Bob Lewis (musician)

Robert Lewis

Robert Curtis Lewis (born March 4, 1947 Akron, Ohio) is a founding member (along with Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh) of the New Wave band Devo. He played basketball briefly for Bobby Knight at Cuyahoga Falls High School, was a National Merit Scholar at Kent State University, and the first student at the university to earn a degree in anthropology, graduating shortly after the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.

In 1971, Lewis, along with Devo co-founder Gerald Casale and Peter Gregg, recorded three proto-Devo songs, "I Been Refused", "I Need A Chick" and "Auto Mowdown", on primitive recording equipment located over Guido's Pizza Shop in Kent, Ohio. Lewis and Gerald Casale were the originators of the concept of de-evolution, writing seminal tracts in the now-defunct LA Staff, and later formed the band with Mark Mothersbaugh.

Lewis studied poetry with Black Mountain poet Ed Dorn, British poet Eric Mottram and Robert Bertholf, an English professor at Kent who later was named the curator of the poetry collection and Charles D. Abbot Scholar at the University at Buffalo.

In 1978, after Devo signed a multimillion-dollar multi-album contract with Warner Brothers Records, co-founder Lewis asked for credit and compensation for his contributions to the band. The band refused to negotiate, and sued Lewis in Los Angeles Superior Court, seeking a declaratory judgment stating Lewis had no rights to the name or theory of De-evolution. Lewis then filed an action in United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, alleging theft of intellectual property. During discovery, Lewis produced articles, promotional materials, documentary evidence and an interview recorded at the Akron Art Institute following the premiere of In the Beginning was the End in which Mothersbaugh and other band members credited Lewis with developing the theory of De-evolution, and the band quickly settled for an undisclosed sum.

He wrote and performed as Hurricane Bob on the New Wave Akron compilation album, Bowling Balls from Hell, and worked on videos with New Wave groups Tin Huey, Hammer Damage and Human Switchboard. In the 1980s, when working as a consultant in Damascus, Syria, he was Middle East Correspondent for Rolling Stock magazine, published by Ed and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn. His poetry has been published in Creedences, Shelley's and the Poetry Review, when Eric Mottram was editor.

External links

• Lewis, Bob (2006). Some thoughts on Devo: the first Postmodern Band at the Wayback Machine (archived February 18, 2006), Devaluate.com. Archived from the original on 2006-02-07.

• Lewis in Antiquities, British Museum at the Wayback Machine (archived February 18, 2006) (Photo)

• Lewis, Bob (1972-07-14). "Readers vs. Breeders: Didactical Works re De-Evolution" at the Wayback Machine (archived October 14, 2007). The Staff (LA Staff) (Los Angeles, CA). Republished at Cleveland.com. Archived from the republish on 2007-10-14.

• Devo at MoMA Looking at Music