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Main event: you just can't get enough
Conrad Astley24/ 3/2006
Depeche Mode's nine-month world tour brings them to Manchester next week. Conrad Astley looks at the band's long and eventful history.
FOR a band at first dismissed as a group of fluffy teenyboppers,
Depeche Mode don't have a bad track record.
They spent the eighties developing from teen heart throbs into
underground goth heroes and provided a major inspiration on the
embryonic house and techno scenes before they emerged as
stadium-filling rock gods.
They have sold 72 million records around the world and remain,
along with New Order, one of Britain's most influential electronic
acts.
The band's story began in 1976, when Essex boys Vince Clarke and
Andrew Fletcher got together in the new town of Basildon to form No
Romance In China.
With a few line-up changes, they would experiment with some equally
unfortunate monikers such as French Look and Composition Of Sound,
before lead singer David Gahan joined in 1980 and they settled on
Depeche Mode - a name which was taken from a French style magazine
and translates as fashion news dispatch.
They began building a following on London's club scene and decided
to get rid of all their instruments apart from the synthesizers -
creating a slick electronic sound to accompany their catchy
melodies.
They had hit singles with Just Can't Get Enough and New Life but
after 1981's debut album Speak And Spell, Vince Clarke left to form
Yazoo with Alison Moyet - he would later join Andy Bell in Erasure
- and Martin Gore would become their main songwriter.
They are remembered as one of the most successful bands of the new
romantic period but subsequent albums, such as Construction Time
Again and Some Great Reward, showed a darker side creeping into
their pop.
As well as a heavier industrial sound, Gore's lyrics revealed an
obsession with egalitarian politics, spiritual doubt and sexual
manipulation.
This change of direction would see the band, which had previously
been popular in Germany but dismissed by Britain's music press,
gain a new following among American and British goth fans -
something they later tried to shake off with limited success.
At the same time, American dance music pioneers like Derrick May
and Kevin Saunderson gave the band new kudos by name-checking them
as a major influence.
The band's popularity continued to explode - particularly in the
US, where their 1988 Music For The Masses tour ended with a
sell-out concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl.
Understanding the power of controversy, they sold the single
Personal Jesus - their first to go gold in the US - on the back of
a truly original advertising campaign. Before its release, adverts
were placed in the lonely hearts columns of local newspapers, only
containing the words "your own personal Jesus." These would later
include a phone number which would take the caller to a recording
of the song.
They reappeared for 1993's Songs Of Faith And Devotion looking and
sounding like rock behemoths - introducing live guitars and drums
for the first time ever.
But, although the album went straight to number one on both sides
of the Atlantic, all was not well within the band.
Fletcher cited "mental instability" for walking out of a world
tour, keyboard player Alan Wilder left the band and Gahan later
entered a drugs rehabilitation clinic battling heroin addiction,
after an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
The band later emerged with 1997's number one hit album Ultra, but
it would be another three years before they returned with Exciter,
which did not generally live up to its title.
The three remaining members have spent most of the last five years
concentrating on solo projects, returned in October with Playing
The Angel, which was hailed as a return to form.
It only takes a quick look through the dates for their current
world tour - taking in America, Canada, Russia, Israel, and all of
Europe - to appreciate that the band continues to have a loyal
global fan base.
Depeche Mode play the MEN Arena on Thursday.
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