Bob Casale, one of the original members of Devo, passed away Monday from “conditions that lead to heart failure” at the age of 61, according to his brother and bandmate Gerald Casale.
“As an original member of Devo, Bob Casale was there in the trenches with me from the beginning,” Casale wrote on the band’s Facebook page. “He was my level-headed brother, a solid performer and talented audio engineer, always giving more than he got. He was excited about the possibility of Mark Mothersbaugh allowing Devo to play shows again. His sudden death from conditions that lead to heart failure came as a total shock to us all.”
Devo is an American New Wave band that was formed in 1972, in part, by brothers Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Bob and Gerald Casale. At first an underground band — bursting onto the scene with debut album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! — Devo soon found widespread fame 1980’s Freedom of Choice and the single “Whip It,” the video for which received massive airplay on MTV.
Most recently, the band released the record Something For Everybody in 2010, an innovative effort (and the band’s first in 20 years at the time) that was composed via an crowdsourcing experiment where fans chose the tracklist.
The band left their label, Warner Bros., two years later, but planned to keep releasing previously unheard material.
Remembrances of Bob Casale are already flooding the Internet, with the likes of Tom Morello tweeting their condolences. Leave your memories and thoughts below.
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