In their earliest incarnations, the synth-pop stars of the eighties lived in a bleak, oppressive, futuristic netherworld where emotions were forbidden and humanity was a faintly flickering memory. Gary Numan, the Human League, OMD, Ultravox, Soft Cell, the Normal—none of them were having much fun. But there was one group of electronic artists who were not crushed under the heel of robot overlords, who were not afraid of being assimilated into a giant hive mind, who were, if anything, uncomplicated and optimistic: Depeche Mode. Vince Clarke's Depeche Mode. Where their contemporaries shuddered in fear and lurked in the shadows like a doomed platoon of Winston Smiths, Depeche Mode were cheerful, wholesome boys, happy to have hatched an escape route out of the unpromising environs of Basildon, England. Depeche's single "New Life" was innocent, awkward, and eager to please. Their other Clarke-penned hits, "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Dreaming of Me," gleamed with confidence and charm. But exhilarating as it was, this iteration had a limited shelf life. Clarke chose to stay positive and, for the remaining members of the group, his departure signaled the end of the innocence.
JB: The bald musician Moby wrote a witty and affectionate afterword for this book in which he—spoiler alert!—describes the music and artists of the new wave era under discussion as not alluding to "anything even remotely sexual." Being an argumentative sort, I took issue with that blanket dismissal, and my prime example was latter-day Depeche Mode and their S&M leanings. He replied to the effect that all the Mode really wanted was to cuddle. In retrospect, I think he's right, and that's why I've always found them a little bit laughable. No matter how much Martin L. Gore bares his diseased soul, no matter how dank and deviant their material, no matter how brooding and perverse Dave Gahan gets, I never quite got past my initial perception of them as clean-cut, obedient purveyors of chirpy electro-pop. The "Personal Jesus" video—the one where they're supposed to be snarling, smoldering gunslingers getting ready to drop their gun belts and do damage to the employees of a frontier cathouse? They looked more like pale, malnourished, middle-management types heading off to a sales conference. They may see themselves as debauched outlaws with insatiable appetites for the forbidden, but for me, Depeche Mode will always be the sound of the suburbs.
LM: If Duran Duran were my first crush and the Smiths wrote the soundtrack of my soul, then Depeche Mode provided the playlist for my sex life—or at least the one I'd imagined myself having. "Master and Servant." "A Question of Lust." "Strangelove." "In Your Room." But I wouldn't even have an imaginary sex life if it weren't for Vince Clarke. He built the foundation on which the mighty edifice of Depeche would flourish. A few months back, I bumped into Gahan at my Manhattan hair salon, where the smock-clad singer was about to have his grays covered before Depeche's upcoming international arena tour, and he and I reflected on how far they've come. Decades on, the band is the biggest electronic music act of all time. They're still making new music that sends albums up the charts, and still an influence on contemporary musicians and dance culture. They might not be the same band Clarke started all those years ago, but if it wasn't for him, Gahan might be the proud proprietor of a nice little upholstery business in Basildon.
VINCE CLARKE: "New Life" was the first song that was played on the radio, and the first one that went into the charts in the U.K. That was a game changer. The first time we heard it on the radio, we were all in Danny's [Mute Records founder Daniel Miller's] car. It was the band, Daniel driving, and the synths in the back. We were going to get a train to Newcastle, where we were to do one of the first TV shows we'd ever done, a Saturday-morning kids show, and it just came on the radio. I think it was Radio 1, which is the most important radio station in the U.K. It was a great feeling.
Around the same time, we did our first appearance on Top of the Pops. The charts would be released on Sunday, and we got the call from Daniel that night saying we'd be on. We'd all grown up on Top of the Pops. I was 19 and wasn't living with my mum at the time. We had fallen out. But I decided to go round to her house and tell her. I don't think she believed me.
We lived in Basildon.[1] Basildon is a town that was built after the Second World War to house all the people who were bombed out of the East End of London, so it was a new town. It was built in the fifties, and it was built so quickly that they didn't bother to build anything kids could do—it was just housing. When I moved there, there was no grass, no gardens—there was just mud. You spent a lot of time being bored. There was no TV. So we started a band.
When Depeche Mode started, when it was just me and [Andy] Fletcher, we were playing guitars. The band that really influenced us the most, that we wanted to be, was the Cure. We'd play their first album, [1979's] Three Imaginary Boys. It's incredibly minimal. There were only three players on it. There was hardly any overdub, I think, just a single voice. We felt that we could do that sound because Fletch played guitar and I had a drum machine. We weren't really interested in synths until Martin, who was a friend of Fletch's from school, bought a synthesizer and decided to join the band. Martin joined two bands, actually: my band and my best friend's band. That caused a bit of a rift. Martin was hedging his bets. Anyway, when Martin chose the synth, we were super impressed. It seemed to be really easy to play, unlike guitar. It wasn't expensive, particularly because you didn't have to buy an expensive amp. We never could afford amps for our guitars, so we all bought synths.
Synth music was really homemade. I don't think punk was as liberating as people make it out to be. They still needed to know how to play instruments. Synth music is more accessible 'cause you don't have to learn your three chords. On our first album [1981's Speak & Spell], no one played anything. It was all done on sequencers.
The synths gave us credibility. All the cool, alternative records—the ones that weren't charting—were all done with people messing about with synths: "T.V.O.D."/"Warm Leatherette" by the Normal, the first Silicon Teens album. They were breaking new ground. Those songs were an influence on "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough." Obviously there was Gary Numan too, but we didn't want to sound like Gary Numan because he was a sellout. You know what it's like when you're younger: Anyone who succeeds is no longer credible. Whereas, we thought the first two Human League albums were amazing records [in part because] they were commercially unsuccessful. Of course, way before any of that was Kraftwerk, but the thing that changed in the eighties was that people used synthesizers to make pop records rather than concept records. I'm a fan of Kraftwerk, but I'm more of a fan of people like OMD, because I like emotional records. Music affects me, changes my insides—it really does. The thing that really turned me on to synths was "Almost," the B-side to OMD's "Electricity." That was when I connected synthesizers with folk music. I'd realized that I wanted to play guitar when I heard Simon and Garfunkel singing on the soundtrack for The Graduate. That's what made me realize the power of songwriting. The next day I bought the songbook and learned how to play every song. Suddenly, music wasn't just a bunch of people doing it on TV—you could do it yourself.
We'd started a band, but we didn't really have aspirations to make a record. We had aspirations to play in the pub, and it went from there. Eventually we were playing a pub in London, and we met Daniel, and he offered for us to make a single. That was probably the happiest day of my life. If we had made that single and I died, I would have died in heaven.
MIXTAPE: 5 Favorite Synth Songs of Vince Clarke (in no particular order) 1. "Always," OMD 2. "Dreams of Leaving," The Human League 3. "Cars," Gary Numan 4. "Warm Leatherette," The Normal 5. "Back to Nature," Fad Gadget
The first time we met Daniel, though, he didn't want to sign us. We had made a demo, and because Dave and I were both unemployed at the time, or Dave was in college, which is the same thing, really—I'm kidding—we got dressed in our best futurist clothes and got the train down to London. I think Dave had on leather trousers. He was studying fashion in college. (Our name was his idea; it was from a magazine he was reading.) Maybe mum had made me something—my mum was a seamstress. So we went to all these companies: Island, Virgin, all those people. In those days you could actually knock on the door, go into the office, and play them a cassette. When we went to the Rough Trade office, they said, "It's not really our cup of tea, but this bloke might be interested," and there was Daniel. And Daniel said no. Then we supported Fad Gadget at a gig in East London, and Daniel was there again. There were two guys who wanted us: Daniel and this guy Stevo, who used to manage Soft Cell. Stevo said, "If you sign with me, I'll get you on the next Ultravox tour." Daniel says, "We never sign anything, but I'm offering for you to make a single." We decided in about five minutes to go with Daniel and Mute. We knew the records he had made: both the Silicon Teens and the Normal. We knew his label because of Fad Gadget.
"The synths gave us credibility. All the cool, alternative records… were all done with people messing about with synths."
The first track we recorded with Daniel was "Photographic." It was for an album called Some Bizarre, a compilation record [from Stevo], which was a fantastic record. Then we did the single, which was "Dreaming of Me." Because that did fairly well, Daniel said, "Let's make an album."
"Just Can't Get Enough" I had written ages ago. We were performing it for a long time before we met Daniel. It was written on guitar. We could do harmonies because Martin is quite a good singer. That made us a little more interesting for Daniel. It's certainly gotten more exposure [than other songs on the first album] because of commercials, and because Depeche has been performing it for years and years in concert.
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
Clarke departed Depeche after only one album. After a shaky start, Martin Gore grew into one of the era's most celebrated songwriters and oversaw his group's metamorphosis into Depressed Mode, the black-celebrating dance-floor juggernaut that's moved more than 100 million records. Clarke went on to form Yaz with Alison Moyet (see this page), then the Assembly, which produced one single. In 1985 Clarke finally found a permanent situation with singer Andy Bell: 30 years and 30 hit U.K. singles later, Erasure are still a functioning duo. In 2012, Clarke reunited with Gore as VCMG and made the instrumental techno record Ssss.
CLARKE: When I decided to leave, it wasn't for another music band or to form Yaz—I just decided to leave.[2] We were just young, and things happened quite quickly for us, and there were a lot of egos flying around. I was just fed up. In retrospect, I'm really glad [I left]. No regrets at all, because I've worked with some really brilliant artists.
I did a single, [the Assembly's] "Never Never," with Feargal Sharkey. I was thinking that since I'd had the personality clashes with Alison I would move on with working with different singers instead [of being in a permanent group]. Then I met Andy. We had auditions. He came alone, and he was there for about 20 minutes and sang two songs I had written: "Who Needs Love Like That" and "My Heart So Blue." We had been through 39 or 40 singers by that time. They were really good, but the moment he opened his mouth and started singing, we knew it.
We had discussions about making dance-type music. He took me to a lot of clubs—the first time I had ever been to a gay club. These gay clubs were playing high-energy music. We were into the idea of making music like that so we could perform it live. But it wasn't really until the second album [1987's Circus] that we became friends, because then we started writing songs together. You can't write a song with somebody you don't trust. And we went through a lot together. We played some really shitty clubs, traveled in some shitty vans, we had a car crash once. We really were a band.
[Regarding reuniting with Gore for Ssss,] I've never really been interested in techno. I didn't know anything about it. But after I did a remix for Plastikman, I started to get interested in the genre. I did two or three tracks and got a bit bored, so I emailed Martin. That email that I sent him was the first I ever sent him. So we started exchanging files: I'd send him a written track, he'd send me a bass part….We did that over the course of a year. We didn't even talk at all until the very end, when we had a conference call with Daniel. Just before it was released, I went to L.A. to do some promotion. I had spoken more words to Martin in that meeting than I had when I was in Depeche Mode! Martin's really shy.
I love making music. It's the best job in the world. When you start making something from nothing, it's just an incredible feeling. Even now, with Erasure, it's always about the next record, the next song you're gonna write. I never stop.
Notes
[1] ALISON MOYET: The Depeche boys, Fletcher and Martin, and I were in the same class. Perry Bamonte, who was in the Cure, was there as well. They were from the right side of the street in our town: They were all studious, they did their homework, they had blazers and briefcases when the rest of us had plastic bags. I remember being bemused when they got together with Dave Gahan. He was one of the punks who was in Southend College with me. We were mates, and he was a bit more lairy [British slang for aggressive, confrontational; master rather than servant].
[2] DANIEL MILLER: Creatively, could they have done more together? Yes. But the band started to change almost as soon as I started working with them. Vince was a restless soul. You could see that during the making of Speak & Spell. Vince was the leader: He was the songwriter, he organized the band, he was the one getting the gigs, he pretty much made all the records. Obviously Dave sang and Martin did some melody lines, but Vince led, he produced. I was credited as co-producer, but most of the big ideas came from Vince. I think the other members of the group were very happy for that to continue. I don't know for how long they would have been happy, but there was more to do if they wanted to do it. But Vince decided he didn't want to be in the band anymore. The touring, he felt there were limitations—there were lots of different reasons and those reasons were very fixed in his mind, so I don't think there could have been another Depeche Mode album from those four people.
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