INTERVIEW WITH DEPECHE MODE
[From The Videos 86>98, Mute MF033 and Videos 86>98+, Mute MF042. Director: Sven Harding.]
Short video interview which introduces the Videos 86>98 compilations. The band members plus Anton Corbijn discuss the nature of their collaboration and reminisce on some of the highlights. A lot is lost through converting a video to a transcript, but plenty of interesting snippets nonetheless.
" Anton comes out with some of these ideas in the videos and it's only because we trust him that we go ahead with them. He's great because he seems to understand us, he seems to bring a sense of humour to us as well, which is good. "
Martin: We had a lot of bad experiences in the early days with videos. I think that a lot of the time directors came in, I think they just saw how young and naive we were and they were just taking the piss - 'Let's see how stupid we can make them look, see how far they'll go!'
Dave: Video wasn't an area where we had ever felt comfortable. We kind of stood in the background and afterwards went, 'Urrrgh, that looks really bad dunnit?'
Martin: We needed somebody who had a very strong image to try and help turn around all these years of pop pictures that we'd been presenting really.
Dave: We were really searching for somebody that we could be comfortable with, and really the moment we sat down with Anton and started talking about ideas it was pretty obvious that he was going to be part of the team.
Anton: They offered me a video for 'A Question Of Time'. I had the idea thrown on me, they just let me take over in that sense. They were quite happy, I think, not to have to take responsibility.
Dave: What was obvious was that he understood that our music was a lot of layers. I think that something that has always been really good about us and Anton is that he understands the songs and he has a picture of what Depeche Mode musically does for himself.
Anton: The music is quite filmic. I don't listen to the lyrics as much, it's more the feel of the music I work with.
Andy: Anton comes out with some of these ideas in the videos and it's only because we trust him that we go ahead with them. He's great because he seems to understand us, he seems to bring a sense of humour to us as well, which is good. I think it's important for a group to have a sense of humour.
Anton: Because of the level of trust between them and me, we actually get things done really well. It's always worked out. It's come into a pattern that I will do the videos. I counted them recently, and I think I came to eighteen videos that I've made.
Andy: 'Personal Jesus' could have been my worst experience because we was actually in this desert town in Spain, it was one of these cowboy towns where they make all the westerns and stuff.
Dave: We had the whole stuff on - the hats, the leather chaps and everything - and there was horses and stuff.
Andy: And all day, they'd been telling me, "Well, Fletch, you know, you've got to ride a horse later," and things like that. And I was like, "Aw, fuck." You know, I can't ride a horse. I can't
ride a horse. You know. "Don't worry, you're going to have to ride a horse" - ?! They said, "Don't worry, you'll be OK. He's nice, he's calm...he's
big, but he's OK." And it came to this bit and everyone was with me to watch me ride this horse, you know, and I'd only ridden a pony once when I went pony trekking and that ran away. It turned out it was a rocking horse, and there's this bit on the video where I'm
[mimes riding]...like that. It's like one of those sort of nice wind-ups, but it did spoil my whole day thinking about that.
Dave: 'Enjoy The Silence' was Anton at his best.
Andy: We went into a studio and Anton said "This'll only take a while." "Yeah yeah yeah this is going to take all day." And then he said after an hour, "Well you can go home now," and we thought "Oh, great!". And poor old Dave, he had six days of filming in freezing conditions.
Dave: We spent about a week filming that. It was quite hard work, but it was a lot of fun. And I got to dress up as king, with the crown and everything. We done it in Portugal, we went to Scotland, at Balmoral, we went up in the French Alps... it was basically myself and Anton, and the producer Richard Bell travelling all over Europe.
There's shots in that video that actually weren't me. Towards the end of filming there's this one shot and I'd really had it, I just wanted to go back to the hotel. We'd taken this helicopter which we had on standby at the top of this mountain, and Anton wanted me to do this shot where I was like way way away, and there was this beautiful scene, it was just all snow, and I'm about this big
[holds up finger and thumb about an inch apart]. And so I thought, "You know what, Richard?" I took the crown off, I put it on his head, I took the robe off, I put it on him, I said, "You fucking do it." And I got in the helicopter, went down and had a cup of hot chocolate in the hotel.
'Barrel Of A Gun' - we shot that in Morocco. The interesting thing about that video was that I had eyes painted over the top of my eyes. There's this wall round the old city of Morocco [sic], this huge wall, which to the Moroccans is basically a bathroom. It's like where they go and take a shit and stuff like that, right? I had to walk all the way along this wall down one side where they was filming me so there's the wall on one side and I'd be like, "Left...right..." because every time they came along to some guy that was, like, doing his business there - I had no idea, I'm blind you know! I'm walking through all this stuff, this shit! Which was very amusing for Anton and Richard at the time...
'It's No Good" I think was probably one of the most fun videos that I've ever made. Anton took it to the extreme and he had me dressed up in this, like, green lame suit. My hair was long at the time, but they created this great big, like, fifties Teddy-Boy wig, and all the gold and stuff. I got to really kind of like play a role, and play a part that Anton wanted me in - the real has-been rock'n'roll star that ends up playing these places but he still thinks he's larger and bigger than life itself.
