In 1977, five misfits from Ohio took a rock-and-roll classic and mutated it beyond recognition.
One afternoon in 1978, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale—the two prime architects of the band Devo—were fidgeting in Peter Rudge’s office, near the Warwick Hotel, in Manhattan, with Mick Jagger. Rudge was the Rolling Stones’ manager, and Devo had recorded an odd cover of the band’s hit “ Satisfaction”—so odd that their label said they needed Jagger’s blessing to release it. Mothersbaugh put the tape in a boom box and pressed Play.
The description is an exaggeration, but only a small one. After forming, in 1972, Devo had spent the subsequent half decade building up a huge fan base in the Midwest, but had not made a dent beyond. To get gigs, they would lie to clubs and say they were a Top Forty covers band. Once promoters figured out that they were not, they were rarely invited back.
The more Devo played the song, the more it evolved—or devolved. Early videos show a version much slower than it would become—a mid-tempo rumble that wore out its welcome by the end. It was interesting conceptually, and no doubt a fun surprise for concertgoers, but not necessarily something you’d want to listen to repeatedly. “The versions that we were doing of all our songs in the early days were very slow and more bluesy, like Captain Beefheart material,” Mothersbaugh recalled.
“Our goal was to just try and make it as faithful to what we were doing as we could,” Mothersbaugh recalled. “But Brian and David added on extra harmony vocals, and they put in synth parts. When we weren’t in the studio, Eno would go in on his own and record extra parts over the top of our songs. Most always, we took all the stuff out that they did.” In the end, the song basically emerged unchanged from Devo’s prior recording.