Depeche Mode
[Flaunt, May 2001, Words: Tom Lonham. Pictures: Anthony Mandler.]
[Flaunt, May 2001, Words: Tom Lonham. Pictures: Anthony Mandler.]
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Depeche Mode Depeche Mode (Flaunt, 2001)
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A recent morning in Beverley Hills: sun dappled, birds twittering, not a stitch of smog in sight. Downstairs at one of the city's swankiest hotels, the beauty is lost on a handful of sluggish guests - mostly rock stars and music industry insiders - who are dragging themselves to the checkout desk, bleary eyes blinking behind high-priced sunglasses. And it is a good bet that the rest of the inn's occupants are probably still in bed, snoring through hard-earned hangovers. Sssshhh! Do not disturb! The annual Grammy Awards have gone down the night before, and its plethora of post-show parties are real glug-till-dawn affairs, usually rivaled only by those surrounding the Oscars.
Upstairs, however, in a spacious parlor, sit the members of English synth-pop purveyor Depeche Mode, sipping coffee, sniffing the fresh breeze through open veranda doors, and looking remarkably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for 10:30 AM. They look down on the sorry revellers struggling with their luggage and chuckle softly to themselves. In their own out-of-control era (midway through the trio's hit-spiked, two-decade career), they would've been the hapless Grammy-bash victims, done in by excesses of every exotic flavor. This time, they behave like decent, responsible blokes. Knowing they have a full slate of interviews today, they dropped by only one wingding given by their Reprise parent label, Warner Brothers. Then it was back to their rooms by the witching hour for a good night's rest. And no one is more shocked by this dramatic behavior change than the musicians themselves.
"In the old days, we'd come into L.A. for seven or eight days, and we'd immediately be checking out where every party is, every happening club," recalls professorial-looking programmer / keyboardist Andrew Fletcher, pouring himself a third cup of java. "But last night was different. I woke up this morning and thought, God, I wish I hadn't had those extra two drinks! I can't do my best on a hangover, and I try and treat my life in that way now - with respect."
Composer Martin Gore - sporting a suntan and baggy surfer togs that reflect his recent move to Santa Barbara, where he's become an avid jogger - silently nods as his teammate talks, then pipes in, "I completely agree with Andy. In the past, we would've been out partying every single night that we were here. But last night was the first night this week that we actually ventured out of our hotel rooms, and only because of that one Grammy party. And I'm not saying that I didn't drink more than I should have, but I was aware of it. In the past, I would not have been aware of it. My main goal would've been to get as wild as possible and not care about the following day."
After all, adds squirrelly frontman Dave Gahan, wearing a "Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck!" T-shirt that hints at his recent relocation to Manhattan, "I just can't party and still be a part of my life," he swears. "I can't do that and have a family. I mean, I can't be there for my family, if I'm not there for myself. It's pretty clear for me that's how it has to be." Gore and Fletcher are both married, with kids to raise and wives to support.
And before they get down to the business at hand - discussing a gracious, decidedly adult comeback disc on Reprise, 'Exciter' - these late-thirtyish ex-Lotharios take a madcap trip down memory lane. Telling tales so bacchanalian, it's difficult to believe they're the same purportedly sensitive quasi-Goths who made such thoughtful classics as 'Black Celebration' and 'Music For The Masses'. There was that time in New Orleans, the lads laughingly reminisce, when Gahan - suffering from drug-related heart palpitations - collapsed onstage. As he was gurneyed away to an ambulance, he whispered an urgent message to his roadie. Did it concern friends, loved ones? No, Gahan sighs, shaking his head, none of the above. He wanted the crewman to race back to the hotel room and hide his stash in case the police launched an investigation. Gore and Fletcher pick up the yarn. There were so many groupies, stimulants, and depressants back stage that night, they promptly forgot all about their MIA vocalist and kept right on partying. Hours later, someone would groggily mention, "Hey, has anybody checked on Dave?"
Then there was the moment a few years ago when Gahan partied so hard he literally died, flatlined, headed up to that great microphone in the sky. No beckoning white lights, no heavenly host, he says - all he felt at the time was a creepy, all-encompassing blackness. In all his life, he'd never felt so frightened. So totally alone. He made a hospital-bed vow to change his ways, switch the balance of his pursuits from carnal to spiritual. "I was slowly killing myself," he murmurs, seeing the incident in 20/20 hindsight. "People have written about it like I attempted suicide, but I never attempted suicide, never physically tried to take my own life." Change, he continues, "was a slow process - I couldn't do it all at once. And where I was going was nowhere - it was bollocks. But it's not like that for me today, so I'm very blessed to still be sitting here today, and to still be making music. I really feel that."
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You can sense a playful, renewed camaraderie among the Modesters as they spin their yarns. They've been friends for a long time, ever since a teenage Gore and Fletcher left their white-collar Basildon jobs in 1980 to for DM-precursor Composition of Sound with Vince Clarke (who would depart after one frothy album, 'Speak And Spell' to form Yazoo, then Erasure). Keyboardist Alan Wilder also joined, only to later quit for a solo career. Through it all, they've had their backstage life immortalised by the legendary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker ('101'), watched the visionary Anton Corbijn design kookier, more futuristic sets from tour to tour, and sold over forty million albums to date. As a trio, they're as time-tested and tight as, well, the Three Stooges. And they not only laugh about their personal pratfalls, they turn them into grown-up songs on 'Exciter'.
In 'Dead Of Night', which crashes in halfway through 'Exciter' like a Sherman tank with air raid sirens, Gore writes and Gahan sings of being trapped in "the Zombie Room / We're twilight's parasites with self-inflicted wounds." Like many popular U.K.-based artists, the DMers were once lured into the privileged upstairs rookeries of London's poshest after-hours drinking establishments like Soho House, the Groucho Club, and Gore's old haunt, Brown's. "And it was a really sad scene," Gore grumbles. "You had three levels - the regular bit downstairs, the slightly VIP but on the second floor, then upstairs the total VIP-VIP bit, which at Brown's was called the Red Room. And you got there, and everyone was taking so many drugs because it was commonly known that it was perfectly cool to take drugs there. So the Red Room for me was the 'Zombie Room', because everyone in there was always talking way too fast, saying nothing and just staring. And while you're there, all these people in the room are your best mates in the world. But the next day, if you bump into one of them on the street, you won't even know their name."
The rest of the record (deftly produced by Bjork alumnus Mark Bell) loosely revolves around the theme of love and physical closeness. Or does it? The chorus of the acoustic-plucked single 'Dream On' may feature Gahan crooning, deep and inviting, "Can you feel a little love?" But the verses send another message: "As your bony fingers close around me / Long and spindly death becomes me / Heaven, can you see what I see...What you take won't kill you, but careful what you're giving."
"But what I've tried to do with my voice on some of these songs," Gahan clarifies, "was to come back to a more closer, loving, smaller place where everything's okay. And you feel safe. And at the end of the album, when you get to (the gentle closing ballad) 'Goodnight Lovers', it feels gospelly, doo-woppy, but it's still more...more loving.
"And you've got to get really quiet and stop and get slow to really feel what's going on with yourself. And it's hard to do that out there in the world where it's all white noise static. And you can't do that in the Zombie Room, that's for sure. But you can do it if you get quiet and slow. And I know it sounds hokey, but I felt that when my baby daughter was born and I picked her up. I felt life. And I felt love."
Which reminds Gore of yet another story when his plane wing was cracked by lightning somewhere over North Carolina a few years ago, and he truly believed he was going to crash. "The only thing that was going through my mind at the time was that my daughter's not going to ever know me! She was only two at the time." [1]
Gahan grows more reflective. "Which is what it's all about when you think about it. Those are the things that are important to you, and it's only in those moments when you're that close to feeling like, this is it! Those important things become very loud."
"And you're one of those people," Fletcher can't resist tacking on, before the group - all goofy giggles and backslapping - adjourns for a catered lunch, "who actually has died!"
In 'Dead Of Night', which crashes in halfway through 'Exciter' like a Sherman tank with air raid sirens, Gore writes and Gahan sings of being trapped in "the Zombie Room / We're twilight's parasites with self-inflicted wounds." Like many popular U.K.-based artists, the DMers were once lured into the privileged upstairs rookeries of London's poshest after-hours drinking establishments like Soho House, the Groucho Club, and Gore's old haunt, Brown's. "And it was a really sad scene," Gore grumbles. "You had three levels - the regular bit downstairs, the slightly VIP but on the second floor, then upstairs the total VIP-VIP bit, which at Brown's was called the Red Room. And you got there, and everyone was taking so many drugs because it was commonly known that it was perfectly cool to take drugs there. So the Red Room for me was the 'Zombie Room', because everyone in there was always talking way too fast, saying nothing and just staring. And while you're there, all these people in the room are your best mates in the world. But the next day, if you bump into one of them on the street, you won't even know their name."
The rest of the record (deftly produced by Bjork alumnus Mark Bell) loosely revolves around the theme of love and physical closeness. Or does it? The chorus of the acoustic-plucked single 'Dream On' may feature Gahan crooning, deep and inviting, "Can you feel a little love?" But the verses send another message: "As your bony fingers close around me / Long and spindly death becomes me / Heaven, can you see what I see...What you take won't kill you, but careful what you're giving."
"But what I've tried to do with my voice on some of these songs," Gahan clarifies, "was to come back to a more closer, loving, smaller place where everything's okay. And you feel safe. And at the end of the album, when you get to (the gentle closing ballad) 'Goodnight Lovers', it feels gospelly, doo-woppy, but it's still more...more loving.
"And you've got to get really quiet and stop and get slow to really feel what's going on with yourself. And it's hard to do that out there in the world where it's all white noise static. And you can't do that in the Zombie Room, that's for sure. But you can do it if you get quiet and slow. And I know it sounds hokey, but I felt that when my baby daughter was born and I picked her up. I felt life. And I felt love."
Which reminds Gore of yet another story when his plane wing was cracked by lightning somewhere over North Carolina a few years ago, and he truly believed he was going to crash. "The only thing that was going through my mind at the time was that my daughter's not going to ever know me! She was only two at the time." [1]
Gahan grows more reflective. "Which is what it's all about when you think about it. Those are the things that are important to you, and it's only in those moments when you're that close to feeling like, this is it! Those important things become very loud."
"And you're one of those people," Fletcher can't resist tacking on, before the group - all goofy giggles and backslapping - adjourns for a catered lunch, "who actually has died!"
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