Unstoppable Mode
Why the music and resilience of Depeche Mode still matters
Today Depeche Mode released their first album for six years. It’s incredible. Their story is about survival, but also how talent, creativity and ambition is unstoppable.
Depeche Mode have provided the soundtrack to my life, from finding my place in society to covering sport across the globe. I didn’t plan to write this piece. It wrote itself. That’s what happens when something matters.
Since their last album in 2017 you and I have been through a lot. Depeche Mode suffered a shocking and sudden loss, the death of Andrew Fletcher. From the group of boys who formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980, Martin Lee Gore and Dave Gahan were left as a duo, without the friend and bandmate they loved.
Fletch was by all accounts a lovely bloke, the rock of the band and those around him. The group’s statement around his death a year ago made a few people think about their own lives, and what they’d be remembered for. For their work alone, or for their qualities as a human being?
Fletch had a true heart of gold and was always there when you needed support, a lively conversation or a cold pint.
A friend texted me to say that’s how he’d want to be remembered after his death. It wasn’t the only message I received from people who’ve known me since we were young. Depeche Mode have been more than a band to me. My passion for sport was the second thing my teenage friends associated with. My main obsession was Depeche Mode, with songwriter Martin the most important person in my life who I didn’t actually know.
As a kid I was of course aware of their first stuff, driven by Vince Clarke, a genius at making electronic music. But Clarke’s best work came when he surprisingly left after that first Depeche Mode album. He formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet, Erasure with Andy Bell (I Say, I Say, I Say is such a wonderful album) and briefly The Assembly with Feargal Sharkey with their oft-forgotten classic single Never Never.
It drives me mad that millions of people associate Depeche Mode with I Just Can’t Get Enough, a piece of admittedly infectious pop from the one album they made with Clarke, Speak and Spell. Enough already! It has always sounded very 1981. Gahan and Gore could be pissed off that none of their subsequent four decades of ground-breaking, mood forming, innovative, pulsating, life-affirming songs are not given as much attention.
When Clarke left, Gore stepped in to take over song writing duties, there was no other option. There was no radical departure from the sound of Speak and Spell, but there were immediate clues to what Gore was capable of (and brilliant musician Alan Wilder had joined, staying until the mid ‘90s).
It was in around 1985 that my friend Peter Lynch made me a tape of Depeche Mode’s first singles collection, comprised of four albums - track after track of throbbing electronic magic, managing to great pop songs and edgy simultaneously, encapsulated by the wrong-footing first note of Love, in Itself.
Another close friend on our estate, Richard Inwood, loved the Mode as much as me, with the happy quirk that his stereo system made everything thud with more bass. It somehow turned their early albums into something even more heavyweight. What followed got even heavier and was all the better for it.
The incredible 1986 album Black Celebration is the one that probably defines the band. Immediately understood and worshipped by their fans around the globe, yet too challenging and brooding for the casual fan and the tiresome (influential) music critics of the time, who felt it ‘uncool’ to praise them (truly). Retrospective reviews usually settle on its unsettling brilliance and the group’s influence on giants of industrial music such as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.
The opening three songs on the album, the title track then Fly on the Windscreen and A Question of Lust I humbly put forward as the most epic starting sequence to any album, managing to be threatening, uncomfortable, disconcerting and claustrophobic while mainly gripping, exhilarating, uplifting and beautiful. It is all of those things and more.
I’d started in sports journalism in Fleet Street and my older peers in the press boxes were usually whistling the latest catchy hit from the hit parade, while I was travelling to matches day after day listening to the Mode.
I remember, as it were yesterday, walking in a brutal thunderstorm through the streets of south east London after reporting on a Millwall match to get the last train, listening to Stripped, (101 live), with its insanely good car ignition intro, the clattering ‘steel piping’ effect, soaring synths and Gahan’s emotional vocal performance. The battle Gahan is having with himself is clear midway through the song.
Depeche Mode was part of my identity. Too many songs, places, moments to mention as the soundtrack played on, the quality of music unrelenting. But I loved the unexpected moments, such as in Rome when the beautiful Home from my favourite album Ultra came on the taxi driver’s radio after we were released by the police (we were arrested before an England World Cup qualifier for reporting where the police didn’t want us to).
And I thank you for bringing me here, for showing me home….finally, I’ve found that I belong here. To find home. To be understood. To belong. Martin’s lyrics are often underrated, partly because his sweeping, exhilarating layers and beats are making the most impact. His voice on that track was at its best. A group with two singers this good, individually and in harmony, is a gift from above.
And so to today, and a reconnection with Depeche Mode I never thought I’d need. Not because their music has dipped - many of the songs of the past two decades have understated quality and are among their best work.
Yet since their last album, something changed, and it surprised me. I never thought I’d finally need a bit of distance from the group I love, who have made music I’m so grateful for. It was the live performances that were ‘out of synth’ with me. Gahan particularly. His showmanship developed into an essential part of what Depeche mode are. But how much slack could this be given?
Gahan got into the habit of wearing waistcoats over a sweaty torso with a pencil moustache, slicked back hair and ‘dad dancing’. it was ruining the magic for me. The visuals had always enhanced the music – Anton Corbijn had developed a perfect look for them, including the trademark black outfits and mesmerizingly artistic videos. I couldn’t help but feel more of their live performance(s) should be stark and powerful - like nailing the terrifying Wrong on Later with Jools Holland a decade ago.
When tickets became available for their forthcoming massive UK show in Twickenham I decided against it. Nothing can take the music away, but I felt like it was time to hold on to those concert memories, and not try and create new ones in a converted rugby stadium with the performances having become just a bit too eccentric.
Then again, Depeche Mode never set out to be constantly judged or have their work polarise opinion. I often think of Andrew Fletcher’s unmistakable honesty on a BBC profile in the late 80s where he showed his hurt and bemusement at the level of criticism they used to get outside of their fan base.
Fletch gently said he didn’t understand why Depeche Mode are “hated when they are a good band making good pop songs.” They were actually already an incredible band making unparalleled classics, huge in America and number one in countries all over the globe (still are). That’s humility for you, and that’s how unfair, misdirected and random a lack of proper recognition can be. Rest in peace Fletch mate.
In ‘live mode’, Depeche Mode have usually given their fans and their public their performances, and the songs, their fans want. I’ve seen them do it live enough times, it’s quite a feat taking songs this dark into stadiums, and putting on such euphoric shows.
A group that have been through so much, changed so many lives, sold so many millions of records, performed to so many people, made so many people happy (yes happy, the group aren’t as miserable as billed!), have come back from the dead (as Gahan did in the early ‘90s after a drug overdose) been through so much personal heartache (as captured in their songs) and suffered the loss of the band member they thought would outlive them all. Depeche Mode deserve to be cherished.
And then came the new music. An album released today, their fifteenth, entitled Memento Mori. Unsurprisingly the title and content is enveloped with death and darkness. But it’s not what I expected. It is better. Because of the live performance reservations, maybe I had to doubt them, just once, to understand why others never fully got them. But I always got them, and always will. And this album is a truly extraordinary piece of work.
Two songs were released in advance. My Cosmos is Mine, a dark and haunting start to album that only they can dream up. It’s not easy listening, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t superb. And shows they never need to compromise with their music.
The other song is Ghosts Again. Because of this song I knew I had to write this piece. Is it their best song this century? Remarkably, it might be. It’s just so bloody lovely. I left a message for my friend James, who’ll watch them for the first time at Twickenham, and suggested he’d really like it, calling it a third-listen classic. James replied to say I was wrong. It took two listens.
Ghosts Again lifts the heart. Of course it has the dark underbelly, it wouldn’t be the Mode otherwise, and of course it’s shocking to see the melancholic video without Fletch, yet the music and Gahan’s voice are heaven. It has something in common with is my favourite song, Enjoy the Silence, where everyone seemed to finally get what they actually do. Where artistic integrity met recognition, that rare, sweet and precious coming together of two separate states.
It’s immediately clear to me that Memento Mori is Depeche Mode’s best album since the 90s. It’s possible it will somehow go on to become my favourite. They are showing again that for them, Nothing’s impossible.
In music, in sport, in society, in life, people want you to fit into their pigeonhole, one that fits their idea of who you are and what you should be. But you have more to give. On more subjects, in more genres. Never let them hold you back and put you down.
In the majestic 1985 song “Shake The Disease” Martin pleaded repeatedly ‘Understand me’. Maybe they are finally accepted. To be understood is a precious thing. Those who get you are a godsend. They help make you unstoppable. Everything else is a bonus.
A group who gave me a soundtrack for my life have reminded me, 43 years into their journey, to never lose faith and devotion.
Eleven ‘hidden’ Depeche Mode songs I love:
Should Be Higher (Delta Machine, 2013)
Fragile Tension (Sounds of the Universe, 2009)
Nothing’s Impossible (Playing the Angel, 2005)
Insight (Ultra, 1997)
Surrender (B-side)
One Caress (Songs of Faith and Devotion, 1993)
My Joy (B side)
Clean (Violator, 1990)
To Have and To Hold (Music for the Masses, 1987)
In Your Memory (B side)
My Secret Garden (A Broken Frame, 1982)
Lee Wellings is a UK-based author, broadcaster and film maker specialising in sports and ethics. He has worked in key roles at Sky, BBC and ITN in thirty years in sports journalism, and reported on major stories and events across the globe.
This column is primarily about sport. Lee’s first book on sport and society, The Dilly Dong Bell (a wake-up call for sport) is available from www.ProjectisPublishing.com.
Lee’s other writing, on music and life, is here:
Lee’s guest appearance on podcast “Soundtrack to my life” 2020: https://www.mixcloud.com/carrie-frais/sports-journalist-lee-wellings-is-the-guest-on-the-soundtrack-to-my-life/