Words and interview by Derek Evers
Video by Hanly Banks
It was the Tripwire day at the Levi’s®/FADER Fort, and I’m talking to Women as we’re all anticipating the spectacle that will be the first ever Tinted Windows performance, when in walks Devo (in full garb mind you). In one of, if not the, most surreal moments of my career, I witnessed all of Devo walking past me and into the dressing room as Taylor Hanson and James Iha walk out. Seriously, you can’t script this stuff.
Devo was actually there to do an interview with another media outlet, when the bells of “hey, this is our venue, maybe we should talk to them too” went off. It all happened so fast, we didn’t have time to mic them or even find a space where they all could sit. Not to mention they had a full video crew documenting their every move for an upcoming film about the reunion and subsequent album and tours. So we crammed roughly ten people, four cameras and two studio lights into the dressing room and threw a FADER mic in front of them as I tried to summarize the last 20 years of the band’s existence in a ten-minute interview. All in all, it was a pretty exciting moment, my only regret is that I didn’t ask them what it was like to do an interview without one “Whip It” question.
