We Want To Do Our Best
[Birmingham Mail, 31st March 2006. Words: Uncredited. Picture: Robin Francois.]
Depeche Mode are one of the most influential and ground breaking bands of the last 25 years.
Their latest album, Playing The Angel, has sold more than two million copies worldwide and on their current world tour they are playing to more than one and a half million people across 31 countries.
Tonight they perform at a sold out Birmingham NEC. [1]
“I want to give the best I can while I can,” says frontman Dave Gahan on the joys of touring.
“Going out on tour and performing every night is the opportunity I have to give what I can to the songs.”
Playing The Angel is the band’s 11th studio album, with the title coming from one of the tracks.
“There are about four songs on the album that reference an angel or angels and Playing The Angel is part of a lyric from one of the songs called The Darkest Star,” [2] says singer / songwriter Martin Gore. “It seemed to make some kind of reference to this angel theme that was going on.”
Martin was responsible for nine of the album’s tracks, with the remaining three, I Want It All, Suffer Well and Nothing’s Impossible, credited to Dave Gahan who was encouraged by the reaction to his 2003 debut solo album Paper Monsters. Says Dave: “There is an underlying feeling to the album and as you start recording, no matter what you put into the pot, it becomes Depeche Mode. That’s definitely what happened to the songs that I contributed to the album.”
Dave counts his blessings that he’s still actually around to make music.
“That we’ve achieved so much in 25 years, and survived so much… Of all the bands, this is the one I’d have put money on not still being around!” he laughs. “I might have lost some of my drive in the mid-‘90s, but now I’ve got it back. It’s better being in Depeche Mode now than it has been for 15 years.”
[Birmingham Mail, 31st March 2006. Words: Uncredited. Picture: Robin Francois.]
Depeche Mode are one of the most influential and ground breaking bands of the last 25 years.
Their latest album, Playing The Angel, has sold more than two million copies worldwide and on their current world tour they are playing to more than one and a half million people across 31 countries.
Tonight they perform at a sold out Birmingham NEC. [1]
“I want to give the best I can while I can,” says frontman Dave Gahan on the joys of touring.
“Going out on tour and performing every night is the opportunity I have to give what I can to the songs.”
Playing The Angel is the band’s 11th studio album, with the title coming from one of the tracks.
“There are about four songs on the album that reference an angel or angels and Playing The Angel is part of a lyric from one of the songs called The Darkest Star,” [2] says singer / songwriter Martin Gore. “It seemed to make some kind of reference to this angel theme that was going on.”
Martin was responsible for nine of the album’s tracks, with the remaining three, I Want It All, Suffer Well and Nothing’s Impossible, credited to Dave Gahan who was encouraged by the reaction to his 2003 debut solo album Paper Monsters. Says Dave: “There is an underlying feeling to the album and as you start recording, no matter what you put into the pot, it becomes Depeche Mode. That’s definitely what happened to the songs that I contributed to the album.”
Dave counts his blessings that he’s still actually around to make music.
“That we’ve achieved so much in 25 years, and survived so much… Of all the bands, this is the one I’d have put money on not still being around!” he laughs. “I might have lost some of my drive in the mid-‘90s, but now I’ve got it back. It’s better being in Depeche Mode now than it has been for 15 years.”