Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode

Avant garde techno-pop group

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

The latest British band to take America by storm is Depeche Mode, a group of post-punk pop performers who have broken new ground in the field of computer-assisted music. Depeche Mode has enjoyed great success in England almost since its debut in 1981. In the United States its following was limited to a sizeable cult until 1990, when the album Violator brought the group into the mainstream. Since then Depeche Mode has had little trouble placing singles on the top forty charts and selling albums by the millions.

The group’s success has come without compromise or pretense—Depeche Mode’s members call themselves pop musicians and seem quite comfortable in that format. In fact, Depeche Mode has been one of the few recent bands to infuse pop with some sense of credibility. “Most pop songs just don’t reflect life the way it really is,” songwriter Martin Gore told Spin magazine. “You can’t be happy all the time. Throughout our career, I’ve tried to write good serious songs as well as escapist songs. I know we get accused a lot of being depressive, but our songs also have a certain get-on-

For the Record…

Band formed in Basildon, England, in 1980, with members Vince Clarke, Andy Fletcher, Martin Gore, and Dave Gahan; Clarke left group and was replaced by Alan Wilder. All band members play keyboards and synthesizers. Group signed with Mute label, 1981, and released first album, Speak and Spell, 1981. Had first American hit, 1985, with single “People are People.” Group has toured extensively in England, Europe, and America.

Band is the subject of the film documentary “Depeche Mode 101,” released in 1989.

Addresses: Record company —Sire Records, 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91510.

with-it attitude. If life is bad, there’s always something to give you solace.”

Most pop bands tend to bask in the limelight and court the press. The members of Depeche Mode do almost the opposite—they save their performances for the arena and do little to court favor among the media. Depeche Mode interviews and features are so uncommon that many new fans still do not recognize the individual band members—a state of affairs the musicians do nothing to correct. This reluctance to speak in print stems from the band’s earliest days in England.

Depeche Mode formed outside London in 1980, fronted by songwriter Vince Clarke. Other founding members include Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher, and Dave Gahan, all of whom grew up in the suburbs of London. Rock music had spawned a whole new generation of machines for making music—synthesizers and drum simulators, to name two—and Depeche Mode’s members gravitated to these machines. “We started doing something completely different,” Gahan told Rolling Stone. “We had taken these instruments because they were convenient. You could pick up a synthesizer, put it under your arm and go to a gig. You plugged directly into the PA. You didn’t need to go through an amp, so you didn’t need to have a van. We used to go to gigs on trains”.

The group also did not need a grange hall in which to practice. In fact, they didn’t even need to be together—any individual’s bedroom could become a studio. Within a year of founding Depeche Mode, Clarke had put together a demo tape and was making the rounds trying to find a record label. Finally the band signed with an independent British company, Mute Records, and released a debut album, Speak and Spell, in 1981. The music was entirely synthetic, but it was original nonetheless. At a time when most techno work revolved around gloomy themes, Depeche Mode offered a dance beat, provocative lyrics, and that “get-on-with-it” attitude. Speak and Spell became one of the ten best-selling albums in Great Britain in 1981, and Depeche Mode was launched.

Not surprisingly, fans and press hounded the young performers mercilessly, and soon Vince Clarke had had enough. After Clarke quit, Gore became the principal songwriter, and Alan Wilder was added to help with vocals. “Under Gore’s direction,” wrote Jeff Giles in Rolling Stone, “Depeche Mode’s music became—to quote the title of an album that many of the group’s fans hold dearest—a ‘black celebration.’ His songs, a few of which have made American radio programmers blush, have been both profane… and kinky.” Almost virtually without radio station support, Depeche Mode began to attract an audience in America. They had one Top 10 hit in 1985, with “People Are People,” but they became immensely popular as live performers. For a time the group was even compared to the heavy metal bands of the 1970s who regularly sold out in concert without ever earning a gold record.

Gradually, however, Depeche Mode began to make inroads in the all-important radio market. This was not an easy task for a group one critic called “synth wimps”—the standard rock format radio stations simply would not play Depeche Mode. The group was saved by dance hall crowds and New Wave fans who could groove to the band’s techno-pop beat and provocative lyrics. Gore told Rolling Stone: “A lot of people get swayed by the ‘real’ music thing. They think you can’t make soul music by using computers and synthesizers and samplers, which we think is totally wrong. We think the soul in the music comes from the song. The instrumentation doesn’t matter at all.”

Early on the members of Depeche Mode realized that their brand of music would not translate well in live performance. They have therefore become one of the few major pop groups be open about enhancing their concerts with pre-recorded material. This has allowed the group to be as outrageous as any of its contemporaries and has contributed in no small part to its fantastic success. “Using … tapes to enhance a band’s performance is less a case of deliberate misrepresentation than of keeping up with the times technologically and giving the audience what it wants,” Peter Watrous wrote in the New York Times. “People weaned on music from the 1960’s may go to an Eric Clapton concert to hear how well he plays his guitar, but an audience for Depeche Mode, whose concerts seem almost completely prerecorded, attend for different reasons. The combination of post-punk performance ideas, in which improvisation is beside the point, and consumer-driven images, in which people come to share space with a performer, has produced an audience that goes out for more than the pleasure of music.”

If the sold-out 1990 World Violation Tour is any indication, Depeche Mode is reaching its fans even with prerecorded concerts. Fletcher told Spin that Depeche Mode’s whole aim is to avoid the ego-trip legacy of the big rock bands. “We don’t think you have to be a great musician to be allowed to play and get a message out,” he said. “I guess that’s what punk was all about, getting rid of the ego and getting right down to it without having to be a session guitarist.” Wilder put it more bluntly in Time magazine. While working with Depeche Mode, Wilder said, “nobody is allowed to be pretentious.” The music speaks for itself—and it speaks volumes.

Selected discography

Speak and Spell, Sire, 1981.

People Are People, Sire, 1985.

Catching Up with Depeche Mode, Sire, 1986.

Black Celebration, Sire, 1986.

Music for the Masses, Sire, 1988.

101, Sire, 1986.

Violator, Sire, 1990.

A Broken Frame, Sire.

Construction Time Again, Sire.

Some Great Reward, Sire.

Sources

New York Times, July 22, 1990.

Rolling Stone, May 3, 1990; July 12-26, 1990.

Spin, July 1990.

Times, July 22, 1990.

—Anne Janette Johnson