Depeche Mode

• 1. Introduction

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  Depeche Mode formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980, and within a decade they were filling the Pasadena Rose Bowl with more than 60,000 people. That crowd, the largest the venue had seen in eight years, gathered to watch four young men from a working-class English town who had started out carrying synthesisers on the train to the BBC. How does a band born in a Scout hut jam session become one of the most enduring acts in the history of recorded music? What happens to a group when addiction, nervous breakdown, and the near-death of their frontman nearly tears them apart? And what keeps two surviving members recording together more than four decades after it all began? Those questions run like a current through the story of Depeche Mode.

• 2. Basildon Beginnings

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  Dave Gahan's audition for the group that would become Depeche Mode consisted of a single song: David Bowie's "Heroes", performed at a local Scout hut. Vince Clarke heard it and knew immediately. Clarke and Andy Fletcher had already been making music together since 1977, when they formed a band called No Romance in China. Fletcher later recalled that his joining was accidental from the start. "Why am I in the band? I was actually forced to be in the band," he said. Martin Gore, meanwhile, had been playing guitar in an acoustic duo called Norman and the Worms. By 1980, Clarke and Fletcher had formed a new outfit called Composition of Sound, Gore joined as a third instrumentalist, and Gahan completed the lineup.

  The four began pursuing a synth-pop direction as affordable synthesisers became widely available. Their first concert as a four-piece took place on the 14th of June 1980 at Nicholas School in Basildon. A plaque now marks the occasion at the James Hornsby School nearby, where Gore and Fletcher were pupils. The band's influences were wide-ranging: Gahan cited Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sparks, Cabaret Voltaire, Talking Heads, and Iggy Pop, while his onstage persona drew on Dave Vanian of the Damned. They grew embarrassed by the name Composition of Sound and considered several replacements, including Musical Moments, suggested by Clarke. Starting on the 24th of September 1980 at Bridge House, they performed as Depeche Mode, a name chosen by Gahan from a French fashion magazine whose title Gore translated as meaning "hurried fashion" or "fashion dispatch."

• 3. Making the First Album

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  Rather than mailing demo tapes to record labels, the band walked in and personally delivered them. Gahan described the response: "most of them would tell us to fuck off. They'd say 'leave the tape with us' and we'd say 'it's our only one'." Phonogram offered what Gahan called "money you could never have imagined and all sorts of crazy things like clothes allowances." The band chose a different path. While playing at the Bridge House in Canning Town, they were approached by Daniel Miller, an electronic producer and founder of Mute Records. The verbal contract led to their first single, "Dreaming of Me", recorded in December 1980 and released in February 1981. It reached number 57 in the UK charts.

  The follow-up single, "New Life", climbed to number 11 and earned the band an appearance on Top of the Pops. They travelled to the BBC studios by train, carrying their synthesisers the whole way. Their next single, "Just Can't Get Enough", became the band's first UK top ten hit. Speak & Spell, the debut album, was released in October 1981 and peaked at number ten on the UK album charts. Critical response was split: Melody Maker called it "a great album", while Rolling Stone described it as "PG-rated fluff." Clarke, however, was already restless. He complained there was never enough time to do anything beyond interviews and photo sessions. By November 1981, he had publicly announced his departure.

• 4. Gore Takes the Pen

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  When Clarke left, the remaining trio placed an anonymous ad in Melody Maker: "Name band, synthesise, must be under twenty-one." Alan Wilder, a classically trained keyboardist from West London, responded. He was 22, one year over the stated limit. After two auditions, he was hired in early 1982 on a trial basis as a touring member. Daniel Miller told Wilder he would not be needed for the recording of the next album; the core trio wanted to prove they could succeed without Clarke. A Broken Frame appeared that September.

  With Gore as chief songwriter, the band's music began to darken. Producer Flood later described the internal dynamic: "Alan is sort of the craftsman, Martin's the idea man and Dave is the attitude." Construction Time Again, the third album, was recorded at Gareth Jones's Garden Studios and at Hansa Studios in West Berlin, where portions of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy had been made. Wilder introduced the Synclavier and E-mu Emulator samplers, and the band began sampling everyday objects to build an industrial-influenced sound. The album's single "Everything Counts" reached number six in the UK and charted across Ireland, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, and West Germany.

  Gore explained his underlying creative vision in a later interview: "My dream was to combine the emotion of Neil Young or John Lennon transmitted by Kraftwerk's synthesisers. Soul music played by electronic instruments." The band also developed strict self-imposed rules, including no presets, no chords, and no hi-hats. All samples had to be original, and no sample could be used twice. The hi-hat sound on the song "Nothing" turned out to be an original sample of a pneumatic bus door closing. The band adhered to these constraints through much of their catalogue, though almost every rule was broken at least once.

• 5. Breaking America

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  In March 1984, Depeche Mode released "People Are People", and the international scale of their appeal changed overnight. The single reached number one in West Germany, the first time a Depeche Mode single had topped any country's chart, where it served as the theme to West German television's coverage of the 1984 Olympics. In mid-1985 it reached number 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100, their first appearance on that chart. The song also became an anthem for the LGBT community, regularly played at gay establishments and pride festivals through the late 1980s.

  Martin Gore acknowledged the band's surprise at what they found in America: they were, he said, "shocked by the way the fans were turning up in droves at the concerts", though he noted that selling concert tickets and selling records were two different things. In Europe, Depeche Mode were treated as teen idols, appearing regularly in teen magazines in Germany, France, and other countries. In the United States, they appealed to an alternative audience disenchanted with what Gore called "soft rock and 'disco hell'." The 1986 album Black Celebration introduced a darker, more atmospheric sound, and that same year Dutch photographer and director Anton Corbijn made the video for "A Question of Time", beginning a working relationship that would see him direct 22 of the band's videos and design stage sets for decades to come.

• 6. Violator and the Rose Bowl

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  On the 18th of June 1988, Depeche Mode closed the Music for the Masses Tour at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Paid attendance was 60,453, the highest the venue had recorded in eight years. The event was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker for the concert film 101, which takes its title from a detail Alan Wilder pointed out: it was the 101st and final show of the tour. On the 7th of March 1988, earlier in that same tour, the band had played in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle in East Berlin, one of the few Western groups to perform in East Germany.

  The Rose Bowl breakthrough set the stage for Violator. Recording began in Milan in mid-1989. Before the album's release, a marketing campaign placed ads in the personals columns of regional UK newspapers carrying the words "Your own personal Jesus." Later versions of the ad included a phone number to hear the song. "Personal Jesus" reached number 13 in the UK and became the biggest-selling 12-inch single in Warner Records' history up to that point. The follow-up, "Enjoy the Silence", released in February 1990, reached number six in the UK and earned the band a gold record in the United States. It won Best British Single at the 1991 Brit Awards. Violator debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum by the RIAA. At an in-store signing at Wherehouse Entertainment in Los Angeles, approximately 20,000 fans arrived and the event became a near riot; as an apology to those injured, the band distributed a limited edition cassette tape through radio station KROQ. For the World Violation Tour, 42,000 tickets for a Giants Stadium show sold within four hours, and 48,000 tickets for a Dodger Stadium date sold in half an hour.

• 7. Devotional Collapse

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  Songs of Faith and Devotion, released in 1993, debuted at number one in both the UK and the United States, only the sixth British act to reach the top of both charts simultaneously. The album blended Wilder's live drums, distorted electric guitars, live strings, uilleann pipes, and female gospel vocals. It remains one of the most sonically ambitious records in the band's catalogue. The Devotional Tour that followed earned a Grammy nomination for Best Long Form Music Video, but the tour itself nearly destroyed the band.

  Q magazine described the 1993 Devotional Tour as "The Most Debauched Rock 'n' Roll Tour Ever". According to reporting in The Independent, Gahan required cortisone shots just to perform, Gore suffered two stress-induced seizures, and Fletcher's deepening depression resulted in a full nervous breakdown in the summer of 1994. In New Orleans, Gahan suffered a heart attack during a performance and was taken from the Lakefront Arena in an ambulance. In Denver, Gore was arrested and fined $50 for disturbing the peace after holding a loud party in his hotel room. Fletcher stopped participating in the second half of the Exotic Tour and was replaced on stage by Daryl Bamonte, who had worked with the band as a personal assistant since 1980. The tour lasted fourteen months and covered 159 individual performances. In June 1995, Alan Wilder announced his departure, citing a persistent imbalance in the distribution of the workload.

• 8. Survival and After

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  Gore tried repeatedly during 1995 and 1996 to get the band recording again. Gahan rarely showed up to sessions, and a six-week stint at Electric Lady studios in New York produced just one usable vocal, for the track "Sister of Night", pieced together from multiple takes. In mid-1996, after a near-fatal overdose in which his heart stopped for two minutes, Gahan entered a court-ordered rehabilitation program. With Gahan out of rehab, the band recorded Ultra with producer Tim Simenon. Ultra debuted at number one in the UK and Germany. Fletcher explained why the band chose not to tour: "Dave's only eight months into his sobriety, and our bodies are telling us to spend time with our families."

  Andy Fletcher died on the 26th of May 2022, aged 60, after suffering an aortic dissection at home. Gahan and Gore called it "the untimely passing of our dear friend, family member and bandmate." Former member Wilder said the news was "a real bolt from the blue." Rather than dissolve, Gahan and Gore continued as a duo. Memento Mori, released in 2023, was co-produced by James Ford. Its lead single, "Ghosts Again", was co-written by Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs, charted at number 14 in the UK, and reached number two on the US Adult Alternative Songs chart. Gahan said the song "captures this perfect balance of melancholy and joy." The Memento Mori World Tour ran 112 shows and concluded on the 8th of April 2024. On the 13th of December 2023, Los Angeles city council member Monica Rodriguez officially declared December 13th as Depeche Mode Day in the city of Los Angeles.