(Berlin) Martin Gore, co-founder of Depeche Mode and its main songwriter, expects to see ghosts during the British band’s world tour after the death of bandmate Andy Fletcher, he said in a Wednesday interview with AFP.
Posted at 1:38 p.m.
The sudden death of keyboardist Fletcher in May, after four decades of collaboration, continues to haunt the British group, which announced Tuesday in Berlin the release of a new album in 2023 and a world tour in stride, the first for five years.
“Andy loved hotel bars. As we travel around the world, I expect to see him sitting at hotel bars with a pint in front of him. I can’t help it,” said Gore, 61.
“I understood when I got back to the hotel in Berlin, when I saw the bar where I saw him so many times, that it was going to happen again during our next tour,” says the musician.
“I realized it was going to be more painful than I had imagined,” he adds.
Entitled Memento Morithe 15the The band’s studio album is due out next March.
Inspired by both the pandemic and the loss of Fletcher, who died of aortic dissection at the age of 60, the album will precede a tour, the 19e of the group, which will begin in California, in Sacramento. Concerts are notably planned in London, Berlin and Paris.
“His death kind of cemented the title of the album,” Gore says. “We thought it was a good title anyway, after his death it seemed really fair.”
“Interesting” for young people
Depeche Mode has sold over one hundred million records worldwide. Among his greatest successes, Just can’t get enough, Everything Counts, Never Let Me Down Again Where walking in my shoes.
Pioneers of synthetic pop in the early 1980s, they developed this genre to free themselves from it by opening up to guitars in the early 1990s.
Gore says many of the songs on the new album are inspired by his sixtieth birthday and the creeping sense of his own finiteness.
But he is also delighted to see new generations adopting the band’s music, both its classics and more recent compositions.
“If you have parents who really like a band, play their music all the time and it’s about right, then the kids are going to listen to it all the time too,” Gore says.
“This is one of my best theories as to why we have so many young people at our concerts and even waiting outside the hotel to see us. Each time, it’s a real surprise.
According to him, the group still considers itself a pioneer of electronic music, a way of not sinking into nostalgia.
“We’ve always tried to keep up with (technology) and it’s always been important for us to have up-and-coming young people to do our remixes and stay on top of that.”
“I think it keeps us interesting for a younger generation,” he concludes.