Interviewer: ... my two guests are to the band Dave Gahan and Andrew Fletcher , better known as 'Fletch'. Everyone's has got nicknames nowadays.
Fletch: And a few other names, as well.
Interviewer: And a few other names.
Dave: We won't repeat that here.
Interviewer: Actually , what's your nickname, I'm wondering, in the band?
Dave: Eh, I haven't actually got a nickname, have I? Gahany , I suppose.
[laughter]
Interviewer: On the new album... actually , it's almost too early for us to answer , we'll wait a little to the end, because this whole programme is all part of The Story So Far with Depeche Mode, which... actually , there's an album out, in Singles forum, it's '81 to '85. But obviously you'll be doing a new album in the new year . We talked about songs and Martin songwriting. Will this extend more, do you think? The rest of the band getting more involved?
Dave: Oh yeah, we definitely wanna do it as a band, we wanna get more involved in, like, the whole production and everything. We've always been involved in the production, and it's always been a co-production between us and Daniel Miller . But we want to get sort of more involved, have more say on what's going on, which I think is a good thing. Because, the more you get involved, I think, in the end, the better it will be, for the band. It's definitely a broader ... The topics which Martin has written about are a lot broader than what they have been, I think, on any album, really .
Interviewer: And you've grown up an awful lot, haven't you?
Dave: Y eah, I think so, and Martin, as a songwriter , definitely .
Fletch: It's a very good position for us to be in. I mean, not many bands can go into a studio with, like, 10 - he's got 1 1 songs, which are really , like, quality .
Dave: Which we're working on at the moment.
Fletch: And it's such a good position to go into the studio and just work on the songs. A lot of bands have to write songs in the studio, and then work on the songs in the studio. It's just a real good position to be in.
Dave: And we've actually got them up front, which is great. And that's what we're doing now, we're just in a small studio at the moment, just programming and working on arrangements and stuff. Martin comes up with very rough demos. He'll have song that's very , very rough, which has got all the tunes and melodies and everything, and all the lyrics, and then we sort of look at those songs and look at them and see if we can change arrangements and stuff and make it more interesting maybe, or whatever . And that's how we work on it as a band, in the end, but Martin is always the one that actually sort of comes up with the ideas first.
[Cut to commercial]
Interviewer: Just to give you an indication as to how popular Depeche Mode are in Britain, another record has been released, they have some T-shirts done, which have "Master" across, and then there's another T-Shirt which has "Servant" across. And I just mentioned on a radio show that I've got one of these "Master" things, and I had about, eh I think, about 3 or 4 thousand writing
and asking for that T-shirt. And then when I said, "I can't, I haven't got enough to give away , but I've got a "Servant" T-Shirt", I've got another 5 or 6 thousand all writing us. "Servant", "Master And Servant". Good track, that. Slightly more rocky , though, isn't it?
Dave: Y eah, I think it is. I think, I have to say , I think it's probably , our wildest single to date. It sounds a bit weird saying "wildest", but I think it is. I think it's quite on the edge. It's a very tense sounding single, it's almost not a pop single, at all.
Interviewer: Instrumentally , then, where does the band go? In other words, the actual sound of the band?
Fletch: Well, in the studio, like Dave said earlier , Martin presents us with very rough demos, and sometimes they are very rough. We then do preparation work, that's what we're doing at the moment, a month of preparation: we go over the song, in a very small, dingy old studio, and work out structures, and the best way to do the song. And then we'll go into a studio and we work quite a lot on the sound.
Dave: But definitelyFletch: -When we first started, we had real definite roles as band, like, for instance, I would be the bass, I'd play bass mainly , and Vince would...
Dave: -play the melodies behind it.
Fletch: -play a lot of rhythm, and Martin was sort of the lead synth. But now...
Interviewer: -This was where I was getting at, all synth...
Fletch: Well, we do use a lot of synthesizer , but generally , these days we use a lot of computers. I mean, there is a difference between synthesizers and computers.
Dave: Y eah. I mean, there's the fact that with a computer you can actually use real sound. When say 'real sound', I mean, like, you can take anyFletch: -It's very acoustic.
Dave: -Y ou can take anything. It's very acoustic sounding, so that's why the last couple of albums haven't really sort of sound synthesized. Our first album was a synthesizer album, so it was totally synth popFletch: -T otally electronic.
Dave: -It was totally electronic. Whereas in fact, although there's was still sort of the name, we were still called an electronic band, in fact we're not really an electronic band, in the way that we don't really use those sort of synthesizers anymore.
Interviewer: Million dollar question: Are you likely to pick up a guitar , for instance?
Fletch: Well, that'sDave: -We do! I meanFletch: -For us, that's a cop out.
Dave: -Y eah. T o actually use, to actually just- Fletch: -So many of the early synthesizer bands, they just went back to the conventional line-up of a guitar , bass, and things. We always, what we try to doDave: -It's not even that so much, it's just that we're more interested in looking at the interesting sounds, and sometimes we do use guitars, in the way that we might sample a guitar chord or
something, and then play that into a computer , and then mess about with it, and try and make it sound more interesting. But when it comes down... We have, actually ... Martin has played guitar , he plays guitar quite well, so he has played a couple of times on songs such as Love, In Itself and And Then, and on the Construction Time Again album he played guitar , but we don't used guitar that much. We use a lot of drums and a lot of different drums and stuff, there's are lot of itFletch: -which are oftenInterviewer: -Surely , this technique is not that much different from a conventional band?
Fletch: Oh, it is.
Dave: Oh, it is, very different.
Fletch: We never use for instance... We use mainly the control room. If people don't understand: that's the thing where the desk is, the room where the desk is. We only use the other roomDave: -for vocals and stuff, reallyFletch: -for vocals. When we pull out our instruments in the control roomDave: -We actually work in the control room, setting up in the otherFletch: -quite a lot of interesting sounds...-Dave: -We don't... I mean, the way we don't work in a conventional way , as Andy said, there's no roles, no one is, like, the drummer , the bass player , the guitarist, we all muck in on everything. Because, when you use computers and stuff, you can all get in there and have a go, which makes it a lot more interesting. So there's a lot of interesting ideas being thrown around at one time.
But the next album, the next studio album, is definitely going to be a lot harder , a lot darker sounding. And the songs are very good, so, who knows?
Interviewer: Shake The Disease was good as well.
Dave: Good single, yeah.
Fletch: I think that was one of the best songs Martin has...-Dave: -Songwise, yeah, it's definitely one of the best songs that he has written.
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