DEPECHE MODE
epeche Mode
certainly have staying
power. They’ve lost
their chief songwriter,
come through near
death drug overdoses,
been taken off mainstream radio
playlists and still remain one of the
universe’s biggest acts.
Four decades in and the trio are
enjoying some of the best reviews of
their career with latest album Spirit,
while its accompanying stadium
tour cements their status as a major
box office draw. “People never took
us seriously,” says Martin Gore,
mastermind of more than 40 UK
hits and 14 Top 10 studio albums.
“But eventually they have come to
accept us.”
“I’ve never felt we were like any
other bands,” Dave Gahan enthuses,
boyishly. “Especially with those we
first appeared on the scene with
in the 80s, like Duran Duran and
Spandau Ballet or those others who
had success at the time. We never
felt we were anything like them.”
Basildon’s finest are back in the
UK on a fleeting visit, conducting
interviews – individually – in a very
upmarket Mayfair hotel. Outside a
clutch of patient teenagers dressed
head-to-toe in black, parading
a range of piercings, fry in the
sunshine. It’s an impressively young
crowd for an act 37 years into their
career, but the frontman is right –
Depeche Mode are no ordinary
band. They seem to have more
in common with heavy metal or
alternative rock acts, those timeless
names who consistently attract new
generations of admirers, almost like
a rites of passage.
“We probably had more in
common with Fad Gadget, The
Normal or Kraftwerk,“ Gahan
continues, listing a number of other
cult acts that used to grace the back
pages of the now defunct Melody
Maker. “We definitely have survived
and been through a lot together. Ups
and downs, marriages, divorces.”
SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT
Unlike those aforementioned chart
rivals from yesteryear, Depeche
Mode command stadium-sized
audiences in 2017. Yet they kicked
off their latest Global Spirit Tour
with an unusually intimate date at
Glasgow Barrowland as part of
the BBC Radio 6 Music festival.
Gahan considers small shows “more
terrifying,” but Gore – who once
SPiRit
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