DEVO founder GERALD V. CASALE comments: eyewitness to May 4, 1970 Kent State tragedy

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"THE DAY THAT NEVER ENDS: May 4, 1970" --
2008 exclusive interview/commentary: Gerald V. Casale,
questions by Alan Canfora, KM4C Director.

1) Would you describe your general or specific recollection of Kent's student and/or anti-war culture in 1970? In your opinion, what percentage of 1970 Kent students were identifiable as part of the anti-war, counter-culture or "hippie" subcultures?

CASALE: By 1970 there seemed to be evidence to suggest that about 1200 students belonged to and/or participated in various anti-war groups on campus. That would still account for less than 10% of registered students at Kent State at that time. SDS, of which I was a member, was certainly the most threatening of those groups by virtue of their somewhat militant, politically and socially astute, articulated attacks on the hypocrisy of our federal, state and local government in a supposed free, democratic society. Their ideological, Gestalt type analysis went way beyond passively opposing the Vietnam War. To us, that war was just a symptom of the corrosive power of the military-industrial complex married with corporate capitalism. The co-option of true freedom and the dissolution of local community power were points of serious contention. In light of present day culture all we can say is "I hate to say I told you so".

Our SDS chapter's presence on campus at Kent was certainly an anomaly to mainstream midwest culture and just as much an anomaly to a state university fueled by sports, fraternities, and curriculums favoring career opportunities in business and technology. Having said that, the intense and pioneering artistic/anti-war subcultural community at Kent State during the period of 1966 to 1972 was at least on par with those usually only attributed to famous "A" list Universities such as Columbia in NY and Berkeley in California. We may have been a small, land-locked group but we were harboring a powerhouse of unsung radical talent. Maybe we were outnumbered 10 to one by marquee name university students hogging the credit but in any category, be it political speech making, radical organizing and demonstrations, musical performance art (before it was so-named), agi-pop paintings and posters, independent films, gay and lesbian activists, and yes, even hippie fashion shops and drug dealers, we had a local star that could stand with the best in the nation.

2) Please describe the impact of anti-war music upon student activists during the Vietnam War at Kent before or during 1970. Did any particular local or national songs or bands inspire you personally or general anti-war activism in Kent?

CASALE: For me it all began with Bob Dylan's "Bringin' It All Back Home" LP that I bought in 1965. I couldn't stop listening to it. It divided me from my college prep , pseudo Ivy League classmates and when I played it in poetry class in my Kent Roosevelt high school I was sent to the principal's office for making a joke of education. I started to grow my hair, formed a band that played Dylan covers and stayed loyal to Dylan when he went electric. I staged the talent portion of the senior class assembly in 1966. Four seniors had been suspended from the football team for drinking beer so I recruited them to sing back-ups on "Rainy Day Women" with its chorus of "Everybody Must Get Stoned". I hid near-beer in the bass drum and on signal we pulled it out and they all started drinking. The teachers in the assembly went ballistic and pulled the plug. I was suspended and received my diploma by mail. Little did I know that 4 years later I would do the same for my BFA since the KSU campus was as closed as a crime scene. As we know a crime indeed was committed and there was an order to shoot as sure as I have functioning eyes and ears.

In that 4 years of college interim between 1966 and 1970, I of course listened to the Fugs, Country Joe and The Fish, The MC5, and more. I traced protest music back to Rural Blues and Folk Music. I became somewhat of an expert due to the lively blues and folk music scene permeating the local counterculture. I was tutored best by Bob Kidney, a local legend whose unparalleled band , 15-60-75, The Numbers Band featured saxophonist, Terry Hynde, Chrissie Hynde's older brother. After the killings on May 4th Bob let me join the band as the bass player. It was quite an honor to say the least.

3) Please describe your own personal observations of events during May 1-4, 1970. Any particular lasting impact for you personally?

CASALE: There is an indescribable lifelong bond between so many of us who survived that day. Imagine being 18 or 19 years old at noon on a sunny day in May attending a student rally against President Nixon's unlawful expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia after being subjected to Martial Law type, Banana Republic tactics by local police and deputies in town on the weekend before. You're standing on a grassy hill known as The Commons on campus with many of your friends listening to various activist luminaries ranting against our tone deaf leaders. Suddenly you are surrounded by National Guard troops who have been hiding in non-classroom buildings on campus as well as many more who pour onto campus in military jeeps. They announce your assembly is unlawful and thereafter start shooting tear gas at you when you defy their order to leave your own campus. They attempt to herd you into an area near the Journalism Building where your escape route will be cut off and you will be easy to arrest. Still, it seemed to be following the rules of the war protest game established years before. Then imagine in an instant 18 and 19 year old peers wearing uniforms and gas masks aiming their M1 rifles fixed with bayonets at you. Think something as surreal as the Storm Troopers in Star Wars unfolding in reality. Like some Civil War parody, the first row of soldiers kneel and the second row stand. To the side a commander yells something and drops his arm. They all shoot!

As I ran from them I wheeled around in the direction of hideous, mass screaming to see Allison Krause laying on the ground, a huge pool of blood spreading out around her, coagulating in the bright heat of the sun. My mind snaps. The guns are LOADED WITH LIVE AMMUNITION! Previous to that moment I had seen only staged TV and movie violence beyond a pathetic schoolyard fight. This was a lethal and nauseating negation of life in an instant -- sanctioned by the state and impervious to prosecution. They got away with murder and I would never be the same. Peace and Love were jettisoned that day. I saw how the world really works. It only works that way even more efficiently now. As George Orwell warned 60 years ago, "the future will be the boot coming down on the face of humanity over and over". In a perverse silver lining, I guess Devo would have never happened had I not had such a life-changing experience.

4) Did you personally know any of the 13 KSU students killed or injured by gunshots on May 4, 1970? Please offer any recollection or anecdotes.

CASALE: I knew both Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause. I grew up blue collar and the only option I had to attend college was to secure a scholarship. I scored very high on my SATs and I qualified for a Work/Study scholarship in the Honors College at Kent State University. The Honors College was an academically demanding program within the University offering small classes and special reading lists, etc. My job was to assist and guide incoming students with their college registration and class curriculum during the summer previous to the start of the Fall Quarter. It was during the summer of 1969 that I met the two of them. They were incoming freshmen from New York and Pennsylvania. They were smart and funny and we immediately became friends. It was truly the era of attempting free love ("crabs" was the worst case scenario we knew of). I panted after Allison and Jeffrey went after my Post-Graduate in Psychology girlfriend, Nancy. I lived in an apartment off campus next to Chris Butler. Jeffrey became friends with him too. I was in proximity to Allison May 4th so, as I have said, I knew that she died. Jeffrey was further down the hill on the roadway leading to the Gymnasium. I actually saw the girl in the famous John Filo photograph gesturing and screaming but it was too far away for me to know that it was Jeffrey laying there face down.

After the shooting stopped, time went slow-motion like some action film technique as in the fight scenes of "Raging Bull". I flopped down on the ground shaking and listened as metallic voices scratched the spring air with commands to "stay where you are!". I don't think I could move anyway. We were marched off campus single file after what seemed like hours. No campus buses were operating so I walked home 3 miles crying and taking back streets to avoid the locals, many of whom were out for blood having heard false radio reports that students had shot at guardsmen. I cried for Allison and Nancy came home from her administrative job in Youngstown hours later crying about Jeffrey. For a week helicopters buzzed the town of Kent looking for any students who disobeyed the 7 PM curfew.

5) Are you identifiable in any May 1-4, 1970 photographs? Can you offer any 1970-era photograph(s) of yourself or other Kent students or events (anything from the KSU campus, city of Kent or JB's bar, for example)?

CASALE: I don't know of any photos where I am identifiable. I'm sure they must exist. Certainly undercover agents must have snapped plenty of them. I was at numerous meetings and rallies including the famous Oakland Police recruiting protest and the Dow Chemical protest with Rick and Candy Erickson and Howie Emmer and the Kent SDS gang. I was also the "go to" guy for graphics on pamphlets and posters, being a fine art major. The only photo I have for sure is a great band shot of me with The Numbers Band taken at Walter's Bar on Water Street in Kent.

6) Finally, please offer your comment explaining why younger students today should remember the lessons of Vietnam and Kent State 1970.

CASALE: I'll answer indirectly. People thought that what I did and said with my band, Devo, was just a silly prank. True we employed humor and irony to get our message out. But, unfortunately, Devolution is real. If eight years of the Bush administration is not proof enough then I rest my case. First I want to ask all those in my peer group this: "If any one in 1970 had showed you a typical news soundbite featuring Bush/Cheney, etc from the last year could you have predicted something this deadly farcical in your worst nightmare scenario? Could you imagine a stupid, menial, mean spirited man and his unholy junta holding the world hostage as they have? People who are on the wrong side of every issue that matters to the quality of survival on the planet be it the environment, healthcare, human rights, foreign policy, scientific research, etc.? How was it possible? The answer is not only that our side of consciousness lost the cultural wars in the 1970's but that today 18 an 19 year olds don't even acknowledge that such a war is real. They don't even get the concept of Democracy. They don't realize that the very idea of Democracy is under attack FROM WITHIN at every moment. They are sheep. They buy bling-bling, they play first-person shooter video games and they just want money. The future is here as predicted because they aren't even aware that Kent State happened. If they are educated about it they think we (the students) must have done something wrong to bring it on ourselves. It's a blame the victim society. America is China now in terms of it's society but it's more like a third world country about to exit the main stage. It's very sad indeed.

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CHRIS BUTLER INTERVIEW, 2008...

POST-SCRIPT: A similar 2008 interview with 1970 KSU student/musician CHRIS BUTLER, a close friend of our martyr Jeff Miller. Same questions by KM4C Director Alan Canfora...

1) Would you describe your general or specific recollection of Kent's student and/or anti-war culture in 1970? In your opinion, what percentage of 1970 Kent students were identifiable as part of the anti-war, counter-culture or "hippie" subcultures?

BUTLER: I came to Kent in ’67, and I can remember Jake Leed and 2½ other people outside The Hub (old KSU Student Union) with anti-war picket signs. Three years later there were hundreds…perhaps thousands?...protesting the war, racism and all the other major ills of US culture. There is always a tendency to over-estimate the number of people who think like you do (the consensus fallacy in Social-Psych), but when you factor in the black student walk-out & the general rumblings of discontent, the answer is…I don’t know. Kent was a main stream campus and tho the numbers grew over time, the majority of students were pretty much non-commited to any kind of bohemian or anti-war action or life-style...but not my crowd! I was in the artsy-muso-filmo bunch who loved the freedom Kent offered, and we soaked up as much optional-fringe-experimental life stuff as we could. It was thrilling…until it wasn’t, of course.

2) Please describe the impact of anti-war music upon student activists during the Vietnam War at Kent before or during 1970. Did any particular local or national songs or bands inspire you personally or general anti-war activism in Kent?

BUTLER: There was a deep conviction that alternative music – in this case blues, jazz and labor struggle folk music – were more ‘real’ than the commercial fodder of the day. This stuff was very much the soundtrack of life in Kent, and when combined with the downtown/Water St. club scene begat an inspirational milieu that encouraged the composing of original music. This alone was ‘radical’, and was a distinct sociological pocket vs. the standard fare of cover/dance bands that were the order of the day.

3) Please describe your own personal observations of events during May 1-4, 1970. Any particular lasting impact for you personally?

BUTLER: 100% involvement and probably the most significant event of my life. It’s one thing to dabble in alternative living/lifestyle/politics – quite another when the uber-culture shoots at you for living & thinking this way. It is impossible to live comfortably within the uber-culture when confronted with such an extreme reaction. Standard, run-of-the-mill youthful alienation becomes the way you live the rest of your life which gives great freedom and great difficulties in equal measure.

4) Did you personally know any of the 13 KSU students killed or injured by gunshots on May 4, 1970? Please offer any recollection or anecdotes.

BUTLER: Yes. I was pals with Jeff Miller and we were together on May 4 up until the last minutes before he was killed. I had gone into one of the dorms to refill a water bucket I had for soaking bandanas (to filter the tear gas), and was walking back to where I had left Jeff when the National Guard opened fire. I did not know he was killed until later that evening when it was announced on network news.

5) Are you identifiable in any May 1-4, 1970 photographs? Can you offer any 1970-era photograph(s) of yourself or other Kent students or events (anything from the KSU campus, city of Kent or JB's bar, for example)?

BUTLER: I have looked at all the photos available, and do not see myself in any of them. I do have some photos of BUS’s walk-out, but l would have to locate them.

6) Finally, please offer your comment explaining why younger students today should remember the lessons of Vietnam and Kent State 1970.

BUTLER: This is a huge question and one that I think about a lot…especially since I need to know what to tell my 8-year-old as he grows up. How do you balance the promise of America with the hypocrisy of its actions? How do you tell your kid (or a young student) that finding your way in the world might have deadly consequences?...yet life is good/you can be what you want to be/you will need to learn how to make a living vs. money is not the most important thing in life, etc. This is tough to parse.

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