Depeche Mode: That Was Then…This Is Now
DEPECHE Mode were “The most popular electronic band the world has ever known”. They might still be. In 1988, the band’s Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher appeared on the BBC2 TV show That Was Then…This Is Now.
The band are back with a new album, Delta Machine. They’ve been talking to The Times:
Simon Cowell, “the baron of bland” called them “weird“:
“That was great,” Gore giggles during a break from filming their new video, Soothe My Soul, in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. Gore, 51, had joked in an interview that “somebody should shoot” Cowell, who tweeted back: “A ton of people have got shot this year, and people like weirdo Gore encourage this.” Gore was surprised that “a little flippant comment” got such a response — although, he adds with a grin, “I think the majority of the world agreed with me”.
They’ve sold 100million albums. But won just one Brit award, for Best Single in 1991 (Enjoy the Silence). Keyboardist Andy Fletcher, 51, says:
“It annoys us, when you see some of the bands who have won it.”
Past recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Brit include Status Quo, Duran Duran, Cliff Richard and the Spice Girls.
Photo: Lead singer of the British pop band Depeche Mode, David Gahan, left, stands with his attorney Leonard B. Levine in Beverly Hills Municipal Court in Beverly Hills, Calif., Tuesday morning, July 9, 1996. Gahan, 34, who was arrested in May after an overdose in a West Hollywood hotel, pleaded innocent to one count each of possession of cocaine and being under the influence of cocaine. Gahan was an addict.
Martin Gore is “regarded as such a prophet of misery that in 2009 he was subpoenaed as an expert in melancholy by an American gamer who was suing the makers of the World of Warcraft video game for alienating him from society. Gore took it as a compliment, although he didn’t appear. ‘The other expert was Winona Ryder! Ha ha.'”
Photo: Martin Gore, left, and Andrew Fletcher of British band Depeche Mode receives Germany’s Echo 2010 award as Best International Rock/Pop Band at the during the award ceremony in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, March 4, 2010.
What about their legacy of the band formed in Basildon, Essex?
Making techno has given Gore further insight into the EDM (electronic dance music) explosion in America. In the Eighties “we were carrying the flag [for electronic music] single-handedly, but it’s huge everywhere now. But I do find it quite weird to go to a huge venue and see a DJ on stage. It’s a totally different thing. Making an album and writing songs is an artform and we take it seriously.” That’s one of the things that has kept them together, although their common roots in Basildon have also helped, Fletcher says: “We came from the same town, had the same working-class beliefs, same humour, same taste in music.” It brings to mind a less flippant comment that Gore made than his “shoot Cowell” line, about the dominance of manufactured acts. “What happened to bands getting together?” he asked. They certainly don’t make ’em like Depeche Mode any more.
Photo: Dave Gahan, lead singer of Depeche Mode, performing a solo set on the Other Stage at the Glastonbury Festival.
Spotter: Racket Racket
Posted: 22nd, March 2013 | In: Music Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
