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Nov. 22, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:15:57
Depeche Mode: Speak & Spell

Richard Spencer and Andrew Jensen review Depeche Mode’s first studio album, Speak & Spell (1981). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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I found the re-listening to this very interesting.
For one thing, it was the first time I listened to it on vinyl.
How were you listening to it?
So I'm listening to it just off of YouTube Music, actually.
And I did listen to the most expansive version with the 16 tracks with the Just Can't Get Enough remix.
Yes.
So, I'm not listening to it.
The original version was 11 tracks, correct?
I think so.
Your vinyl, I would imagine, is 11 tracks, but...
No, my vinyl here is 12. Okay.
Was there one song that wasn't on it?
I believe, yeah, Dreaming of Me, their first single, wasn't technically on.
And there are other ones that weren't on there.
I'm not sure if Shout or Ice Machine were on the album either.
That's interesting.
Ice Machine is not on this.
So I have a reissue 180 gram vinyl.
That is it's one a single vinyl record, but you said you showed it or you you you showed the album to your brother and let him listen.
Yeah, so he's younger than I am.
He's about 10 years younger than I am.
And he was not impressed.
I mean, he just said, this sounds old kind of thing.
Really?
Yeah, I don't...
Look, I think when people go back, Zoomers go back to listen to older music, I don't think...
I had that kind of same opinion when I was about his age.
This sounds kind of dated or whatever.
But I guess seeing past that and just appreciating the songs is kind of...
Yeah, I guess I had that opinion too.
Because my parents had a record collection.
And I was actually joking with my mom a few months ago.
Because I've...
I've only recently adopted full-on vinyl hipsterdom.
But I got into it, and I have a nice turntable and some good speakers, and I'm just kind of starting my collection.
But I was looking at discogs and things at some albums, and prices are just bizarre.
Things you think would be expensive are selling for $3.99.
Things that you've never heard of or something like that are selling for like $30,000.
So it's just like weird collector's market.
There probably is a rhyme and reason to all of it, but at first glance, it's pretty odd.
But I was joking to her.
I was like, I bet that vinyl collection you guys had, which you assembled in college, they graduated from college in 1969, I believe.
Multiple first editions, maybe first pressings of Beatles and Elvis.
Indiegata La Vida, I remember listening to their album of it.
But even in the mid-80s, when vinyl was starting to go out of style, I remember thinking all of that music was goofy and kind of old and 60s and stuff like that, even though we were separated by 15 years.
I mean, less time had passed between when I listened to my parents'record collection and your Zoomer kid brothers listening to 1984.
Right, yeah.
your parents were mine, I probably would have rated that.
I would have loved to have had like a Abbey Road, you know, original pressing that would have been incredible.
I'm sure they gave it away at a garage sale or something.
That's what I was joking.
I was like, I don't, I mean, who knows?
Of course, as I said, the prices are very weird, but who knows?
You might have some first pressing of, Some album that's worth tens of thousands.
I think some of the vinyl that you would think is useless, that goes for such high prices, I think a lot of that has to do with sampling.
Especially rap producers, they'll sample the entire loop of a song.
So these records that may have only sold a few, but a few thousand or whatever.
Tens of thousands now are rare finds because they have a certain drum break or a certain sound that has been sampled repeatedly by rappers.
And not just rappers, but house music in general.
But I think that might explain some of it.
Certainly couldn't explain all of it.
Well, I think there's...
I mean, we're going off field here, but I think there were some...
There's genuinely historic records that are on sale that probably would deserve to be in a museum or something like this.
But yeah, first pressing of the White Album or something.
Yeah, I'm sure these are going for a lot.
A lot of this vintage stuff, though, I don't know.
At the same time, you've got to want it.
There has to be a market for it.
There's a global market for vintage cars.
There's a global market for vintage watches.
There's a global market for vinyl.
Because you have these collectors, some of whom are willing to pay.
And even the smaller, less wealthy collectors are willing to pay a few hundred bucks or something that they find really special.
And so there is a market for it.
But the market goes away and all of that stuff vanishes.
It becomes garage sale fodder.
It's funny, Mark Brahman is here visiting and he's staying.
I was listening to the album just in a room of the house on vinyl.
He was actually remarking.
He had the opposite impression.
He's slightly older than I am.
I'm in my mid-40s.
He was basically saying, he was like, you know...
All of that early stuff, you can kind of tell it's a first album and there is a youthful, juvenile quality to it, but it was more experimental and fun and you could almost see them cranking out something that maybe is half-baked or maybe is never ever destined for the pop chart.
But being genuinely creative and interesting, he was he was, you know, impressed.
by it.
I don't think he's a big Depeche fan, but yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with your age.
Yeah, definitely.
It feels like they were tinkering, you know?
I mean, it doesn't...
Yeah, which, for good and bad, like you said, there is a good, youthful, energetic quality to the music in Dave's voice and the production itself.
Yes.
Dave's voice is pretty interesting.
I mean, it's...
I don't know how I would classify him.
At this point, but it's clearly his voice lowered and darkened.
Like he hadn't fully gone through puberty or something or gone through growth.
And you can see that when you see these interviews of him.
He looks like 14 or something.
And you don't really hear the full sound.
And this is an album written by Vince Clark, which we'll get into later.
So it's not a Martin Gore album.
You mentioned this before we went on, but Martin wrote Tora Tora Tora.
Is that the one song he added?
He also wrote Big Muff, which is an instrumental.
It sounds vaguely like a video game.
Yeah, it does sound like a soundtrack to a Soviet Union knockoff of Rambo.
From that era.
Oh, definitely, yeah.
It could have been in, what's that, Battlestar Galactica?
Something like that, yeah.
*Music*
Dave has not matured.
I mean, even by...
Even in Broken Frame, his voice is lower.
Certainly by the mid-80s, he's got a low voice.
He's a baritone.
I mean, I think that's actually a really interesting thing about the band.
That's not what you...
I mean, there's all of us, of course, but it's not what you associate with pop music.
You associate a higher voice.
And I think that is one of the things that has really set Depeche Mode apart.
You can't, you know, we were talking about these, like, indispensable qualities.
I mean, Dave is definitely indispensable.
You can't just bring someone on to sing it.
You don't have the, you know, the darkness, the kind of grit, a little bit of crooning, a little bit of Elvis thrown in.
You don't have that without Dave.
And I don't think he's there yet.
He sounds like he, you know, he is.
What was he, 18 or 19 when he was singing these?
Yeah, I believe 19 years old when he was singing.
I think, what is he, born in 62, yeah.
But so, yeah, as far as his voice, it's definitely, it's softer, too.
And I'd say the same thing about Broken Frame.
His voice is definitely, the whole project is just green, you know?
You can, like I said, you can feel the youth.
But also, in certain lines, like, I apologize for making this kind of noise, but...
He'll do the kind of seductive, like, you know, in some of the lines that you'll hear in singers like Bono kind of overdid it, in my opinion.
But, you know, just to add that kind of seductive sort of quality to the lyrics, to the music.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he'll do a lot of sighing and grunting later on.
But yeah, there's something very poppy.
There is something very poppy, and that's how this album was perceived.
And I think it was what they were going for, and so on.
But before we dive into the history, or we look at individual tracks, I think I mentioned this on the first one on Memento, but my first impression Of Depeche Mode was overhearing my sister, my older sister, playing Depeche Mode in her room.
And I think she was actually playing vinyl.
So it was very early.
I mean, I think I heard them around 85 or so.
And by the late 80s, when I was becoming, you know, 10 or thereabouts, maybe even kind of an early teen.
It was on CDs, and I had the Catching Up with Depeche Mode album, which is a compilation.
And I don't even know if that is in print or out there anymore.
I bet, obviously, you could get a used vinyl copy.
But it was a best of released in the mid to late 80s.
And it really, it was pre-Violator.
And let me actually call it up real quick.
Yeah, the one that they shot where Martin's nipple is out.
Yes.
I remember Martin Adkins in one of those documentaries from 2005 was talking about that cover and saying, he's like, did that sell a lot of records?
Kind of laughing about just the cover itself, how provocative it was.
Yes.
So, oh, it was from 1985.
So it was much earlier.
But I remember listening.
So the first three tracks were Dreaming of Me, News Can't Get Enough.
And then it ended with Fly in a Windscreen.
So it was going through the Black Celebration album.
I think like something in here, Beating Is On My Body, It's Called A Heart.
I think that was like an original song they added or something like that.
But it also had Shake The Disease, which isn't, I think, not found in an album, I believe.
That was just a single.
It is not.
Yeah.
It is not.
And so it was actually an important one.
But I did remember even then thinking that like, I didn't even know about Vince Clark and the breakup and so on, but just thinking that it was a different band.
And it was really...
I guess when you hit track 7 halfway through Master and Servant, when I was like, alright, this is Depeche Mode.
This is what Depeche Mode sounds like.
Definitely.
Yeah.
And that was my perspective then.
You said what year would that have been?
Late 80s?
I know it came out in 85, but when you heard it, it was late 80s?
As far as me hearing them, I think...
I can't remember exactly where I was when I heard.
I just know it was Enjoy the Silence.
And it was one of those that you recoil from.
Yeah.
And certainly that's something, well, yeah, I mean, it's just one of those.
And from there it was Violator would have actually been the first album.
So I had to kind of start in the middle and go back.
But a lot of this stuff, I wasn't impressed by on the first listen.
I mean, even Violator.
Now, with a song like Enjoy the Silence or Policy of Truth, I was immediately impressed by those.
But these, for me, same with bands like Radiohead or even some of the Beatles, they took...
I had to sink my teeth into it, basically.
It had to grow on me.
Yes.
And I think it did have to grow on me.
It's one of those weird things.
I don't know if this is almost an insult or maybe a compliment.
Maybe it's a little bit of both.
But listening to the albums more and more, I like them more in the way that I'm not immediately grabbed by them.
I was immediately grabbed by the first time I listened to mid-80s Depeche Mode.
When I heard...
Black celebration coming out of my sister's room.
I was mesmerized.
I was just like, I never heard anything like that.
It's the darkness, the kind of starkness.
The kind of monotonous repetition.
Maybe it was strept.
It was a song like that.
I was absolutely hooked, but also it was just totally different than any sound.
It was electronic, but it certainly wasn't disco or something.
I'd heard that.
I like a lot of these albums more and more.
Maybe it's getting used to them.
Getting that groove in your mind of knowing the song.
I think there are some genuinely fun ones.
Just Can't Get Enough is a fun song.
That's on every greatest hits of the 80s album and things like that.
That's fun.
New Life is pretty good.
Dreaming of Me is pretty catchy.
I like even songs like Puppets and Photographic.
I like the second half of the album.
Or the B side of the album more.
But anyway, it's something that you, it kind of grows in you.
And I guess maybe it's, you know, in light of what they've done in the, they'll do subsequently, you kind of can hear that in the music.
But would I have been totally hooked on Depeche Mode if I were living in Basildon and buying a single on a whim after hearing on a radio in 1981?
I'm not sure.
And I probably would have thought of them as a pretty dispensable, interchangeable band of that era.
other bands like, you know, I don't know, OMD for instance, that just seem to be doing it better.
Yeah, OMD certainly had a liber aspect to their music.
And that's a question that I'm actually...
I was thinking about, were people ready for them ever?
Right.
From the word go, were they really ready for it?
I mean, if you look at the music scene, it's 79, 80. The people that are dominating are like the kind of new romantic, you know, Human League, Roxy Music, David Bowie, those kind of...
Who were their inspirations, for sure.
But it's also, like, in America, something like Van Halen or The Police.
Rock and roll was definitely dominating.
And I just feel like their approach to music was, obviously it was programmed, but it was, like, hyper-pop to the point where it was, like, beyond poppy.
And I think that's kind of how I would describe this album.
This ain't no disco.
Sometimes when I wonder if you're taking a chance.
This ain't no disco and you know how to dance.
And move me disco.
Baby, don't you let go.
This ain't no disco.
This ain't no disco.
Rock and roll develops around this time into New Wave.
New Wave kind of develops into synth pop.
It's its own kind of thing, which is not to say that there weren't other synth pop groups.
I mean, there were plenty on Mute Records.
I mean, that was the whole label, but I just think that they were...
Stones is a better comparison, but when I originally thought about them, I said, you know, these guys are the Beatles of synth-pop.
They're really original, basically.
I don't know if I was ever ready for them.
This past album, I don't know if I was ready for it.
A year from now, I might be like, oh my god, I said this was a 7.5 out of 10, this is a 9.5 out of 10. I didn't notice this, you know, whatever it was, it didn't click.
And that can happen.
I do think, you know, they attract that kind of quality fan, if I can say so about myself.
They can attract that fan who's going to listen to them again.
Yes.
And give their song.
They might like track four, but track five and six, I'm not.
And then you keep playing the actual album over and over again.
And then you're like, okay, I'm locked in.
This is...
I can feel this as a cohesive piece and enjoy it all the way through.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
So, why don't we talk a little bit about the genesis of this and then we can talk about things we noticed on individual tracks and so on.
So I mentioned Basildon earlier in this podcast, and I mentioned it on the Memento Mori one as well.
It's a new town outside of London, and there's a way in which it's both futuristic and industrial, but then also middle to lower middle class and boring all at the same time.
And it was built to, you know...
Take care of the overflow from London, post-war, all of these kinds of things.
It's a kind of version of suburbia, I guess, would probably be the best comparison.
And these four guys were there roughly the same age.
Another thing that I noticed, I was just reading from...
Just Can't Get Enough by Simon Spence, which is a good book.
As an aside, I was thinking about this.
I feel like some of these rock books, I've read a few of them.
I've read a few on U2 and two, I guess now, on Depeche Mode.
I guess they serve a purpose, and they're done in an academic way, but they are kind of fan books on some level.
You go album by album, more or less, and they interview a lot of people, interview a lot of people who are there, they'll interview the roadie, the school teacher, and they'll get these quotes that are pretty mundane or quotidian, if maybe anecdotally interesting.
But it's rare that...
You really get analysis.
One thing that I would say about the Simon Spence book is the first two chapters are on Basildon, and he's done research on the history of this suburb, etc.
I actually found that more interesting of what is the background that made these people, the class background, the time, all of those kinds of things.
And he goes into a lot of that, so I would actually recommend that.
He goes into the building of the town and all that kind of stuff.
But one of the things that I did find interesting that he also stressed was the religiosity.
So they really met at church or at Sunday school, or at the very least, Fletch met Vince Clark.
And it was actually a Methodist church, and I don't know exactly what to put into that, but the kind of youth pastor also had a band, and he was influential.
It was actually a Methodist church that would bring together Vince Clark and Andy Fletcher.
Churches flourished in early Newtowns, often appearing on the new estates ahead of schools and shops.
Friar's Baptist Church, for instance, opened in 1954, and he goes on to it.
St. Martin.
So they had some Church of England, but then there seemed to be a kind of Methodist quality to their work.
But I don't know.
I mean, what do you make of this beyond, you know, it was a simpler time?
It's not terribly surprising.
If you grow up in a suburb or a small town in the US, at least in many places, you might very well meet your friends at church group or something.
But do you think there's something else there?
Yeah, I do.
I do considering Martin's writing.
I think when I heard about them releasing Blasphemous Rumors, I know Martin and Fletcher.
Who it seems to be were the most religiously schooled of the group, that they were afraid to release that song and kind of...
It was ambiguous.
Whether they were afraid to release it as like, we don't want to piss people off, or we're afraid to release it in the sense that we're kind of like paranoid that maybe...
God might strike back, you know, in a kind of superstitious manner.
That I wasn't sure about.
But as far as their overall religiousness, it does, like I said, it strikes me mostly in Martin's writing.
It seems like maybe Vince and Dave were kind of turned off by it.
I mean, that can happen, just speaking from experience.
Yeah, I think Martin's writing is deeply religious, yes.
And I think there's some obvious examples, like Blasphemous Rumors is a very obvious example, or John the Revelator, or something like that.
But I think it actually goes in all of them.
I can't wait to do Songs of Faith and Devotion.
I guess that one's pretty obvious, but he's making...
If not biblical, kind of Christian references.
And there's a song called Judas, etc.
I mean, it is part of it.
But I also...
How do I say this?
And it's hard to articulate.
I think it does come from a Christian perspective in the sense that their depiction of...
Love and sex and even sadomasochism, etc.
There's a kind of guilty consciousness or indulgence and sin that I think is lacking from other pop stars.
So I'm just going to use kind of a terrible example.
I was just going through Twitter last night and I was seeing all this talk about Taylor Swift and...
She's dating Travis Kelsey and blah, blah, blah.
So I actually, I can't even name a Taylor Swift song.
But I just went to, I just put her into YouTube and just listened to like the top number.
I can't even remember what it's about.
But it's all this kind of knowing like I'm a bad bitch and you're going to fall in love with me.
He, he is how I would basically describe her music.
And I don't even think I'm being uncharitable.
Like, that's like literally what this song is about.
I got harder in the nick of time.
Honey, I rose up from the dead.
I do it all the time.
I got a list of names and yours is in red underlined.
I check it once, then I check it twice.
Oh, look what you made me do.
Look what you made me do.
There's something about it that's just so fundamentally shallow.
That it's almost evil or just, at the very least, risible.
And I don't think that, you know, there's a new game we like to play.
You see a game with added reality.
You treat me like a dog.
Get me down on my knees.
Let's play.
When you indulge into the sadomasochistic aspect, there's inherently a kind of darkness and guilt concept or...
You're acknowledging turning tables.
You're acknowledging self-abasement.
These are all aspects of Christianity, first off.
I don't think any of those things have the same edge to them if you're not coming from a place.
If you're just a basic bitch like Taylor Swift, none of these things matter to you.
Do you see what I mean?
Right, yeah.
As far as I understand, She has, I think her father's pretty well off, well off to the point where he's got connections kind of thing.
That's what I've heard.
But as far as her lyrics, I remember being in high school and there was something, because I think she's only a year older than me, but it was something like, She wears short shorts, I wear t-shirts, something she's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers.
I do.
She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts, she's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers, screaming about the day when you wake up and find it, what you're looking for has been here the whole time.
It was kind of underdoggy, but it was, yeah, extremely shallow.
And now I know she's, you know, picked up some quote-unquote woke talking points and kind of...
But only in the most shallow conceivable way.
I remember dating a girl and she was like, did you know that Taylor Swift, she wrote a song about this guy and this song is about that guy.
These are like famous people.
God only knows what actors they are.
Who cares?
I was just like, well, there's kind of no mystery in that, you know?
I mean, that's one of the things about Martin's writing.
There is mystery in it.
I mean, mystery in the religious sense and just ambiguity.
There's no, like, yeah, Taylor Swift is...
But it's all, I mean, that's how we've talked about this before.
That's how all music is.
It's, like, very consolidated.
It's extremely, extremely hard to get to the top, but even harder today.
Probably easier to release your own music or whatever today than it was in 1981.
Yeah, it's easier to release your own music, but from what I got, and again, I read a few chapters in Just Can't Get Enough, and they were centering around this period, and then I watched, there's an interesting documentary that's available on YouTube.
I don't even know who did it, but it's well done.
It had original interviews with...
All of the bandmates.
Daniel Miller and Griffin, I believe, is the name of the photographer.
Yeah, Brian Griffin.
This album is kind of weird and maybe not great, but Broken Frame is a really great album cover.
It looks like a painting.
Anyway, I would say today, obviously, it's easier than it ever has been.
To just produce your own music.
You just get a SoundCloud account, use GarageBand and some kind of mic, Blue Yeti mic and GarageBand, and there you are.
You can do whatever you want.
And that's great on some level.
But I would say that they're reading this, there does seem to be this like, what's the right word?
Like implausible, how did this even work?
Kind of idea of...
Creating this band, performing the shows, developing a little teenage fan base of 50 people, and performing live, and then going into a studio, getting your older brother-type Daniel Miller figure to work with you with the album.
Releasing it, it gets played on the radio a few times and people buy your single.
And you go on a national tour, which is a national tour of Britain or even England.
A 14-day national tour, which is what they did after this.
There was something kind of homey and fun about it all.
They had to meet the right people.
They had to go perform the music and so on.
But again, the kind of ease to get a record pressed and the personal connection you had, I mean, I don't think I would see this now.
There was a kind of ease to doing it at that point that I think is probably gone now.
Mm-hmm.
And people would actually buy your records.
Right.
And Depeche Mode's like, it's, I mean, I think I watched the same documentary that you did, and it just seemed like the way that they describe the band's reaction to, you know, getting signed as, well, you know, it's kind of like, they're so humble, they're almost like, they seem like, almost afraid to, like, make it.
I mean, Vince was definitely, I mean, according to Andy Fletcher, he was the driving force.
He was the one he really was pushing the band forward.
But it kind of seemed like everything about them is so humble that they were just like, well, this is kind of the last, you know, we'll stop at Rough Trade to try and get a deal.
And if this doesn't happen, then it's back to, you know, gay jobs or whatever.
And they...
In their entirety, I think humility is a theme for them.
I think they kind of think this album is rubbish.
Mostly.
And I think they thought themselves as musicians were rubbish.
And they might not be the best.
I think we could agree about that.
But if you have a great songwriter and Martin Gore and the kind of attitude and...
And of Dave's, you know, possibilities are limitless.
But so, another aspect of their humility is the fact that Daniel Miller was running a quote-unquote label out of his flat in London until like 1980, I think.
I mean, it was very...
The guy was not even offering them money.
And, I mean, everything about them is...
Humble.
And as we know, humility is a Christian virtue.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, and I think they're humbled by nature.
You do get the impression of middle to lower middle class kids.
I mean, they're affording synthesizers, we're saving money.
Vince Clark was, from what I've read, just a kind of extreme penny pincher, actually, and very driven to make music.
Yeah, they're taking their...
You know, synthesizers with them in a cab and so on.
They certainly weren't the first all-electronic band, but what was it?
I mean, do you think there was just a kind of hook that they had by being all synth and not bothering with a drummer, which was extremely strange in terms of all of their contemporaries?
You know, I think it's their work ethic, actually.
I think it's the fact that they were going to tour every album, no matter what.
There was no, we'll release the album, we won't tour it, though.
I mean, not until you get to Ultra.
I think that's part of it.
And then you get that kind of Grateful Dead kind of cult following with the quality fans as opposed to just mere numbers on a chart or something like that.
But, yeah, I think the—I didn't really think about this until now, but I think their work ethic, maybe that has to do with their Methodist upbringing.
I think it had something to do with their success.
I was raised Catholic, so I'm not familiar with the Methodist Church really at all, and I'm not sure if there's a big stressing of— I don't know if you could attest to that.
I don't think it's that simple.
I think it's the types of people you're around who are attracted to that religion.
I think also the synthesizers were a way of...
Getting away with lesser musicianship, to be honest.
I mean, Vince Clark supposedly was a good guitar player.
Martin Gore plays guitar, but I'm sure you could find a guy living in your town who's a better guitar player than Martin Gore.
I think the synthesizer, your ability to create tracks on your own, I think it was a kind of crutch in a way, but it's what...
This is an interesting quote from Stripped.
So this is Jonathan Miller's book.
Let me just see when that was...
This came out in 2003 and then there was a kind of updated one in 2008.
Okay.
Yeah, so Clark said this to...
Paul Colbert.
I'm sure this was like a magazine interview.
It lost its enthusiasm.
It was turning into a factory production line.
That was worrying me.
The techniques were improving to an extent the way we're playing.
But even then, I found there were things in the way preventing us from experimenting.
We were too busy.
Blah, blah, blah.
That might have had something to do with it.
It's interesting because this is the next paragraph.
In a more candid conversation, Clark admitted, overall, I could say it was just the fact that probably I felt I was the person doing most of the work and was the most committed.
And I probably felt I could do it all on my own.
So it was total ego on my part.
That's the honest answer.
And it was, there was another, I think this was mentioned in that documentary of like...
Once you enter the realm of synthesizers and you have a drum machine, you have a backing track on a tape that's playing in the theater, you're hitting keys, you're not really being virtuosic at all.
I mean, maybe in the singing, but even that is clearly not the case.
It's a pretty limited vocal range.
Particularly in these albums, these early albums.
So it's basically you can do the entire thing yourself.
And I think that that's what Vince Clark wanted to do.
It's like, I can just leave these friends that I met along the way on the side of the road.
And I mean, he accomplished that in so many ways.
I mean, he's had a number of different bands.
Yazoo or Slash Yaz, Erasure, just himself.
I mean, Erasure is probably the longest standing one that has a fan base.
But he's just his own man, really.
I was just going to say, he recently released his first solo album, which I've not listened to, but I know that he did release it.
I want to say within the last month.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
I'll check that out.
Yeah, so, I mean, he's done that, but he missed the magic of Depeche Mode, which I think is Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, and maybe even the name, and maybe just the very idea of it.
I mean, he missed that train, and so it is one of the more curious things.
From what I can tell, again, from reading these books at the time, when Vince left, You know, there was a lot of thought that the band would go under.
And I think Daniel Miller kind of wanted to keep it going.
The bandmates wanted to keep it going.
And Martin Gore was tasked with songwriting.
But there was this notion that, like, you know, well, Vince is the driving force.
Like, he can do anything.
He's just going to go off on his own.
And not that he hasn't been successful, but he's not, I mean, clearly not been as interesting as Martin Gore, in my humble opinion.
And secondly, not nearly been as successful.
I don't know of an example of Vince Clark and Erasure playing the Rose Bowl in 1988 or going on this massive tour that Depeche is doing right now.
I don't really see it.
And so it's a very curious thing.
I think he preferred the studio.
I don't think he cared that much for performing live either.
I mean, from what I've The few interviews I've seen with him, he's said basically as much.
I like the studio more.
He's good, I guess, but he's not a virtuoso either.
But as far as their music, I think around that time of 79, 80, you had in bands like Duran Duran where Nick Rhodes would set up A sequencer, and it would play a kind of robotic, you know, kind of drum beat.
And that was there to aid the rhythm, but it was never there to replace it.
It wasn't there to be solely the rhythm.
You know, it was me, Nick Rhodes, I'll have this keyboard.
And it's the same thing with Human League or a lot of these bands.
No, there were synth pop bands, like I said, like Daniel Miller's The Normal, but they were just too quirky and almost like low effort.
If you ever listen to those records, and I think that's what Depeche was just more serious.
And I think that's why they were actually able to chart on mute, whereas I don't know how far Fad Gadget went.
I mean, not far enough for...
You know, me to really recall or either of us, you know.
But as far as their sound, I think it was before sampling.
I mean, sampling was very, very limited.
But they're kind of, it's almost like a dada or something like that.
It's like, we're, it's not to say, like, look how untalented we are.
We're going to leave the drum machine out here and we're going to play.
Look, this whole thing is computerized.
It's not necessarily that, but it is basically, to put it in economic terms, it's kind of replacing labor with capital.
And it's all their program.
I remember in an interview with Vince Clark, he said, I was so happy when Daniel got the ARP 2600 because it could keep everything in time.
And I didn't need to rely on my ability or Martin's ability or Vince's.
Or I'm sorry.
Andy is.
That's really, as far as the synthesis and the quantization, that kind of aspect of the band, I think they were, like I said earlier, taking it a step forward and just, you know, being upfront with it and not trying to hide it.
Like, there were bands like ELO in the 70s who were under some serious scrutiny for having backing tracks, which now every...
Every band has a backing track almost.
It's hardly ever completely live.
And that was another reason they weren't really big in America was because in the beginning they were kind of scoffed at by a lot of American critics.
They're playing a computer.
This isn't even music kind of thing.
Yeah.
So do you want to talk a little bit about some of the tracks?
Yeah, I can talk about the ones that struck me the most.
So I guess just starting off with, let's go with their first single, Dreaming of Me.
It's not, there's not, it's just 60s pop, you know?
Yeah.
You hear that a lot, actually, in their 50s bebop or something.
It's predictable.
The chord progressions are very 1-4-5 or 4-5-1.
And that's another thing, too, is that it's very fast-paced and very staccato.
And I think that might be more Vince's MO.
Uh, than, than Martin's, which is more legato and, um, uh, uh, downer, you know, it's, uh, it's not fast, it's slower.
Um, but so, yeah, if you start with a track like Dreaming of Me, I think the lyrics are, uh, what is it?
Light switch, man switch.
Light switch, man switch.
Film was broken only then.
All the night, views tomorrow.
Dancing with a distant friend.
Filming and screening.
I picture the scene.
Filming and dreaming.
Dreaming of me.
Dreaming of me.
Dreaming of you and dreaming of me, it doesn't fully grab me.
Yeah, I mean, there's a question about whether the lyrics make any sense at all.
Light switch, man switch, film was broken only then, all the night, views tomorrow, dancing with a distant friend, filming and screening, I picture the scene filming and dreaming, dreaming of me.
Yeah, there's something there.
I think it's kind of interesting.
This is also from Stripped.
So, the ambiguity of Vincent Clark's primitive lyrics were unintentionally exposed when, in late 1981, Smash Hits published the rhyming couplet, fused and saw a face before, like association whore.
from Dreaming of Me and views that saw a face before like Association Hall, thereby dramatically altering their meaning.
I never understood what Vince was writing about.
Often the grammar was a mystery to me, let alone the meaning.
Vince Clark, there was no meaning in the songs at all.
Nothing.
They were very stupid lyrics, you know.
I'm not sure I totally agree with him, though.
Some of the lyrics are interesting and catchy.
I mean, Just Can't Get Enough is catchy enough.
Photographic is an interesting kind of objective song about an object.
A white house, a white room, the program of today.
Lights on, switch on, your eyes are far away.
The map represents you, and the tape is your voice.
Follow all along you till you recognize the choice.
Now, I don't know what the last one means, but the map represents you and the tape is your voice.
To be honest, seems kind of like a postmodern comment on simulation, so to speak.
Like, the tape is your voice.
The map represents you.
It's a little Baudrillard.
Now, you know, whatever.
But I think that...
actually is pretty interesting.
Follow all along you till you recognise the choice.
I take pictures.
Photographic pictures.
Bright lights.
Even if you go to the song that follows after, which I like actually a lot.
I don't think it was...
I know it was not ever a single.
I don't know if they've ever performed this, you know, in the last 30 years.
Maybe they should.
Tora, Tora, Tora.
But they were raining from the sky, exploding in my heart.
Is this a love in disguise or just a form of modern art?
So Tora, Tora, Tora is a call sign.
Of the Japanese who invaded or bombed Pearl Harbor.
From the skies, you could almost hear the cry, Tora, Tora, Tora.
In the town, they were going down, Tora, Tora, Tora.
And then there's this very curious, and you can get to this kind of like creepy Halloween element to Martin Gore.
I had a nightmare only yesterday.
You played a skeleton.
You took my love, then died that day.
I played an American.
So I don't even know what he's saying there exactly.
It's just like images of a skeleton woman.
It's all a dream, basically.
But it's a dream of Pearl Harbor.
And then he's saying, I played an American.
And then he repeats that.
I played an American I played an
American I played an American I don't know.
I like it, actually.
And I like the fact that you can't quite figure it out, but you know that it's about something, and there's something there, and it's a little bit of a puzzle, like the Tora, Tora, Tora, and the bombs falling in the sky.
But I actually think it's cool, and it kind of reminds me of Kraftwerk-esque objectivism.
You know, like this no emotion, you know, blunt descriptions of things.
I think that's in a little bit of irony thrown in.
I like it actually.
I like it actually.
Take care.
That's funny because I would have said that there is more emotion in this, in Tora Tora Tora than in any of the other songs written by Vince.
As far as, I feel like this is the warmest one of all.
I mean, it's hard because they're all, you know, quantized and perfectly in sync.
But, I mean, the first thing I noticed...
About this song is, it's Martin's only song, right?
And his first song is about death.
You know, I mean, if Martin writes about death, then maybe you could say that Vince writes about, like, rebirth.
He just writes about happy things.
I mean, I'm trying to squeeze that into Eastern terms, but...
Yeah.
That seems to be what he writes about.
Yeah.
But when he says, I had a nightmare only yesterday.
You played a skeleton.
You took my love and died that day.
I played an American.
I'm kind of thinking, oh, it sounds like, you know, he died and or she died.
But it might be like a death of a personality.
I mean, that's kind of what I'm trying to get out of it.
But also, as far as the music of Tora Tora, I mean, it just comes in with that bang.
And it's just, there's something almost, to me, almost rock and roll, almost.
But it's just serious, you know, with that kind of minor sound, which most of Vince's songs are not minor at all.
And the chord progression, if I have it correctly, is very, I mean, it's D minor for the The chorus is D minor to B flat to E flat to D minor, so you're getting that kind of tension between the D and the E flat in the chorus, which is...
Semi-tone, yeah.
Yeah, it's only a semi-tone away, and basically if you play with that dissonance...
Which Martin certainly does as a songwriter, you get a lot of the times a darker, more, when are we ever going to resolve this?
And with Vince's songs, it's always, there's easy resolution.
But yeah, I mean, that is probably my favorite.
Well, I can't say that, but it might be my second favorite on the album.
What is your favorite?
It would have to be, what is it called?
Any Second Now.
Martin sings it, but Vince wrote it.
And the moment on the road slips away.
I actually think those lyrics are really good.
Vivid pictures like a wall that's standing empty And the nights are still *music* Such a small affair We'll have someone closing like the nightclub door Here again and when you speak I watch you move away and seem so
sure Without getting too personal, you know a person, a female, that that song reminds you of when listening to it.
I think it's a very, very simple song.
I believe it's just a few chords and I think great lyrics.
It's able to have the electronic, quantized feel, but also have that kind of soul to it.
I think that is my favorite.
What about you?
Yeah, I really like the B-side, basically, or side two.
Photographic, going to Tora Tora Tora, and yeah, ending up with Any Second Now.
It's a funny thing.
Maybe it's just I've heard them a million times, but I'm less interested in Just Can't Get Enough or Dreaming of Me or New Life.
I mean, I do like those songs, but I'm just much more interested in the ones that were not singles, basically, and they're not trying to sell you a single or get on the radio.
And yeah, I really like that whole photographic moving into...
It kind of like...
What is it?
Sgt. Pepper style kind of coast into the next track.
And I like that quite a bit.
Puppets is also a great song.
I like that.
It's just so weird.
You know, I'm in control.
Yeah, it's great.
Thank you.
Understand what I'm trying to say.
I'll be your operator, baby.
I'm in control.
I'll be your operator.
I like all the non-singles.
Yeah.
But Puppets is a, it's kind of proto master and servant, you know?
Yeah, definitely.
I'll be an operator, baby.
I'm in control.
And that's, you know, I think that's something with, if you compare Vince and Martin, Martin's, or Vince's lyrics are subvert, I'm sorry, suggestive, but not subversive.
Whereas Martin's are both.
I mean, he goes all the way to the darkest of places.
As he said before, though he still offers light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
I wanted to ask you if, just because this is the first album, if the name Depeche Mode has any, if you think it has any significance.
Well, I mean, I think it means fast fashion.
So it's French, obviously.
None of them spoke French.
And supposedly Martin, or Dave Gahan saw it on a magazine, a fashion magazine or something?
I, you know, it's basically, it's the best translation, like a non-literal translation would be like the latest fad.
Or fast fashion, like, you know, I don't know, ready to wear.
I think those are the connotations that I have.
So it's evoking a kind of poppy 80s, you know, GQ or Vogue magazine thing.
And it's interesting because I...
I think it will have different connotations.
I mean, if you listen to the singles from this album, it's like, oh yeah, Depeche Mode kind of makes sense, although it is a bit pretentious.
So is Constitution of Sound.
But nothing is as bad as Martin Gore's first band, Norman and the Worms, I believe.
Extremely quirky.
But you could also take it the mode as well.
I think it might have a...
A connotation of being a sequencer or a synthesized beat, like a mode in that sense.
But I'm kind of being almost like Jungian here.
I don't think that was necessarily intended.
And I think that's kind of the beauty of...
Of it, too, is that it is kind of a Dada, throwaway kind of title, to call it yourself Depeche Mode.
But, I mean, if it is fast fashion or hurried fashion, I think this album sounds like Depeche Mode in the translation, because all of the tracks are, I think the average is 140 BPM,
which is definitely a danceable pace, but I mean, I'm trying to think of a faster type of maybe house music or some kind of jazz would average at that 140 BPM.
You feel the youth.
I've also heard it translated as fashion update.
It's not necessarily a fashion update.
You could interpret that as more like a musical update, because they certainly were.
No one sounds like them.
You know when it's Depeche Mode.
Now, from this album, really, that interpretation wouldn't necessarily fit, because it is, in a lot of ways, standard pop.
But I was just curious what you thought about the name.
Well, I think another connotation to it...
Which is worth mentioning, is this continental connotation.
So, Depeche Mode has always been most popular in Germany.
If they have a fan base, it's there.
It's on the continent.
And it's not in England.
They obviously have fans in the United States, but it's never a...
It's not a U.S. rock band.
I think it's interesting that they went away from something that sounds very English.
I think it's very interesting that they went against that.
And maybe kind of telling and prophetic in many ways.
That they were going to be more popular with people who don't even speak English as their first language at least.
And then very popular in the East.
Yeah.
Other side of the Berlin Wall.
Yes.
This is very interesting.
Oh, that's what I was going to ask, though.
Were there any tracks that you, I don't know, just found bad or almost unlistenable?
I would say Big Muff is pretty cringe.
But the kind of like...
Is it Boy Say Go, where he was like, you know, P-R-E-T-T-Y.
Pretty Boy, what's your name?
Oh, what's your name is Pretty Boy.
Yeah, it definitely does.
I mean, these are Vince Clark sounds.
Vince Clark is apparently not gay, although Erasure is a very gay band.
I mean, it's hard to listen to those and not think of them as gay songs.
And also just kind of frivolous gay songs like, you know, Who's This Pretty Boy walking around Basildon or whatever.
I mean, it's just a bit cringe.
Hey, you're such a pretty boy.
You're so pretty.
Music.
And not great.
Not songs I really want to listen to.
Again, I like...
Many of the songs I'll turn on, I really like.
Puppets.
You know, Tora, Tora, Tora.
There's some of them that I really do genuinely like.
But I would say those don't.
Those are a bit cringe.
And then the...
It's kind of fun and almost...
I mean, I guess I joked that it was like the soundtrack to a Soviet knockoff of an American movie or something.
But there's something kind of fun about it.
But the idea of if it weren't written by Martin Gore, the idea of listening to that is not happening.
I think...
What's your name?
I think that is actually...
Like you said, it's kind of fun in a 60s pop kind of way.
I feel like I would have heard the Beatles sing that in like 62 or 63 or something.
Yeah, definitely.
But yeah, it sounds gay in the original sense.
Kind of...
Frivolous or fun with a tinge of mischief or whatever.
It sounds like that.
And it also sounds actually gay and it also sounds lame.
In all senses of the word gay, yes.
It's really gay.
This should come as no surprise.
I'm definitely not really an Erasure fan.
I think there's one or two songs.
It's just, yeah.
It's very major key, as is, you know, all of Vince's stuff, but I don't find it interesting.
It's, yeah.
In the song, Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead.
Yes.
It's a bizarre title for that song.
Yeah.
That was a bad thing to type into Google.
But, yeah, I mean...
It doesn't sound...
I thought, okay, for sure, Martin wrote that song, right?
And it's about, like, literally wishing you were dead.
Nope, it's just...
New day, turn away, wipe away the tear.
New night, feel all right, knowing that you are here.
Yeah, it's not great.
New sound all around, you can hear it too.
Getting hot will never stop, just for me and you.
Playing on my radio and saying that you had to go.
It's not good.
But it doesn't even say, you know...
No, it's just a bizarre title for a song.
And the actual sound, like the opening, is kind of like, yeah, it's just goofy.
There's a lot of cringe going on.
Yeah, it's flawed, but it, you know, it got them started.
They were...
Perceived as a pop act.
And judging by their singles, that makes a lot of sense.
Particularly Just Can't Get Enough.
Which is abided as a song.
You hear that at parties, at best of the 80s soundtrack albums.
You hear it in movies sometimes.
There's something that they were able to evoke with that song.
That really speaks to the time.
And that's, you know, interesting.
But that's how they were perceived.
I don't think, you know, they had no right to be pretentious in a way.
I mean, you have these kids out of nowhere, out of the burbs.
You know, the futuristic English version of the burbs doing this.
You know, we can look back on this album now and kind of project Later things onto it.
But if you were listening to it, I don't think you would ever imagine, first off, that they would sell out stadiums and write anthems and be a 40-year project with a huge fan base.
I don't think you would ever imagine that they would write Enjoy the Silence, Master and Servant, the Momenti Mori album, Precious.
You do not...
It's hard to imagine them writing those songs listening to this album.
Yeah, they're a high school boy band, basically.
But very, very, very good.
Good enough to chart number 57. I think that's what their first single was, it charted 57, which they were just happy that it charted at all.
But yeah, they're...
I think that if they were to have carried on with Vince, that they would have had a higher peak, but also a quicker fall or decline, because all these songs are dance songs.
They feel like London, 1980.
Not necessarily like cocaine, but they feel like...
Fun.
And yeah, I just don't think that there's nothing in Vince's lyrics that are going to create a cult.
You can't say, oh, I'm a really devoted Erasure fan like you can say I'm a really devoted Depeche fan.
Right.
I think that's one of...
They slowly just built and built and built and then people caught on.
I mean, even in America, people caught on and it was more linear, their progression was.
And then for, like I said, if Vince would have wrote, I think it would have been exponential and then increase and then exponential kind of decline.
He probably would have dumped them later and done some other project as well.
Yeah.
I do have a question.
Do you rank this as dead last for them?
Oh, um...
I guess we could do a kind of ultimate rating at some point.
Would you rank it...
Would you...
Would you rank it below Broken Frame?
Would you rank it below...
You would.
Okay, interesting.
Certainly.
Yeah, I enjoyed Broken Frame.
Actually...
Really played the hell out of that when I first heard it.
Very interesting.
That's a lot of people's Dead Last Depeche album.
But yeah.
And even some albums like Spirit might not be terribly high, although I don't know.
I'll need to give it a listen.
Would you rank it below Exciter?
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Construction Time, again, is fairly interesting, and it's got a totally classic song in it.
Everything counts.
Although, there's a lot of filler in that album.
Okay, I like it a lot, but yeah, relatively speaking, sure.
I'd say middle of the road for them.
That's what Construction Time is for me.
Maybe seven or eight.
But yeah, I think for me Dead Last would be Sounds of the Universe.
I still don't like Wrong.
But yeah, and then I'd have to re-listen to Delta Machine because you said that you You really liked it, or at least you did like it?
No, I do like it, yeah.
It's definitely not...
I like Memento Mori actually a lot more than...
Certainly a lot more than Sounds of the Universe and more than Spirit as well.
Although I kind of like Spirit.
So I think this was actually a really good project for them.
But I don't know.
It's hard.
It's just such a piece.
It's like...
It's like historically relevant or something.
In the words of Indiana Jones, it belongs in a museum.
It's like you can't get away from it.
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