While much of America has devoles to become, as William Gibson put it “Devo’s vision made flesh,” Devo’s own Jerry Casale, obviously a man of “wealth and taste” has revealed to Wine Spectator magazine that he’s taking a more sophisticated approach to life here in the Age of Ignorance, the Tea party and Fox News—the kinds of things he and his band mates were predicting back in the mid-70s.

I was at a dinner party that Jerry also attended a few years back, and I recall that the host was extremely impressed with the bottle o’ vino that Jerry brought.

Wine Spectator: How did you learn so much about wine?

Jerry Casale: When we signed with Warner Bros. Records and moved to California [in the late 1970s], a world opened up to me. We hit California not only when there was an explosion in the music scene, but there was a revolution in cuisine. All the restaurateurs were now famous and had cookbooks out and were new and young and were stretching food consciousness. It stretched from Alice Waters, in San Francisco to Bruce Marder, Sam Clark and Michael McCarty. I met them all, and they were Devo fans! I got to eat and drink in their restaurants and ask a lot of questions. I started from zero and learned and learned and learned. Touring completed the picture. In Europe, I was able to visit vineyards. It was a revelation. I was so into it that I taught wine [at the Wine House in Los Angeles].

Wine Spectator: How long did you teach wine classes?

Jerry Casale: It was in the years that Devo were in some kind of suspended animation, when there was no activity—sometime between 1992 and 1995. [The Wine House] was a serious operation: 1,000 feet of retail space, plus a restaurant and a classroom. I wanted people to strip away all the assumptions they’ve made and things they’ve learned that were wrong like sniffing corks [laughs]. Wine represented some kind of hoity-toity frightening thing to them.

Casale hopes to begin developing his own wine within the next couple of years. Below, “Mongoloid” performed in France, 1978.
 

Devo Frontman Is Whipped by Wine (Wine Spectator)