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[Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton. Pictures: Anton Corbijn / Redferns - page 8 of 8]

    Fletch agrees. "I know it makes interesting reading, but it was a terrible part of all our lives. It's not something that was done for publicity. The thing is now, touch wood, we do seem to have come through. I honestly believe we're all better people. Heaven knows how we got ourselves into that situation, but the important thing is we do seem to have bounced back."

    Nowadays, both Gahan and Gore get their natural highs from running several mornings a week. And Dave takes care to avoid old friends with bad habits. "Most of my friends that I hang out with in N.Y. are people who are choosing to not drink or do drugs any more," he nods. "And most of them are way more creative than the people who I thought were creative, who I was hanging around with. When you're doing drugs, you sit around talking about being creative, but you don't do fuck all."

    Does Dave still see this former party posse? "Naaah!" he laughs. "I don't know where they fucking are! They all disappeared as soon as I stopped taking drugs."

    Daniel Miller remembers very clearly the day he signed Depeche Mode to Mute. It was, after all, only last year. After nearly two decades of living in sin, the two long-term partners finally tied the knot legally.

    Miller calls the contract a "technicality" undertaken purely to suit the band's internal business structure. And while Mute have relied heavily on the Mode in the past to carry them through lean years, he no longer feels dependent on them.

    "When we did this contract," he says, "I think they vaguely looked around to see what else might be on offer. Whether they were actually ever seriously going to go, I don't know. We're so embroiled with each other."

    All on the cusp of 40, Depeche Mode have now been famous for half their lives. They have sold upwards of 50 million records since debuting in April 1981 with 'Dreaming Of Me'. [1] These days, you don't need to look very far for their musical legacy: Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Marilyn Manson - even U2 and Prodigy - have all had their Mode moments. Not bad for a band once derided as a Fisher Price Kraftwerk.

    All three surviving members now have wives, children and business interests outside the band - and all could afford to spend the rest of their lives browsing around garden centres, should they wish.

    Today, the mood in the Mode camp is up after three years of reconciliation and recovery. In 1998, they embarked on their first drug-free tour, a stripped-down affair promoting their second hits album, Singles 1986-98. Gahan took his addiction counsellor on the road, and nothing stronger than wine was allowed backstage. The shows were generally well-received, a lean and muted throwback to the band's pop roots.

    Gore moved to Southern California with his wife last year. It was there that most of the Exciter sessions took place. With Mark Bell's encouragement, Gahan was largely left alone in the studio to complete his tracks - which perhaps explains why they are his most emotive, expansive vocals to date.

    "I definitely feel like I'm more right there with it," Gahan nods, "and really contributing something that I'm proud of. There were periods before where I felt a bit outside, like I've got these ideas but no-one wants to hear them anyway so why even bother? Which was stupid. I felt undervalued but it wasn't like I was saying I had more to contribute. I was going about it the wrong way - once again, I was trying to get attention and be noticed."

    It may be significant that all three Mode members now live thousands of miles apart. But Fletch insists that the internal friction which made previous recordings so traumatic has been settled.

    "We did have a chat together at the start of this album," he says, "and any problems that we had with each other we sorted out. Which is one of the reasons the recording of this album was so successful. Even if you can't hear it on the record, we can say we had a really good time. I must say I didn't think a few years ago that I'd ever be able to say that."

    But where would the original new town neurotics be without their frictions, feuds and insecurities? Don't worry, says Fletch, they haven't gone completely. "We still argue," Fletch acknowledges. "We still have those tensions, but a band has to have tensions. It's not like this brilliant, perfect existence. Martin ins one of my top three, top four friends. Dave I'd consider a brother, it's like a family relationship. I don't have to be Dave's best friend to be in a band with him."

    "Tensions have been in the band since day one," confirms Daniel Miller. "It's part of the thing that makes Depeche Mode what they are. I can't imagine that some of those things will ever sort themselves out. The real mates in the band are Martin and Fletch, historically. And Vince as well, they all knew each other. Dave was brought in late. The others had grown up together and known each other as kids. It's Bas you see - different parts of Bas."

    And so it all comes back to Basildon. To school days and teenage gangs and the bruising brutality of growing up strange in a strange town. You can take the boys out of Essex, but you can't quite take Essex out of the boys.

    "Things haven't changed a lot," shrugs Martin Gore, still huddled on the designer couch of a Notting Hill studio. "I got attacked in the street the other day just out here, just a 10 second walk from Portobello Road. Over nothing, like when I was 17. Two guys came along, 5 o'clock in the evening, I was walking along with this American journalist. One of them just said, 'What are you fucking looking at?' Then he came up and kicked me." [2]

    Poor Martin. That kind of bullshit must have dogged you all your life.

    "No," he says wistfully, "those are the only two times it's ever happened."

    Exciter is released next month by Mute, preceded by the single, 'Dream On'

ENJOY THE SILENCE: 20 YEARS OF DEPECHE MODE ALBUMS

SPEAK & SPELL
(May 1981, UK 10) «««
Clipped, zippy, Fisher Price Europop with helium harmonics, hi-NRG beats and a faintly homoerotic subtext. Mellifluous ditties like 'New Life' and 'Boys Say Go' would sound comically slight by the late Eighties, but history has lent this debut an innocent charm. [3]
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Soft Cell, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret; Human League, Dare; Ultravox, Rage In Eden.

A BROKEN FRAME
(September 1982, UK 8) ««
Vince Clarke's upbeat pop sensibilities still linger but Martin Gore's minor chords and lyrical unease prevail. A stark, early Factory Records feel can't salvage these transitional, uncertain songs.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Duran Duran, Rio; Michael Jackson, Thriller.

CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN
(August 1983, UK 6) ««
The arrival of the sampler and Gore's new industrial direction combine into an anthology of totalitarian work songs and satirical observations on pop success - most notably 'Everything Counts'. Ungainly tempos still spoil the broth.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Japan, Oil On Canvas; Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams; Einsturzende Neubaten, Kollaps.

SOME GREAT REWARD
(September 1984, UK 5 / US 51) «««
Tougher beats and metallic textures abound as Gore conceives his first subversive pop masterpiece in 'Master And Servant', 'Blasphemous Rumours' and the achingly personal piano ballad 'Somebody'. Chunky, funky, mid-Eighties production packs a satisfying punch.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Welcome To The Pleasuredome; Madonna, Like A Virgin.

THE SINGLES 81-85
October 1985, UK 6) «««
From Basildon to Berlin and back again - all the hits and the end of an era in Mode history, as America looms over the horizon.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Blancmange, Believe You Me, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Psychoc Candy; Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Crush.

BLACK CELEBRATION
(March 1986, UK 4 / US 90) ««««
Impressive use of sampled sound collages, stacked vocal harmonies and symphonic arrangements characterise the Mode's most fully rounded opus to date and US breakthrough. Diversity rules, as Gahan croons like Morrissey and Gore flirts with Brechtian cabaret.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Erasure, Wonderland; The The, Infected; Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Dress For Excess.

MUSIC FOR THE MASSES
(September 1987, UK 10 / US 35) «««
A commercial setback in Britain but a major leap forward abroad, especially America, this slick collection of brooding pop travelogues finds the Mode on the border between cult act and mainstream phenomenon.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: INXS, Kick; U2, The Joshua Tree; The Jesus And Mary Chain, Darklands.

101
(March 1989, UK 5 / US 45) ««
A double-live album rounding off a decade of Mode action but these retooled hits add little to their studio blueprints. The monochrome grandeur and sly observation of the film which spawned it is lost in clinical, two-dimensional reproduction.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: U2, Rattle And Hum; New Order, Technique.

VIOLATOR
(March 1990, UK 2 / US 7) ««««
A coming-of-age landmark and major unit shifter, this distillation of pure-pop sensibilities with propulsive motorik rhythms and dry, buoyant, disco-friendly production shows the Mode graduation to consummate albums act rather than great singles band.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Massive Attack, Blue Lines; Pet Shop Boys, Behaviour.

SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION
(March 1993, UK 1 / US 1) ««««
Another fully rounded epic, brimming with transcendent cyber-gospel and ravaged Biblical soundscapes, this widescreen experiment in soulful self-laceration lifts the Mode to a higher musical level and defies the traumatic circumstances surrounding its conception.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Nirvana, In Utero; Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral; PJ Harvey, Rid Of Me.

SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION LIVE
(December 1993, UK 46) ««
Whether unorthodox experiment or festive cash-in, this live set replicated the studio album's running order but added little besides crowd noise, expanded gospel arrangements and Gahan's rock-tastic crowd banter. The tunes remain mighty, but these windy remakes are inessential.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Portishead, Dummy; New Order, Republic.

ULTRA
(April 1997, UK 1 / US 5) «««
Fashioned from the wreckage of Gahan's drug addiction and Wilder's departure, this strained comeback finds the Mode turning back towards Eurocentric hip-hop for inspiration. Tim Simenon's powerhouse beats and grainy textures please the ear, but the overall mood is weary and fragmented.
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Prodigy, Fat Of The Land; Chemical Brothers, Dig Your Own Hole.

THE SINGLES 86-98
(1999, UK 5 / US 38) «««
From Basildon to Hell and back again, all the hits plus the closing of another chapter in Mode history - a fine collection but as their LPs have become stronger, DM singles have declined in pure-pop punch. [4]
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS: Duran Duran, Greatest; Marilyn Manson, Mechanical Animals.

[1] - 'Dreaming Of Me' was released in February 1981. [continue]

[2] - The reporter was J.D. Considine, for Revolver. The incident is mentioned in the resulting article here. [continue]

[3] - 'Speak And Spell' was released in November 1981. [continue]

[4] - 'The Singles 86-98' was released in September 1998.

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