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COMING
UP SMILING
[The
Face, February 1985. Words: Sheryl Garratt. Pictures: Steve Pyke.]
"
When I remarked that
I liked their last album, "Some Great Reward", many of my friends fell
about laughing; when I said I was going to Italy to interview them, they thought
I was being deliberately perverse. People, it seems, find it hard to take this
group seriously.
Summary:
An outstanding and independently-minded
article catching Depeche Mode on the knife-edge of being taken seriously. The
author discusses the difficulties they have faced due to popular misconception
and all but cries out for them to be given at least a second glance. I had to
check the date on the magazine because both the writing and the photography seem
to have come from four or five years later: this will restore your faith in the
music press. [2507 words]
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This article is part of the Newcomer's Trail [previous item] [next item]
Martin Gore is reading out a letter by a fan who somehow acquired a pair of his
zipped leather undies and has now decided to send them back. She is anxious
because she couldn't wash them first, and explains that her mother wouldn't let
her hang them out on the line for fear of what the neighbours might think.
"I enjoyed having them next to my bed," she writes. "It's
probably the closest I'll ever get to you."
Does it ever get embarrassing? I wonder.
"Oooh no!" he grins.
"I love it!"
Or another story...
In a hotel lobby in Bologna, Italy, a
presenter sits between the Depeche boys, wearing a cap tilted at a rakish angle,
a suitably thin 'New Wave' style tie, and the manic, false smile that seems to
settle on anyone who sits in front of a TV camera regularly. "Right!"
he exclaims breezily, pointing to a bored-looking Alan Wilder. "We'll start
with you, Vince Clarke..."
Old ghosts linger on, and Depeche Mode are
also victims of an assumption that pretty equals vacant, a pop group who are
underestimated because they have huge adam's apples, spotless skin, and look as
if they've never seen a razor blade, let alone used one. Yet apart from a few
odd underwear fetishists, their audiences are remarkably free of screamers,
although the preconceptions remain.
When I remarked that I liked their last
album, "Some Great Reward", many of my friends fell about laughing;
when I said I was going to Italy to interview them, they thought I was being
deliberately perverse. People, it seems, find it hard to take this group
seriously.
"What's credibility anyway?"
ponders singer Dave Gahan, pulling his scarf a little tighter round a swollen
throat. "Credibility is usually lost when any band enters the Top Fifty, so
for us that went out of the window five years ago. But there's a certain
credibility you have to retain in yourself - you've got to know that what you're
doing is valid. Not whether it makes people think or whether it changes things -
this business is about entertainment, and it's whether you're just travelling
along. I don't think we are, I think we're a very unconventional band."
And that, I'd submit, is the case for
Depeche Mode.
In the late Seventies they were one of the
first to reclaim the synthesizer from the Futurists, the Manic Depressives,
Numanoids and Art School Boys, and to successfully use it instead as a pure pop
instrument. The group have slipped in and out of the charts ever since with a
series of inventive, intelligent, and unpretentious singles, although few will
admit publicly to actually buying them.
Part of the problem is that Depeche Mode
are such inarticulate spokesmen for their own cause. Some would say they need a
Morley to turn "Master And Servant" into a "Relax", but
Depeche aren't as malleable as Frankie: they manage themselves, they release
records on the independent Mute label (with whom they have never signed so much
as a formal contract), and in spite of his inability to offer an advertising
budget or any great hype, they seem quite happy to go on making money for label
head Daniel Miller to finance his more esoteric projects, and for themselves.
"This is the best job I've ever
had," says Gahan, simply.
"It started in Basildon, Essex, a town
built to house the spillover from London's East End. The synthesizers came first
as a convenience - they were easy to carry to gigs on trains, and could be
plugged directly into the PA, saving money on amps. It was, they claim, six
months before Martin even changed the sound on his first keyboard, because he
hadn't realised that you could.
"We were that naïve."
Yet when the big companies came down waving
cheque books, they were unimpressed.
"We were told all this stuff about how
we were going to be Top Ten in a week and megastars within the month, and we
just didn't believe it," explains Gahan.
Then, Daniel came along and offered them,
frankly, nothing. They took it. "At least he was honest."
The first single on Mute went into the Top
Fifty [1], favourable articles
appeared in the music press and a debut album was recorded before the first
bombshell hit: Vince Clarke, the main writer and generally considered the brain
behind the group, announced that he wished to leave.
"It was a shock," recalls Gahan,
"Like losing a part, having something taken from you. At first, I couldn't
understand why - we'd only been together a year, and things were just starting
to happen. It took me a long while to see how he felt. He could have been
trapped into something he didn't want to spend the rest of his life doing."
Shy, retiring, and more interested in
making music than all the work that goes with promoting it, Vince subsequently
squirmed out of Yazoo for similar reasons, according to Alison Moyet. The
Depeche split was fairly amicable: he continued working with them for some time
after announcing his departure, and when the first single recorded without him
was a success, the trio were optimistic. Then came their second shock.
The follow up - "The Meaning Of
Love", a catchy tune they had expected to do well - was a flop, and their
second album was trashed in the press. Previously only a sporadic writer, Martin
Gore was finding his new role a strain, and although "A Broken Frame"
sold respectably to the loyal, Depeche Mode's credibility had, it seemed,
disappeared along with the unkempt Clarke.
"All that we need at the start is
universal revolution (that's all)"
"And Then"
The group quickly dismiss any suggestion
that the militant socialism of the next LP, "Construction Time Again",
was a deliberate attempt to grow up.
"The
first album was very young and twee, and ever since then people have been saying
we were trying to grow up," sighs Gore. "Even by the second album, we
were sick of the phrase. It's nothing you attempt to do - it just happens."
They credit their new awareness instead to
a tour of the East that taught them there were worse places to live than even
Basildon. But this in itself is not enough - The Police slummed it in India with
no noticeable changes, so why did a short stay in Thailand affect the Depeche
boys so?
"I think it's the way we've all been
brought up," explains Gahan. "I had a bad juvenile background, I got
into trouble with the police and mixed with a lot of people who got into trouble
- all petty things, silly little things you do all the time. Then at school, I
decided I didn't like the way I was treated, so I hardly turned up at all in the
last year. From the age of about ten, I can remember things quite vividly that
just didn't seem right, and I think we've all had that sort of general
working-class upbringing.
"Then when you see things that are poorer than you've ever seen, when we saw people begging and little kids coming up to us with disgusting, dirty clothes hanging off them, showing themselves or holding their hands out for food... When you experience that, you begin to understand what a lucky position all of us here are in. We were in this really expensive hotel full of businessmen, but as soon as you went outside the gates, it was a totally different world.
[1]
- Not quite: "Dreaming Of Me" peaked at No. 57. [continue]