Sometimes things get lost because it’s easier that way. Like Jeremy Deller’s and Nicholas Abrahams’ 2007 documentary on Depeche Mode fans called Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (aka The Posters Came from the Walls). No one’s quite sure what happened there. Maybe it was accidentally filed under “F” for forgotten? Or perhaps carelessly pushed to the back of the archive where no-one would ever think to look except for maybe a very keen researcher hoping to find that one rare masterpiece for a festival schedule?

Who knows?

Whatever happened, happened. But very few people have seen Deller’s and Abrahams’ documentary, which to be frank is a goddamn shame.

Our Hobby is Depeche Mode is one of the best films ever made about music. It’s a staggering good documentary that has the audacity to speak to the fans and only the fans. Are you aware that Depeche Mode fans comprise one of the most ardent and hardcore fanbases of any group in the entire world history of popular music? Oh yes they do. Maybe not so much in their homeland England, but in many countries, Depeche Mode are viewed as actual heroes. 

Jeremy Deller is a Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker. Nicholas Abrahams is a documentary filmmaker, artist and promo director. Their film Our Hobby is Depeche Mode documents the stories of Depeche Mode fans like Mark who was homeless when he found his love for the band. He slept rough under Hammersmith Bridge. His greatest fear was not finding food or comfort or money but would the batteries in his Walkman last so he had their music as company. Or, Masha, a girl in Russia who spends her time drawing intricate comic strips of her imaginary life with Depeche Mode. Or, Orlando who lights a candle every day at his shrine to the band. Or, the thousands of youngsters who gather every year in Moscow on Dave Gahan’s birthday to celebrate “Dave Day.”

I contacted Deller and Abrahams—the former over the phone, the latter over genteel refreshments in a busy Glasgow cafe—to find out about their documentary and what happened to it?

How did ‘Our Hobby is Depeche Mode’ come about?

Nicholas Abrahams: We were commissioned by Mute Records. They wanted to commission a film about Depeche Mode.

Jeremy Deller: They wanted a film to be made to celebrate some anniversary. They wanted a documentary about the band. We suggested this film about the fans and this way you don’t have to have the band involved.

NA: We pitched it as not about the band but what if it’s about the fans and how important the music can be to people in ways the band could never imagine. That was our pitch basically.

We knew if you made a film about the band, it maybe what a lot of Depeche Mode fans wanted but it’s boring people talking their music. We knew fans wouldn’t realise how interesting they are. And they were interesting.

JD: I was aware the band had this huge following in Eastern Europe and Russia. It was something I’d heard about but didn’t really know much about. I thought that would be quite fertile territory for the film.

NA: Daniel Miller [Head of Mute Records] knew Depeche Mode were huge in Russia but he didn’t know the story. He said, “It would be great to know about that.” We were discovering all that as we went along.

How did you find the fans for your film?

NA: We advertised through the official Depeche Mode website. Had any fans got stories about the effect the band had on their lives?

JD: I can’t remember how many we got but it must have been over 5,000 responses. We had to go through every one and work out if we could film these people, if it was worth filming them or not. It was kind of trial and error really. Some of them really stuck out, like Mark, because no one else really had a story like that.

It was trial and error and traveling around the world meeting people we’d never met before and filming an interview straight off, straight from the airport you go and make an interview and another one and another one. Then you’d have a night out with them. The next morning make an interview then go off on a plane. It was like being on tour.

NA: We were just looking for interesting people really. We also wanted to see the archive the fans had like the stuff from Russia the VHS tapes that were passed around like sacred objects and copied and re-copied.

JD: Depeche Mode for some people is a religion. In the same way, for us in Britain, the Beatles are like a religion. The effect is very similar to what the Beatles did to Britain and America in the 1960s.

I think it has enriched their lives, definitely. Maybe not financially but in terms of networks and friends and culturally. I think it has been good for people.
 

Deller and Abrahams.
 
Did you have any preconceived ideas about the kind of documentary you wanted to make before you started filming?

JD: You know what you want but you don’t know how you’re going to get to it. It’s so random really because you’re relying on the public. You can’t really control those people who you’re working with and filming. You know the kind of thing you want.

NA: We thought the stories in the film were culturally interesting, especially the stuff behind the Iron Curtain. At one stage it was going to be called How Basildon Ended the Cold War. Because it was like soft propaganda. And because in England they’re not taken that seriously where in other places they are. It’s as simple as that. Also how culture travels around the world, how it varies. 

JD; A film with a global story which show’s [Depeche Mode’s] reach as a band really and how different countries look at them in different ways.

NA: It’s all tangential. None of this is what the band is aiming to do. People take something and use it in their own way. I suppose that’s part of what the film’s about.

We couldn’t have made the same film about another band, like say U2, because there’s an outsider-ish element to Depeche Mode.

Did you enjoy making it?

JD: I did actually. It was kind of amazing. It was quite tiring. I don’t know if I could make it now, you know, being a bit older. I think it would probably do my head in all the flying and stuff. Obviously there’s all that strain and stress when you don’t think you’re getting what you want and you’ve traveled all the way to a country and you can’t grab what you need and you know it’s there and you cannot find it. Those moments are potentially stressful.

What was the response from Mute Records and the band? And what happened to your film?

JD: Daniel Miller really loved it. But as soon as it got into the band camp or arena it sort of got lost a bit. We never really had any direct contact with them. We never really knew what they thought of it. It was made for them. It was paid for, ostensibly, by them. It sort of disappeared really.

NA: We were never asked to make changes. We just got shut down. It never got released.

JD: I think it got wrapped up in some band politics. Some politics within the organization which we weren’t really aware of and we had no control over. It just happens really. Bands are very strange things, they’re like little countries aren’t they? Especially bands that are very successful and make a lot of money. We were absorbed into that.

It’s never been put online and never been released as such—online or in cinemas or TV. We’ve never really exploited that. I think it’s time now that we can do it.

At this point, what are your hopes for ‘Our Hobby is Depeche Mode?

JD: I just want it to be seen really. It’s not as if I have some grand hope for it as it’s so old, if I’d made it last week i’d want everyone to see it. A lot of people have seen it. I just want it to be seen more widely really.

NA: It’s a total Valentine to the band.
 

via Zero Equals Two

A couple weeks ago, Vince Clarke from Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and Erasure stopped by the set of Extra Crispy, Time, Inc.‘s “digital editorial brand dedicated to obsessively documenting breakfast, brunch and the culture surrounding it all.” He charmed them silly while fixing beans on toast, a dish he touts as nutritious (?), inexpensive, and good for a hangover. (On the road, Vince apparently makes a hell of a grilled cheese sandwich with the hotel room iron, too.)

The Guardian reports this is nine out of ten Britons’ “preferred way to enjoy beans.” In the U.S. of A., we use a hose and a funnel, so I’m curious about these here beans prepared in le style anglais I heard tell of oncet or twicet; it is said that one eats them with one’s mouth.

The ingredients: sharp cheddar, Irish butter, well-done toast, and Heinz baked beans. The equipment: butter knife, can opener, cheese grater, saucepan, toaster, stove, broiler. Where’s my bottle of HP Sauce? Where’s my button that calls the paramedics?
 

 
H/T Zero Equals Two

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
When Vince Clarke met Wire

 
Back before the intricacies of the thoroughly made-up ancient language of Dothraki in Game of Thrones entranced the more dorkish among us, that same sort of person spent his/her time immersed in Simlish, a language that was created for the world of the Sims, a popular franchise created by Maxis that was first released by Electronic Arts in 2000 in which users, in the act of ensuring that their anonymized suburb dwellers took out the trash on time, often ended up ...... neglecting to take out their own trash on time (that’s how I processed the experience of playing the game, anyway).

The Sims was enough of a sensation that it spawned some sequels, such as The Sims 2 in 2004 and The Sims 3 in 2009. By the time those franchises got going, the concept of Simlish had gotten embedded in enough people’s minds that someone, most likely Maxis audio director Robi Kauker or EA music marketing honcho Steve Schnur, had the idea of enlisting some top music acts to record some of their songs in the language. (Noted spud Mark Mothersbaugh was also hired to compose the music for The Sims 2, but there was no Simlish component to his contributions.)

The expansion pack The Sims 2: Open for Business, released in 2006, featured songs by several well-known acts, all of which shared the trait of having their most fruitful period occurring well before the year 2000. Depeche Mode released a Simlish version of “Suffer Well,” off of 2005’s Playing the Angel. At least that was a new song at the time—joining them on the The Sims 2: Open for Business soundtrack were Kajagoogoo, with “Too Shy” and Howard Jones, with “Things Can Only Get Better.”
 

 
Later expansion packs saw the inclusion of such Simlish classics as “Future” by Cut Copy, “Free Radicals” by the Flaming Lips from their 2006 album At War With the Mystics, “Take Out the Trash” by They Might Be Giants off their 2007 album The Else, “Violet Stars Happy Hunting!” by Janelle Monáe, and “Na Na Na” by My Chemical Romance. You can consult a complete list of Simlish music here.

To get an idea of what a Simlish song would sound like, here’s a bit of “Na Na Na” in English and then the same portion in Simlish:
 

Drugs, gimme drugs
Gimme drugs, I don’t need it
But I’ll sell what you got
Take the cash and I’ll keep it
Eight legs to the wall
Hit the gas, kill em’ all
And we crawl, and we crawl, and we crawl
You be my detonator

Trubs nibby trubs nibby trubs
Weys a neeba
Westu nell anzu bar will enash and za weeba
Da megs eeba za
Mental ras gibba na
Ebwee ga ebwee ga ebwee ga
Du bas an doobie sa

 
In a press release, you can find the rather anodyne quotation from David Gahan, which runs, “Depeche Mode has always been open to new ways of sharing our music, but re-recording a Simlish-language version of ‘Suffer Well’ just sounded completely bizarre. Of course, that’s why couldn’t resist doing it.”

Here are some of the primary highlights from the Simlish songbook: 

Depeche Mode, “Suffer Well”:

 
Lots more after the jump…...
 

 
Individually, Nick Zinner and Justin Pearson have made significant contributions to the ongoing post-punk revival. Zinner, in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, has edifyingly proffered everything from sparse, serrated blasts of underground dance punk to a pop disco anthem that ended up being performed on Glee—mashed up with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” no less. Pearson, in The Locust, has been a Godfather of the influential Powerviolence micro-genre, a disorienting and challenging chimera of brutish, back-to-basics hardcore and the reductive, mechanical textures of early ‘80s synth-pop.

Together, Zinner and Pearson have collaborated as members of Head Wound City, the band that melted faces as the openers on Savages’ 2016 tour. But more recently, as members of Planet B (along with Locust/HWC’s Gabe Seriban), they’ve collaborated on a cover of an altogether different and more rarefied post-punk icon—“Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode, one of the most successful electronic music groups in history, ranking alongside Kraftwerk and DEVO in sheer enormity of influence, and surely surpassing both in cultural reach.

“Never Let Me Down Again” is an unshakably dark heroin song that achieves a weird and poignant universality by never explicitly mentioning drugs, and was the lead track and first single from 1987’s Music For the Masses”, which, taken with its follow-up, 1990’s Violator, comprises the band’s high water mark in this scribe’s correct opinion. It’s ominous, beautiful, creepy, and euphoric, and it was a massively depressing track to release as a single to begin with, but Planet B’s version is a lo-fi screamer that significantly ups the ante on the song’s bleakness, stripping it of its drug-high euphoria and leaving in its place a harrowing withdrawal. They recorded it for Love Oakland, a compilation benefitting the Oakland Family Fund, which arose in the wake of last year’s tragic Ghost Ship fire, which wiped out a crucial DIY venue/incubator and took 36 lives. The comp mostly features the obscure artists associated with that scene—apart from Zinner and Pearson, the contributor you’re most likely to know is the Indo-Canadian garage/psych savant King Khan, but other tracks, like Tony Molina’s lovely acoustic instrumental “Fluff” and Naked Lights’ “Hyde,” a jagged gut-punch of a song that recalls Arab on Radar, are absolutely worth hearing. The whole thing is streaming and available for sale on Bandcamp, and Pearson took some time to talk to DM about it:

For Planet B the decision to cover “Never Let Me Down Again” was simple. Musically the song is timeless, and lyrically, it seemed fitting for the Love Oakland compilation. Most listeners of music can connect to certain songs and this one was relevant for all of us. Furthermore, the idea to have Nick Zinner featured on the track was a means to showcase our radical friendship, and the basic idea of community. Over all, the compilation is littered with friends and family, all coming together for a good cause, and ultimately to shed light on a situation that effects a lot of artists.

 
Listen after the jump…

 
Thirty-five years ago a band called Yazoo (Yaz in the US for legal reasons) released their debut single “Only You.” It was a big hit reaching #2 in the UK charts. The song could be heard everywhere that spring. Unfortunately, I first heard it being tunelessly whistled by a friend over breakfast at a local cafe. Still, his lack of musical ability didn’t disguise the song’s immediate hook and I asked him the title of the tune he was murdering? He wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, he liked it. He liked it a lot. Then when I heard it on the radio an hour later, I understood why. Here was an utterly compelling mix of a powerful blues singer with a synthpop backbeat. It should never have worked—but somehow it did, it did exceedingly well.

Yazoo/Yaz consisted of Alison “Alf” Moyet on vocals and Vince Clarke on synthesizer. The band formed in late 1981 after Clarke replied to an advert Moyet posted in Melody Maker looking for a “rootsy blues band.” Clarke had been the founder and chief songwriter at Depeche Mode. He quit that band because he was “fed up.” What with isn’t clear. What’s probable is that Clarke wanted to spend more time in the studio and develop his own unique electronic sound. For whatever reason, Clarke left Depeche Mode after writing most of the band’s first album and their first three hits “Dreaming of Me,” “New Life,” and “I Just Can’t Get Enough.”

It’s a good PR story that Moyet and Clarke didn’t know each other until that fateful ad in Melody Maker, but the truth was they had known of knew each other for quite some time. They both lived in Basildon and had both attended the same weekend music school as kids. Clarke had heard Moyet sing. He was more than impressed. Moyet has an incredible voice. And he was the keyboard wizard who wanted to do something different.

Clarke had the song “Only You.” He had offered it Depeche Mode as a farewell present but his ex-bandmates thought it wasn’t quite right as it sounded like something they’d already heard. They were wrong but it didn’t hamper their meteoric career. Moyet didn’t really like synthpop. Clarke was undeterred. He played her the track. Moyet sang the lyrics. Yazoo was formed.

According to Clarke, when they played “Only You” to Daniel Miller, the head of Mute Records, he seemed disinterested. But when the publishing company gave it a listen, they knew they had a hit. Yazoo was signed. Now a B-side was required. The only track Clarke and Moyet had was “Don’t Go” which was too good a song to fill out a B-side. They quickly recorded “Situation,” which was the first club hit by which Yaz/Yazoo became known in America.

“Only You” was released in spring 1982. It was the first of four singles released by the band over two years. Thousands of doe-eyed lovers swooned. Nightclubbers grooved. Friends tunelessly whistled it. “Don’t Go” followed and then their classic debut album Upstairs at Eric’s which is still one of the best albums of the decade.

Yazoo became Yaz in the States after Blues label Yazoo Records threatened a multi-million dollar lawsuit. They toured North America where they became better known after their 1983 split.

In an interview with Smash Hits in 1982, Moyet said she didn’t really know Clarke. He was uncommunicative and spent most of his time with his girlfriend or in the studio.

“We don’t really see each other until five minutes before the gig…Vincent and I are just basically different people, but we’re very alike in a way. We’re both very set in our ways, in our own beliefs. We get on fine but that doesn’t warrant an out-of-work relationship. He wouldn’t choose me as a friend if we weren’t working together, and I wouldn’t choose him as a friend. We’ve just got different likes and dislikes.”

More on synthpop’s ‘Odd Couple,’ after the jump…

 
Before there was Depeche Mode, there was Composition of Sound, a minimalist synth act that Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, and Andy Fletcher formed in the spring of 1980. COS were able to put together a 4-song demo with Clarke on vocals. A few weeks later Clarke heard Dave Gahan singing David Bowie’s “Heroes” at an informal jam session, and asked him to join the group.

Daniel Miller, the founder of Mute Records who first signed Depeche Mode and was an early musical influence on the band, said of Composition of Sound: “I just thought they looked dodgy—dodgy New Romantics. I didn’t even hear the music at that point.”

According to Jonathan Miller’s Stripped: Depeche Mode, Composition of Sound did play a handful of gigs. The first COS show with Dave Gahan on vocals happened on June 14, 1980 at Nicholas Comprehensive in Basildon. The poster for the show touted a “Discotheque featuring French Look and Composition of Sound.” Composition of Sound was the headliner and French Look opened. Vince Clarke remembered the gig going pretty well, because Gahan “had all his trendy mates there.”
 

 
The most amusing show COS played sounds like something out of This is Spinal Tap:
 

Composition of Sound played a third, as it turned out, final gig with the same line-up at a youth club at Woodlands School, Basildon, where their audience consisted of a bunch of nine-year-olds. “They loved the synths, which were a novelty then,” remembers Fletcher. “The kids were onstage twiddling the knobs while we played!”

Keep reading after the jump…

 
A few years ago there was a theory that Kraftwerk was the “most influential group in pop history.” The pitch goes something like this: The Beatles’ influence lasted about thirty-plus years while the electronica heralded by Kraftwerk continues to be of influence to this day. One of the chief proposers of this argument was Andy McCluskey from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark who said:

When you listen to pop now, do you hear the Beatles, or do you hear electronic, synthetic, computer-based grooves?

It’s a moot point as nearly everything is electronic today. McCluskey clearly remembers the day he first heard the future of music—when Kraftwerk played the Liverpool Empire on September 11th, 1975. Though the venue was about half-full, this gig had far-reaching consequences. It was a starting pistol announcing the launch of bands like OMD, the Human League and Cabaret Voltaire who were to pioneer electronic music in Britain.

When OMD signed to Factory Records, McCluskey was utterly horrified when label supremo Tony Wilson said their music was the future of pop. OMD saw themselves (quite rightly in many respects) as creating serious artistic music. Though McCluskey vehemently disagreed at the time, Wilson has been proven right. Yet it wasn’t until Gary Numan, Visage, Soft Cell, and in particular Depeche Mode, could synthpop be said to have truly arrived.

Depeche Mode was originally a guitar band from Basildon, Essex called No Romance in China. It was formed by two schoolmates Vince Clarke and Andy Fletcher in 1977. The line-up changed as different members came and went until the band morphed into Composition of Sound with the arrival of Martin Gore on guitar.

When Clarke saw OMD in concert in 1980, he reinvented the group as wholly synthesizer-based band. With the addition of Dave Gahan on vocals, Depeche Mode were complete.

Clarke was the principal songwriter and main driving force behind the band. At the time he was working as a delivery driver for a lemonade company to pay for his synthesizer. They recorded a demo and hawked it around to different labels, yet, it wasn’t until Daniel Miller—head of the newly formed electronic record label Mute—saw Depeche Mode play a gig in London that he offered them a deal on the spot

Miller was one of the pioneers of electronic music. As The Normal he released two seminal singles “T.V.O.D.” and the J.G. Ballard-inspired “Warm Leatherette.” One of the reasons he offered Depeche Mode a contract—apart from the obvious synthpop association—was the fact people at the gig weren’t watching the band play, but dancing joyously to their songs.

Watch Depeche Mode perform, after the jump…

 
On October 23, 1981, Depeche Mode taped a brief set for a youth-oriented BBC show called Something Else, which we’ve written about before. The show was broadcast on November 6. Depeche Mode played seven songs; what stands out about the performance is how remarkably fully formed the band is, even at this early stage; it’s even more impressive when you realize that their first album, Speak & Spell, had come out just two weeks earlier.

This appearance is also notable for being among the last ones Vince Clarke would play with Depeche Mode—having written one of the band’s most enduring hits in “Just Can’t Get Enough,” Clarke would play his final show with DM a few weeks later, on December 3 in Chichester. Clarke would quite quickly find success by teaming up with Alison Moyet for Yazoo (Yaz in the U.S.) and, of course, in Erasure.

More after the jump…

 
Here’s a video of one-man-band street performer located in Buenos Aires, Argentina flawlessly playing his homemade didgeridoo meets plastic pipe drums kit for an unusual rendition of Depeche Mode’s classic “Just Can’t Get Enough.” And then he plays something that sounds like Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” meets Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” meets “Swamp Thing” by The Grid???

This dude is deep.
 

 
via WFMU on Twitter

 
Yesterday DM contributor Martin Schneider wrote about the incredible H.R. Giger bars. And someone in the comments—who’s perhaps a world traveler—mentioned they’ve visited a Giger bar in Switzerland and a Depeche Mode-themed bar located in Tallinn, Estonia. When I first read that I immediately had to Google this magical place—that I didn’t know existed—and find out what’s all about.

The name is actually Depeche Mode Baar and it opened its doors back in 1999 by a devoted fan of the band. Apparently, it really grew in popularity in 2001 after Depeche Mode band members partied the night away at the bar after their concert in Tallinn. Since then, the bar has been highlighted on a few news features including a segment for BBC TV.

I don’t know what else to say except to quote Liz Lemon, “I want to go to there!” I mean, a Depeche Mode bar?!

 
Of the late ‘70s class of synth-pop artists, Gary Numan, Soft Cell and DEVO are among the best remembered thanks to having all scored massive international hits. But there were, of course, influences and contemporaries who were every bit as innovative and exciting, but not as lucky. High on the list of lesser-known greats is Frank Tovey’s incredible Fad Gadget.

An art student like so many rock-era musical innovators, Tovey took an interest in music, but found he lacked the coordination to play an instrument. He turned his attention to performance art (he was a mime student at Leeds Polytechnic) and recording technology, and re-engaged with music making when he discovered that synths and sequencers allowed him to realize his ideas without traditional instrumental proficiency. Around the same time, Daniel Miller founded Mute Records to release the single of his minimalist synth-pop project The Normal, and Tovey sent him a demo of the song “Back To Nature.” Tovey thus became the first artist to sign to Mute and a re-recorded “Back to Nature” would become one side of his first single in September 1979. Pay attention to the lyrics—he’s singing about a post-climate change apocalypse.
 

”Back to Nature” demo
 

”Back to Nature” single
 

 
Tovey selected the name Fad Gadget for his project, likely, it seems, not just for its cool cadences, but because he embraced the idea of pointedly making a gimmick of himself. His performances were directly confrontational affairs in which he’d put his body on the line. He appeared dressed in nothing but shaving cream, as a Punch puppet, he even had himself tarred and feathered. He’d leap into the crowd Iggy Pop style, and was even known to shower “lucky” front row audience members with his own pubic hair, ripped out on the spot. Per his NYT obit:

Mr. Tovey’s performances were often highly intense and theatrical. He tore the ligaments in both of his legs diving into the audience at one show; at another concert, he swung his microphone around his neck, and it hit him in the face, cutting open his nose and blackening his eyes. After a show in 1980, he was taken to an emergency room after cutting his head open while using it to play an electronic drum.

 

 

 
Lyrically, Tovey’s themes of dystopian alienation put him in more or less the same camp as Gary Numan, only with a dark, wry bitterness taking the place of Numan’s sci-fi trappings. His thematic darkness combined with his haunting deployment of the squared-off coldness of that era’s synth technology made for a potent sound that crossed over to the early industrial scene (he even did a collaborative noise album with Boyd “NON” Rice), and Fad Gadget would become a major part of the blueprint for electronic music from Depeche Mode to Nine Inch Nails and beyond. Fad Gadget released four LPs: Fireside Favourites, Incontinent, Under the Flag and Gag. All are superb. If you’re the kind to get your feet wet with best-ofs, there are two in print, the 2XCD The Best Of Fad Gadget, and the more recent (and more bargainous) 2XCD/2XDVD Fad Gadget by Frank Tovey. Here’s a handful of my faves:
 

Insane performance of “Collapsing New People” on TV Playback, 1984

After Fad Gadget, Tovey continued making music, moving beyond electronics and recording more straightforwardly rock and acoustic music under his own name and with his band The Pyros. He reactivated Fad Gadget in 2001 to serve as the opener for a Depeche Mode tour, and sadly, died prematurely of heart failure in 2002. He was 45.

This documentary does a fine job of introducing Fad Gadget to newbies, and has plenty of great footage to satisfy longtime fans. Enjoy.
 

 
Depeche Mode interviewed in 1993, with Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, Alan Wilder and Andy Fletcher discussing their individual roles within the band, and their thoughts on their careers and music.

As wag Andy Fletcher tells it: Martin is the Writer, Dave is the Rock Star, Alan the Musician, and Andy, well, he handles business and keeps them all together. That was (of course) until Wilder left the band in 1995. Since then, Gore, Gahan and Fletcher have made Depeche Mode the most popular electronic band in music history. This has been in large part, to the quality of their songs, which as writer Gore explains:

“I usually write about things that move me. If I can capture the emotion that moves me, and it’s there in the song, then it naturally moves other people—that’s how it works.”

The interviews were recorded after the release of the band’s eighth album, Songs of Faith and Devotion.
 

 
‘A good photograph,’ says Steve Gullick, ‘is one that looks great, one that captures an interesting moment in time, one that tells a story, or in the case of a portrait, offers an insight into the subject.’

This is could be a description of Gullick’s own photographs—his beautiful, inky black portraits that are amongst the most recognizable and iconic images of the past twenty years.

Gullick was influenced ‘Mainly by the dark imagery of Don McCullin and Bill Brandt. I tried to infuse my photos with a similar drama—I spent all of my spare time in the darkroom working on getting good.

‘It was more difficult with color but when I started printing my own color stuff in the late 1990’s I was able to match the intensity of my black & white work.

These photographs have captured succeeding generations of artists and musicians from Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Bjork, The Prodigy, through to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Richard Hawley

‘Photography is magic. The ability to capture something forever that looks interesting to you is magnificent.’

Now an exhibition of his work Punk as Fuck: Steve Gullick 90-93 is currently running at Indo, 133 Whitechapel Road, London, until 31st March, and is essential viewing for anyone with a serious interest in photography, music and art

To coincide with the exhibition, film-maker Joe Watson documented some of Steve’s preparation for the show, and interviewed him about the stories behind his photographs.

For more information about Punk as Fuck and a selection of Gullick’s brilliant work check his website.
 

 
In 1988, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher from Depeche Mode appeared on the BBC pop interview series That Was Then…This Is Now.

Aired as part of Janet Street-Porter’s “Yoof TV” on BBC 2, the series attempted to break away from the stranglehold of sixties pop, to focus on bands that had come to the fore during the 1970s and early 1980s. Guests included Mick Jones, John Lydon, Robert Smith (The Cure), Joe Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Spandau Ballet, Martin Fry (ABC) and even (surprisingly) Gary Glitter and Eddy Grant, who were exceedingly popular that year. Shot on 16mm, the series consisted of twenty-two 30-minute episodes, broadcast between 1988 and 1989.

This is Depeche Mode captured at the start of their world domination, just as they were becoming “The most popular electronic band the world has ever known.”
 

 
Via Racket Racket
 

 
I would definitely give this guy a dollar:
 

 
Thanks to Chistopher McEwan!