Bob Lewis

Who is Bob Lewis?

Robert Curtis Lewis is a founding member 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 multi-million 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.