Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

The album received somewhat mixed reviews from critics and peaked at No. 78 on the U.S. Billboard chart and No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart. Recent reviews of the album have been more uniformly positive and the album has been included on several retrospective "best of" lists from publications including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Spin.

In 1977, David Bowie and Iggy Pop received a tape of Devo demo songs from the wife of Michael Aylward, guitarist in another Akron, Ohio, band, Tin Huey. Both Pop and Bowie, as well as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, expressed interest in producing Devo's first release. At Devo's New York debut show in 1977, Bowie proclaimed that "this is the band of the future, I'm going to produce them in Tokyo this winter."

The earliest material on the album includes "Come Back Jonee" and "Shrivel-Up", recorded at Different Fur, San Francisco, California in October 1977 with Patrick Gleeson acting as producer, which were mixed and overdubbed later. Eventually, Eno was chosen to produce the rest of the album at Conny Plank's studio located near Cologne, Germany. The band were flown to Germany in February of 1978. Bowie was busy with filming Just a Gigolo but helped Eno produce the record during weekends. Since Devo was without a record deal, Eno paid for the flights and studio cost for the band, confident that the band would be signed to a record contract. In return for his work on the album, Eno asked for a share of any subsequent deals.

Gerald Casale was not present for the first day of recording, as he had missed the flight. With their bassist missing, the group spent the first day playing with Eno, Bowie, Holger Czukay and Dieter Moebius.

The recording sessions were a source of frustration for Eno and Devo. Eno found the band unwilling to experiment or deviate from their early demonstrations of recorded songs. Devo later admitted that "we were overtly resistant to Eno's ideas. He made up synth parts and really cool sounds for almost every part of the album, but we used them on three or four songs." A majority of the tracks were later remixed by Bowie; excluding "Space Junk", and "Shrivel Up", which had Eno's production still intact.

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