{"id":525089,"date":"2026-04-11T11:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525089\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:57:12","slug":"when-devo-dismantled-the-rolling-stones-in-front-of-mick-jagger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525089\/","title":{"rendered":"When Devo dismantled The Rolling Stones in front of Mick Jagger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DEVO<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 11 April 2026 6:51, UK <\/p>\n

Once heralded by David Bowie as \u201cthe band of the future\u201d, one of Devo<\/a>\u2018s purest moments was looking back to the past as Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale and their robotic new wave vision was applied to The Rolling Stones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keith Richards would, undoubtedly, never wear an energy dome hat, or even a yellow jumpsuit for that matter, although the get-up he sports on the cover of Dirty Work is garish enough to take out a weak retina, but Mick Jagger was always a bit keener on experimentalism. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat somebody else was doing was far more interesting to him than what he was doing,\u201d Richards reflected on his Rolling Stones peer when the quirks of the \u201870s began to capture his attention. \u201cHe even began to act as if he wanted to be someone else.\u201d If he was beginning to fear that Jagger was losing sight of his \u201cnatural rhythm\u201d, then things were about to get a lot worse for the irked guitarist when his pouting frontman attended a Devo gig.<\/p>\n

Jagger stationed himself in the crowd with no small degree of admiration, and the feeling from Devo was surprisingly mutual. Tom Petty once said that the opening lyric to \u2018(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u2019 was \u201ca great moment in rock history. Just the phrase is worth a million bucks.\u201d And Mothersbaugh seemingly agreed.<\/p>\n

While Mothersbaugh might have been critical of some of the \u2018so-called\u2019 classic rock that was arising in his era, he certainly didn\u2019t classify the Stones as being of that ilk. \u201cI feel like Mick Jagger is one of the underrated lyricists of his generation. \u2018Satisfaction has some of the best ever lyrics written for rock \u2018n\u2019 roll,\u201d he told Kory Grow. \u201cThere are so many other great things about the Rolling Stones that perhaps people don\u2019t give him enough credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mick<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Nationaal Archief)<\/p>\n

With ferocity, angst, and a stunning central riff, \u2018Satisfaction\u2019 irrevocably changed the 1960s. A decade on, Devo looked to change \u2018Satisfaction\u2019, in turn. Their new wave cover version was originally self-released as a single in 1977 on their own DIY label Booji Boy Records. <\/p>\n

A long 12 years on from The Rolling Stones\u2019 original, Devo dismantled the old edifice of an era. It saw the dome-hatted group lay out their foundations for a new style of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. The track then got an extra flourish when it was mixed by Brian Eno as part of their debut album.<\/p>\n

Ripples of success soon saw Warner Bros Records take a chance on the band and sign them up. The issue was, their breakthrough cover song now needed to have a little extra big label vetting and security measures were quickly put in place. In short, they wanted Mick Jagger\u2019s approval on the track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A somewhat tense meeting was put in place. Devo founder Gerald Casale recalled this fraught affair in coversation with The New Yorker<\/a>. Jagger had been summoned to a Manhattan office by Devo\u2019s new manager, Peter Rudge. His mission was to play Jagger the song, with the band present, get his approval, and re-release the cover as a launchpad single.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just looking down at the floor, swirling his glass of red wine,\u201d Casale recalls of Jagger\u2019s reaction. \u201cHe didn\u2019t even have shoes on, just socks and some velour pants. I don\u2019t know what his habits were then, but this was early afternoon, and it looked like he had just gotten up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trepidation the band must have felt when playing their version was excruciatingly paralysing. As one of the world\u2019s most prominent rock stars dissected a cover that barely resembled his iconic hit, the scenery of the day must have felt overwhelming. Add into that mix that Devo cite Jagger and The Rolling Stones as major influences and there\u2019s a chance for a complete meltdown. But the duo held on.<\/p>\n

After all, while their cover might have entirely dismantled \u2018Satisfaction\u2019, the aim was to illuminate some of the depth that might have been lost when the growling single became a ubiquitous radio classic. Mothersbaugh hailed it for \u201cdealing with conspicuous consumption and the stupidity of capitalism and sexual frustration all in one song.\u201d <\/p>\n

His appraisal continues, \u201cIt pretty much encapsulated what was going on with kids at that time, much more than any of the hippie songs, as far as I was concerned.\u201d The truths that the Stones had touched upon still rang true in the \u201870s (as they do today). That\u2019s what attracted Devo to the song in the first place. But they weren\u2019t labelled the future of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll for nothing, and they fittingly reconstructed it into a machine-led modulated version.<\/p>\n

But this felt decisively modern in \u201878, and this cover was the furthest anyone would\u2019ve dared take the track. Let alone have the gall to play it back to him. It was akin to completely redecorating the house you just bought and then inviting the old owners around for a dinner party.<\/p>\n

So as the band sat down in silence across from a velour-attired Mick Jagger, they let their cover play out across the stereo. A weary Jagger suddenly \u201cstood up and started dancing around on this Afghan rug in front of the fireplace, the sort of rooster-man dance he used to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This felt like a good sign. He began yelling, \u201cI like it,\u201d over and over. \u201cMark and I lit up,\u201d Casale recalls, \u201cbig smiles on our faces, like in Wayne\u2019s World: \u2018We\u2019re not worthy!\u2019 To see your icon that you grew up admiring, that you had seen in concert, dancing around like Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger. It was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it is easy to imagine the overwhelming incident from Devo\u2019s surreal perspective, while the moment was life-changing for them in that they got the approval of this idol in every sense, for Jagger it was possibly pivotal, too. While the band had worried that their brick-by-brick deconstruction of the track might have been deemed a slight, in truth, Jagger self-evidently found the reinvention invigorating.<\/p>\n

It was, at this stage, a 13-year-old track. The rise of capitalist realism made its wearying realisation of elusive satisfaction all the more eluciated, prompting \u201860s idealism to mutate into \u201870s cynicism, and therefore, a total reinvention of the same message was the appropriate route for a cover version to take. While it would be another seven years before Jagger would finally take a shot at a solo project, maybe being wowed by Devo\u2019s reinvention gave him the courage to do so.<\/p>\n

After all, he was dancing around like a \u201crooster-man\u201d, and that\u2019s not nothing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 11 April 2026 6:51, UK Once heralded by David Bowie as \u201cthe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[62233,96,25722,128,15747,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-525089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-devo","tag-entertainment","tag-mick-jagger","tag-music","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}