AD What influenced you to start playing guitar?
MM I started taking organ lessons at home at age seven, and thought music had been invented to torture me. At age twelve, I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. From that day, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and started that night figuring out how I was going to join the Beatles. They broke up before I met any of them, but John Lennon came to a Devo gig at Max's Kansas City in 1977. Afterwards he stuck his head in my face and sang the yeah, yeah, yeahs in the Devo song "Uncontrollable Urge" from about 2 inches away.
AD Did you ever take lessons?
MM Keyboard lessons, yeah.. It ended in 1967 with four months of jazz improv lessons from a guy in Akron, Ohio who had permanent yellow stains between his cigarette holding fingers. Before that, in junior high, I played farfisa in a band with an electric bass player and two electric guitarists, and we went to an accordian shop in Akron for band lessons. That lasted for about a half dozen lessons before we figured out how to play 45's at 33, to learn our parts.
AD What were your early influences?
MM Of course, all things pop, but by the time we started Devo, we were interested in film, television, commercials, elevator, and just about every kind of music out there.
AD What are your current influences?
MM I tend to get immersed in music relating to a project. For the movie, "The Royal Tenenbaums" it was French impressionist music. For the movie "Lords of Dogtown", it was Led Zeppelin and The James Gang. For "Saving Private Perez", a Mexican movie I'm scoring right now, it's "norte banda" music; the kind of stuff Mexican mafiosi might have on the ipod on their yacht.
AD Which is your favorite guitar you've ever played?
MM I destroyed a red plastic and naugahyde Hagstrom that Bob #2 from Devo let me use onstage... I think it cushioned a stage dive one night... it had a nice twangy sound and a stiff whammy bar that worked good with the Electro Harmonix frequency analyzer I used to gaffer tape to the front of whatever guitar I was playing back in the mid '70's.
AD What's next ?
MM Always scoring films, games, tv, but the big news is the impending Devo album. Devo just played the Olympics in Vancouver, and the next date is Coachella. If all goes wrong, we'll end up touring to support the new recordings.
recorded via email 4:05 am, April 1, 2010
If you want to know what Mark has been doing recently, all you have to do is listen. Along with the release of a new Devo record, he is scoring movies and producing all sorts of musical pieces and ad work through his multi media studio, Mutato Muzika. At this very moment, he could be on the radio, on the tube, or on that video you popped in to keep the kids from wrecking the house.
