Depeche Mode facing death

The untimely demise of Andy Fletcher could have marked the end of Depeche Mode. Dave Gahan has indeed thought of storing his microphone. Martin Gore never thought of turning off his synths. “I never questioned the group,” he says in an exclusive interview with The Pressa few days before the launch of the disc Memento Mori and an umpteenth world tour that will pass twice through Montreal.

Alexandre Vigneault

The Press

Stunned by the sudden death of Andy Fletcher, founding member of Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan only fully realized it at the time of his funeral. He and Martin Gore fell into the arms of Daniel Miller, the founder of Mute Records, the label which welcomed the group in 1980, and the trio embraced to pour out their sorrow.

The scene told by the British daily The Guardian dates from last spring, but Depeche Mode has not finished living its mourning. “We had to live a lot of firsts without Andy”, agrees Martin Gore, contacted in California at the beginning of March, a few days before the start of rehearsals for the world tour which begins Thursday.

“Going on stage without him will undoubtedly be quite an emotional moment,” he continues. I hope we will come to terms with his absence after a few weeks of touring. That it won’t be so difficult after a while. »

The premature disappearance of Andy Fletcher, who died of an aortic dissection in May 2022, forced a rebalancing within Depeche Mode. Suddenly, everything rested only on its two main figures: Dave Gahan, its charismatic singer, and Martin Gore, its main musical architect. Two icons who, without being enemy brothers, were not the two most intimate in the group.

“Dave and I were more, I’m looking for the right word… Distant, that sounds bad, but we socialized less, explains Martin Gore. Andy was the type to talk to everyone when he walked into a room, while Dave and I were more in the background. Now that Andy is gone, we had to work on our relationship, get closer. »

Dave Gahan admitted that Andy’s death, combined with the forced shutdown by the pandemic, had prompted him to consider the end of Depeche Mode. Martin Gore never thought of it. “I never questioned the group, no,” he assures us. Music is his whole life. “We often think Dave and I would be floundering in life if we hadn’t had success with our music,” he says. God only knows what we would do with our lives! »

The shadow of death

Memento Mori, a Latin phrase meaning “remember that you are going to die”, was already very advanced when Andy Fletcher suddenly died. Death had already haunted Martin Gore’s compositions for two years. “Most of the album was written during the pandemic and this is one of the reasons why several songs address death, explains the lyricist and composer, who signs or co-signs 10 of the 12 songs on the album. I also turned 60 and it felt like a warning to me: my stepfather, the man who raised me, died at 61 and my biological father at 68. Turning 60 shook me up a bit. »

That Depeche Mode is releasing a dark album is not surprising in itself: it has been in its palette for decades. Memento Mori turns out to be particularly rough, however, at times, and develops haunted atmospheres, betting on what makes the mark of the group, that is to say music built by successive layers, great care given to textures, lines pure melodies and Dave Gahan’s vocals dominating everything.

Another aspect of Memento Mori strikes the ear: we have the feeling that Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and their collaborators (Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs, in particular) like to insert here and there electro sounds vintage. people are good (the title is sarcastic, of course) subtly evokes the krautrock of Kraftwerk and we even find ourselves thinking of Jean-Michel Jarre when hearing the keyboards of Wagging Tongue. Which isn’t so surprising: Martin Gore collaborated with the French composer on a track called Brutalism Take 2revealed last fall.

“It’s not like we sat down and planned this out,” half of Depeche Mode says of the side vintage of Memento Mori. It’s something that happened naturally. The demos were much more mature than usual this time around and I think they already carried those references. »

Spaces of freedom

One of the things that don’t change on this 15^e Depeche Mode album, it is this use of the guitar, always so parsimonious, that we hear in the intro of Ghosts Againas is also the case on Behind the Wheel, Personal Jesus Or I Feel You. Martin Gore recalls that this choice was imposed from Composition of Sound, a trio that gave birth to Depeche Mode.

“Vince was on guitar, Andy on bass and I was on synthesizer. We soon realized the potential of synths, so Andy and Vince put bass and guitar aside, and that’s when we became a synth band with a drum machinee. For a while, we limited ourselves to this aesthetic, he says. We had the feeling that this was the path to take to advance in music. »

Of Speak and Spell (1980) to Music For the Masses (1988), Depeche Mode wanted to preserve its identity as a “purely electronic” group. “We wanted it to stay like that, even if it was strange since the guitar is my first instrument. I started playing it when I was 13 and didn’t get my first keyboard until I was 18, he says. Then, at some point, we said to ourselves that we should no longer limit ourselves and use everything that could serve the songs. Hence these guitars, most often discreet, which nevertheless imperceptibly raise the pieces,Enjoy the Silence several of Memento Mori.

Martin Gore doesn’t think about any of that when he’s composing now. “I just try to write the best song possible,” he says. And he is convinced that Dave Gahan, with whom he now forms the old couple that is Depeche Mode, will seize it and propel it. “Dave has a unique, special voice,” says Martin Gore. I think he takes my songs to another level. In fact, that’s always what happens. »

Rock

Memento Mori

Depeche Mode

The album will be on sale Friday

Yesterday’s Craftsmen

Vince Clarke

The sources of Depeche Mode can be found in No Romance in China, a group formed in 1976 by Vince Clarke and the late Andrew Fletcher. Martin L. Gore will join them in another group called Composition of Sound. Having become a quartet with the arrival of Dave Gahan in 1980, the group took the name Depeche Mode. Vince Clarke left in 1981, after the album Speak and Spellon which we find the oldest success of the group, Just Can’t Get Enoughand will form Yazoo then Erasure.

Alan Wilder

With the arrival of Alan Wilder in 1982, Depeche Mode finds its “classic” alignment. Martin L. Gore emerges as the group’s author and composer, emphasizing tortured imagery and intimate relationships marked by power games (Masters & Servers, strangelove). Alan Wilder contributes to the development of the darker sound of Depeche Mode, perfectly embodied by Black Celebration (1986), and in the band’s creative golden age marked by the albums Music for the Masses, Violator And Songs of Faith and Devotion. Dissatisfied with the place given to him and the credit granted to him, he left in 1995 to devote himself to his Recoil project.

Andrew Fletcher

Pillar of Depeche Mode – he’s been there since the beginnings of this group which aimed to make music without typically rock instrumentation – Andrew Fletcher has already said that he was only an extra… that he hung around the three others, all of whom had greater musical skills than him. Fletch was however a solid anchor of Depeche Mode: he was the unifier, the diplomat, the one who always kept his feet on the ground while his colleagues sank into excess. He died on May 26, 2022 from an aortic dissection.