Robert Curtis Lewis (b. March 4 1947, Akron, Ohio), founding member (along with Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh) of the new wave band Devo. Lewis 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 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 New York State University at Buffalo. In the 1980s, when working as a consultant in Damascus, Syria, he was Middle East Correspondent for Rolling Stock magazine, published by Dorn and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn. His poetry has been published in Creedences, Shelley's and the Poetry Review, when Eric Mottram was editor.
Robert 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.
In 1978, Lewis successfully sued the band for theft of intellectual property. 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. As a result of his experiences during the Devo litigation, the reclusive Lewis began consulting with trial lawyers, doing legal research and writing, and writing commentary on cultural and political issues.
Lewis currently resides in Independence, Missouri.
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