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Mark Mothersbaugh, co-founder and frontman of the trailblazing new wave rock band DEVO, is one the most distinctive and prolific figures in music history.

David Bowie (a patron saint of the group) called DEVO "the band of the future” (with one of their numerous innovations including the invention of the music video format, pre-MTV) and from early on DEVO was celebrated by the likes of the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Neil Young and Andy Warhol.

Also an award-winning composer, Mothersbaugh has scored everything from global box office hits The Lego Movie, children’s television classic Rugrats through to the majority of Wes Anderson’s films, including Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Life Aquatic.

Never one to be confined by easy categorisation, Mothersbaugh is also a celebrated multi-media artist who has held numerous solo exhibitions of his work.

Artist Beatie Wolfe sat down with Mothersbaugh, an LA resident since 1977, to talk about the best (and weirdest) things about life in LA.

What are you currently working on?

"I’ve got about four films in different stages of development. One of my favorite directors in the world, a guy named Beto Gomez, called last night and said he's got a film. He grew up on the other side of the border in Sinaloa, kind of parallel with Wes Anderson who was growing up in Houston, and they have a similar kind of aesthetic. Their visuals are similar but Beto has less affectations."

What do you love about Hollywood?

"Hollywood is an amazing place and it drives people on the East Coast crazy because it's both immature and has a lot of the most creative people in the country here.

Everybody who got thrown out of Europe for being too crazy started moving further West. If they couldn't handle being in New York or Boston they kept moving, and if they couldn't handle being in Chicago they finally got to the coast - and that's as far as they could go.

So you ended up with the craziest people in the country all out here, but also the most creative people, and I think it contributed to something that's still endures. It's always been a city with a lot of potential to it."

Your first impression of LA?

"In 1977 when I first came here with DEVO we got out of an Econoline van at the corner of Vine and Hollywood and said 'Ah, here we are tinsel town!' But then I’m looking around and thinking this place is horrible, this is a dump. And then some crazy old woman walked up to me and she goes, 'You want to buy my glasses?' I'm like, that’s not Betty Grable! These are the craziest of the crazy people!"

How has living in this city changed you in any way?

"First off getting to work in music so much, it’s much easier here. I grew up in Akron, Ohio, which was an industrial town and once the rubber capital of the world.

In Akron, there was a lot of resistance to what we were doing and we considered ourselves a lightning rod for hostility. Back there we thought, if we're pissing these people off, we're doing something right. That's how we had to think about it when we got in a fistfight during a show or got asked to stop playing.

Then we came out here in the mid-70s and met people like Dennis Hopper, Neil Young, Dean Stockwell, Tony Basil and they were so accessible and interested in new artists like us.

Coming to LA I met all these amazing people even though I had to be with a record company, which was the bullsh**t part because they didn't have a clue what we were about and only signed us because David Bowie was a fan and they were trying to get him to do a production deal with them."

Something you’ve done here that you couldn't have done anywhere else?

"Meeting people who felt the same as me who were involved in expressing themselves through multimedia. And it was easy out here because it was so cheap to live, even up to the year 2000 or so.

You could get these giant apartments for like 300 bucks, so it was very artist friendly. Now we're creating the crime that has screwed up so many other big cities around the world where we've made housing so expensive that the artists and new creative minds have a hard time being here."

A favorite film or music video that has been shot in this city?

"I like corny, teen stuff where you see what Hollywood looked like in the 1960s and you see the clubs or diners that don't exist anymore, like Mel's Diner - that used to be Ben Frank's.

I would have loved to have been here about 30 years earlier. The golden age of film is long over and the most amazing films were made 60 or 70 years ago. Hollywood doesn't really make To Kill a Mockingbirds or Citizen Kanes anymore."

Your most enjoyable score?

"It changes, but I'm fond of the stuff I did with Wes Anderson. I enjoyed working with him, he’s an interesting artist. He’s also very agoraphobic and wouldn’t let me use a recording studio where I could have a big orchestra. I had to bring six or seven people in at a time to record and it would take us four times as long, but he could sit on that couch and feel more in control."

Tell me more about your connection with Bowie?

"David Bowie and Brian Eno were early patron saints for DEVO and they paid for our first record.

I lived with David for a bit in New York when I had nowhere to go and we'd go out to the theater and somebody would notice it was David Bowie and soon there'd be a big mob. I'd be sitting in the back of a car with him with all these people pushed up against the window going, 'David, David!' And I’d go, 'It’s David Bowie, it’s him.'"

Didn’t David Bowie first discover you with Iggy Pop?

"Yes. They were touring The Idiot with David playing keys, backing up Iggy and we went to see them in Cleveland and a girlfriend of ours was cute enough to get backstage and give them a tape.

Then when they were back in Berlin to record 'Lust For Life' they were looking for something to listen to other than German radio and so Iggy started going through the box of tapes and pulled out the DEVO one. They put it on and they said: 'This can't be real!'"

Were there other interesting people who were early fans of DEVO?

"DEVO was this band where people would tell one another 'I’ve just seen the weirdest thing! These guys they hung a curtain up and they had a movie projector with films of themselves playing songs and then they'd come out and play the songs dressed like factory workers and janitors.'

So after one show everybody started turning up, like Andy Warhol would be at a show and that's how we met Dennis Hopper and a lot of people."

Who were some of those early people that made this city home?

"I met two of the most positive people I’ve ever met on the planet in this city. One of them was Timothy Leary and the other one was Allee Willis. Allee threw parties every couple of weeks and Norman Bates would show up at her house or Earth, Wind & Fire would be there.

With Allee, it wouldn’t matter what it was, if you gave her a little gift or you showed her something, she would go: 'OH MY GOD!' She would be so over effusive and so incredible and it was such a beautiful energy. Allee has always been this person who just emanates incredible, giving energy to people. She was a special person and there aren’t that many."

Do you have a particular memory with Timothy Leary?

"I used to carry a 3D camera around in the '80s and '90s and have photos of Tim Leary and me fully dressed in this heart-shaped bathtub that was Althea Flynt’s bathtub - it was about a week or two before she committed suicide in the same bathtub, because she was one of the first people I knew who had AIDS. Back then it was really a death sentence."

Have you got a favourite time of day in LA?

"I live in Laurel Canyon and I've always loved being up there because I can see the sky and the ocean and all of LA.

There are times when I get up in the morning and look out the window and there's no city - because of thermal inversion. It will just look like puffy clouds, like you’re on the seashore somewhere up North or in Northern England.

And then it will start to dissipate and as it does, you'll see little skyscrapers starting to poke through, in downtown and Century City and Beverly Hill and I love that time of day."

Is there somewhere that always inspires you?

"I like Huntington Gardens. Even if they're like really manicured and maintained, I just happen to like gardens.

My family were coal miners on both sides and both of my grandmas had gardens. They barely had anything, but they both had gardens.

My one grandma had roses and they were so soft and beautiful and her gardens smelled so good. There was just one grapevine and the grapes that grew on it were super sweet, sweeter than almost any grapes."

Do you have a favorite space to see art in LA?

"Hauser & Wirth. I like the way the space is set up and I like that it's got a nice restaurant attached to it because in LA it's so hard to get around nowadays, traffic is so crazy, that a meal has to be included."

How else has LA changed?

"I was around when it was all about excess. Now if you go to any record company or film company for a meeting someone takes an order for Starbucks and everybody gets their cappuccinos and are ready to go for the meeting.

I remember our very first meeting here after we’d signed with Warner Brothers, a guy walked in and pulled out a canister of cocaine and everybody did a line so they could all be creative and sharp for this marketing meeting.

I was the luckiest person in showbiz because that stuff never appealed to me. But that was accepted, that was the norm, and those were the kind of things they taught you out here."

Do you have a favorite building?

"I like the Roosevelt Hotel. I think it has good energy."

A neighborhood you particularly like?

"I like the Venice canals. In the 1970s they were filthy and there was garbage and tires floating in it and now it's all very gentrified."

Favorite sign and why?

"The In 'N Out burger sign. When I first came out here, In 'N Out Burger used to pass out these bumper stickers if you went through the drive through and kids would cut a letter off the end of each side of the sticker so it would say In and Out Urge.

I love hair salon names too. There's one somewhere out towards Silver Lake called Hairllucination."

Favorite street?

"Sunset Boulevard. I think about the history of the street all the time. I walk on it and I think how I would have loved to have been here in the '60s and '50s."

Something you find that only happens here?

"The thing that freaks me out that happens here is people fail upwards. It probably happens everywhere but I see it here so much. People that blow it at one thing and then resurface somewhere else."

Is there a hidden gem that you would like to shine a light on? And it can be anything.

"I would even say one that I can't go to because my daughter is on the strict ballerina diet - Mashti Malone’s."

LA in three words?

"Devolved, devoid, divine."

If you were a juice, what use would you be and why?

"I would be green juice because green juice makes me happy. And it feels like I don't have to make apologies for drinking it.

Beatie Wolfe is an artist and innovator who has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN Women role model for innovation and held a solo exhibition of her album designs at the V&A Museum.