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Feb. 21, 2024 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
02:02:21
Depeche Mode: Music For The Masses

Richard Spencer and Andrew Jensen review Depeche Mode’s sixth studio album, Music for the Masses (1987).ReferencesDepeche Mode, “Never Let Me Down Again,” Music For the Masses (1987)DM, “Pimpf,” MFTMDM, “Agent Orange” (1987)DM, “Enjoy the Silence” reducedDM, “Stangelove ’88” (1988)Led Zeppelin, “When the Levee Breaks,” Led Zeppelin IV (1971)3rd Base, “Wordz of Wisdom,” The Cactus Album (1989)DM, “Things You Said” (live),” 101 (1988)DM, “Strangelove,” 101DM, “Strangelove,” MFTMDM, “Question of Time” (live),” 101DM, “Little 15,” MFTMDM, “Behind the Wheel,” MFTMKraftwerk, “Autobahn,” Autobahn (1974)Bobby Troupe, “Route 66” (1946)Rollingstones, “Route 66,” The Rolling Stones (1964)DM, “Route 66” (1987)DM, “Route 66 (Beatmaster mix)” (1987)DM, “Pleasure Little Treasure” (live), 101DM, “I want you now,” MFTMDM, “To Have and to Hold,” MFTMDM, “To Have and to Hold” (Spanish Taster)DM, “Sacred,” MFTMDM “Nothing,” MFTMDM, “Just Can’t Get Enough (live),” 101DM, “Everything Counts (live),” 101 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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Thank you.
So a lot of people will say that this is Depeche Mode's best album.
Now, I am a partisan for Black Celebration.
Probably a lot of people would immediately answer Violator to what is Depeche Mode's best album.
Maybe some might even say Songs of Faith and Devotion.
We'll get to those soon.
I think this definitely is in the running.
And I think a lot of things came to a head with this album.
Aesthetically, visually, even.
And I think it might very well be their best.
And it's also that point where they developed a...
For Speak and Spell.
They developed a fan base among Basildon, many of those people probably being their personal acquaintances.
But this was a point where they developed a massive fan base in Europe, still outside of England for the most part.
They developed a fan base in the United States.
This was the album that launched the concert in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl, which I actually just learned hadn't hosted a music event for some time.
Opening act was OMD, so it was almost like it came full circle.
The people who inspired Depeche Mode were the opening act.
I don't think Depeche Mode has ever been On the level of the Beatles, Taylor Swift, any just household name, etc.
They're still an alternative band, but their cult following had grown to such a point that...
They were on the banks of the mainstream, but effectively a mainstream band.
They probably had a larger, more fanatical fan base than mainstream acts.
They aren't really charting that high.
I mean, I remember I was reading actually the stripped biography and you get some charts at 17 and then collapses and so on.
I think the album might have charted it at 9. It charted it at 2 in Germany.
So there's obviously that.
Theme we're talking about where they're speaking to Central Europe apparently more than they're speaking to Brits and Americans.
But at the same time, there's some of these funny news reports from the 80s that are on YouTube of the album selling out in five minutes and people ransacking the store and just having this huge concert in the Rose Bowl.
This is when it came together in the sense that they're certainly not going away, which might have been a danger with a broken frame.
They are confident in their new sound, which we saw with some great reward.
But they're now putting out albums where I would say that every single track...
Is really good.
Really great.
Every single one is a classic.
They are selling out stadiums.
They have a kind of repertoire of anthem-like songs that people are singing together tens of thousands loudly before the band.
With this album, they're going more towards guitars.
They're going more towards Elvis.
Leisure, Little Treasure, which...
Fascinatingly, it's a B-side, and it's probably, you know, top 10, maybe top 20 Depechewood classics, is an Elvis song, but an Elvis song with a twist.
And I just, this, so you hear a lot of Violator in this album.
You hear a lot of certainly some great reward.
They've just mastered the industrial sound to a point that they're very confident with it.
And also, you have this, you know, commie, fash wave aesthetic of, first off, music for the masses, which I think was a bit jokey,
the title, because...
The, you know, inside joke is that there are never going to be music for the masses.
They have this fan base and, you know, they don't really chart that well, etc.
But this is, it's kind of a joke about their unpopularity in some ways.
But it's a just full embrace of 20th century totalitarianism as an aesthetic.
Red speakers, and I'll have some quotes on this.
As we get into this, I mean, I think it's not my number one album, but I think in terms of everything coming together, firing on all cylinders,
becoming a classic band, it
here that the full achievement comes to fruition.
We're flying high, we're watching the world pass the spark.
Never want to come down, never want to put money back down on the ground.
you you
So what do you think?
Yeah, I think that I think sonically, musically, this is a huge step up.
I think that with this album, Depeche Mode was finally able to grab America where they might have lost them in 1986 with Black Celebration.
As good of an album as that is, it's not as commercial as this one.
And I think I mentioned this on our Black Celebration podcast that it didn't...
I think it was in the 70s.
The album itself charted in the 70s in America, in the year-end Billboard charts.
It's probably their most accessible album since Speak and Spell or Some Great Reward.
I think those two are very accessible.
I think this album is very accessible.
Although Music for the Masses was a joke for the band, it actually is kind of Music for the Masses.
In a lot of ways, at least, especially with the singles.
I think the album has a really good balance, just like Some Great Reward had a really good balance of darkness and light, sadness and triumph.
And I think it is for a good reason that it's often considered their best album.
In a lot of ways, it is their peak.
They still haven't.
Played to a bigger show than the 101 gig in Pasadena, where I think they played to 60,000, over 60,000 people.
And as far as I remember that gig, I think it was the Eagles who had played there last or something, before them, I'm saying.
Yeah. And it's kind of a, I think it's a summary of their albums thus far.
So I think it has the accessibility of Speak and Spell.
The moodiness of A Broken Frame, the toughness of Construction Time.
Again, the sound has really improved.
It's a louder album than, say, Black Celebration was.
And the anthemic qualities of Some Great Reward are there in this album.
And I think the edginess of Black Celebration is also there in this album.
I think it's a total achievement.
Yes. Also, I would...
Also mentioned just the sonic quality, and I guess this is with mixing.
So they mixed this in a Scandinavian studio.
They actually had a new producer named Dave Bascom.
And one thing I have to say, I mean, I am a fan of Black Celebration, and I probably will almost just to be a contrarian, just pick that as their best album.
But it sounds actually quite bad.
And this might...
I mean, I'm not necessarily saying this is the best mixed or just the best sampled, the best sonically booming album necessarily, but this sounds cinematic and big.
And all of the synthesizer...
Sounds are really well chosen and really accessible.
Whereas there are some great songs on Some Great Reward, for instance, or Black Celebration, that just sound muddy and strange.
They almost sound like a demo track to be critical of them.
Whereas this is totally polished.
And I think that cinematic Quality is worth dwelling on.
One of my favorite songs, Pimp, it does seem almost like a soundtrack to a Christopher Nolan action movie or something.
There are a lot of B-side remixes, but the Spanish taster is really interesting.
But with the pimp as well, they're just building and building.
It's the same basic idea repeated over and over again, but they're just building and building and just putting new layers on layers to this point that it's bombastic and operatic.
guitar solo
We can think back to some construction time again.
Songs where I think I charitably called them kind of like an art song.
These attempts to do something that's kind of like an interesting idea but is just really kind of strains listenability here and there.
With this, they're just completely confident where they know they can do, say, an instrumental track like Pimp for Agent Orange or some other things.
And they can just make it really great.
And again, it sounds like a movie soundtrack.
I think I would say the same thing for Strangelove as well.
The improvement with this album is really It's unmeasurable.
I mean, I can't put it more strongly just in terms of an artifact of something that's perfect, something that you don't want to change anything, something that never really strains the ear or anything like that.
it is music for the masses.
*Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* *Dramatic
music* Definitely.
I think what draws me to the album is the fact that, like I said, it's a summary.
They've got the synth pop, they've got the industrial, and now they're going into a more guitar-laden rock influence, which definitely comes to the fore in a song like Pleasure, Little Treasure with the guitar riffs on there.
And I think at the time the band was trying to shy away.
From the guitar influence and they certainly were trying to shy away from using guitars period before just because music in general at the time had been so guitar dominated.
And I think that it's the use of synthesizers and using guitars through synthesizers that helps to really shape the sound.
As long as we're talking about sound, I kind of want to talk about the recording of this album because I was listening to some interviews with their producer Dave Bascom.
So one of the things that he said during this time was he was striving to make the band a little bit less industrial, a bit less construction time again.
A little bit louder and a little bit more rock-driven.
And he admits that he was kind of hands-off, and he said, really, the band produced the album.
And more to the point that Alan was really the driving force of the band.
I read that as well.
I think Alan said it was the most self-produced album.
Yeah, he corroborated what you're just saying, yes.
And according to Bascom, he was the driving force, the workhorse, the craftsman, as the lore goes.
And yeah, like I said, he admitted that he was a little bit more of an engineer in Depeche Mode.
It kind of produced it.
He said he would spend hours or whatever with Alan in the studio, just as far as crafting the individual sounds.
And I think this...
Where Alan is staying in the studio and really crafting a lot of the sounds starts on some great reward.
There's a little bit in there where the Basildon 3 had gone off on vacation and Alan, Gareth, and Daniel had finished producing it.
And I think you could tell in an interview that Alan was a little bit resentful for that because he's bearing the brunt of it.
But what really, I think, begins here is Martin's coming up with the demo, Alan taking it home and adding new sounds, rearranging something, taking stuff out.
I mean, even to the point where Dave Bascom was saying, like, a lot of Martin's, some of Martin's ideas would be ruthlessly edited or deleted, taken out, rearranged, whatever.
Alan had the vision.
I'm not saying this is his album, definitely not, but he definitely had the vision as the sort of engineer type.
Yeah, I don't doubt it, actually.
I think, you know, look, they're all coming into their own.
Martin is coming into his own as a songwriter.
I don't think any of these songs are, like, I would describe as quirky.
Which I would use that adjective with a lot of Martin Gore numbers.
These are more mature, and I look forward to getting into some of the lyrics as well and what they're about.
Dave, you know, Vince Clark was unhappy with Dave, basically.
He has a very limited vocal range.
And, you know, with Vince Clark, when he forms other bands, Yaz or Yazoo, you have this contralto woman, which is kind of a really weird voice in a way.
It kind of almost sounds like a man's voice.
And then you have, with Erasure, a tenor voice, very high singing.
So he's obviously going for something that Dave could not fulfill.
But Dave, as you get older, you know, you...
I don't know.
Your body fills out.
You become more resonant.
You're just a better singer.
I think this is the first, you know, maybe not the first, but this is where Dave sounds like a mature adult.
He's a clear baritone, and you're getting a lot of Elvis.
And he's starting to lean in to the Elvis sound of his voice.
And I think it's kind of like you have to play to your strength.
You might not even peg him as a baritone with Speak and Spell because he's so young that it doesn't quite sound like that.
Once we get into the late 80s and afterward, this is a lower male voice that really fits well with...
The clanging guitar, the kind of low notes and crooning or whatever you want to say it, that made Elvis famous.
And they're kind of leaning into that where I don't think they were before.
And so I think this is, again, they're in their late 20s.
They've been around.
They've survived.
Whereas most bands don't.
They have a fanatical fan base, and they're just playing to their strengths.
And kind of moving into this almost ironic take on Americana or American rock and roll, Elvis, the blues.
This is also where they're starting to feel confident enough to kind of meld that with electronic music, which is two things that are seemingly...
Definitely. I think that the only criticism I have of this sound of the album is that a song like Strange Love does kind of sound dated with the reverb.
I guess all of these big cinematic or anthemic qualities that you're talking about with the sound, in a way...
Maybe it didn't bite him in the ass in a sense, but it does sound like 1987-88.
But it's still, nevertheless, a great album with great lyrics.
But that's about the only criticism I have.
As far as Dave's voice is concerned, he has that...
If you listen to his voice isolated, which they have, for example, Enjoy the Silence, they have...
I've heard isolated tracks.
And you can't really hear how much vibrato he has, but it's like super fast and it's super subtle that honestly I've not really heard on many singers getting it that subtle.
I don't even think it's on purpose.
I just think it's something that I overlooked initially when listening to Depeche Mode because...
When I started listening to Depeche Mode, I had that kind of same Vince Clark attitude about Dave's voice.
Well, it's limited, it's only a baritone, but I guess a way to put it is that it's rich.
And it's only gotten richer, actually, with age.
Yeah. Words like violence break the silence Come crashing in into my little world Painful to me, pierced right through me Can't you understand,
oh, my little girl All I ever wanted
I don't think any of this works with the tenor, actually.
I don't think it works with the female, definitely.
There's no Depeche Mode without that sound.
With the low voice that's a little bit gruff and tough and a little bit barky sometimes, but also is rich and deep.
That's Depeche Mode sound.
And it does not work.
No one else can do that.
And, you know, again, it's just these weird...
I shouldn't say weird, but just amazing coincidences of these people...
coming together haphazardly forming a band and the stars aligning or, you know, the molecules combining into something new.
Strange lives and strange love.
Stranger, that's how my love goes.
Stranger, will you give it to me?
Will you take the pain?
I will give to you again and again.
Will you return?
Stranger
So, Never Let Me Down Again is the opening number.
Also very, it's not the first single.
The first single is Strangelove, and the single was recorded in Paris, as was the music video, which is very cool.
Anton Corbin, black and white, you're clearly in Paris.
The shot of the Eiffel Tower, there's this intriguing woman that Dave is chasing, and it's very fashionable, very 80s, but also kind of timeless as well.
This is no longer a kind of teeny bopper band.
This is an interesting, mature band.
But the opening number is Never Let Me Down Again, and it was also a single that did not do very well.
But I would say Never Let Me Down Again because of the anthem quality, the just driving force of the quality of the chorus and everything.
It has probably been played at every single concert since.
It is a great song and also an intriguing song, if I'm going to use that word.
eyebrow-raising song is maybe a better adjective when it comes to the lyrics.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
I hope he never lets me down again.
He knows where he's taking me, taking me where I want to be.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
We'll be right back.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
I hope he never lets me down again.
He knows where he's taking me, taking me where I want to be.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
I hope he never lets me down again.
Promises me I'm as safe as houses as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers.
I hope he never lets me down again.
When you listen to the chorus of we're flying high, we're watching the world pass us by, you get this sense of it's an acid trip or something like that.
And you're above yourself, like floating, looking down on yourself in a dream or something like that.
I never want to come down again.
What do you come down from?
You come down from a high.
I never want to put my feet back down on the ground.
But there's just...
I'm taking a ride with my best friend.
There's this...
Even the...
He promises me we'll be as safe as houses as long as I remember he's wearing the trousers.
You can interpret that lyric in terms of drug use.
You can also interpret it as homoerotic and strangely homoerotic.
I don't...
It's the...
I hope he never lets me down again.
Well, what does that mean?
Does that mean getting let down from a high, or is it being disappointed or betrayed?
You know, remember who's wearing the trousers.
That's a cliche about...
I think in the United States we say, remember who wears the pants in that family.
It means who's in charge.
In the context of taking a ride with your best friend, it also just your mind goes to this is about something else.
So I don't even know quite what to say about it.
I mean, I wonder if this is a nut that you can't quite crack in the sense that it's not like Precious, which is about a child of divorce.
And, you know, you don't really know that on the surface.
But once you just dig down a little bit, you feel it.
This one, I don't know.
You know, drug use and a homosexual experience.
I don't know if that's what it's about.
I mean, I don't want to go here, but Martin did it for me.
I think that when you said, never let me down again, like, your best friend's letting you down, or quote-unquote best friend.
Right. Is the best friend a drug?
You know, it's like, what do they call Dr. Feelgood?
Or, you know, I want to take another hit from my best friend.
It's almost like something you would say about it.
That's there, but then it's more literally your best friend, or a kind of ironic best friend.
You know, in a homosexual sense.
I don't know.
But go on.
Sorry I interrupted you.
It's okay.
I mean, the worst take that I can come up with is that it might be about impotence, like literally letting someone down.
That is the worst take.
Yeah, well, I mean, he said these lyrics.
But yeah, honestly, I don't really think it's...
Yeah, there's definitely some hints of gayness with who's wearing the trousers.
Lyric. But I really do kind of think it is like a drug song.
Like, Never Let Me Down.
You're trying to get high.
I think, you know, obviously the Flying High.
I think it might be their first drug song.
See the stars, they're shining bright.
Why did it take them six albums to get to their first drug song?
Isn't that a bit strange?
Maybe. Yeah, I'm glad in a way.
I think drug songs should be kind of boring.
But this is so poetic that it's more than a drug song.
And it kind of puts you in that mood of flying and seeing the stars.
They're shining bright.
Everything's all right tonight.
It's more than that.
You know, you could say it's like a poetic description of a dream.
Music. Music.
I was just going to say, I think one of the interesting things with this song is that the drums were sampled from When the Lead Be Breaks by Led Zeppelin.
And Dave Bascom admitted that.
And you can tell it's got that compression and reverb on these big, giant snares that often epitomize drum sounds in the 80s.
But then the opening guitar riff was later sampled by this rap group, the third bass.
The band was appreciative of it, actually.
They weren't like a lot.
I mean, they were sampling themselves.
So it's not like they could be hypocritical about it.
But. So, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
How about the news?
Hard as hard as Chinese arithmetic, avant-garde, not a heretic.
Pick out a right round, stick it in my cranium.
Nice elementary like uranium, flowing joints, blowing like a cool...
They had the big orchestral samples, too, as well.
Yes, it's just operatic at some point, or cinematic, whatever you want to say.
It's like the music to an action movie or something, or like an alien invasion.
They're just going completely big in what they're doing, and it takes confidence to pull that off.
Yeah, it's not my favorite song, but I understand why it's a classic and why it's just constantly played.
Dave, according to this one documentary, and this is also in stripped, is that he started waving his hands in this almost 45-degree angle to the crowd, Ed Pasadena and the Rose Bowl, and everyone just started doing it with him in unison.
He's continued to do that at every concert that I've ever attended, so he's been doing this for 30 years, and it still works.
Yeah, it's an amazing song.
Yeah, you gotta wave your hands to this song.
I mean, at both concerts when they played it, in unison, everybody's waving their hands, and it's just such a great...
Energetic song.
It almost can't be not played live.
Like it has to be played live from them.
heard it from my friends
about the things you said.
I heard it from my friends about the things you said But they know me better than that
They know me better than that They know my weaknesses They know my weaknesses I never do it from my friends I never
do it from my friends
And then we go to Things You Said.
I'm just kind of going in order on this one, but it's almost like every song is worth dwelling on.
You know, it's almost on some level a song that you could imagine Taylor Swift singing.
Like, I heard it from my friends about the things you...
Like, it's a very almost high school, like, sentiment.
And... But it's done in this interesting way.
This is a song sung by Martin Gore.
It has this minimalist bass line.
And I think in that sense, it really works.
Yeah, it's also like a really eerie sounding with the voices.
Basically going from like that C minor to A flat and playing with that G to A flat semi-tone.
And I mean, yeah, it's just an awesome, great melody with the...
But yeah, the lyrics are a little bit, I don't know, maybe on the nose.
But the sound, everything just works.
For this song.
I even like the fact that the kick, which is usually on one and three, is on two and four, so it's like nothing, two, and then it's hard to describe.
That kind of rhythm is often used in reggae.
Usually you'll hear a snare on two and four, but on this it's nothing on one and three, and on the two and four is the kick.
But yeah, and it was the 101 version of this is...
It's basically just Martin and Alan playing.
101 has got to be the best live album ever produced.
I obviously say that as a Depeche Mode fan, but the capturing of the musical quality is great.
And then there's just enough crowd noise.
Where you know it's live and you know it's real.
And I don't know.
I mean, it's...
And again, it's this album, basically, that makes up most of the music.
And, you know, I don't know what to say.
I don't know of an album, a live album, that reaches this quality.
It almost sounds like one album because all of their music is now...
It's all coming together.
And so, you know, Shake the Disease fits in here.
Just Can't Get Enough fits in.
Even though it's, you know, written by Vince Clark and it's totally kind of out of character of what they're playing.
It's really an amazing album.
Yeah. I'd have to think about that.
Best live album.
But this is certainly the most played live album that I've ever played, without a doubt.
I mean, because it just has.
all the best the best hits on it me
out of reach i give in to sin because i like to practice what i preach i'm not trying to say i'm holding all my weight i'm always willing to
hurt and hope it's something to teach oh and i'll make it all the part i'll make it punch my heart come
on now
So, Strange Love seems to be riffing on a theme.
And, you know, even if we go back to Never Let Me Down Again, there is this theme which I think recurs throughout the album of letting go.
And I don't know if they had pursued that in some of their earlier work of...
I'll remember who's wearing the trousers, or you're behind the wheel, or other things like that.
I think that's kind of a macro theme that you see in other different songs.
But Strangelove seems to be, on the theme, it's a kind of take on Master and Servant, which came from Some Great Reward.
It doesn't necessarily have to be about S&M, but that's kind of where the mind goes, particularly knowing them.
And then the pain, will you return it?
I'll say it again, pain.
I won't say it again.
This notion of a relationship based on pain exchange is when essentially Martin Gore.
But as you say as well, it's an interesting song in the sense that it is kind of a synth pop song with a real infectious...
Melody, although this one in the minor, you know...
So it has that synth-pop quality to it.
It's a pop song.
It's a song you would expect on MTV or something like that in the late 80s.
But I don't think it also...
You said...
I guess you were hinting it's maybe a little bit dated.
Sure. But I don't think it is...
That much.
It kind of is a mature...
It's not just an anecdotal kind of fun piece like Just Can't Get Enough, which occurs in movies quite a bit and almost always ironically.
I actually saw this last night.
This was thrown up on my YouTube feed that it was actually in the Cocaine Bear movie, which I haven't seen, but it's just this like...
Ridiculous, bloody horror film.
And they, of course, go to...
Just can't get enough cocaine in a bear that's murdering everyone.
But that is a song that's...
It's a kind of like anecdote of the 80s.
It's a song you heard in high school or something like that.
You're older than I am, even.
This... This is like that.
It's a synth-pop song, no question.
But I think it's more than that.
And then also, there's that edge to it where it's not just about fun and love.
It's about strange love in the sense of something taboo, something weird, something about where you give pain to one another.
It's a, you know, typically Martin Gore way of writing a love song, where as opposed to singing about love, you sing about pain.
Yeah, it's a classic.
Absolutely. You know, there are two versions of this.
There's the album version that also had a video that was in color that came out in 87, and then there's the 88 single version.
And there was an Alan and Martin clash on which one they preferred for the album.
And Alan preferred the version that came out on the album in 87 because it sounds a little bit more eerie.
It opens up with like that eerie kind of looping sound.
Music
Whereas the 88 version opens up with the drums and the big riff in E minor.
lives and strange love, strange lives.
The bassline's a little bit busier.
The 88 single version is just poppier is all.
But I don't know that they've ever played the 88 single.
Every time I've seen them play live, like on 101, they're playing the album version.
But yeah, obviously I love the album, so I'm not saying it's super dated sounding, but I could guess that it was from the 80s.
As far as the lyrics are concerned on this one, you know, this one was, it's actually kind of puzzling to me because it's definitely about relationships.
It might be about cheating, certainly about the highs and lows.
But yeah, I don't know how necessarily deep I could penetrate into this one.
And maybe that's the point.
Well, I think it's already leaning towards...
A song...
I did this before.
What do you think is my favorite song from this album?
And remember, I'm a contrarian.
I always want to shock people.
Pimp is your guess.
Or Little Fifteen.
Close. I like that one as well.
To Have and To Hold.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. But it's leaning towards there again.
Yes, it's in a minor mode.
And so it's already a little bit different than synth pop.
But it's also, I mean, it's singing about giving pain to one another, but then it also is getting into this...
To return to something I've been talking about a lot on this podcast, this deeply Protestant notion of depravity.
And so he's singing about his own crimes, which are unforgivable.
And it's not just about love of like, oh, I love these, you know.
These girls with the long, long legs or something.
It's singing about, I give in to sin.
And that's the only way to make life livable.
But he's seeking redemption.
And again, I think all of the guilt-ridden curviness that is quintessentially Martin Gore makes this a different song than it otherwise would be.
You know, he's not singing about like...
My, you know, society won't accept us, our strange love.
He's not singing about that.
Again, the song we were most critical of, what was it from, was it Sounds of the Universe of Jezebel or something where it's kind of a cool song, but it's ultimately just a kind of like 2000s era feminist.
Kind of thing of like, oh, men don't respect you because they want to own someone.
That, again, I actually like that song, but it's ultimately just kind of lame.
It's like a libtard sentiment.
Strangelove is not.
Strangelove is a Protestant sentiment about his interior and his depravity and his giving in to sin.
And perhaps sadomasochism is almost the way that Martin Gore, who's so guilt-ridden, can engage with sex in this kind of weird way because there has to be some pain.
You're doing something wrong.
He's not liberated.
he's repressed.
Because you've had to make this life livable.
But when you think I'm not enough from the sea of love, I'll take Paul and another river full.
Yes, and I'll make it all worthwhile.
I'll make your heart smile.
Strange love.
Strange eyes and strange love.
Stranger, that's how my love goes Stranger, will you give it to me?
Will you take the pain?
I will give to you again and again Will you return it?
I will give you again and again
Interesting. Okay.
I dig it.
The only thing I might push back on a little bit is just coming from a cradle Catholic background is the...
Yeah, I've known...
Let's just say I've known some Catholics who are guilt-ridden as well.
Sure. Sure.
But he comes from a Protestant background, so I think that's where it's coming from.
Sure. Yeah.
But no, Catholics are famous for their guilt.
Self-flagellation.
Yes. Yes.
Literal and figurative.
Yes. All right.
You know, I'll actually hand it to you on this one.
So I had listened to a question of time, you know, hundreds of times in my life.
And I liked it a lot.
I thought it was a cool song.
It's a driving beat.
I feel like it had been hiding in plain sight for my whole life.
In the sense that you mentioned this when we talked about it from Some Great Reward.
It's effectively about pedophilia.
And I think that's correct.
I mean, you could read it...
On the surface as, well, you're just in love with this girl and you don't want her to be taken up by the other group or something, so I'm going to get you.
I'm going to get you, get you, get you, get you one way or the other or something like that.
But I don't think that's what it's about.
I actually agree and I would give it a very dark reading of it's almost from the perspective of a predator.
And who's going to turn her into something else.
And it is only a question of time before he gets her.
But you can, if you want to add on to that.
I know my kind, what goes on in their minds.
I think that I could feel the disappointment and bewilderment in your reaction when I said that one of the themes on the album was pederasty.
But I hope I didn't ruin the song for you, but I just looked at it and I was like, yeah, it's a question of time.
Yeah. And
it's funny, it's before they get their hands on you and make you just like the rest.
So that is before, in a way, society or her family or friend group turns her into a good girl, you're going to get her.
No, look, it is what it is.
I like the fact that it's a dark song.
And just because you're singing about something doesn't mean you're endorsing it.
It's just you're putting yourself in that mind of someone else.
And even the mind of a villain, I think that's good.
This is almost a rejoinder, maybe, or a way of, you know, Little 15, that is, it's talking about you, so it's from the perspective of a man,
but it's showing great sympathy towards Little 15. We're talking about someone who's been abused, but we're, I would say, probably talking about a child prostitute.
You help her forget the world outside.
You're not part of it yet.
And if you could drive, you could drive away.
You would drive away.
So this idea of escaping to a happier place, to a happier day, that exists in your mind.
So that escape is only a fantasy in your mind.
You could escape there just for a while.
It's...
She knows your mind, so now he's using she as opposed to you, is not yet in league with the rest of the world and its little intrigues.
Do you understand?
Do you know what she means?
As time goes by, and when you've seen what she's seen, you will.
Why does she have to defend her feelings inside?
Why pretend?
She's not had a life.
It's a life of near misses.
All that she wants is three little wishes.
She wants to see with your eyes.
So it's almost like the child prostitute, I guess, wants to see with the eyes of her pimp or the person who's hiring her out.
She wants to smile with your smile.
So the man is getting pleasure from this, and she almost wants to experience that because her whole life has been pained.
She wants a nice surprise every once in a while, Little Fifteen.
Your world outside You're not part of it yet And if you could drive You could drive her away To a happier place To a happier day That exists in your mind I
think it's amazing writing.
It's disturbing.
It's dark.
Maybe there is a little bit of sexiness, but it's enveloped in darkness and pain.
It shows sympathy for someone going through this.
It's not just some, you know, glam rock song about getting it on with a hot little number, you know, dancing queen, only 17. This is not that.
And I, yeah, I think it's actually an amazing, an amazing song.
And it's very interesting.
It's the orchestration or instrumentation, I guess we should say.
It's this.
Kind of symphonic number.
I've listened to the demo tape by Martin Gore.
It was also synthesized.
Alan really turned this into something bigger and more cinematic, to use that word again, with the strings.
But yeah, you can jump in if you want to add anything on this.
Yeah, I think if there's any sexiness in it, it's like a forbidden sexiness.
It's like you don't want to admit that this underage poor prostitute is in a way sexy.
But yeah, as far as the sound, it almost didn't even make the album as far as I understand because they didn't know how to approach it.
And Alan had seen some movie.
I think.
And there was some composer, some English composer.
I think it's Michael Nyman.
That's his name.
And he did the soundtrack to this movie and that inspired him to approach Little 15 this way.
So yeah, that symphonic, like you said, quality to it.
It just sounds to me like a classical music song.
The progression to it, the E minor, the B, the A minor to B. There's something about the chords, and not often in Depeche.
Very simple, because it's 1-5, basically.
But as with almost like Shake the Disease, it has that kind of falling halftone.
I mean, it's not outside of the key.
I mean, in E minor, the...
Leading tone, I guess, is D-sharp.
That's what it's doing.
It's E, G, G, G, D-sharp, G, D-sharp, D-sharp.
But it has that kind of syncing quality to it.
It's very simple, but I agree.
It does have a kind of classical feel to it when it's done this well.
And the song was a single in France, but what pisses me off is, why haven't they played this live?
Yeah, yeah.
Of course.
That is funny.
I never even thought about that.
But yeah, it's the only place that it was.
For the French audience.
Yeah, of course.
But I want to read a quote, actually, from Dave about this.
He says, Little 15 is actually about a guy.
It's about a boy.
See, a lot of people have taken that song already in the wrong way.
They think it's about a small girl, but it's not.
It's actually about a boy, and his mother is talking to him.
She's saying, look, you're going to grow up and everything, and this is what it's going to be like.
It's not a bed of roses, and you're going to be going out into the big, bad world soon.
It's about a boy and his mother, his older mother.
To be honest, when Martin wrote this song, and he brought it to us, and I read the lyrics and stuff, it's actually one of my favorite songs on the album.
But when he brought it to me, I thought immediately it was about a little girl, one of his, you know, quote-unquote, things.
But we won't talk about those!
I thought that was an interesting quote.
One of his quote-unquote things.
Yeah. Well, Martin Gore had ceased dating Christina Friedrich at this point in Berlin, and he had moved back to England.
Yeah, I mean, it is what it is.
It's not terribly surprising, but I...
I am surprised that, at least in Dave's mind, it's about a young boy.
I think almost everyone who has heard the song immediately goes to where he went, admittedly, that this is about a child prostitute.
But, you know, look, it can be read in multiple ways.
I kind of find that implausible.
Yeah, no, I definitely agree.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so that's the first half of the album, and then the second half, or the flip side of the record, it starts with Behind the Wheel and that iconic rattling hubcap and so on.
As I mentioned, I do think that there's an interesting quality to letting go.
You could...
You could almost read this in a way of, oh, it's a feminist song or something.
It's like, you know, do what you want.
I don't care.
Tonight, I'm in the hands of...
You're behind the wheel kind of thing.
Oh, little girl.
But I don't...
It's feminism in a Martin Gore type way.
It's almost like I'm in the hands of fate.
I'm letting go.
You almost feel like...
Fate has the wheel, or he's in Fight Club, he's unbuckled his seatbelt and pressing the pedal to the metal and just seeing what happens.
That's definitely the impression I get, although I think it is about letting go of the power in the relationship as well.
Come, pull my strings, watch me move, I'll do anything.
So again, it's this notion of giving up.
Autonomy and becoming an automaton.
Sweet little girl, I prefer you behind the wheel and me the passenger.
Drive, I'm yours to keep.
Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Route 66 quality to it, but if you have any comments on this one.
Yeah, I think that first of all, it just sounds like tough as hell.
That bass line, the drums, the...
Weird melody, then the super weird chord structure, which literally does go around and around like a wheel, with D minor to D minor to G minor to B flat, and that's the entire song just circling around that chord progression.
I actually played it for my friends one time, and they were like, what the hell is this Indian music?
Because they heard that melody that...
Anyway. I think the song is definitely about submitting, but I go out to bars playing this song to get myself pumped up.
It's just such a good...
It's like a hard dance song.
I'm not really sure how else to describe it.
It can be played that way.
Yeah, it is interesting because it has the same...
What is the chord progression again?
It's a B minor?
B minor to D minor to G minor.
So you're flatting the five.
B minor has an F sharp, but then you're doing D, F, A for D minor.
So he's already gotten into this weird, creepy chords that are out of tune.
And then to G minor after that, and then to B flat.
Wow. It's like, what key are you in, really?
I mean, maybe D minor, because D minor and G minor and B flat.
Well, you're doing minor thirds.
You're doing the B minor to D. You're just staying in the minor mode, but you're doing thirds.
So it's B to D and then G to B flat.
B flat, that's a bizarre chord in B minor.
But it keeps repeating over and over and over again.
Quarterly, this is more interesting, just unusual.
But I do think that Kraftwerk's quality of the very simplistic intervals repeating over and over again, I do think that that left an impression with Martin Gore.
He took that in and then he
something totally new and totally different.
Very interesting.
It's funny because it's about driving and things like that.
So there are two remixes or B-sides or whatever you want to call them that accompanied this song.
They went to the Route 66 song.
So it was first produced in the 1940s by Freddie Troop.
Jazz song became standard.
Probably the most famous version of the song is by the Rolling Stones.
that's probably how most people have heard the song, in fact, from the mid-60s.
If you ever plan to motor west, travel my way, take the highway, that's the best.
Get your kicks on Route 66.
From Chicago to L.A. They're
very interesting because they're mashups.
So they're taking this old song, but then they're adding that weird chord progression in as a kind of bridge.
So it's, you know, down to St. Louis, into Missouri, Oklahoma City.
It looks so, so pretty.
And then it's...
It's just kind of blending those two things that are really discontinuous together and in an amazing way.
Also, with the Beatmaster mix, it's very interesting because they're using sound.
They're using recorded voices, found objects, sound, which they will later on in this album.
But they are using Name That Tune for the first one, which is kind of an ironic nod.
It's like, Name This Tune.
You have Depeche Mode, late 80s synth pop band.
And they're going back to this 60s number.
It's kind of named that tune.
And then when you go into the behind-the-wheel bridge of that song, you go into this reading off an announcement about the military draft.
And so I think it's brilliant because you kind of have this flip side of the 60s.
So there's this fun quality of the 60s of get in a car and drive from Chicago to LA and have sex along the way and be free and all that kind of stuff.
And then there's this like flip side into the minor mode where it's like, oh, also, you're going to be drafted into Vietnam and you're going to die.
Thank you.
Gallup, New Mexico
It's pretty brilliant from a commercial perspective, too, because it's an American song about an American road and American places, and this album really broke them in America.
I don't think that's probably not an accident.
Yeah. And then also with Pleasure, Little Treasure, which goes on this, that's also a very simple chord structure.
It's actually one.
I think it might even be in C major or something.
It's just the one chord over and over.
But it also has this clangy blues sound where it's...
It's actually doing one 3b3 natural 3b.
It's doing that kind of...
Bending of the three.
So it's...
So it's both in the minor and major key.
And the whole structure is just this one chord over and over again.
And definitely looking forward to Personal Jesus in the meaning of the song.
And also, Personal Jesus is literally about...
Elvis, and this is about Priscilla Presley, I guess.
And this is also just full-on Elvis music, which, you know, again, we're not that far away.
We're seven to eight years away from Speak and Spell.
It's not that long of time.
If you would have suggested that they would be going here, you know, when we re-listen to that album, you know, it kind of couldn't be believed.
but it shows just like the distance they've traveled in seven years.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Everybody's looking for someone to follow Finding the whole thing hard to swallow Everybody's looking for a reason to it If you're looking for a reason, I'm a reason to give Pleasure,
little treasure Everybody's looking for a new sensation Everybody's talking about the state of the nation Everybody's searching for promised
land Everybody's waiting to understand Pleasure, little treasure Everybody's looking for a reason to live
looking for a reason to live Hey!
If you're looking for a reason, I'm a reason to give Pleasure, little treasure Pleasure, little treasure Pleasure,
little treasure Turn on your cross, can't pretend to shoot If that's what you want, then we need it for you
I don't have anything more to say about that, but I do have a lot to say about I Want You Now, if you wanted to talk about it.
So with I Want You Now, I think that's...
Well, first, a quick personal anecdote.
So I recall playing this song, blaring it at full volume in my car, and I stopped at a red light, and it's just using these porn samples of moans and stuff.
The guy next to me, you know, we're both sitting at this red light and this guy next to me is just like kind of looking at me like, what in the hell is this guy playing just full volume in this car?
Yeah. Yeah.
And so I think it's one of the most creative tracks they've done.
It's obviously about sex.
I want you to know.
I think that's pretty clear.
But what they're using is like a male moan.
And a female moan, almost as percussive, like a bass drum and a snare almost.
And then having girls laugh and deflating an accordion to get a kind of gross breathing noise.
And then, yeah, just like I said, actually sampling porn.
But it's a great song.
And it's sort of interesting.
Chord progression.
Nothing too crazy, but going from A minor to E, then F sharp minor, which is a big departure from A minor, from F sharp minor to D, and then D minor.
But yeah, I think it's one of...
And it's a Martin song, too.
It's very personal.
But yeah, it's, I think, one of their most inventive songs.
Yeah, that accordion sound.
It goes back to Blasphemous Rumors as well.
It's hard not to hear that, which is an accordion, as like a breathing machine or being strangled to death or Darth Vader.
Yeah, which is great.
And, you know, I don't want to be one of the boys.
I'm not one of these idiots who just want sex, but I do just want sex.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I don't know.
I want you now.
Tomorrow won't do.
There's a yearning inside and it's showing through.
Reach out your hands and accept my love.
We've waited for too long.
Enough is enough.
I want you now My heart is aching
My body is burning My hands are shaking My head is turning You understand?
It's so easy to choose We've got time to kill We've got nothing to lose I want you now To have and to hold I love the chord progression I love the music I just...
I love the darkness of the song.
I love how it goes back to some earlier themes with even like two-minute warning.
This is music for the masses, and you can take that in a couple different ways.
Is it an album written for America?
Is it Evoking Elvis?
Is it a totalitarian album?
And to have and to hold, definitely.
Evokes the latter.
So this is from strip to having to hold, which translates, this is the found object radio announcement in the middle of it, which translates as the evolution of nuclear arsenals and socially psychological aspects of the arms race was considered in these reports that said in Russian.
So you're already kind of looking to the Eastern Bloc.
You're looking back at Two Minute Warning or many of these other songs about nuclear holocaust and etc.
But I think it goes even deeper than the sentiments expressed in Two Minute Warning.
But you're also kind of slyly evoking the Cold War, but in a way that's very difficult to even...
You're not just in their face talking about 99 red balloons and this is going to start Armageddon or something.
It's much different than that.
It's kind of objectively, in the way that I was using that term earlier, bringing in found objects from the Cold War into this dark, minimalist soundscape.
Yeah, as far as I understand, I remember reading on Alan's blog, which is, it's a shame because it was his old blog from 1998, right after he had broken up from the band.
And he, I swear he said on the blog, it's since been taken down, that they didn't know what that said.
I just can't really believe that they didn't understand, or they didn't know the translation.
You know, the report observes it.
Yeah, I can't believe that either.
Yeah, and...
Someone knew.
Because it's so specifically chosen.
It's not just a random Russian radio address or something.
problems of the body and the body.
of the body and the body.
of the body and the body.
...social and psychological problems of the body
and the body.
...social and psychological problems of the body.
And the interesting, too, is there's another clash with Alan and Martin on this, as far as the sound goes, and Alan's version is the one that made the album, and Martin's is the Spanish taster.
Like, he wanted that melody that's on the Spanish taster version, and Alan said basically, like, I don't know, I have a quote here.
The Spanish taster is basically Martin's demo, which he insisted on recording as well.
Which one do you think I prefer?
I don't think there's a more perfect example of musical differences between myself and Martin.
So I think that's pretty interesting.
He was getting chippy.
Yeah, yeah.
And that was from that archive from like 1998.
Yeah. I mean, I like the Spanish taster.
I think it's cool.
It sounds a lot like a soundtrack to a movie.
Not that that's bad.
But I think Alan's To Have and To Hold, again, is my favorite song, just because, you know, I want to be special.
But it's my favorite song.
It's just when essentially Depeche Mode, it's dark as hell.
It's evoking big themes.
And then the lyrics also go back to this.
I need to be cleansed.
It's time to make amends.
For all of the fun, the damage is done.
So we send, and I feel diseased.
I'm down on my knees.
And I need forgiveness.
Someone to bear witness.
To the goodness within, beneath the sin.
So this is someone, again, it's like the opposite of...
What we think about normal rock music, which is about liberation, sex is good, and so on.
No, no, no.
Someone to bear witness.
Someone needs to be able to see the goodness within, beneath the sin.
Although I may flirt with all kinds of dirt, to the point of disease, now I want release from all this decay.
Take it away.
And somewhere there's someone who cares.
And then with a heart of gold to have and to hold.
So, he's...
This is something I also see in U2 of this, you know, she moves in mysterious ways.
Well, who works in mysterious ways?
It's God.
But you're almost replacing God with this female object of desire.
And I think there's a similar move going on here.
So it's all of this...
You know, he is repenting, and he's acknowledging his depravity.
And he's also claiming that there's something underneath it all, beneath the disease and decay and sin, blah blah blah.
And I need help from someone.
But then, to have and to hold with a heart of gold definitely sounds like a woman.
So it's this love replacing God.
I think the...
Nuclear arms or a nuclear bomb kind of functions in Martin's lyrics as like a flood event, like a biblical flood event.
All this decay, take it away.
I need to be Klein's.
It's like a wiping the slate clean, which is, yeah, that's powerful.
And this goes with a song that we kind of, I guess, weirdly skipped, but Sacred, which is also a favorite song, where it...
It gets to that idea that I'm having trouble expressing, but they're singing about something.
They're singing an anthem about something, but what it is exactly isn't clear.
So it's Black celebration.
We're celebrating the fact that we've seen the back of another Black Day, but what is it?
What exactly happened?
What are you overcoming?
And I think this sacred, you know, you're saying it's sacred, it's holy.
To put it into words, to write it down, that is walking on hallowed ground.
So to put it into writing.
But it's my duty, I'm a missionary.
Well, for what?
I think the answer comes trying to sell the story of love's eternal glory.
So, you know, much as with you two, you can see this as almost Christian rock.
Like, if this were not done by Depeche Mode, and the same exact sentiment were done by a Christian rock band, we would say that it was the most cringe thing ever put to paper.
You know, just unbearable, goofy Christian rock.
But when they do it, they get away with it.
Because they kind of abstract it, and they start to equate...
I guess it's not terribly unusual to equate God with love, but they're doing it in an unusual way where you don't feel like this is some heavy-handed Christian rock ballad.
You feel like this is an anthem that we're all coming together to sing about what actually is sacred.
And what that is isn't exactly clear.
And I think that makes it powerful.
It's love of some kind.
Is it lust?
Is it sexuality?
I mean, you could definitely draw that conclusion for the rest of the album.
Is it God himself?
I mean, the kind of sincere repentance and self-loathing in the rest of the album does strike me as someone who is a sincere Christian.
Sacred, holy.
To put it in words, to write it down.
That is walking on hallowed ground, but it's my duty.
I'm a missionary So here
is my confession It's an obsession I'm a firm believer
And a warm receiver And I've made my decision This is religion There's no doubt
I'm one of the devout Trying to sell the story Of the lost is earth of glory Sacred
Holy To put it in words
My take on sacred was that there wasn't much of a connection between religion and sex like there is often in Martin's songs.
It just seemed like it was about sacredness itself and almost like the technology of the written word and just about being a fanatic.
And I kind of was getting zealot vibes from it or something.
Just kind of like a religious experience.
I mean, to put it into words, to write it down, that is walking on hallowed ground.
It's my duty.
I'm a missionary.
It just seemed to me that that was what Martin was getting at with the song.
And I do really appreciate those very Gregorian-like chants in the beginning.
They're probably samples, but yeah.
Which, again, you can kind of hear earlier with See You or something.
But See You is just such a throwaway lyrical number.
Martin might have written that song a few years earlier, and it was just some little teenage, you know, all I want to do is see you.
Don't you know that it's true?
But... Yeah, but again, they turned it.
They started to go there.
They started to turn it into something else.
And then now, they're mature.
They can just talk about God, love, and that sound just takes on...
It comes into its own.
It takes on the quality that was meant to the beginning, but just wasn't fully achieved in a, you know, immature album like A Broken Frame.
targets, sitting, waiting, anticipating nothing,
nothing. Nothing.
What do you...
Make of the lyrics and just overall sound of nothing.
Well, I mean, again, you've gotten that something-to-do quality to it of I'm bored, but this just takes it to another level.
I mean, sitting target, sitting praying, God is saying nothing.
Nothing. So you're just like full-on black-on-black nihilism.
Basically. Yeah, that's about what I got.
It is a really good song.
I mean, it's not single material, and I think on this tour was the only time that they played it, but it's just a good something to do.
It's just one of those good crowd bangers, I guess.
Yeah. So PEMF is a reference to Nazi Germany?
The Hitler Youth?
Yeah, so do you want to talk about that?
I have a quote I can read about it.
Go for it.
Okay, so Dave says, Pimp was something to do with the Hitler Youth or something like that, wasn't it?
And Martin Gore.
Yes, it was an instrumental that we originally started recording for, I think, the B-side of Never Let Me Down Again.
And we liked it so much that we ended up putting it on the Music for the Masses album.
All of our concerts on the tour started with Pimp.
So now, whenever I hear this melody, it evokes a very precise memory.
It was a signal that we were about to enter the stage, a moment when I started to have cold sweats.
Pimp was originally only a B-side, but it ended up being put on music for the masses.
I think that's what the young members of the Hitler Youth were called.
The music reflects the political climate that was occurring at that time.
Of the rise of Nazism.
It's because of its orchestral, quite distressing aspect.
And that last quote was from Alan.
Yeah, but also it sounds like the kind of badass soundtrack to some film about Hitler or, you know, Germans invading Poland or something.
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty bombastic.
Actually, even though it's very simple, it gets layered and layered and layered until it's just utterly bombast.
Yeah, it sounds like this kind of dystopian marching music or conquering music that you could imagine, like sing a movie about Kristallnacht, and this is playing in the background.
I don't speak German, but I did find that Der Pimpf was the Nazi magazine for boys, particularly those Deutsches Jungvolk with adventure and propaganda that first appeared in 1935 as Morgan.
Changing its name to Der Pimp in 1937.
Morgan just means morning or tomorrow, I guess.
But Der Pimp, that's just the pimp.
So it's the boy.
Gotcha. And as far as I understand, it's slang for like a scoundrel, right?
Or a little rascal.
So there's no relation to like our English word pimp, correct?
No. No, I don't know that.
When I learned German, we didn't go into this, but I imagine it has the same...
It's analogous to calling someone a little rascal or something.
It's a term of German.
The song itself, it builds and builds and builds over these...
I think there's only four melodies just cycled over and over, and when it builds up to the top, and it just explodes, I don't think that's a coincidence.
That's kind of like...
Nazi Germany in itself just building and building and building until it explodes in the Second World War.
Yeah. Also, there's a clear evocation of Nazi Germany in the album cover as well.
So this was Martin Atkins, who was an art director.
So Martin came up with that title.
He said that he was...
Looking at an album story, and he saw something that said Music for the Millions, and he found that just almost goofy title, but he thought it was funny.
And then it became this ironic nod of, you know, actually, we're a cult band, but we're going to create this album called Music for the Masses.
But again, it ironically, again, became Music for the Masses.
But he took that, and so it's this idea of...
You know, producing this music in a totalitarian regime where they would almost, like, pump out music for everyone to hear.
You know, like, party time is here again.
You know, they're bringing to fruition all these ideas that they had been working on before.
And so it's also ironic in the sense that it's this big loud speaker, bright red, evoking I think it's really cool.
But there's this other element to it.
But as well as the tongue-in-cheek title, further irony was had in that the megaphone was put to devastating use in Nazi Germany, spreading Adolf Hitler's disturbing dictatorial message.
This is stripped by Jonathan Miller.
In a knowing nod to his reformed country's past, Kraftwerk's chief propagandist, Ralf Hutter, had once claimed that his pioneering electronic quartet created Lautsprecher music.
There's some quote from Hitler of, you know, the National Socialist Revolution would have been impossible without the speaker system with a microphone.
That is...
Probably true.
And so I do think that there's evocations of communism, Cold War, nuclear Armageddon.
There's also just a kind of hint of fascism that they have been trying to achieve in a number of albums, really beginning with Construction Time again.
And, well, actually beginning with A Broken Frame, in fact.
And they're just wearing it on their sleeve a little bit in a kind of winking nod way with this album cover.
And maybe it's not their best album cover, but it is their most iconic.
It's their most Depeche Mode thing.
It's something they'll go to again.
If you just show someone that red speaker in a deserted area, I think that's immediately where their mind goes to Depeche Mode.
So it's very powerful.
At this point, actually, I think there are...
It's probably at its peak with Anton, but it's definitely an upgrade.
The earlier stuff was obviously too, I don't know, cutesy and innocent.
And this was...
Yeah, this is just bold.
Yeah. And where they failed with Black Celebration, they succeeded here.
So the Black Celebration cover art is a disaster.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, I agree.
But what they were trying to evoke the last time, they actually did this time.
And, you know, there's something to be said for that.
Yeah, so I have...
Bit quote heavy today, but I do have a quote that I wanted to share because on this tour, on the Black Celebration tour, they actually did not go beyond the Iron Curtain.
They had gone back on the Music for the Masses tour, and the first gig that they had played because they wanted to play there so badly was in East Berlin.
It was March 7th, 1988.
And this is a quote from Andy Franks, their tour manager at the time.
We have been wanting to play in East Berlin since forever, but we were never allowed to.
We performed in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, but two cities did not allow us in, Moscow and East Berlin.
For years, we had been asking our management about it.
And one day they said, we did it.
You can go to East Berlin.
Later on we heard that we were being presented as the main event of the anniversary of the DDR's youth organization in order to score points with the kids.
We heard that normal fans had almost no shot at getting tickets.
We did not know this.
At the time we were simply excited to be playing in East Berlin.
Looking back we should not have done this concert.
We were used by the party.
The funny thing about the tickets was that it did not have our name on them.
But during the concert we did not notice the real fans who managed to enter the venue.
It was nevertheless a great gig, but there were unpleasant aspects.
There were hundreds of cops during the sound check, and streets were sealed off for miles.
The fans would gather around in the area, but could not come close to the venue.
It was really frustrating.
We were being completely shielded.
Before the show, we knew nothing about our DDR fans, and after the show, we didn't know anything about them either.
We could also only spend that one day in East Berlin.
I remember taking a walk through the city, but forgot much of it.
After the concert, we were immediately being escorted back into the hotel, and the road and hotel were completely empty.
What was weird was that we knew that we were one of the most popular bands there, but somebody told us that it was the most bug-infested hotel in the world.
Really eerie.
I think an irony of that is that they're playing music for the masses to the DDR, who's supposed to be...
The Communist Party is supposed to...
They end up playing just really to the DDR and the DDR, this youth organization, kind of has this privileged viewership that the common fans or masses don't.
It almost kind of proves just how capitalism is just more democratic than communism.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
That was a pretty long quote.
Yeah, no, it's good stuff.
Yeah, there's no doubt by the mid 80s, you know, Gorbachev
wanted to save the Soviet Union by opening it up.
Like Gorbachev never wanted to destroy the Soviet Union at all, including the Soviet Empire, which he fought to defend and then resigned after he lost Ukraine.
Yeah, he was a Marxist.
But in opening it up, he did just unleash its own dissolution.
And, I mean, McDonald's was in Moscow well before the Soviet Union collapsed.
And Pepsi and Coke were going over there.
There's some famous concerts.
What was it?
It was a Bruce Springsteen played a concert, I think.
Born in the USA.
It's interesting stuff.
I guess the irony of Depeche Mode is that they're this Western band.
I mean, they're these kids from the suburb of London.
And they're trying to evoke totalitarianism, if anything.
You know, they're not going in there and singing about Coca-Cola and Blue Jeans and the Beatles and whatever.
They're singing about living in a totalitarian society.
But, okay, the rankings that we are ongoing, always shifting rankings.
What do you think?
So, still, I'll say Songs of Faith and Devotion 1, Violator 2, and then I do have to say Music for the Masses is 3. There's not a bad song on this one.
There's not a bad song on Black Celebration or Some Great Reward, but it's just so good.
Like, because of the reasons that I said it's accessible, dark, it's all these things.
Yeah, it's...
Yeah, it's prime Depeche Mode.
I can understand if someone puts it at one.
I might even have to, in a way.
Because, you know, on some basic level, Depeche Mode is an 80s band, and we listen to them a little bit nostalgically on some level.
It's not the whole story, of course.
This just seems to be just the culmination of everything that they were working towards for seven years just coming into fruition.
Yeah. And then to cap it off with the 101 concert is like, man, that's the cherry on top.
Yeah. And everything that they're going to do...
I mean, maybe you don't hear songs of...
You don't really hear songs of faith and devotion in this album.
You definitely hear Violator in this album.
Yeah. And so you kind of see where they're moving.
And I don't...
I would say this.
You know, number one, number two, number three, you know, whatever.
I don't think it's surpassed.
Also, just in terms of the quality of the album itself, yeah, it's kind of more commercial in a way.
It's more like a soundtrack to a film.
And so maybe part of me almost likes the muddiness of Black Celebration, but it's just perfect.
It's really well-crafted.
It's professional.
It's very much Depeche Mode.
It has all of the themes, all of the sonic elements.
In one thing.
I mean, I guess if you're going to hand someone a Depeche Mode album and they can only have one, this is it.
Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
Because in a lot of ways, it is their peak.
Did you want to talk about 101 a little bit?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, personally speaking, I remember buying 101 on CD when I was young.
It was probably a couple years after it came out.
It's probably before Songs of Faith and Devotion, but after Violator.
And I didn't know of its existence.
I bought it used, and I was like, oh, this has everything.
It's like a compilation.
And then I heard the live album.
Yeah. I would stand by this.
I don't know of another live album that's better than this.
All of the performances are great.
Day visit, top form.
The encore set of digging back into the past for Just Can't Get Enough is amazing, and then closing out the concert with Everything Counts, doing it in really a new version of Everything Counts,
and the whole stadium singing along with grabbing hands, grab all they can, Everything Counts in large amounts.
Yeah, I do think it's surpassed.
I've seen 101.
It's kind of like an artifact.
It has a lot of good elements.
Whether it holds up together as a film, I guess, is another question.
It was made by a famous director of rock films.
It's kind of fun to see these kids.
You go back to the 80s, you see how decent everyone was.
They're very innocent.
Yeah, I just, I don't know.
It's just weird as well.
My older sister, who, again, I think I mentioned this in our first podcast, when I was outside of her room, she was playing the, I think it was the Black Celebration album, and I think the song was either stripped or Black Celebration.
So I was quite young.
I mean, this is like 1986, 87. I mean, I was like, wow, never, ever heard a sound like that.
And that just started all.
I just remember her.
I remember she'd gotten like the DM 1988, you know, Music for the Masses tour shirt.
She didn't attend that concert, but she had.
The shirt, I just remember her wearing that at camp.
I don't know.
It just brings back a lot of nostalgic memories.
Definitely. Yeah, the 101 movie itself is kind of...
You don't need to watch it, even as a huge fan, because it's not even really about the band.
It's not like they have big interviews or you get some kind of scoop or you can...
See the working relations or how they get along or how they don't get along.
It's actually, as far as the band's concerned, it's pretty surface level.
And Alan has said in interviews before that he doesn't think the film is very deep.
It's really about these kids.
And a lot of them, they met, if not all of them, they met in New York.
Some of these kids were just at this club.
Whoever was working, I don't know, somebody from Mute or something like that, or one of the associates of Penny Baker was just like, hey, would you like to be in a Depeche Mode documentary film or whatever?
In a lot of ways, it's very reality TV, but it's even almost too surface level to be reality TV.
I'm being critical of it, but it's okay.
It's a good time capsule kind of film.
But if you really want to know about Depeche Mode or their music, then it's pretty surface level.
It's almost reality TV, but it's even a little bit too surface level for reality TV.
But the versions of these songs on 101, like them reworking Just Can't Get Enough, so they had this harmony breakdown.
I think that's awesome.
I think that version of Just Can't Get Enough is the best that they've ever done.
And they've done a few different versions of Everything Counts, but that, I think my favorite part, I just love vocal harmonies in general, but their harmony of all three of them singing at the end to kind of close out that song is just perfect.
Yeah, and, you know, the other thing about it is that, you know, as I mentioned multiple times, you know, music for the masses is a bit of an ironic nod to the fact that they're not making music for the masses.
But doing this, this was a culmination of the world tour.
And according to this documentary, Alan was saying that, you know, they wanted to do a free concert.
They wanted to do some kind of celebration.
And so they decided to do the Rose Bowl as this massive blowout.
It was not free, but it was unusual.
But at least the impression I got is that it was a risk.
I mean, it's like, are you do you have the fan base to do this?
Are people going to show up?
And, you know, famously, it was raining.
There was a thunderstorm during Blasphemous Rumors, which is kind of a, you know, amusing anecdote about, you know, God being mad or maybe having a sixth sense of humor or something.
Who knows?
But yeah, I mean, it,
They're peaking.
They couldn't have done this earlier.
They were not setting the world on fire when they flew to New York City and performed a broken frame or something.
This is a point where they're just able to do this, and they pulled it off.
I think it is a...
Yeah, it's a really amazing event in the history of the band.
Yeah, the sound was notoriously mediocre, according to the band, because I guess Dave was really loud, and Martin and Alan, you couldn't hear their voices.
And they were using basically an entirely different PA system because the Rose Bowl was so much bigger than every other venue that they played up to that point.
And so, as with all albums, they go back in the studio and they fill in parts, you know, and do a little bit of editing.
But I think Martin...
The sound of the album is great.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
There's no doubt about it.
And, but Dave said, like, he lost his voice pretty early and he was like, I couldn't hit a high note, like, all night.
But not that he ever really...
Not that he could ever hit a high note, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, whatever happened.
I mean, again, I think it was a celebration of fandom.
And this is where you, again, I think I mentioned this two hours ago now, of you, these just...
Funny news reports.
I'll be sure to include one while editing this.
Kids ransacking the record store because they sold out albums.
They were just on a different level at this point.
We've just gotten an updated figure on the number of kids here.
Police say now there's maybe 15,000 kids here.
A police helicopter is going overhead.
There's lots of backup patrols in the area.
The band's only going to be here for three hours.
I'm afraid a lot of these kids will not be able to get in to get autographs, and at that point, who knows what they might do.
So far, it has been peaceful, just not quiet.
I'm Cindy Vandor, reporting live from the Beverly Center area.
Back to you, Jerry and Jay.
I've just made a list, got one thing on it.
Events to miss.
Unless you're into cramp and crush.
Yeah, and LA is like, that's like the perfect place for them.
Because they're huge there.
If they were big, any place in America was Los Angeles.
I think it's also probably, I mean, has an electronic band ever sold out the Rose Bowl?
Like they did.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, and like you said, the interesting thing, though, of OMD just sort of fading by that time, because they were a big band in the early 80s, and it's like literally they just flipped with Depeche.
Also, another interesting thing I saw about this was that there was a ticket that somebody saved from this concert, and I don't know where exactly he was sitting, but it was just funny to see that.
The person paid $22.50 for the ticket, and I was just thinking to myself, I would pay a lot more for Noah's Bleed at that time to see that concert.
Well, the whole economy is different.
They would tour in order to sell albums.
I think it's the reverse now.
You sell albums to get people to go to the concert and pay $300 for a fairly decent seat.
Yeah, it's terrible.
But I remember going to concerts in the 90s, and it was closer to that.
You could probably get a seat for $25, like a bad one, and pay $75 or $85 for something big.
It was not at the just crazy hundreds of dollars level where it is now.
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