Original subtitles

In 1994, after the release of their eighth studio album, Songs of Faith and Devotion,

D'Pesh Mode were a band fractured under the weight of their immense success.

Having travelled a long way from their humble roots in the Essex town of Bazidone, England,

and with a career spanning almost 30 years, it was over the course of four albums between

1986 and 1993, that they made their name as one of the most important influential and

successful electronic acts of all time.

This film is the story of those four records.

I think D'Pesh Mode created a remarkable balancing act in an individual style, which

was to actually make very popular hit music out of some fairly dark themes.

And I think that is possibly the key to them doing success.

For me, it's the combination of classic songwriting and orchestrated with synthesisers in a really serious way.

The longevity of the band, the fact that they still feel fresh, still feel young is a great counterpoint to rock acts that have lasted for decades,

like you two of the Rolling Stones or whatever.

There's not many people in electronic music have done that and still done it in a fresh way, and I think we all owe them a debt.

The music is a great way to make a difference.

Perhaps it wasn't sort of seen at the outset that we're going to end up that way.

Really, 25 years down the line, D'Pesh Mode are the biggest electronic acts the world has ever seen, and probably had a wheel scene.

D'Pesh Mode was formed in Baseldon, Essex in 1980 by neighbours Vince Clark and Andy Fletcher, along with school friend Martin Gore.

Originally known as Composition of Sound, they played local gigs and at the time appeared a much more conventional act to the one that would achieve such great success.

Vince was a guitarist. Martin Gore, in fact, was the only person in the band with a synthesiser.

Rumour has it he was asked to join the band because he had a synthesiser.

And later on, they obviously realised they needed a visual impact.

They didn't really have a frontman. Vince wasn't comfortable in performing that role, although he's quite adept as a songwriter.

And they basically found another guy in the area called Dave Gahn, who remains with him to this day as quite an enigmatic frontman.

But back in those days, he was quite a dresser. He was sort of known in the area as someone who was into fashion.

And basically Dave was drafted in the group. I think as a result of that, they obviously then had a look, at least someone who could bring some visual impact to the group in the early days.

Along with a new visual impact, the group acquired a new name.

Taken from the title of a French fashion magazine, Depeche Mode was the name chosen and translates as fashion dispatch.

Depeche Mode consisted of four band members. They all had their own musical interests.

Vince was very influenced by OMD, who probably notched their first two or three hit singles at that time,

a wear of the early human league, a graphic as well. So there was the electronic side of things.

Dave Gahn was probably more from a kind of rock background, the kind of music he was listening to.

Martin Gore also. Fletcher, or Andy Fletcher, that is, the sort of silent fourth member of Depeche Mode.

He was a heavy metaler, deep purple were his thing. So yeah, there's a lot of influences coming in.

The influence of electronic music was most significant for Depeche Mode.

The beginning of the 1980s had seen an explosion of new wave acts, many of whom embraced the style and potential of the electronic sound.

An offshoot from the new wave was the new romantic movement, who added a more commercially accessible flavour,

along with the fashions that were prominent on the club scene, although the use of electronic instruments and experimentation was not something new.

Electronic music had long been on the fringes of the mainstream.

Brought to the fore by such acts as tangerine dream and craft work during the early 1970s,

the electronic approach provided an alternate route for new groups to the guitar-based sound of the time.

Middle 870s, I suppose the people that people like craft work were beginning to become quite renowned by them.

David Bowie had done some of his more grandiose, low type electronic things.

So it was moving out of the realms of the prog rock people that have been doing it for a while.

People had been a part of certain classes, rock music and that for quite some time.

But it had always been this background thing with guitar getting all the acalades and the shapes really.

And then I suppose with craft work it began to become a little bit more the instrument itself,

but it started to become an instrument in its own right I suppose.

The 1970s was a very period of great change in electronic music.

The most important thing about the 1970s was that synthesizers, as they were the electronic instruments that musicians could use,

started to change from being huge cabinets and basically you'd need an articulate lorry to move these huge,

huge mode synthesizers into much smaller devices called modular synthesizers,

which you could actually pick up and carry the suitcase.

No longer did you have these great big modular things, if 1000 cables linked with these little boxes together,

that went in and out.

You had a mini-move now.

And if you had other things all beginning to come into one cute little box and you could just sit there

and not really know what you're doing and make these amazing sounds.

But in the early days synthesizers were very, very primitive and you could really make one note at a time.

And tape recorders were primitive.

I had a two-track tape recorder so I had to program one sound and then rewind it and program a second sound

and ping-pong them together.

It was very laborious and you couldn't really afford to make mistakes because you could never go back and unravel them later.

In a way that was what made electronic music so interesting in those days was it was so rarefied.

There were only a handful of us doing it and every time you twiddled a knob you felt like you were pioneering breaking new ground.

It was so exciting.

It was so exciting to be a part of something which felt genuinely new.

I'm not saying that it hadn't come before because it had, you know, you had your craft boards and people like before,

but it felt like it was beginning, it felt like a new generation of young people were beginning to grab it and see the potential.

Amongst the many members of this new generation was a duo from Liverpool who would come to be known as orchestral maneuvers in the dark.

Their involvement with the electronic sound would unwittingly have a profound effect on the eventual direction of Depeche Mode.

Like most teenagers of my generation I guess and the ones before and several of the ones after, I was interested in doing something different.

I did not wish to repeat what had come before.

Just after my 16th birthday I had heard outer bar on the radio.

That was the catalyst. That was the key. I heard this and I thought, I mean it's catchy, it's attractive, but it's constructed in a completely different way.

And I just went, that is what I want to do.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

The mid 70s just happened to coincide with electronic music becoming, I guess a little bit more available.

Not least for us, was that you could actually buy cheap synthesizers.

Our first synthesizer was bought from my mother's mail order catalog, but at least it gave us access to the instrument.

You went into a music shop, you could buy a synthesizer and it was an affordable price.

It was no longer an extremely luxurious item to have.

It was more comparable to buying a drum kit or a guitar setup.

So I think that inspired a lot of younger kids to go out and get into it.

And it also made it a lot more practical for the average band to have a keyboard player and a couple of synthesizers.

Utilizing the affordability of the new technology, several bands started to form with electronic music in mind.

And although underground, the scene slowly began to build.

The electronic music scene as far as I was concerned when I come along.

But it wasn't one really.

Something that I was aware of.

I got into it, but I was so by accident because I went to a studio to make a punk album and as a synthesizer there, I never seen a real one before.

I didn't really know that there was a scene as such going on.

Then I found out about UltraVox, obviously, and then I found out about Human League.

But all in different cities.

So it seemed as if there were little groups of people in different cities around the UK that were kind of doing it in isolation.

More and more of the underground electronic bands started to have pop hits and get recognition that way.

You had people like the Human League and Soft Cell and so on who had come out of the underground electronic scene,

throbbing in Grissel and Cabaret Voltaire and so on, who weren't as successful.

But you'd see somebody on top of the pops using entirely synthesizers.

You'd see Gary Newman up there using all synthesizers.

Here in my car I have to say this to all.

I can lock on my cars, it's the only way to live in cars.

Here in my car I can only receive.

I can listen to you in case we stay before the ice in cars.

Nobody had really done anything and a lot of us, they just got a deal, or didn't have a deal at all.

And so it wasn't really a movement as such and so it needed something to kind of bring it all together

and to bring it to the public's attention.

And I think it was just a matter of time before somebody had the right song,

or the right opportunity perhaps, and it all came together.

When we got old enough to go into the central lip pool and go clubbing,

we went to Eric's Club which was the focal point of most of the young people in Liverpool

for listening to live music.

And standing in the audience one night, I think Paul and I heard warm leather eights

by the normal come on the house PA.

And we just looked at each other and went, shit, somebody in this country is doing what we're doing

in your mother's back room and they've already made a record.

Leather eights, warm, leather eights, warm, leather eights, warm, leather eights.

See the breaking glass in the underpass.

See the breaking glass in the underpass.

So that really was when we decided we'd better get on stage.

And fortunately Eric's had this kind of open door policy.

So Paul and I, with our friends tape recorder, because none of our other mates

wanted to go near what we were playing, they thought it was absolute crap.

So the two of us on tape recorder piled on stage in October of 78

to do what we'd been writing for the last two years but never dared to do.

So we'd heard warm leather eights, we'd go on stage.

And we were supporting Joy Division, who of course were about to sign the factory record.

There was about 30 people in the audience, most of whom actually were our family and friends.

And the applause was, I mean, we were going nowhere.

This was not the future of popular music.

It certainly didn't seem to at the time anyway, but incredibly.

There was a couple of people who did seem to think there was something there.

We were offered more gigs at Eric's.

We were offered to make a record with factory records.

And obviously Tony Wilson from Factory was actually the first person who heard our music and said,

this is the future of popular music.

And we were like, fuck off, it's experimental.

But it turned out he was right.

The electronic sound did turn out to be the future of popular music.

And Tony Wilson of Factory Records was not the only person to see that.

Warm Leather Eart by the Normal was the brainchild of Daniel Miller, who had launched his new label,

Mute Records, to release his own work.

The potential seen by him in the electronic style proved to be the perfect grounding for Dimish Mode's eventual success.

We got a deal on factory, they released electricity, which I believe then, the Dupeche Boys heard in a club

and went, what's that in the same way that we'd done with Warm Leather Eart?

And I believe they then decided to kind of start playing electronic music.

And what did they go and do? They signed to Daniel Miller's label, Mute, so the complete circle from Miller

through Warm Leather Eart to Oumdu to electricity in Depeche Mode and back to Daniel Miller was completed.

With a handshake deal from Mute, Depeche Mode was ready to take its first real steps into the public gaze,

propelled by the vision of Vince Clark.

In Vince Clark, they had an electronic genius.

In Vince Clark, totally saw Mide a way to make music.

Mide electronic music, very, very commercially electronic music, without having a lot of equipment around it.

He knew how to control a lot of synthesizing, and since those were pushed back, he had a few keyboards.

Clark was absolutely crucial to the early success of Depeche Mode.

Vince was still the driving force of the band at that time.

He was obviously their principal songwriter.

He was the guy going out and getting the gigs.

And the early days of the group pretty much were performance orientated.

A couple of the band members still had jobs at the time.

But perhaps we could say that it was through Vince's tenacity, that they eventually found themselves with Mute Records

and struck an independent deal, although nothing was actually written, and released their first record

just on a sort of handshake agreement at the tail end of 1980.

The first single was called Dreaming of Me.

It wasn't a particular big hit, but it made the top 50, not bad going, considering Mute at the time.

It was a very small, independent operation, and we could safely say that nobody could foresee what was going to happen in the not too distant future.

In 1980, Depeche Mode, we're just a sort of always like doley light, very nifty, shiny, smart, poppy band.

You really didn't imagine that they were going to last the ages.

They were going to sell millions, about millions of albums.

They looked like they'd be kind of blown away by the kind of next sort of change in fashion, the next one to change.

But Depeche Mode weren't blown away.

After their second single, New Life reached number 11 in the UK chart, the band released their third single

from their debut album Speak and Spell. Just can't get enough.

MUSIC

It's not enough. It's actually an excellent single.

It's undoubtedly very, very lightweight.

It's very much of its time, and yet it has endured.

It's kind of a school disco staple, whatever, but it's still very, very listenable and still very much played today.

It's just about itself. It's just about pop appetite.

It's shiny, it's catchy, it's infectious, it's absolutely perfect.

MUSIC

Just can't get enough, mark the final release from a successful debut album.

However, despite Speak and Spell's warm reception in top 10 positioning, there was to be a major upset

his principal songwriter Vince Clarke announced he was leaving the band.

Vince did leave, in fact he apparently announced he was going to leave before the first album was even released.

He went round to each band member and told them.

I think they were all quite shocked, although they were committed to their first UK tour

on the back of their first three hit singles and indeed that first album, Speak and Spell.

But apparently Vince just tended to sit at the front of the van on his own and the other three are kind of, you know, enjoying the tour and it was obvious that he was going.

Really, once Vince Clarke left D'Pesh mode, I think anybody looking for the world, that's the end of them then.

He was the songwriter, he was a very good songwriter, he was a very ambitious guy who wanted to pursue these other projects

and he thought, well, it's a bit like Jimmy Hendrix leaving the Jimmy Hendrix experience in this end.

How was this band going to survive?

Clarke took his talents and teamed up with singer Alison Moyer to form the band Yazoo, where the sound that he had developed with D'Pesh mode continued, albeit on a slightly different tag.

I think there's a lot of parallels between, musically speaking that is, between the first Yazoo album, Upstairs at Erics, which was released within a year of the first D'Pesh mode album, Speak and Spell.

Obviously Vince wrote most of both albums and he's using pretty much the same instruments as well, although by the first Yazoo album he's obviously becoming more adept at using those instruments.

But of course the main difference is this singer that he's now working with, Alison Moyer, this gutsy, bluesy female voice being thrown against these supposed lightweight electronics.

So, yeah, just like D'Tian, I love that to you, and it's time to get it right, your love's gonna sing to you.

Guess down there, don't you know, all that gold, let's go down.

I'm playing the make more now, you may watch it, fix me with your love and shut the door and turn it on.

Hey, go get the doctor, stop!

Don't go too late, but never that night I feel all around my love, boy, you know.

There's no love, don't you know, I never let you go now, girl!

And the face of it, Yazoo appeared a much stronger act musically than perhaps D'Pesh did with their difficult second album.

Had Vince Clark, persisted with D'Pesh mode, I don't think their career would have had the sort of length and trajectory that you eventually did.

The position of Chief Songwriter vacated by Clark was quickly filled by Martin Gore, who immediately set about making the job his own.

Martin already was a songwriter. It's not like he was suddenly said right, okay guys, who can write songs in the band, we're gonna have to do something here.

Martin was, you know, a songwriter and had been writing since his teenage years.

Martin created a sound for them, which was very distinctive.

And if you think about it, for him to take over the reins from Vince, because it mean effectively Vince was the main man in the first band.

And for him to just walk and take his more light pop sound with him, and then Martin had to bring in this other sound and probably struggle to begin with to find his own sound.

But I think Martin brought that more kind of dark, you know, sinister S&M kind of vibe to the whole thing.

The group pressed on with their second album, a broken frame.

However, soon after completing it, another significant change occurred in the D'Pesh mode line up.

I guess they wanted to do the second album on their own as a trio, again with Daniel Miller helping them behind the scenes, perhaps to prove that they could do it.

They were obviously then due to tour, and they were performing, you know, a lot of records from the first, a lot of tracks rather from the first album, as well as new ones from the second.

And I guess they just wanted to continue the arrangements as they were before, so they just needed someone to step into Vince's shoes on stage and play another synthesiser.

After holding lengthy auditions, the group decided upon the 22-year-old keyboard player Alan Wilder.

His involvement with the band would ultimately help shape the D'Pesh mode sound and contribute in no small way to their eventual success.

Alan Wilder was initially drafted into D'Pesh mode purely as a stage musician. He's a classically trained keyboard player.

He's also tried his hand at the pop scene as well. He's had a couple of record deals with groups that just didn't make it.

Alan Wilder joined in 1982. His role, and I think it was his role throughout the time, is with D'Pesh mode. It was really to colour in the material.

In a sense, Martin Gill was a songwriter, he was almost like a content provider, as opposed to a stylist or whatever.

And I think that it's Alan Wilder would be the one that really helped realise the tracks, he was the one that was working with the various producers.

And though it's not exactly the composer, it's obviously played a very important role indeed.

With the release of a broken frame, D'Pesh mode proved that despite Vince Clark's departure, not only could they survive,

but were taking their music into an increasingly more serious and darker sound, partly inspired by Daniel Miller's involvement with some of the industrial acts coming from Germany.

That first single of 1983, in other words, the first single that didn't come off the second album, get the balance right,

just outside the top ten in early 1983, it was the first record that Alan Wilder was actually directly involved in.

And it's a bit more downbeat in terms of sound and mood than the previous releases had been.

So I think also he is going to have some impact in the way that the sound develops.

In tandem with these influences coming over from Germany, the industrial scene, and also new technology that was just starting to arrive at that time as well.

We're talking about the early days of sampling here.

So we're making a distinction between synthesisers and samplers which allow you to manipulate recordings of sounds.

Which of course is what a lot of these German industrial bands have been hammering away with bits of metal on stage and all that kind of thing.

Well, I guess the patch started thinking about incorporating elements of that kind of thing, but in the pop formula.

It was clear that they were definitely trying to get a dark and tougher sound up, get darker, whatever.

I mean, we all took it very seriously. They wanted to change their sound, but it was the start of bringing distortions in.

I was very interested in room sounds. So I was very keen to move away from DI synthesisers.

All the synths went through amps as well, basically.

And this gave a whole new edge and an excitement for them and for me to the work that we were doing because it's not something that they'd really done before.

Synthesisers had been recorded. There was a plug on the back. You plugged it in the mixing desk and you got this fantastic sound that came out of the mixing desk.

More the sound of I later, maybe, than the sound of songs of faith and devotion.

But back in the days of construction time, we were starting to do that and everything was getting thrown into amps.

So there was always a distorted edge and we had a close mic on the amp and a mic down the other end of the room.

So it was kind of ambient. So there was an ambient sound as well.

The handshake, silver contracts, from the contracts, there's no turning back.

The turning point on the Korea, in Korea, is in sin.

The holiday, with fun fact, the contract, still in fact.

The burning hands, where will we care?

All the sounds after all, the burning hands, where will we care?

All the sounds after all, the competitive world.

Everything counts in large amounts.

It was a very natural kind of fusion of ideas.

But somehow there was a shared vision. Whereas now, of course, we would all meet and discuss what we wanted to do.

Then we kind of just met in the studio and started recording. But it somehow clicked.

Depression mode's change in sound reflected the continuing development of electronic music within the 1980s.

Still battling against the expectations of the old God of music that based their sounds in live instruments.

Acts that predominantly utilised synthesises in sampling were constantly looking for new ways to break through into the mainstream.

During the course of the 80s, I think electronic music evolved quite quickly, even within the context of pop music.

And you had different threads going on.

Synthesizers were very un-hip at the beginning of the 80s in the harder rocking scene.

And certainly in the dance scene. They'd been a very strong reaction to disco.

And disco, if you remember at the end, you know, you're done a summer in George Yeomarota using synthesises and those sort of octave bass lines.

And electronic snare drums and things in dance music.

And that was very, very un-hip for much of the 80s.

Until the point, actually, when new order did Blue Monday and that era of their stuff.

Because up to that point, they'd been viewed as a sort of indie guitar band.

And suddenly they went all the way back to those Donna Summer bass lines and Roland SH101 synthesises and things like that.

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I was actually very surprised at the time that a band that was sort of, you know, an NME favourite would actually be as un-hip as to start playing synthesisers.

So I think it sort of echoed a movement within the electronic music scene more over to the dark side.

And that sort of cheerful, hoppity kind of quirkiness of just can't get enough, you know, started to give way to the darker stuff that Depeche was starting to do.

It was a radical change really to their sound and I think it was very risky and actually very daring on their part.

Because they were running the risk of blowing off their core audience.

Yeah, when you become successful and then you take a bit of a detail with the music, you do risk losing everything.

And whoever big you are, there's always dozens, hundreds, thousands of people just waiting around the corner.

And record companies came to push their next pet project.

And it's a very, very easy thing to let slip.

And making the wrong album at the wrong time is a short way of doing that.

The industrial sounds combined with growing political themes in Gore's songwriting on construction time again

seemed the perfect antidote to the lighter, happier sound of Depeche Mode only three years earlier.

The band themselves appeared to be carving out a niche within music.

I can't really think of anybody else at that time who were spending as much time meticulously working on sound

or diligently working on sound as they were.

I mean, craft work in Germany by that point had kind of retracted into their own infamous cling-clang recording studio

and yet to follow up on their last break through album, which was about three or four years earlier in the album called Computer World.

You know, perhaps they would be diligently working on sounds, but nobody was hearing them.

Construction time again was the first step in a new direction for the band and was a moderate success both critically and commercially.

Depeche Mode had managed to shift their sound and image without driving away their core following

and the band continued in this vein moving into their fourth album, 1984's Some Great Reward.

This not only achieved similar success to its predecessor, but also spawned the hit song People Are People,

which surprisingly also provided the band with their first success at the United States.

Depeche Mode's biggest hit single since the very early singles, like Just Can't Get Enough.

I think the next time they really broached the top ten nearly went all the way, was People Are People in 1984,

their first single off their fourth album. And that's got an amazing array of sounds on it.

It's incredible. They spent a long time working on these sounds. I mean, everything was sampled right the way down to the bass drum of the record.

It wasn't just a bass drum off a drum machine. It was a sort of bit of metal being hit to get the percussive edge and then added to something else and something else combined to produce.

And that's just to produce the bass drum.

We were constantly trying to push boundaries. Very much everyone, actually in the team.

For me, because I worked closely with them on those three albums, like Some Great Reward Being in the Middle feels like a transition from the one to the other,

from Construction Time, which was completely a new experience for me personally, because I'd never worked with the band before.

And to Black Celebration, where we all felt we'd really achieved something unusual and dark and interesting.

And in a way, even though Some Great Reward had, People Are People on it and Mastering Servants on it as well,

there were two big hits. It somehow, for me personally, still feels like a transition object between the other two records.

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People Are People So Why Should It Be?

You And I Should Get Another So All The Ring.

People Are People So Why Should It Be?

You And I Should Get Another So All The Ring.

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Round About 84, the very interesting thing happens.

America, which really all enthused to be very hard for a band, or impossible for a band like Depeche Mode to break America.

The American music scene has this hung up ideas about authenticity and realness.

And this usually means guitars, and tradition, and unstylation men in tight white t-shirts or whatever that springs to stereotype.

Or, you know, there are also things like the disco sucks movements.

You know, there's this visceral loathing of all things, electronic, you know, as representing, if femininity and inauthenticity.

And then over kind of, over kind of Depeche Mode, along with a few other band,

then the fact that there's unlikely British invasion, and there's even people like a flock of seagulls who, some reason, gained traction in America of all places.

So, suppose it wasn't just Depeche Mode at that point, but that was the point at which they do get this first rather unlikely foothold.

The success of People Are People in the United States provided the band with a good foundation on which they strongly intended to build upon.

The change in the band's style and sound, along with the influence of Daniel Miller and the addition of Alan Wilder to the group, had built steadily.

And now the band will ready for a new album, the first in a meteoric four album rise to the top.

It's released an album every year, from 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, and then 1985, they didn't actually record an album.

I think it was a period of sort of stepping back a little bit, and yeah, what do we do next?

And as it was, they did come out with a fifth album, six years down the line, in Black Celebration, which really was a continuation of what they began with some great reward.

It still was a very sort of industrial sounding album.

Black Celebration came out in 1986, and by that point, certainly in terms of the whole world of Synthop,

things have reached a rather interesting point.

By this point, that's the same year that Kraftwerk released Electric Cafe, which was effectively their last album.

Their work was done by then.

They kind of laid down in size of grid.

And by this point, I mean, you've got groups like New Order, Urethmics, The Pet Shop Boys.

Synthop is no longer this kind of quirky, faddish option the way it was a few years earlier.

It's now pretty much the element.

And so Depression Mode was very much at that point. It was in their element.

They'd gone back to Berlin with the same team as before, Daniel Miller, Gareth Jones, and they'd recorded at Hansa recording studios,

but they'd really kind of... the idea this time was that they were going to sort of live and work together as it were continuously.

Daniel Miller, the record company boss and co-producer of the album, had a vision to live the album, he described it as.

He said, right, I propose that we live the album, which means we're going to meet every day from the start of the album recording until it's finished,

and we're not going to do anything else.

And everyone thought, oh, that's a good idea. Let's do that.

I mean, he didn't lay the... he was of strong suggestion from him. He was like, what do you think of that?

And everyone went, okay, that sounds about right, because we were all pretty focused and hyper and wanted to really do it, you know?

And so that's what we did. So that made it very intense, and it had enormous influence on the claustrophobic nature of the achievement.

They apparently only had a day off between flying in and then recording, and it became a very drawn out and quite torturous experience by all counts.

I think the team that had sort of developed over the albums three and four, and was being continued into this fifth album,

they're probably starting to rely on old formulas a little bit. Not necessarily repeating themselves, but certainly the equipment and the whole sampling,

everything, and having a sort of unwritten rule that no sound, no one sound will be the same from track to track an album to album,

you know, it was clear that this was going to become impossible to continue forever.

When we finally decided, right, we've got to mix this album now, otherwise it's never going to be finished.

We started mixing it, and we were, Daniel and I got involved with the title track, actually, and we're continually dissatisfied,

which to me now, these days, it's not such a big deal. I don't throw up a mix. I don't like it. I save it. I put it away.

I come back to it another day and do something else in the meantime.

This was obviously in a big console and a big mix. So we put a mix up and spend all day putting a mix up,

and then we'd listen to it and think, no, that's not it. It's not right. And then we'd pull it all down again.

And then we'd go, okay, the next day we come in again, because we didn't think, okay, we'd just do something else.

That would have seemed like a diversion. No, we had to get this one right.

I think it was Alan came in and the band had a serious meeting about it, and Alan came in and said, look, this has got to stop.

We cannot go on like this. It's driving us nuts. We need to commit. We've got to get these mixes down.

We need to move forward. And he had a real serious grown up talk with us about moving forward and committing and getting shit done.

We could say that Black Celebration was a difficult album. Still produced some hit singles, most notably stripped,

which again, a bit like people are people to listen to even today, you know, contains an amazing array of sounds.

I mean, just even in the opening 30 seconds, we listened to a motorbike engine sort of turning over very slowly in a rhythmical way.

And then you hear a car engine start up before you get a sort of ominous drone, and then the song sort of starts.

Even in that first 30 seconds, you can imagine it would have taken ages to put that kind of thing together.

The motorbike and the Porsche engine starting up and everything, it's all like Dave's car and whoever I can't remember, it's the bike belonging to.

But it's all piece. It's had kind of the fact that the throbbing motor runs all the way through it underneath, gave it a real industrial grounding in a kind of a really literal way.

The basic rhythm of the track is inspired by the throbbing of the engine, which is an internal combustion engine slowed down.

The motorbike engine is a very natural way to get a little bit of a

little bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a

bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of many people who whom who who whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom whom who whom who who who who who who who who who who who

and that perhaps been the key to their success.

He's got some very strange, I mean,

stripped down to the bone.

It's rather not an idea.

He's almost slightly beyond the sort of sexual.

And you'd expect a patient mode to be kind of pro the city,

pro the troplet or whatever.

But it's almost pole-pot-like,

they're going to take them by their hand and go back to the land.

It's almost like an agrarian type proposition,

and that's where he can only really be truly free.

And it's wonderfully, it just shows that there isn't this kind of sort of simplistic,

futuristic thing going on with the Pesh mode,

that the ideas that Martin Gore is dealing in are actually quite complex,

slightly morbid and quite revealing in that sense of times.

Released on February the 10th, 1986,

stripped marked a Pesh mode sixth consecutive single in the UK Top 20,

peaking at number 15.

Their success, however, appeared limited due to the more

uncommercial nature of their music.

By this point, it'd become clear that Depesh mode have got a very strong,

hardcore fan base, albeit quite a large fan base.

But certainly in the UK,

they're no longer having the crossover hit singles, you know, of yesteryear.

I mean, just can't get enough.

Obviously, there was a lot of people buying that record,

I forget it's something like half a million copies sold.

And, you know, that's above and beyond the Depesh mode fan base of the time.

It's people who like Depesh mode buying it,

and it housewives who like a catchy, whistle-ball song buying it as well, let's say.

But by 1986, when these darker moodier tracks are starting to come out like strip,

which actually sound very unusual as well,

certainly don't sound like your average pop sort of ditty of the day,

it really appears to be only the Depesh mode, hardcore fan base,

that are buying these singles.

It's a tricky thing to get right, and it's a tricky thing to bring the audience with you

when you do that, because a lot of them, if not the majority,

well, want you to stay doing what you do, you know,

and then every time you do a little detour, they're like,

it's not as good as what you're doing, you know.

Why don't you go back and do that again?

Then you get into all that sort of stuff.

So to be able to do that and just keep getting bigger, again, brilliant.

It certainly doesn't feel in any way, you know, opportunistic, you know,

or in particular, where, and it doesn't seem to be, again,

it's perhaps coming from the whole mute culture, you know,

they're not being lent on to sort of produce another, you know, hitting,

certainly not in the sort of Vince Clark type of vein.

And so, yes, they do suddenly seem, you know, slightly more kind of serious proposition.

They're dealing in themes and ideas, you know, rather than possible hit singles.

Like a baby in your arms,

the teenagers are with me, like never really doing it.

Apologies,

and will you soon take that from me?

And just like a child,

you may lose my way,

but you know, it's just you and us,

it's just you and us, it's just you and us,

it's just you and I,

what we do,

is that I come to know,

and it's always the reason

to be a baby.

It's certainly dealing in a slightly kind of unusual and rather personal themes and ideas,

very much to do with negotiations in love and romance,

you know, a slightly kind of existential take on it,

and coming up with some surprising conclusions, you know,

finding a lot of solace in material things,

you know, rather than some sort of immaterial sort of conventional pop ideal.

On the album side of things, however, they're still selling very, very well.

I mean, every single album from the very first speaker spell to the fifth,

and now we're in 1986, Black Celebration,

they all go straight into the top ten.

So we can sort of say that the Depeche Mode fanbase in the UK

has hit a certain sort of size,

and they're starting to veer towards being an album act,

not so reliant on having hit singles to carry the albums into the top ten anymore.

And by this stage, the next tour that they undertake on the back of the Black Celebration

are things are really starting to change as well, they're playing larger venues.

Following stripped, Black Celebration debuted in March of the same year.

It had continued the dark and somewhat industrial nature that Depeche Mode had embarked upon

with construction time again and some great reward.

The resulting promotional tour saw the band play to sell out crowds in the UK and Europe,

and once again, they set their sights on breaking the United States.

The tour into the US on the back of Black Celebration, again, again, Black Celebration,

it wasn't really a major hit album in the US, I think it got into the top 100,

something like that as did the previous album,

but the sort of, you know, the Depeche Mode interest,

if you like, the wave of the undercurrent, it seems to be growing somehow,

and live again in the US, they're starting to, in certain territories,

not everywhere, they're getting to the sort of stadium level as well.

Chicago, LA, they're starting to play to 10, 15,000 people at a time on that tour as well,

so it's clear that their diligence and going back to the US repeatedly is now starting to pay off,

you know, I mean, by 1986, Duran Duran, for example, who were a very big band in the United States,

starting to taper off and go the other way with a more traditional sound, you know,

even they're struggling to sell out the 10, 15,000-seat arenas that Depeche Mode are now starting to fill.

But of course, by the time that a question of time is released as the third single,

Depeche Mode are already on this will tour on the back of the album,

which was, as we said earlier, is starting to break throughs in the US as well.

The Depeche Mode had always been derided for their look, really,

by this point, they were dressing in sort of black, you know, this whole idea of a black celebration,

celebrating the dark side of life really is kind of the gist of that album, so, you know,

they were naturally sort of had that look themselves anyway,

but on that point having had many looks and obviously many promotional videos made for their singles to date,

none of which, let's be honest, have really done the many favours,

and the UK press in particular, who seemed to be very keen on shooting down their own,

obviously, you know, had plenty of ammunition from some of these early videos, promotional videos.

However, a question of time is very interesting because it's the first time that Depeche Mode worked with Anton Corbin,

the Dutch sort of independent filmmaker, come video maker, and photographer.

He was invited to do a video for Depeche Mode, he'd done some promotional videos and photography for other bands in that era, most notably U2.

So he came out to California and they shot a sort of road movie in the desert during downtime from the tour for a question of time.

It's just a question of time,

or they lay their hands on you,

and make you just like the rest.

I've got to get to you first,

it's just a question of time.

Granny sort of footage, and, you know, these guys dressed in black and interesting sort of scenery in the Joshua Tree National Park and the background,

that kind of thing, and it really worked well. It's quite a driving sort of track, a question of time,

and it could be argued that it was the first time, perhaps, that, you know, the image and the music were really starting to tie together to produce something stronger.

In the USA in the middle of the 80s, because radio was still very much stuck in this sort of rock and roll years,

in order to have a hit with something different, you needed to have a great video.

And MTV was still very influential in those days, they were still showing music videos,

and if you had a successful music video, hit people would stay home on a Saturday night to watch MTV, instead of going out to a nightclub,

and so radio ultimately was affected by what was successful in MTV.

So I think for Depeche, when they started working with Anton Corbin, which is a great move,

I mean, a great, great combination, really, of, you know, his visual aesthetic with the new darker music that they were doing,

people stood up and took notice of their videos, you know, they're very different, very stylish.

By this point Depeche mode, it's clear that the new world they were doing musically.

But visually, there was something lacking, and Anton really, you know, brought that together with that first video that they did together.

And on the back of that, we become a lot more involved with the group in future, both in terms of more videos,

later down the line, album, sleeves, and perhaps even stage design.

Anton's obviously got many talents, and I'm an amateur photographer,

but one of the things that really strikes me about what Anton does, Anton can take a photograph of an ugly bloke like me and make me look really cool,

and that is great, that is such a great talent, you know, because, especially for a rock band, or band, I mean, bands want to look cool, most bands,

I mean, bands who take themselves seriously want to look cool, you know, and Anton can just do that so well.

Black celebration reached number four in the UK album chart and signified that Depeche mode was still as popular as they had ever been.

The band were finally started to be taken more seriously.

With Depeche mode, there is certainly in the UK, I think that the very early speaking spell period still gets a kind of, there's a lot of airplane.

For some people, actually, finds what they're about, a lot of people still see them as like, you know, the class of 80, 81,

there's a whole kind of school disco type section of Depeche mode that you've got in this country.

But of course elsewhere, there's a generation that got into a little bit later on for whom they actually do represent something actually more, you know, darker, more substantial, more serious.

I think the overall view was that they were maturing and certainly moving on from, let's say, the more teeny-bought style and image that they began with merely five years ago.

You know, their audience was clearly growing, but I think it was probably best reflected in that year in 1986 on tour in the US, where the US audience in particular, there was definitely now somewhere for all, perhaps, disaffected youth of a certain kind to sort of look musically.

And that darker phase that they went through in sort of early to mid 80s probably set them in good stead in America because they were appealing to a more underground audience.

They were patently not trying to sell out or cross over. And also there was the beginning of the kind of gothic thing.

So, kids were starting to want to wear, you know, not tight black leather pants, but the sort of more gothic look.

And, you know, there was the makeup coming and the black hair and that whole gothic thing, I think they tapped into.

And, you know, what you would have thought might have been a very small minority were coming out of their bedrooms and out of their depression and starting to go to gigs.

As the dust settled from the black celebration tour, Depeche Mode returned to the studio looking to capitalize on their success in the United States.

Their darker sound had established their credentials as more than just a pop act.

But to progress to the next stage, they had to make some major changes behind the scenes.

I think that production team had probably Gareth Jones, Daniel Miller and Depeche Mode themselves had sort of run its course.

They'd done three albums really pushing the technology of the day to its limits.

As I said, you know, no one sound would ever be the same.

And it was probably quite clear that it couldn't go on forever doing that kind of thing.

When I met Depeche, when we did construction time, they were looking for something new.

We did three albums together and they needed to keep growing or experimenting with new possibilities.

By the next record, which became music for the masses a year later, obviously decisions were made to work with somebody new.

I mean, by that point as well, you've got to remember that on the strength of Depeche Mode success,

obviously the short lived success of Yazoo and by this point, erasure, new records are becoming quite a big concern.

Daniel Miller simply just couldn't do it all.

He couldn't work with Depeche Mode to the level that he had and Obracie, obviously quite a successful record label at the same time.

So he obviously chose to step back and they were left in the position of looking for someone new, obviously with his sort of recommendations and assistance.

And they ended up with Dave Baskin.

I think mainly on the back of his success with Tears for Fears at the time, the songs from the Big Chair album.

And it's accompanying sort of barrage of hit singles that had broken through in the US coincidentally.

Those records have done very, very well in the US and a great sounding record.

Welcome to your life.

There's no turning bad.

Even while we sleep, we will find you rising on your best.

Welcome to your life.

There's no turning bad.

Even while we sleep, we will find you rising on your best.

Even while we sleep, we will find you rising on your best.

Welcome to your life.

Welcome to your life.

Everybody wants to move.

Welcome to your life.

Depeche, we're just looking to not necessarily tap into that success, but just looking for someone that could hopefully gel and work with them.

On their next record.

And clearly, Tears for Fears had quite a technological sound as well to their records.

So perhaps it was Hope that Dave Baskin could fit the mold.

We used to discuss beforehand how we were going to make each album different from the last.

And that became more important to us as time went on, that we weren't just going to repeat a formula.

Because we'd worked on three albums with Daniel and Gareth.

And we just felt that we needed some fresh impetus.

I also think that Daniel had had enough of working with us.

Because mute by that time had started to become quite a big label on the indie scene.

And he had a lot of work to do anyway. So spending months in the studio with us probably wasn't an option for him anyway.

Well, I think it was Dave Gahn who had heard some stuff I'd done with Tears for Fears.

And I think he liked that. And I think he was the one who suggested me.

I know they were looking for a change of producer.

Daniel, Daniel Miller from mute, who had been very involved with all their albums up to them.

And I think he wanted a break from the studio.

They wanted to move on a little bit.

And so I think it was David came up with mine, who suggested me.

We started in Paris, Guillain-Tel. We did some of the backing tracks there.

All the studios and old cinema. And so that's one of the reasons I chose it.

It had tons of all-cestrel instruments lying around.

Some amazing spaces. There was a stairwell we used for a lot of sounds.

Temps, all-cestrel bass drums, all sorts of stuff.

And the process was really the first few days or week or whatever.

It was just to go around bashing everything and sampling all these unusual sounds that pop up here and there and everywhere.

They'd kind of run the risk of repeating themselves, perhaps, if they continue with exactly the same formula as previously.

But they still were at that time a very technologically driven act, interested in new sounds using the latest technology.

Again, within the confines of the traditional songwriting formula.

I think the music, the masses, really by this point, you're talking about this less about depression mode as an electronic background.

It's an electronic band. Obviously electronics are very much involved, but the arrangements, the kind of covering this,

it's coming from all these beginnings to come from other sources as well.

And you are really sort of beginning to look more and more at the actual songs.

Martin Gore is principally a guitarist.

And some more obvious guitar sounds, shall we say, were starting to filter through by that point.

Particularly on the single Never Let Me Down again, there's a sort of electric guitar sort of melody.

Never Let Me Down is more, what I think was classic Martin because he's just got this fantastic, very simple sounding melodies and chord progressions.

It just seems to nail it, same as personal Jesus or other tracks where it's just great songwriting.

This pop simplicity with this fantastic coating of it, of big, weird sound.

That's the success of it, I think. When he's on form, I think he's one of the best songwriters around.

Never Let Me Down is ever one to a million.

I got down all around this song.

Gore's songs were the framework of the Depesh Mode sound, yet Alan Wilder's influence provided the flesh,

and this had become even more prominent by the time of music for the masses.

Well, Martin was involved in the, heavily involved in the arrangements of the music for the masses album.

He's the guy effectively who takes or took at that time.

Martin Gore's recorded demos for an album and effectively turned it into what we hear.

Alan's a incredibly talented musician. He's obviously the most musically trained out of all of them.

I think he's probably had the most patience and vision in the studio.

Martin wasn't interested in that particular side of it.

David Day would be very quite involved.

But obviously, Dave's focus is obviously the singing and an overview.

Alan was pretty much doing the everyday stuff with me.

Every part would be layered up with two or three different sounds.

So it was quite a painstaking thing and Alan had a good vision for all that sort of stuff.

A good demonstration of Wilder's talents came in the form of music for the masses first single, Strangela,

released five months prior to the album.

The

Strangela is certainly a reflection of Alan Wilder's arranging abilities and certainly sound design abilities

against Martin Gore's songwriting abilities of the time.

It's quite an unusual song though because there's no real chorus to it as such.

So again, Gore's sort of moving further away from this sort of tried and tested pop formula

as to what a single can actually be.

The demo had a kind of faster pace and then we ended up using two bass lines, a combination of two bass lines.

But then the album version was based on a remix that Daniel did, which had a much slower groove.

So because the single is the faster one, I think.

And yeah, the album we went about remixed it and used some of Daniel's elements and did this slightly slower groove.

It is a hit single in the UK, but it's the same sort of trajectory as before.

You know, quickly goes into the sort of mid reaches of the chart and then ponets away again

while the album that it came from sells in ever greater quantity.

Music for the masses was released in September 1987 and proved to be a great success for Dinesh Mode

with a key feature of the album being the accessibility of the songs.

The album was a big hit in Europe and having already flirted with success in the United States,

it was on the following promotional tour that the band really had their achievements record.

The music for the masses too, on the face of it in Europe was pretty much on a par with the tour that supported black celebration.

The difference really happened in the United States.

Things had started getting to another level in the US.

It had to possibly follow the U2 model, which was just go out there and play and play and play and go round and build it up through college radio, small gigs, word of mouth.

By just playing live constantly, backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards

and building up a genuine core of hardcore support.

That's the way to do it.

Everywhere you go, people know they've seen you, they've seen you working up and working up.

And they started this live steam roller, which by the late 80s, well, they were a stadium act.

In a surprising and audacious move, Dinesh Mode announced that they would conclude the music for the masses tour

by playing a show at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena.

Despite the growing support for the band, it was still a gamble, especially for an electronic act.

Alan has especially prepared to meet for us.

I do, yeah.

Good morning.

We want to say good morning to all our fans listening and watching this morning,

and we'd like to announce that as a final, special final concert to our World Tour

on Saturday, June the 18th, will be playing a concert for the masses here at the Rose Bowl Pasadena.

It represented sort of the zenith of the conquest of California and increasingly the rest of North America by Depeche Mode, their sound,

and the tour that they did for the music of the masses, basically followed the infection of the K-Rock factor

across North America to all of the different radio formats and different radio stations.

And I think they fed off each other.

I think each new city that they got to had just sort of got the bug of the K-Rock format had hit different cities.

And so it was very clear that by the time they got to the Rose Bowl, which is the biggest gig that they'd ever done,

and really the biggest electronic music gig that had ever happened, it was going to be a big celebration.

It was going to be a kind of woodstock for that electronic K-Rock sound.

Supported by both OMD and Thomas Dolby, the final show at the Rose Bowl marked the 101st gig on the tour

and was documented in the film 101, directed by DA Penny Baker.

Despite often being overlooked or derided in their own country, Depeche Mode had finally arrived on a global stage.

I think it must be strangely satisfying in a way to still have people at home going, and it's rubbish.

It's not proper music, and you're selling out massive stadiums just to fly it away.

I think behind the scenes Daniel Miller felt quite vindicated, you know, because here was this vision of a synthesiser act

that had finally cracked the rock music, and they were playing them at their own game.

They'd finally played a stadium gig and showed that it could happen.

I don't think things would ever be the same for them again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

For Depeche Mode, things would never be the same again.

The success of music for the masses had catapulted the band into the upper echelons of music aristocracy,

but it wasn't until 1990 that the world would hear another Depeche Mode album.

Violator would see a new production team brought in with producer Flood replacing Dave Bascomb.

It was an interesting track to, you know, praise the album with as it were, perhaps not the most obvious choice as a single,

but on the face of it, guitar led, which is perhaps quite a bold move for a band that prior to that were dominated by synthesisers.

Perhaps a reflection of the kind of music that Martin Gore himself is perhaps influenced by and enjoys.

It's one of their strongest lyrics.

It's, you know, impression that they've probably listened to a lot of televangelists or whatever.

It's very unresolved, it's very slightly kind of creepy, very awkward.

Who is this guy called themselves Jesus?

And was like, you know, back to the nature of relationships, and, you know, despite all the kind of ridiculous over-the-top assurances of the rehater in this song,

that, you know, how easy it might be to end up in a relationship with someone that's potentially very unreliable or potentially very domineering.

On the face of it, the band sounded like a, perhaps a more conventional band on the strength of this dominating guitar.

I gave them their biggest hits single in quite some time, so perhaps there was an element of the band.

I gave them their biggest hits single in quite some time,

and perhaps there was an element of crossover in terms of the record buying publicly won, the hardcore Depeche Mode fan base,

or whatever that might be buying into that particular song as well.

So, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, it probably worked in their favour.

Maybe they could be taken as a risk to release a track on the face of it sound wise straight so far from the Depeche Mode sound that had previously been established.

They were volatile, I think, that was a fantastic album.

Yes, it took an album that I'm just encapsulates them perfectly, you know.

I think, still the perception probably is still very electronic on that.

I mean, there are guitars on it, which is great, and they do, you know, a more unbuttoned role,

but I don't think there was a guitar seen as a guitar band, then I think that's part of the attraction because still in the 80s,

you know, I mean, you've got the American guitar bands, this is something different.

The sort of the power and the aggression of the guitar bands, but it had this much more interesting quirky, you know, electronic sound.

I think that's what the appeal was.

It was the first sort of, I suppose it was the first big example of that sort of techno rock thing, which now a lot of people are doing, you know,

but that was probably the first big breakthrough, I guess.

I think the step forward that Depeche took with Violator, I could sum up in one thing,

and that was the guitar riff from Enjoy the Silence.

Personal Jesus maybe come out before, still a somewhat familiar sound, it was that glitter beat, you know,

so it was natural to have a guitar in there, but the arpeggios, the intervals of the guitar riff and enjoy the silence was something very, very different.

And I think that took their sound to a new place.

Music

So I always thought there was a dance element to a lot of the Depeche tracks, anyway, I think.

But I can see the flood influence in there, especially because I know at the end of the first chorus there's a classic sort of drum break,

which brings in a lot of very electronic sort of analog feel to it all, you know, and I can see that as a major flood influence.

Enjoy the silence, might just be the quintessential Depeche track, possible their best.

On the one hand it was a classic situation, and al-Depeche mode weren't really innovators, I mean, you could look at that track,

you could, you could, you could, you could, you could simply reduce it to two parts of the verses,

very, very similar to human leagues, life on your own, and then the whole chorus line just sounds very, very reminiscent of new order.

But they've, they've made just two things, they've come up with something that's kind of also a musical point of view, very, very memorable indeed,

it feels somehow very much Depeche Mode's out.

To me, for my personal tastes, and maybe just off the back of spending time with them on the tour and then seeing what they went on to do next,

I just think the violator album is a stunning piece of work, and when, you know, enjoy the silence came out, it's just like, oh fuck, that's good.

Breathe in,

What's up, every,

We've personal Jesus and enjoy the silence, along with the two other singles, policy of truth and world in my eyes charting

well. Violator proved to be Depeche Mode's biggest success to date.

The album not only reached number one in the UK charts, but much to everyone's surprise

also hit the top ten in the United States.

What had happened in the interim between the final music for the Masses concert and the

Passeldino Rose Bowl 101st concert selling out to 65,000 young Americans in the California

area and in three years down the line when Violeta was released in the US, it's incredible.

There's an album signing at a then famous record store on, I believe it's Sunset Boulevard

it was situated on called The Warehouse and you know 17,000 people came to have their

album signed on that day.

It took ten years and 22 singles but D'Pesh Mode is now the ward in the music called Progressive

Techno Pop.

Tonight the band is appearing in person for an autograph party at a West LA record store

and has attracted thousands of fans waiting to see their music idols, some who have been

lined up since last night.

Well you know the group themselves you know made the local news stations it's like it's

like Betelmannia again.

You know there was concerns that the glass was going to break in on the store and the

band had to be rushed out earlier and all this kind of thing you know and I mean later when

it was being reported on the news you know they sort of held a press conference and you

know while they sort of said something along the lines of they couldn't have hoped for

better publicity and it wasn't even planned.

It wasn't really a riot let's get it straight I mean there were a lot of people it's not

what I call a riot there wasn't any violence involved a couple of people to get hurt unfortunately

but basically the wall was found that were there were very well behaved it was yeah right

Chelsea on a Saturday afternoon now that's a riot.

Something was obviously happening in the US in particular clearly that sort of you know

that high of the previous tour wasn't just a one off it was going to continue at this

next touring level.

The World Violation Tour saw Depeche Mode play to their success both in Europe and the

United States with multiple nights sold out stadium shows.

The highest highs had heaped pressure on the band and it was to take its toll when they

returned from tour causing a three year hiatus before their next album.

The guys are getting a little bit older now you know they have families they've got their

own lives outside of the band so again there's another extended break between you know coming

off to a violator and beginning to think about recording a follow-up album that would become

songs of faith and devotion but I think the main change that had occurred at that time was

Dave Gahn himself you know he was quite dissatisfied with his own life it seemed went through a divorce

left a young family and it literally ran to the Hollywood Hills it seems to sort of

live the life of a archetypical rock star.

Gahn's situation had exposed him to the sounds that were coming from the American rock scene in

the early 90s with bands such as Nirvana and Jane's addiction capturing the public's attention.

On returning for the recording of their eighth studio album Songs of Faith and Devotion in 1993

he was determined to infuse that rock influence into the Depeche Mode sound.

I'm sure they wanted to do something different I mean there's a way you can't you always can't

top violator if you say well what we're doing is craft work style electro pop and there we've

done violator then in a way it's really the sensible thing to do to say right well we can't

really beat that let's now do something different. There was an angle which came I think from Flood

and Alan as you say trying to get more dirt into some of the sounds trying to make it a bit more live

and a bit more band-esque and then of course there was Martin's demos and Martin's direction

which is a slightly kind of a cleaner direction and it's just fantastic songs so I think that

you know there's only so far that you can push a direction if the songs don't warrant it.

I know they adopted a different method of working I know Alan specifically requested

Alan Wilde is specifically requested for songs of faith and devotion that Martin's demos be

really stripped down so that the imagination could run wider. Working once again with producer Flood

the band set their sights on creating an album with much more of a live feel. I played bass I think

Martin played guitar with a drum machine going someone else might have been on bongers or something

and we were jamming you know we'd never really done that ever only only for fun maybe in the

other room you know as a sort of break from the studio but we'd never actually done that

we'd always sat down with computers, keyboards started programming the drums and so I think it

was inevitable it would take time to get used to that way of working and perhaps we didn't really

perhaps the frustration of not immediately getting a result wore us down whereas in fact if we'd

have just accepted look this is the way many bands actually record you know.

So the general thing was well we want to make it a bit more live and of course Flood had just come

off of doing a phenomenal what was the album? God I can baby with you too so I think everyone was

influenced by their recent work and kind of what other people were doing and that was always good

there was always kind of this right in what will have some of this kind of get as much in as

possible but then filter it through the Depeche filter of which was Alan and Flood really.

On Violator the performance is all computer manipulation apart from the vocals which are

obviously incredibly important the musical stuff is all played by a machine almost but obviously

songs of faith and devotion feels the other way around it feels like the musical stuff is all

played by guys behind guitars, basses and drums and I think they did a lot of performance on

songs of faith and devotion in the studio where people would bash out beats and play guitar chords

and play riffs. Of course it was massively sampled and edited and tweaked and manipulated in Trudy

Pash style but I came at it from a different angle.

The nature of the guitar riff I think led the direction of the track because you couldn't have

the song without the guitar riff so therefore it's a rock song but then how did Depeche interpret

a rock song and I think that is a prime example.

The

Living and recording together in Madrid it was clear from the beginning that the band

members were struggling to pull together especially now under immense pressure to follow the massive

success of their previous album. As soon as we started working on it it was obvious really that

we were suffering somehow and that we weren't finding it easy to a sort of come back together

as a unit having had a bit of a break and b kind of live up to perhaps a success as violator.

The kind of atmosphere that prevailed around the beginning of the recording the album was pretty

poor and I think the band were very they had the songs and they were really searching for a

direction and we're getting nowhere fast. They were separating they were splintering you know in the

worst possible confines of being in the same building. Around about the the violator and

songs about is massive heavy drug consumption you know and massive alcohol consumption. This

doesn't help for clarity of vision you know it doesn't and it doesn't help for resolving

conflicts either but you can you know to resolve those kind of conflicts everyone's got to dry out

and then saying of course no one was able to dry out. You just wonder if I mean I think there

will probably be at this point there would have been strange and various you know Alan Wyler

feeling perhaps you know he's doing a lot of work on this album it's not going to get in proper

credit. He's particularly a personal problem and some of his vocal performances there's a definite

sort of hoarseness you know there is a distress in some of his work and Martin Gore has really

been in terms of what he's been bringing to these songs all of these years you can't just believe

that's just purely just the work of an artist who's imagining what you know in a situation I mean

clearly there is so much you know the personal God that you personal going on in those songs that

that must also take its toll.

Condemnation has a sort of gospel feel to it you know and by the Pash Mode standards it's

quite sparse the arrangement I mean it's it appears to be sort of piano led you know okay you've got

this sort of slow rhythm with it but you've got this sort of gospel type multi-track vocals going

on in the background. The Martin's a big gospel fan and and the melody itself and the lyrics

and I can't even remember how the idea came up but basically the desk that we had we had a

full studio flew out to Spain and the desk came in a wooden box and downstairs with this massive

garage and it was cavernous kind of garage and all the gear was down there and the idea was like

well why don't we try and recreate a gospel feel so there's like myself the four guys in the band

Darryl he was this the band's assistant downstairs we hit go on the tape machine upstairs round

downstairs and we're banging on these wooden boxes and came up with a rhythm that was then sampled and

I mean so many you know great ideas that started out as like well you know that doesn't

sound that's never going to work and then it's pushed through the you know the mince of that is

the depeche why and you get something that's completely individual it's great it's giving

Dave Gahn's lead vocal space to breathe or at least that as far as depeche modalist as I

can see and it's perhaps one of the you know the few tracks that are really up to that point

had allowed his voice to really shine through and obviously he himself must have been in a very

dark place at that time the whole substance abuse that his life is sort of very different to as it

had been in previous depeche mode recording sessions and and I guess he he probably felt also that

the lyrical content a lot of those songs sort of applied to him in terms of him as a personality

I mean he's lived the life and the depth of experience which enables him to sing those sorts

of lyrics and basically put the persona into them.

I've always understood from Martin that he's not writing about his or Dave's personal experience

because sometimes they seem to match so well that's part of the magic of the band I think

even when Martin writes a song that Dave sings that you think well you know that's just perfect

it must have been and obviously he writes he knows he writes but but the way that Martin

describes his songwriting to me is this is like a spirit takes him over and it just a creative

thing flows through him and he's a channel for a piece of songwriting he doesn't really know how

he's done it. Despite its many problems songs of faith and devotion arrived on the shelves in

March 1993 became an instant hit reaching number one in both the UK and the United States as well

as drawing widespread critical acclaim.

Genius. Genius best to best my dad ever and I love lots of them but that one

head and shoulders for me above all of them so I'll get goosebumps even now when I said 16

years ago and everyone I'm gonna hear it live I get really protective about it as well but

they do it live they don't do it quite the way it was in the album I'll get really upset

you didn't do that line and I love it that's it love it it came it came out at a time in my own

creative thing was that an all-time low and I just churned out now this absolute piece of shit

and I was really down in the dumps and I knew that from a creative point of view that I was

low really low down and then that comes along and it it could make you it could just crush

you completely you just think that's it you know I'm doing shit and they're doing that you know

and there's no way ever gonna get it back but for me it didn't for me it just

again as sate the disease had done earlier it just opened my eyes to a different way of going about it

my

To support the release of songs of faith and devotion the Peshmo'd embarked on the devotional tour

complete with a stage set specially designed by long-term collaborator Anton Corbin the band

were truly at the top of their profession

Words like violence break the silence

come crashing into my little world grateful to me

because you understand oh my little girl

all ever wanted all ever needed is here in my arms

was

By 1994 Depeche Mode was considered one of the most significant and influential bands of all time

this was due to the defining darkness and continuing development of the album's black celebration

music for the masses violator and songs of faith and devotion which together cemented the name

Depeche Mode forever in music history not just as the name of a band but as a style of music in its

own right I think there were very few bands in the last 25 30 years when you mention a band's name

that it's not just about a few songs it's kind of a it's a big weighty balloon of influence

they've done a lot of things to electronic music which which for a lot of people over the years have been

lessons in how it can be done and they've made so many other people look like amateurs

this set of four albums represented a pinnacle in the band's sound and image and demonstrated

that their unwillingness to remain content constantly transformed their output while also

enhancing developing electronic music despite losing Alan Wilder Depeche Mode have again

progressed and outlasted many of their contemporaries to continue achieving great success

into me Depeche Mode have always been unwilling to just settle into a rut and you know churn out

hit after hit using the same formula they've always tweaked it in sometimes subtle ways I mean they're

not a radically different band from what they were 10 or 20 years ago but they've been willing to

just just vary the sound a little bit and and move on and I think that's part of the reason that

they're still valid really today is that there's been a constant constant flow and evolution to their music

brainstorming

So

We were really trying to break America. We had been hugely successful in Britain and Europe.

We had American management. We were spending a lot of time in America. We'd finally got onto a label that wanted to release our records.

We'd started to have hits. We'd been immensely successful with the song If You Leave From The Pity and Paint movie, which was our first big hit in America.

I don't know how we got on the tour, but presumably our agents got our agents to talk to their agents.

I guess they wanted to do this big size tour that would culminate in the big gig at the Pasadena Rose Bowl.

We certainly needed to support them. We weren't big enough to do anything like that kind of size tour on our own.

I don't know whether they felt they needed us to just fill those extra seats, but it certainly was a very, very tasty package for the promoters.

Obviously for the audience, because it was sold out everywhere. I know it was breaking box office and merchandise records everywhere it went that tour.

The only thing was for us, we were getting paid $5,000 a night and losing huge amounts of money.

And they were probably earning enough to retire on.

We weren't surprised because we'd seen how big the Depeche Motor had become in terms of a live act in America.

They had worked harder at it and they were huge. We knew they were huge. That's why we wanted to support them, because we were going to play to a bigger audience than we could play to on our own.

I think the whole tour was massively successful.

The interesting thing really came after the tour, because Depeche Mode went on to make what I consider to be their best album and it capitalised on all the success and the hard work.

The Violator album was huge, incredibly successful, a really great album and took them absolutely onto that massive next step level.

And what did we do? We self-destructed.

There was four acts. There was ourselves and a passion who'd been on the entire tour and then there was Thomas Dolby and Wire.

I'm not sure if I remember where I was when I first got invited to play at the Rose Bowl, but the significance of it to me, other than it was a huge gig, 60,000 people, was that it was a huge gig.

It represented the zenith of the conquest of California and increasingly the rest of North America by Depeche Mode, their sound.

And the tour that they did for the music of the masses basically followed the infection of the K-Rock factor across North America, the tool of the different radio formats and different radio stations.

And I think they fed off each other. I think each new city that they got to had just sort of got the bug of the K-Rock format had hit different cities.

And so it was very clear that by the time they got to the Rose Bowl, which is the biggest gig that they'd ever done and really the biggest electronic music gig that had ever happened, it was going to be a big celebration.

It was going to be a kind of woodstock for that electronic K-Rock sound.

And so it was a natural for me to be on. And whatever we say, however humble we appear to be, basically there's nothing a musician likes better than running up a ramp and go, good evening!

We just love that stuff, we're suckers for that stuff, so how could I resist?

The atmosphere backstage at the Rose Bowl was one of a lot of excitement. A lot of bands and their entourage is coming into a sort of stadium festival environment which they weren't really used to.

I mean, only a couple of years before we'd all been playing clubs and small theatres and making do with grungy dressing rooms and so on.

So to suddenly have like a fleet of trailers and high security and so on, helicoptering, being helicoptered in and stuff was different and exciting.

And it really felt like the crest of a wave. From my own personal points of view, I played while it was still daylight.

So it's a bit, when you play during the day at an outdoor gig, it's always a bit disconcerting because you can see the audience and you can see the people are just sort of trying to find their seat and their own number while they've got this big gulp, you know, they're trying not to spill on everybody.

So people were still finding their seats and that was a little bit strange for me, but it was still really great to be there and the crowd had warmed up by the time I came on and I got a great reception.

And I'd also had a lot of radio play in California. It was really my strongest territory at that point.

And my own band had played around LA a lot. So there was a sort of hardcore fan base and a lot of Depeche fans who had obviously heard me on the radio and were very receptive to it.

So the vibe was very, very good. I remember being terrified, so frightened that my stage fright manifested itself in, I guess, form of a narco-lepsy, I just fell asleep.

That had to wake me up five minutes before I went on stage because my body just shut down. I was like, can't face this, this is scary.

I remember it being a great gig after we'd got through in Olga.

Because we went on stage, started the drum machine to in Olga.

The audience went nuts. I counted it in one, two, three, four, and just as we came in with the whole band for the main melody, there was a power spike.

The generators. Everything went off on stage for a split second.

And when it came back on, there was just me and the drums. The keyboards had gone off.

Their computer keyboards and the two keyboard players were thrashing dead keyboards, which were just reading back to them.

Disc read error, this will take a while.

And so we did this dub version of in Olga for about a minute whilst the fucking keyboards reloaded, which the audience probably thought was some particular dub trick we had thrown into, amused them for a minute.

Then it all came back together again. The gig was amazing, but it was an inauspicious start to a massive concert.

But it was an amazing day.

I think there was a certain element on that tour, if I remember rightly, of a little bit of sense of competition in the sense that we could go out there and play in Olga electricity if you leave.

We had hits in America. By that stage, it built a certain audience.

And by the time we came off stage, we had really kicked the audience's arse.

So it was like, follow that, lads. And they would, bastards.

But there was an element of, we're going to try our hardest, see if you can top that.

There are some bands who tend to not fraternise with other bands.

There are some bands who tend to just be very blinker. They'll do their gig and nobody else.

Not interested. But we would make a point in making sure we watched them.

It was a very nice tour. The band and the crews all intermingled.

That's the three months. We all got to know each other pretty well.

We'd have days off where we'd all get together and have a picnic and play cricket for crying out loud.

There was a couple of cricket games on that tour, which got quite competitive too.

To keep our costs down, we were actually all travelling on one bus with our crew.

So we effectively travelled with their crew to Peshra, sort of, I suppose, jetting around.

So there was just one day off when there was this sort of pickup cricket game.

The crews basically played. And so we sort of had us and our crew against their crew.

And it was really, you know, sort of like somebody had a cricket bat that was a tennis ball and a make-do wick here.

And it was just a bit of a laugh. And we beat their crew.

So I think they got a bit pissed off about that.

So the next day off, they turned up with pads and a proper ball and stumped and were like,

okay, now this is a bit serious, isn't it?

And I seem to recall, actually, that a guy who'd been our monitor man who was then on their crew, Nick,

was a fucking demon baller. And I was like, I've got more gigs today. I've got to sing.

I'm not facing this in. I'm out. I'm off. But yes, they had their revenge that once the Depeche boys turned up,

with the proper kit, we got soundly thrashed. And I think the final result was too one to them in cricket games.

There was something interesting as well that I discovered about Depeche Mode on that tour,

because I think in the very early days, we'd seen them as a band, as a group, as a homogenized group of people who functioned as a band unit.

It became fairly evident that by the end of the 80s, that they had formed themselves into something that was a lot more than just a band.

There seemed to be quite definitive job demarcations.

And I don't think I'm wrong, but I think effectively, there was four separate individuals fulfilling four completely separate roles by that stage.

There was Martin who wrote the songs.

There was Alan, who was the musician, who could really play and sort of produce and hold it all together.

There was Dave just shut up and seeing Dave gone.

There was an element of that, which was quite strange.

It was like, just the singer, shut up and sing and go and prance around in front of the audience.

And then there was Andy, and it was like, what does Andy do?

And then he realized that, well, he's kind of the manager really.

And when you could kind of sneak up behind him on stage and realize that he wasn't really playing anything on stage.

And we used to joke about it. We used to say, you're not actually playing a keyboard, are you?

You're the manager. You're playing the cash register.

You've got an accounting machine there going, merchandising, $57,000.

Everybody clap! Put your hands on for that one, right?

And I'll calculate the next bit now.

Everybody applaud.

He wasn't playing a fucking keyboard. He was working his cash machine.