Success All Areas
[NME, 3rd November 1990. Words: James Brown. Pictures: Stefan de Batselier.]
[NME, 3rd November 1990. Words: James Brown. Pictures: Stefan de Batselier.]
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Depeche Mode Success All Areas (NME, 1990)
- Thread starter demoderus
- Start date
Ooh-er, madame! DEPECHE MODE, zey are enorme! In America (north and south), the Eastern bloc, Japan and all over the Common Market, Basildon bondage is bigger news than the Gulf crisis. JAMES BROWN follows the smell of lust, leather and lager to downtown Paris and catches both the climax of their “Violator” world tour and a few words with the one they’re all calling FLETCH. Moody Mode shots by STEFAN DE BATSELIER
“You’re going to interview Depeche Mode? They’re big all over aren’t they?”
Ooh-er, it is a sign of the times for the Basildon Boys, they’re at that level of the rock hierarchy where they are no longer known for their songs but for being something.
Def Leppard? – their drummer’s got one arm.
New Order? – they own a nightclub.
Depeche Mode? – they’re big all over.
At least New Order share the credit for the England World Cup song, but for Depeche it’s simply their success and not their skills which are wittered about.
The Bercy Sports Stadium, Paris, is a post-modernist pyramid that would have the Pharaohs browning their body-cloths in shock. An elegant contraption, not unlike the chrome and glass affair that’s been installed at the Louvre, its distinguishing feature is the grass – real grass – that grows from its almost vertical sloping sides. At first you’d think it’s artificial Astroturf, but then you realise it’s the real thing. Genuine sod.
You get the same feeling about Depeche Mode. OK, they’re big all over, but so is Tina Turner. Then you see 16,000 Frenchies in their black and red “Violator” T-shirts, cheering at the end of the Renegade Soundwave records that are being played before Depeche take the stage. You soon realise love for these sods is genuine.
In three nights here, Depeche Mode will play to 50,000 people, that’s three times the average First Division football crowd. When the band come on, the masses quit being merely excited and hit hysteria full on the jaw. The screaming audience are louder than the band. At least 5,000 cheap lighters with assorted gimmicky designs on the side are held aloft, thumbs are dragged over stubby cogs, and a field of flickering flames wake up.
The combined effect of the screaming – and this isn’t teen-screaming of the New Kids type, it’s adult – the lighters, and the ridiculously hyped-up fans isn’t just shocking, it’s awesome.
The Depeche Show is simple yet clever. With Basildon Blond bombshell Martin Gore at the centre and Alan Wilder and Andrew “Fletch” Fletcher on risers to his left and right, the synth team make a “V”. The same shape is beamed out through the backlights. “V” is for “Violator” and by now the audience are more than ready for a bit of Violation.
Once the rumbling Depeche sound has been cranked into overdrive, David Gahan skips into view, thrusts his buttocks about in the style of a Palitoy Mick Jagger, and begins to tease the screeching mass before him.
Dave’s a slight lad but he knows how to titillate an easily pleased audience. Wipping up the mic stand he swivels four, five, six times with it at his hips, a chrome Torville to his Dean. Another favourite is to raise the leg 80 degrees from the other one in a half-pike then clomp it down as if trying to scuff shit from his shoe. Later he’ll get as cheeky as Madonna and grab his package while rotating his crotch.
All these moves get screams of pleasure from the flock of mini-rockers before him, and you can’t help but think of the fans in the futuristic political rally in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. You’ve seen the scene time and time again in crappy Made For Video films about rock stars who get religion or murdered. But this is for real.
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Depeche’s music thunders into two camps. Pre and Post-Neubaten. There was a time when people laughed at these plinkety-plonk techno-popstars for taking on the heavy duty imagery and sounds of the Teutonic Metal Bashers, but now that huge industrial furnace roar has been polished up and made their own. Being a pre-Neubaten fan I have to settle for the clearly defined pop structure and lyrics of “Everything Counts”, an easy to read Economist lesson for Farfisa fanatics. There are others, but they’re album tracks not singles.
The post-Neubaten fans feast on the Gore stories of S&M, Religion and Serpents. Even when Martin takes up a guitar and serenades us solo, the fans accept it as pure Depeche and roar appreciatively as he gets as sensitive as a man who makes music from production line sound effects can be.
The most original part of the stage show is the videos projected onto two screens behind the band. More than anything the boys can do in their uncannily ordinary stage routine, the footage suggests a sense of humour, sex and romance.
There’s nothing quite so moving as seeing two lovers rolling in a sleepless turmoil on separate beds and on separate screens. There’s nothing quite so amusing as realising one of them, Alan Wilder, has his biker boots on. The song “Clean” has the most appropriate images, each one fitting tight and snug with the lyrics Gahan is rocketing off down below.
Then the lads lift up the lid of self mockery and begin poncing around in Stetsons, gun belts, and boots. Silhouette cowpokes with a couple of large breasted air-hostesses dressed as ranch hands leading them on. Flesh, sun glasses, and monochrome graphics, it’s like The Young Ones doing a matt-black advert for Gillette. Any minute now a Porsche will glide over Gahan’s chin.
The effect of all this on the crowd is of course ecstatic. When The Mode rip into “Personal Jesus” the sober adult male and female audience start grooving as one, joining the younger fans in a complete arm waving exercise that makes the stadium look like it was fitted with livid shag pile carpet.
It was like being trapped inside a James Herbert novel called The Fans, and the worrying thing was it was easier and I felt happier joining in than I did being the only person in the arena on my arse losing my voice trying to hold a conversation.
The next morning I sat inside a hotel so expensive it didn’t even look like a hotel, the cab drivers didn’t know of it but that could have been my thick phonetic pronunciation of “Hotel Rally Car Door”. Inside a polite ante-bar where the waiters wore cream uniforms and businessmen discussed purchasing minor Asian states, I felt like a war criminal.
Mute employees discussed the day’s schedule.
“We’ve got ten film crews wanting to do interviews but they’ve released the French hostages so I’m not sure how many will turn up, you know what it’s like with news.”
That’s how big Depeche are here. They don’t do the French pop shows, they do the news. Today Martin Gore’s doing the long interviews. “How long is long?” “Thirty minutes.” That’s how big Depeche are, they give shorter interviews than Saddam Hussein. [1]
Because NME had Gore in February, today I’m getting “Fletch”. It’s hard to be profound in 15 minutes, especially when you’re interviewing someone named after a Ronnie Barker character. When “Fletch” arrives I decline from asking him whether he’s any good at putting up shelves and we begin. It takes longer to drink a glass of Perrier than it does to carry out a “short” interview with Depeche Mode. But this isn’t a problem. “Fletch” takes care of Depeche business and he’s used to brief meetings. Talk is fast, chatty, and precise.
“After the show we came back here and went out with a couple of friends to a couple of clubs, and sort of erm, got plastered, hurhrhrhr. Actually, I only arrived yesterday so I didn’t have the run-in like everyone else. Everyone else has been here for three days, so it was a nightmare.”
Is that a regular Depeche habit, to go out and get plastered after a show?
“The thing is you build up during the show, don’t you, so you’ve got to carry on. You get into a routine, so on days off I’ve been trying not to drink at all.”
Is that difficult?
“Not drinking?”
Yeah, when you’re hanging round in airport lounges, in hotels, restaurants for most of the day.
“The main problem with us is because we’ve been touring for so long, in each city, say Paris, Milan, we’ve got so many friends in each city you can’t ignore it. You can’t just sit there drinking coffee afterwards because it’s a big night. It’s a good thing to have.”
Do you ever do shows with hangovers?
“Well, the other day I… Well I won’t say. There’s this really disgusting liqueur called Jeigermeister and I actually sobered up finally, this is the first time it’s ever happened so I won’t say it’s a regular occurrence… I came down for the show at eight o’clock and that’s when I sobered up. Not hungover, ill.”
The post-Neubaten fans feast on the Gore stories of S&M, Religion and Serpents. Even when Martin takes up a guitar and serenades us solo, the fans accept it as pure Depeche and roar appreciatively as he gets as sensitive as a man who makes music from production line sound effects can be.
The most original part of the stage show is the videos projected onto two screens behind the band. More than anything the boys can do in their uncannily ordinary stage routine, the footage suggests a sense of humour, sex and romance.
There’s nothing quite so moving as seeing two lovers rolling in a sleepless turmoil on separate beds and on separate screens. There’s nothing quite so amusing as realising one of them, Alan Wilder, has his biker boots on. The song “Clean” has the most appropriate images, each one fitting tight and snug with the lyrics Gahan is rocketing off down below.
Then the lads lift up the lid of self mockery and begin poncing around in Stetsons, gun belts, and boots. Silhouette cowpokes with a couple of large breasted air-hostesses dressed as ranch hands leading them on. Flesh, sun glasses, and monochrome graphics, it’s like The Young Ones doing a matt-black advert for Gillette. Any minute now a Porsche will glide over Gahan’s chin.
The effect of all this on the crowd is of course ecstatic. When The Mode rip into “Personal Jesus” the sober adult male and female audience start grooving as one, joining the younger fans in a complete arm waving exercise that makes the stadium look like it was fitted with livid shag pile carpet.
It was like being trapped inside a James Herbert novel called The Fans, and the worrying thing was it was easier and I felt happier joining in than I did being the only person in the arena on my arse losing my voice trying to hold a conversation.
The next morning I sat inside a hotel so expensive it didn’t even look like a hotel, the cab drivers didn’t know of it but that could have been my thick phonetic pronunciation of “Hotel Rally Car Door”. Inside a polite ante-bar where the waiters wore cream uniforms and businessmen discussed purchasing minor Asian states, I felt like a war criminal.
Mute employees discussed the day’s schedule.
“We’ve got ten film crews wanting to do interviews but they’ve released the French hostages so I’m not sure how many will turn up, you know what it’s like with news.”
That’s how big Depeche are here. They don’t do the French pop shows, they do the news. Today Martin Gore’s doing the long interviews. “How long is long?” “Thirty minutes.” That’s how big Depeche are, they give shorter interviews than Saddam Hussein. [1]
Because NME had Gore in February, today I’m getting “Fletch”. It’s hard to be profound in 15 minutes, especially when you’re interviewing someone named after a Ronnie Barker character. When “Fletch” arrives I decline from asking him whether he’s any good at putting up shelves and we begin. It takes longer to drink a glass of Perrier than it does to carry out a “short” interview with Depeche Mode. But this isn’t a problem. “Fletch” takes care of Depeche business and he’s used to brief meetings. Talk is fast, chatty, and precise.
“After the show we came back here and went out with a couple of friends to a couple of clubs, and sort of erm, got plastered, hurhrhrhr. Actually, I only arrived yesterday so I didn’t have the run-in like everyone else. Everyone else has been here for three days, so it was a nightmare.”
Is that a regular Depeche habit, to go out and get plastered after a show?
“The thing is you build up during the show, don’t you, so you’ve got to carry on. You get into a routine, so on days off I’ve been trying not to drink at all.”
Is that difficult?
“Not drinking?”
Yeah, when you’re hanging round in airport lounges, in hotels, restaurants for most of the day.
“The main problem with us is because we’ve been touring for so long, in each city, say Paris, Milan, we’ve got so many friends in each city you can’t ignore it. You can’t just sit there drinking coffee afterwards because it’s a big night. It’s a good thing to have.”
Do you ever do shows with hangovers?
“Well, the other day I… Well I won’t say. There’s this really disgusting liqueur called Jeigermeister and I actually sobered up finally, this is the first time it’s ever happened so I won’t say it’s a regular occurrence… I came down for the show at eight o’clock and that’s when I sobered up. Not hungover, ill.”
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Are you aware of how loud it is in the auditorium?
“What? Out front? We do have loud monitors but the screaming last night was particularly loud. That’s got to be one of the… erm… I think Belgium was quite loud as well but I was surprised. I don’t think it was like that. You don’t get much of the audience. It was a bit weird for us, the whole gig, because we were recording it and there was a whole concentration.”
How many times do you change clothes during the show? There’s a lot of running around.
“Not for me, hahhahaha. I take my jacket off but Dave gets sweaty. He’s lost a couple of stone since the beginning of the tour. The last tour we did over 100 concerts so this tour we decided to limit it to a maximum of 75, unfortunately there’ve been a lot of places we haven’t been able to go to.
“Fortunately we’re very popular all over the world, Eastern Bloc, everywhere. We’ve had to cut out all those markets and stuff, we’ve played Japan, but even then we could have played Singapore, Hong Kong, we’ve done that before. We only played Australia for the first time this year and that was a great trip east but you get into a Catch 22 situation with your production and stuff and they really haven’t got the equipment there.
“On our last tour, the Eastern European leg was very interesting but we just got ripped off basically, we ended up losing money. It was good, but we went before the walls came tumbling down, and we made a decision never to go back in that situation because we were puppets of the government. And I think for touring in general we have lost a lot of enthusiasm. There’s no doubt in the future we won’t doing as many concerts.”
What about the band’s sex appeal?
“Lack of it, you mean, huhuhha hu!”
Well you’ve got 16,000 people screaming at you, men and women, girls and boys. Do you ever wonder what it is that attracts such a response?
“Dunno, I have thought about it but I’ve never come to a conclusion.”
How do your parents relate to seeing you swaggering around dressed as cowboys followed by half-naked cowgirls pushing their breasts into the camera?
“I don’t think they deal with it at all, you know. They think it’s part of being a group I suppose.”
Would you like to see more humour portrayed in the band?
“I think the videos have brought humour to the band, there’s humour in the songs but it’s subtle. I think we often come across as being too serious, but I think that’s a reaction to earlier in our career when I think we weren’t serious enough. We were smiling, laughing, we felt people were too sick of us, and we were sickly ourselves.”
Will there be a similar change in direction over the next five years?
“Hopefully, yeah, we let the music do that. We go in to do an album and try and be as natural as possible before it. Especially the last album, we went in and went through the routines for the first two weeks. Then we had to stop and push ourselves to do something that was different.”
A bit of Violating?
“A bit of Violating, heahuhuh.”
Have people picked up on that and taken it too seriously because it is an aggressive world?
“What! Violator? Obviously the Germans don’t get it, we had a few problems in some countries but most people realised it was supposed to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.”
What about the rest of the tour, have any surprise celebrities turned up?
“My idol turned up, did you hear about that? So embarrassing.”
“What? Out front? We do have loud monitors but the screaming last night was particularly loud. That’s got to be one of the… erm… I think Belgium was quite loud as well but I was surprised. I don’t think it was like that. You don’t get much of the audience. It was a bit weird for us, the whole gig, because we were recording it and there was a whole concentration.”
How many times do you change clothes during the show? There’s a lot of running around.
“Not for me, hahhahaha. I take my jacket off but Dave gets sweaty. He’s lost a couple of stone since the beginning of the tour. The last tour we did over 100 concerts so this tour we decided to limit it to a maximum of 75, unfortunately there’ve been a lot of places we haven’t been able to go to.
“Fortunately we’re very popular all over the world, Eastern Bloc, everywhere. We’ve had to cut out all those markets and stuff, we’ve played Japan, but even then we could have played Singapore, Hong Kong, we’ve done that before. We only played Australia for the first time this year and that was a great trip east but you get into a Catch 22 situation with your production and stuff and they really haven’t got the equipment there.
“On our last tour, the Eastern European leg was very interesting but we just got ripped off basically, we ended up losing money. It was good, but we went before the walls came tumbling down, and we made a decision never to go back in that situation because we were puppets of the government. And I think for touring in general we have lost a lot of enthusiasm. There’s no doubt in the future we won’t doing as many concerts.”
What about the band’s sex appeal?
“Lack of it, you mean, huhuhha hu!”
Well you’ve got 16,000 people screaming at you, men and women, girls and boys. Do you ever wonder what it is that attracts such a response?
“Dunno, I have thought about it but I’ve never come to a conclusion.”
How do your parents relate to seeing you swaggering around dressed as cowboys followed by half-naked cowgirls pushing their breasts into the camera?
“I don’t think they deal with it at all, you know. They think it’s part of being a group I suppose.”
Would you like to see more humour portrayed in the band?
“I think the videos have brought humour to the band, there’s humour in the songs but it’s subtle. I think we often come across as being too serious, but I think that’s a reaction to earlier in our career when I think we weren’t serious enough. We were smiling, laughing, we felt people were too sick of us, and we were sickly ourselves.”
Will there be a similar change in direction over the next five years?
“Hopefully, yeah, we let the music do that. We go in to do an album and try and be as natural as possible before it. Especially the last album, we went in and went through the routines for the first two weeks. Then we had to stop and push ourselves to do something that was different.”
A bit of Violating?
“A bit of Violating, heahuhuh.”
Have people picked up on that and taken it too seriously because it is an aggressive world?
“What! Violator? Obviously the Germans don’t get it, we had a few problems in some countries but most people realised it was supposed to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.”
What about the rest of the tour, have any surprise celebrities turned up?
“My idol turned up, did you hear about that? So embarrassing.”
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Who was that, Neil Tennant?
“No, Steffi Graf. I really do like Steffi Graf, she’s my total idol, she was dancing at the side of the stage in Frankfurt. Apparently she’s going out with Mick Hucknall. Anyway, she came backstage and I just think she’s phenomenal so I can’t, erm…”
That’s interesting because when I was watching you onstage you looked more like sports stars…
“Than rock’n’roll stars.”
Dave looked like Gary Lineker.
“Brian Clough he always thought he looked like. I think the whole stage thing is “clean” I suppose, yeah. We’re just trying to be ourselves, we’re not dirty people. A lot of rock bands go out of their way to be falsely dirty, don’t they? You look at all these American rock bands and to me they’re as clean as anything, all their designer ripped leathers and stuff.”
Where did the cowboy imagery come from for “Personal Jesus”?
“That’s the video maker. We don’t hide the fact that we’ve never had very much to do with the videos. Never have been, that’s a reason why we made so many bad videos early on. The videos make it less rock’n’roll and it has brought a bit of humour to the show, without it you might have a standard rock’n’roll show.
“The irritating thing about this European show is that we’ve played a lot of these halls six or seven times and it’s always the same faces, there’s not that sense of excitement we still get in America of playing somewhere new.”
Do you have someone who suggests what you should wear on stage or how Dave should dance?
“No, we do it all ourselves. We all wear black and white because it’s neutral colours.”
Do you think you have a specifically gay section to your audience?
“I think gays do like us. The imagery is supposed to be a bit ambiguous, a lot of people think, especially Martin, that Martin’s gay. [1] We did a French newspaper interview last week and apparently he was shocked that none of us were gay. He thought it was the general view in France that we were gay. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Have you got any tattoos?
“No, have you?”
No, but bands get them on the road don’t they?
“I don’t, I’m not a rock’n’roll animal.”
As you’re involved in your own management, does it become an extra burden the road?
“Fortunately it’s going very well so I don’t have to worry, but if it wasn’t I might have to.”
Would you get behind the stall and start flogging the merchandising?
“No, but I might have to one day. We have to take control because we don’t have a manager. Daniel Miller was really our manager and he taught us a lot. If we hadn’t had him we might have had to get a manager.”
Do you ever meet your fans after a gig?
”We have fans backstage, it’s a bit like Jesus wandering through the masses, quite a few fans come backstage, yeah, they need laminates but we have so many fan clubs in each continent that we usually let the organisers and a few people back. I think it’s good to listen to them, they’re usually the best critics, some of them really do take it so seriously. Some fans really do analyse it. They know every word, especially the French, which I think is a real achievement. We really consider ourselves a real true European band.”
It’s unfortunate that whilst “Violator” is commonly held to be their best LP in five years, Depeche Mode no longer write distinctively poppy songs to run amok through the charts. It’s hard to come to terms with a band so confident and so clearly adored by their fans who don’t have Number One hits. They’re not hard up for attention but it wouldn’t be amiss for a band so successful world-wide to be give more consideration at home.
Whether they’re actually any good or not is another matter. By messing with their image and switching from the semi-serious to the comedic in public they have left themselves open to criticism from confused or simply bored onlookers. Depeche Mode have grown huge by being mediocre and have now sharpened their position so they give their fans a stage show that is shocking in its human simplicity and visual complexity.
Gahan bobbles like a doll on an electrified plate, yet he doesn’t appear taken with himself. Twice I see him flash a bemused glance at Alan Wilder during the show and in terms of spitting and blowing snot from his nose he makes Terry McDermott’s old Match Of The Day clip look angelic. OK, he shaves his arm pits and he won’t talk to the press, maybe he’s got an immense under arm hair hang-up. Or maybe there’s more to hide.
In truth the relentless shiny throb of Depeche’s synthesisers gets a bit monotonous after a while but they weren’t playing it for me, they were playing for the fans. The people who knew exactly when to get out the sparklers and light them during specific songs. These people are fanatics. They don’t need to be told “Depeche Mode are big all over”. They saw it years ago.
“No, Steffi Graf. I really do like Steffi Graf, she’s my total idol, she was dancing at the side of the stage in Frankfurt. Apparently she’s going out with Mick Hucknall. Anyway, she came backstage and I just think she’s phenomenal so I can’t, erm…”
That’s interesting because when I was watching you onstage you looked more like sports stars…
“Than rock’n’roll stars.”
Dave looked like Gary Lineker.
“Brian Clough he always thought he looked like. I think the whole stage thing is “clean” I suppose, yeah. We’re just trying to be ourselves, we’re not dirty people. A lot of rock bands go out of their way to be falsely dirty, don’t they? You look at all these American rock bands and to me they’re as clean as anything, all their designer ripped leathers and stuff.”
Where did the cowboy imagery come from for “Personal Jesus”?
“That’s the video maker. We don’t hide the fact that we’ve never had very much to do with the videos. Never have been, that’s a reason why we made so many bad videos early on. The videos make it less rock’n’roll and it has brought a bit of humour to the show, without it you might have a standard rock’n’roll show.
“The irritating thing about this European show is that we’ve played a lot of these halls six or seven times and it’s always the same faces, there’s not that sense of excitement we still get in America of playing somewhere new.”
Do you have someone who suggests what you should wear on stage or how Dave should dance?
“No, we do it all ourselves. We all wear black and white because it’s neutral colours.”
Do you think you have a specifically gay section to your audience?
“I think gays do like us. The imagery is supposed to be a bit ambiguous, a lot of people think, especially Martin, that Martin’s gay. [1] We did a French newspaper interview last week and apparently he was shocked that none of us were gay. He thought it was the general view in France that we were gay. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Have you got any tattoos?
“No, have you?”
No, but bands get them on the road don’t they?
“I don’t, I’m not a rock’n’roll animal.”
As you’re involved in your own management, does it become an extra burden the road?
“Fortunately it’s going very well so I don’t have to worry, but if it wasn’t I might have to.”
Would you get behind the stall and start flogging the merchandising?
“No, but I might have to one day. We have to take control because we don’t have a manager. Daniel Miller was really our manager and he taught us a lot. If we hadn’t had him we might have had to get a manager.”
Do you ever meet your fans after a gig?
”We have fans backstage, it’s a bit like Jesus wandering through the masses, quite a few fans come backstage, yeah, they need laminates but we have so many fan clubs in each continent that we usually let the organisers and a few people back. I think it’s good to listen to them, they’re usually the best critics, some of them really do take it so seriously. Some fans really do analyse it. They know every word, especially the French, which I think is a real achievement. We really consider ourselves a real true European band.”
It’s unfortunate that whilst “Violator” is commonly held to be their best LP in five years, Depeche Mode no longer write distinctively poppy songs to run amok through the charts. It’s hard to come to terms with a band so confident and so clearly adored by their fans who don’t have Number One hits. They’re not hard up for attention but it wouldn’t be amiss for a band so successful world-wide to be give more consideration at home.
Whether they’re actually any good or not is another matter. By messing with their image and switching from the semi-serious to the comedic in public they have left themselves open to criticism from confused or simply bored onlookers. Depeche Mode have grown huge by being mediocre and have now sharpened their position so they give their fans a stage show that is shocking in its human simplicity and visual complexity.
Gahan bobbles like a doll on an electrified plate, yet he doesn’t appear taken with himself. Twice I see him flash a bemused glance at Alan Wilder during the show and in terms of spitting and blowing snot from his nose he makes Terry McDermott’s old Match Of The Day clip look angelic. OK, he shaves his arm pits and he won’t talk to the press, maybe he’s got an immense under arm hair hang-up. Or maybe there’s more to hide.
In truth the relentless shiny throb of Depeche’s synthesisers gets a bit monotonous after a while but they weren’t playing it for me, they were playing for the fans. The people who knew exactly when to get out the sparklers and light them during specific songs. These people are fanatics. They don’t need to be told “Depeche Mode are big all over”. They saw it years ago.
