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[Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton. Pictures: Anton Corbijn /
Redferns - page 3 of 8]
"They were a very tight unit, somewhat self-deprecating and lacking in confidence," Wilder recalls. "All the musicians I'd been involved with prior to this had exuded self-belief while enjoying little or no success. I'd never met a group like this one, and it made me wonder how they had come so far in such a short time. Then I realised how much influence Daniel Miller had over them. As I got to know them, it became clear that it was actually Vince Clarke and Daniel who had been the driving forces up to that point."
Miller was indeed a crucial "co-producer and collaborator" on the first few Mode albums, but denies dictating their sound. "It's a bit of a joke," he says. "I was only a bit more experienced than them in the studio. But I had ideas about how to push it, move it forward."
Alan Wilder came on board just as Depeche Mode's honeymoon with the pop press began to curdle. As their dirty electro sound hardened, chart music softened. The gleefully synthetic New Pop generation was being supplanted by Thatcherite fluff and windy, worthy stadium rock. The synth pop trend withered, but the Mode stuck unfashionably to their guns. Although their commercial profile would build steadily throughout the Eighties, UK critics consistently dismissed the band as comically pervy lightweights. They were a Casiotone Cure, a Toytown New Order, but without the credibility or mystique of either. Reviewers were savage.
"If I'd been writing reviews at the time I'd have given us a bad review," Gore concedes. "At least the first couple of albums, and probably a bit longer. But we also really suffered because of our image. We had a really awful image. Once you hate something and get a bee in your bonnet about it, you have to really work to gain people's trust back."
Daniel Miller argues that regional snobbery worked against the band in their early days. "They didn't come from London or Manchester or Liverpool or Edinburgh," he says. "They came from Basildon, which is almost like Neasden or something. That was always mentioned in interviews in a slightly snidey way."
Dave Gahan says, "You know what England's like - the first thing you ever do, that's it. It's written on your gravestone. When we first started, we just did anything that was put in front of us and we were very happy to do it. All these TV programmes and mags were interested - your Swap Shop and your Smash Hits. But we looked fucking horrible in some of those early pictures, and I don't think we ever lived it down."
America, which would later embrace the Mode as stadium rock gods, proved to be even more indifferent than Britain in 1982. On a short spring tour, Gahan performed with his arm in a sling - ironically, he had just had his teenage tattoos removed, and the scars had swollen up badly. The tour started badly, and got worse.
"We played the Ritz club in New York," recalls Fletch. "The first gig that Alan played. We'd done Top Of The Pops the night before - why we agreed to, I don't know. But Mute decided to send us over on Concorde. Unfortunately it was probably the most disastrous gig of our lives. None of the equipment worked, we didn't go onstage until 2.30 in the morning. A guy outside said to me afterwards, 'What happened to you lot? You used to be good...'"
After their transitional post-Clarke album, A Broken Frame, the Mode recorded a trio of albums which marked Gore's coming-of-age as a songwriter, heralding a new lyrical darkness and hard-edged sound. Its 1983 sequel, Construction Time Again, was mixed at Berlin's Hansa Ton studios, the 'hall by the Wall' famous for Bowie's 'Heroes' and, later, landmark albums by Nick Cave and U2. Hansa became their regular studio for the next three years. The studio was recommended by Gareth Jones, the Mode's long-term engineer. A strong pound also made it significantly cheaper to relocate the band to Germany rather than pay London rates. Besides, Berlin was a 24-hour party city and the Basildon boys were starting to live a pop-star party lifestyle.
Martin Gore, who ended up moving to Berlin for two years, recalls, "It was a significant time for me personally, because before that I'd been going out with a girl was a devout Christian who really had me on reins. She was ridiculous - anything was perverted. If I watched something on TV and there was somebody naked, I was a pervert. When I finally left her, I started going out with a girl in Berlin and suddenly discovered all this freedom."
Gore's growing interest in S&M found an outlet in Berlin's famously Bohemian club scene. and it was there he would compose sado-erotic anthems such as 'Master And Servant' for 1984's Some Great Reward, the more industrial-flavoured sequel to Construction Time Again. But the songwriter plays down his interest in domination and submission.
"There's only one or two songs that ever touched on S&M," Gore argues, "There was a time when I used to go out to a lot of those clubs anyway, just out of interest. I was never heavily into it, but it was a fascinating scene. But sex is an interesting part of life. I may seem to write about it a lot, but I don't think I overdo it."
Alan Wilder confirms, "We certainly saw Martin come out of his shell during this time. It seemed as though he had some catching up to do, having been a quiet and reserved teenager by all accounts. Frequenting clubs and bars became more routine and we all saw a very different side to Martin when he was let loose, so to speak - heavy drinking followed by apparel-removal being top of his list of favourite activities."
The Mode's reputation as small-town synth-pop lightweights still dogged them during the Berlin years. While Gore flirted with gentle S&M symbolism, Frankie Goes To Hollywood took a much more upfront and marketable leather clone look to the top of the charts. When Depeche Mode began tinkering with industrial rhythms, they were overshadowed by hardcore metal-bashing hipsters such as Test Department or Einsturzende Neubaten. Unlucky timing and critical disdain conspired to belittle their progressive pop agenda.
The Berlin sessions were a confusing time for Gahan. He acquired the nickname of 'Caj', as in 'casualty', for his all-too-real impression of a wasted rock star. But he could also turn puritanical, dismissing his fellow band members for their juvenile indulgence. "It would piss me off," he says now, "but I think that was more because I felt I was missing out on something."
In August 1985, Gahan married his long-term girlfriend Joanne. They moved into a semi-detached Essex home, bought several sports cars and tried to play happy families. But the singer was constantly torn between domesticity and debauchery, dependable husband and wild frontman.
"I wouldn't say I was 100 per cent comfortable in either. I needed both," Gahan admits. "I definitely needed family and stability, but I was always itching to get out and play. But somewhere along the line, especially after all my antics during the late Eighties and early Nineties. I found a way to keep both and do both."
In 1985, the Mode consolidated their huge European congregation with their first greatest hits collection, Singles 1981-85. Afterwards, while recording the masterful Black Celebration in Berlin in 1986, the band signed their first legal agreement with Daniel Miller on the morbid grounds that he might die at any moment.
"Up until that point we didn't actually have a contract," says Gore. "It was a handshake and an honour kind of thing. But we started thinking that Daniel's getting on now, and he's also overweight, so what would happen if anything happened to him? What would our position have been?"
Relations between the Mode and Miller were also becoming strained. Following clashes over the new album's lack of obvious singles, an exasperated Gore disappeared to stay with a former school exchange friend in northern Germany. "There were quite a lot of arguments going on around that time," Gore recalls. "We'd overdone the working relationship between Daniel and Gareth Jones. That was the third album we'd done together and I think everybody'd become very lazy, relying on formulas."
In fact, the Teutonic torch songs and Wagnerian lullabies of Black Celebration helped make it the Mode's biggest hit to date. A Top Three album in Britain, it also earned a significant cult following in America, where the band are licensed by Mute to the mighty Warners corporation. Four years after their disastrous 1982 jaunt, the foursome decided to risk another US tour. The strength of underground Mode mania overwhelmed them.
"It sold out in a second," Fletch recalls. "We had this bizarre situation - we'd never had a Top 40 album in America, or even a Top 100 album, but we were playing to 30,000 people."
The rise of 'alternative' rock radio was crucial to the Mode's US success. "One of the problems we've always had with Britain is our so-called dodgy past, but America never got that," says Fletch. "In fact, they thought it was quaint. You've got to remember punk had passed them by, and they had this horrible music at the time. This was the first time Americans were starting to listen to music that wasn't Journey and Aerosmith. And from that radio format, bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam came about."
Alan Wilder suggests the Mode's embracing of global fame was partly a reaction to 'provincial' British snobbery. Prophets without honour in their own land, they keenly courted other markets. "It seemed that in the late Eighties," Wilder says, "we fitted in perfectly with what the all-American, white middle-class kids seemed to be searching for - a band that was clean cut enough to cross over but subversive enough to push a few boundaries at the same time."
The Black Celebration period marked a significant shift for Depeche Mode. Around this time, they employed a tour accountant, Jonathan Kessler, who would eventually become their first real manager. They also shot their first video with Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, who would shape their visual identity for years afterwards. Just as he did with U2, the 'Old Master' helped re-invent a gawky quartet with a serious image problem as heroic, iconic, post-modern superstars.
For Gahan, this was a step towards credibility. "I felt really comfortable with Anton," Dave nods. "He was trying to portray us in a good light. It wasn't like it was just a job, he definitely was in it for the long term."
The next Mode album, Music For The Masses, would make them fully-fledged US stadium stars. Recorded in Paris, the album title was intended to be an ironic comment on the band's enduring unpopularity. In reality, these epic evocations of travel and sex sold more than half a million copies, grazing the UK Top Ten and the US Top Ten and the US Top 40. Significantly, the single 'Strangelove' was remixed by Bomb The Bass founder and future Mode producer Tim Simenon, one of the band's earliest acknowledgements of club music.
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