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Depeche Mode Monument Book

New Wave/Punk music, culture, genres, memories. '80s revivalism and other relevant topics.

Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby Jim2 » Thu Jan 16, 2014 3:08 pm

The massive 424 page book on Depeche Mode that was published in May of last year in a German language edition, is now available in English. It contains a history of the band and the insanely complete Depeche Mode collection of one Dennis Burmeister, a German fan who co-wrote the book with writer Sascha Lange. There is a 33 page preview that can be viewed at the link below. If these pages are anything like the rest of the book, it will put everyone else's Depeche Mode collection (including mine) to shame.

https://issuu.com/marcusthie/docs/leseprobe/1?e=0


The most reasonable price for the US and maybe most countries (check Amazon) is $63.68 which includes worldwide shipping at Book Depository.com:


http://www.bookdepository.com/Depeche-M ... 3351050115


"Things went fine, up until the start of school, the world was still okay." -Nina Hagen
Jim2
Take On Me
 
Posts: 175
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:31 pm
Location: USA

Postby negative1 » Fri Jan 17, 2014 1:35 am

thank you so much for posting this.

here is the link to the english version,
the one you posted was for the german
one, almost bought it accidentally:
=========================================
http://www.bookdepository.com/Depeche-M ... 3351050115

ordered it, and will scan it to PDF as soon as
i get it.

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
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Location: USA

Postby negative1 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 4:31 am

got the book.

it's massive. and excellent.

going to take awhile to read.
not sure what other books are out there about them,
or their work.

this has lots of pictures and text. which i'll be reading
soon.

get it, if you're a fan.
high quality paper, binding, and picture quality.

all around. a definitive work.

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
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Location: USA

Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby negative1 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 8:10 am

well 3 years later, i'm finally getting around to the scan.

results look pretty good, and will post a sample, and some OCR text.

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 1444
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Location: USA

Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby negative1 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 4:27 pm

Here's the first chapter:

DEPECHE MODE

MONUMENT



DENNIS BURMEISTER & SASCHA LANGE

► Contents

► PREFACE .......................... 7

► BASILDON ......................... 8

► SPEAK AND SPELL ................. 34

► A BROKEN FRAME ................. 50

► CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN.......... 70

► SOME GREAT REWARD ............... 94

► THE SINGLES 81-85 .............. 120

► BLACK CELEBRATION .............. 136

► MUSIC FOR THE MASSES ........... 160

► VIOLATOR ....................... 190

► SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION .... 212

► ULTRA .......................... 232

► EXCITER ........................ 260

► PLAYING THE ANGEL .............. 280

INTERVIEW WITH DARYL BAMONTE............ 298

► SOUNDS OF THE UNIVERSE ......... 300

INTERVIEW WITH ANNE HAFFMANS............ 324

► DELTA MACHINE .................. 330

INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL MILLER............ 342

► FAN CULTURE IN THE EAST AND WEST

BEHIND THE WALL......................... 358

THE OFFICIAL DEPECHE MODE FAN CLUB ..... 388

BOOTLEGS ............................... 394

FAN EXHIBITION 2013 .................... 396

► APPENDIX

COMPLETE TOUR DATES .................... 412

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................... 423

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................ 424

---------------------------------------------------------------


► Basildon ► The Birth Of A Band 10

► BASILDON

THE BIRTH OF A BAND

Basildon is boring. About thirty miles east of central Lon-
don. not a trace of the pulsating city’s coolness can be
found. Just one dull modern estate after another with rows
of low. terraced housing as far as the eye can see, built on a
held in postwar England for 80,000 residents. Growing up
as a teenager in the late 1970s, the only options were get-
ting drunk, getting into fights or starting a band. And right
here is where the incredible story of Depeche Mode begins.

Dave Gahan, Andy Fletcher, Martin Gore and Vince
Clarke, the founding members of Depeche Mode, grew up
in modest but not deprived families in Basildon. Vincent
John Martin (Vince), born on 3 July 1960 in South Woodford,
changed his surname to Clarke in Depeche Mode’s
early years, allegedly to stop the job centre finding out
about them. Vince, the driving force behind the band’s cre-
ation. was in the Boys’ Brigade at St. Paul’s Methodist
Church in Basildon where he got to know Andrew Fletcher
(Andy), born on 8 July 1961 in Nottingham. At school,
Vince took violin lessons but later changed to guitar. At the
time, the dominant sound on radio airwaves and turnta-
bles was still the music from the seventies - Simon & Gar-
funkel. T. Rex, Pink Floyd and David Bowie.

Over time, Vince and Andy stopped going to the Boys’
Brigade and met up at the youth club of their local church
instead. They occasionally hung out with shy Martin Lee
Gore, bom on 23 July 1961 in London, and a school friend
of Andy’s. Martin was good at guitar, a big Sparks and Talk-
ing Heads fan, and started his first band in 1977 - a duo
called Norman and the Worms. In the same year, Vince
formed a duo called Nathan, which was influenced by the
music of Simon & Garfunkel. Alison Moyet also belonged
to the circle of friends around the future Depeche Mode
members and later formed Yazoo with Vince Clarke. Alison,
like Martin and Andy, went to St. Nicholas School in Basil-
don and was in some of their classes.

Around this time, many British teenagers dreamed of
having their own band and appearing on Top of the Pops,
the most popular show on British TV in the pre-MTV era.
Those who got on to TOTP had “made it,” so popular opin-
ion went at the time. Then, in 1977, punk broke out like an
epidemic - or a revolution - in the UK. The virus infected
the brains of countless teenagers. Suddenly, it was really
easy to start a band. You didn’t have to take music lessons
for years, or even know how to read music: you could play
a song on the guitar with just two chords. Do-it-yourself
was the one thing anyone needed to know about punk. But
punk wasn’t all just fast, aggressive music.

When the Manchester-based band Joy Division released
its debut album Unknown Pleasures in 1979, and Closer
a year later, a whole new genre was unintentionally
spawned. Other bands followed. Slow, mournful guitar
riffs overlaid with synthesizer sounds spoke to the souls
of a generation of teenagers: new wave was born. The
synth-minimalism of the 1978 album. Die Mensch Maschine
by German electroband Kraftwerk, achieved cult status for
the punk and new wave generation.

Besides the standard rockband line-up of guitar, bass
and drums, whole new instrument combos were made
possible by technical developments in electronic music:
only a few years previously, drum computers and synthe-
sizers had been out of the price range of working-class

► The Birth Of A Band ► Basildon

BASILDON, RAILWAY STATION Bonjour Tristesse


teenagers but gradually more and more young musicians
could afford these futuristic machines that wouldn’t have
looked out of place on Hans Solo’s Millennium Falcon. A
new era was ushered in: a 1982 article in the German
magazine Der Spiegel talked of “pop music for the Star
Wars’ generation,” referring to the countless new elec-
tronic bands from the UK. The early monophonic synthe-
sizers could only produce one tone at a time, and so
could be played with one finger. This meant you didn’t
even need to know any chords to create sounds and mel-
odies. One of the most radical examples of this new, futur-
istic electronic music was the German band Deutsch
Amerikanische Freundschaft (German American Friend-
ship), DAF for short, and their LP Die Kleinen und Die
Bosen.

Basildon is boring. That’s why the do-it-yourself genres
of punk and new wave spread like wildfire. The Cure’s
1979 record, Three Imaginary Boys, impressed Vince
Clarke so much that he wanted to do something similar.
His guitar duo Nathan had already split up. His next short-
lived band project was called No Romance in China, which
he ran with a couple of mates. Vince and Andy didn’t meet
in the church youth club any more; by this time they were
going to Basildon’s Leisure Centre with Martin Gore and
Vince’s mate, Robert Marlow, to talk about their favourite
records by bands like OMD, Fad Gadget, The Human
League, The Normal and Kraftwerk. Around this time Mar-
tin had a keen interest in Germany - both its language and
culture - partly due to a school exchange in Erfde in Schles-
wig-Holstein. He was particularly keen on the German
electro-punk scene and its bands like DAF, Palais Schaum-
burg and Der Plan.

But music remained just his hobby at that time. In sum-
mer 1979 Martin finished secondary school and went to
work for the NatWest bank in London. Andy Fletcher had
been working for Sun Life Insurance since he’d left school.

Vince didn’t look for a permanent job at first. Conven-
tional jobs bored him as much as Basildon. Vince wanted
to make music, and he wanted to do it full-time, not just
after work. But his bands had been short-lived until then.
In early 1980 he and his mate Andy started a new band with
the slightly clumsy name Composition of Sound.

They were aiming to make music that was as futuristic
and fresh as the new electronic bands they were into. But
Vince only owned a guitar and Andy a bass. So they started
looking for other band members. “They only took me on
because I was one of the few people in Basildon who had a
synthesizer,” recalls Martin Gore who at the time was play-
ing with Robert Marlow in a band called French Look. They
started rehearsing in Vince’s small garage at home: he
wrote the songs and the beats came out of a cheap drum
computer. Around this time, they were already performing
living room gigs for friends.

COMPOSITION OF SOUND

On 30 May 1980 Composition of Sound had their first gig
in front of a real audience at a party in The Paddock, a
community centre in Basildon. Although Vince was the
lead singer, he wasn’t really credible because he just stood
coyly behind his instrument. “We need a front man to
make us look interesting,” was his verdict. At an audition
where several people sang David Bowie’s Heroes in a
rehearsal room at Woodlands School, a teenager stood
out who they knew from their wider circle of friends.
David Gahan (Dave), born on 9 May 1962 in Chigwell,
was a wild child from another part of Basildon, and a
member of the local soul boy scene. “I rehearsed a few
times with a couple of bands,” Dave later told the maga-
zine Uncut. “Never played a gig, just rehearsing after
school. They were called The Vermin. They were famous
in that one area of Basildon. In our own minds we were
going to be the next Sex Pistols.”

He was also the occasional sound man with French Look.
Andy recalls: “Dave looked better than us and had thou-
sands more contacts. We had no contacts. And he sang very
well as well.” Spontaneously, Vince asked him if he wanted
to be their new singer and on 14 June 1980 the four mem-
bers of Composition of Sound performed for the first time
at a gig in St. Nicholas School’s cloakroom.

Poster for the concert on 14 June 1980 at St Nicholas School in Basildon,
designed by Rodney Martin, Vince Clarke's brother

Poster for the concert on 21 June 1980 at the Top Alex in Southend-on-Sea, designed
by Rodney Martin, Vince Clarke's brother

The new singer quickly worked out the band’s image.
Dave had always had a soft spot for fashion and design,
which he’d started studying at the Technical College in
Southend-on-Sea. The band’s clumsy name in particular
was crying out for a makeover. After a few gigs, Dave
convinced the others to take on a new, catchier name
inspired by a French fashion magazine that he’d come
across: DEPECHE MODE.

The name was not only changed, the sound also needed
to be cooler. For weeks, Vince struggled with crummy temp
jobs until at last he was able to afford a synthesizer. Andy
got one too. Guitars were a thing of the past. But they
weren’t content to pat each other on the back and be proud
of having a band: the priority now was to make the band
known. And, of course, that was easiest to do by giving as
many concerts as possible.

A decisive moment came when club owner Gary Turner
offered them a regular slot to perform at Crocs in Ray-
leigh, six miles east of Basildon. And so, in August 1980,
they did several gigs there. The club could hold up to 300
people and it was common for it to be packed on a Sat-
urday night. Many people in the audience were followers
of the latest New Romantic trend - defined by outlandish
clothes and haircuts as well as heavy make-up; the others
were mates from Basildon and students from Dave’s tech-
nical college.

Slowly, their first fan base started to grow, and they began
travelling down to London for shows. Vince Clarke fixed
their first gig at the Bridgehouse pub in East End’s Canning
Town. Although only a few people turned up, the pub
owner offered them further show dates. Apart from the
songs that Vince wrote, they also had a few cover versions
in their repertoire such as Price of Love by the Everly Broth-
ers. It was all going pretty well for Depeche Mode. And
these were the days when new records were constantly
being released on the market. Why shouldn’t theirs be one
of them?

► Basildon ► Dreaming Of A Single

16

DREAMING OF A SINGLE

A demo tape, urged Vince Clarke, was the only way to get
better gigs. And so, in the Lower Wapping Conker Compa-
ny studio in nearby Barking, they recorded the songs Ice
Machine, Photographic and Radio News on a four-track
recording system and primitive equipment. They had the
cassette copied by the Tape Copying Services in London. As
a contact, Vince Clarke handwrote his parent’s address on
the inside of each cassette case.

Poster for the concert on 16 October 1980 at The Bridgehouse pub in London.

In the hope of making a record deal, Vince and Dave then
trawled around several major record labels in London. In
those days, you didn’t just send in your demo tape but
went personally to see the A&R managers and listened to
your tape with them - if they had the time and the inclina-
tion. But no one was interested in Depeche Mode. Their
last stop was the indie label Rough Trade, with its little
shop in Notting Hill. The owner, Richard Scott, listened to
the tape but didn’t think they were right for Rough Trade.
He pointed them in the direction of Daniel Miller at Mute
Records, who was also based in the shop. But on that day
he was having a technical problem with the Fad Gadget LP
and simply waved them away.

--
The band's first demo tape was thought to be lost until it turned up at a major online
auction house in February 2011 and changed hands for £2,000. A second copy,
in the possession of Terry Murphy, owner of the legendary Bridgehouse Pub in Can-
ning Town, was auctioned shortly afterwards fetching the even higher price of
£2,800.
-------

So far. Depeche Mode’s band story resembles that of count-
less other bands - they were young musicians with an ambi-
tious demo tape and no record deal in sight. So the lads sim-
ply focused on their next concert. In November 1980 they
supported Fad Gadget in Canning Town. Daniel Miller was
also there. After seeing the band live he radically changed his
opinion of them. Only a few days went by before Daniel got
in touch and asked if they’d be interested in producing a sin-
gle for Mute. “We were big fans of Mute at that time,” explained
Martin later, “and being offered a single deal on the spot was
pretty amazing.”

At the same time, the band had come to the attention of the
17-year-old manager of Soft Cell, Steve Pearce (Stevo), who
asked them to contribute a song to a futurist compilation
album that he was planning to release on his label, Some Biz-
zare. ‘Futurist’ was a catchall term back then for some of the
new electronic bands. But it didn’t stick.

DJ Stevo, who was also a concert organiser for up-and-com-
ing artists, also wanted to sign up Depeche Mode and tried to
tempt them by offering support gigs with Ultravox, as well as
a multi-album deal. But Depeche Mode didn’t jump straight
away - they were unwilling to commit themselves to a long-
term deal on the spot and preferred to release a single to start
with. For the Some Bizzare album, they agreed to contribute
their song Photographic, which Daniel Miller produced
together with the band at the end of 1980 in the Tape One
Studio. On 30 January 1981, the compilation was available in
the shops, including Depeche Mode’s first song on vinyl.

They were still four normal lads from Basildon. But there
was no trace of boredom any more - they couldn’t wait to
get hold of their first single.

► Basildon ► Mute Records

18

MUTE RECORDS

Do-it-yourself was the order of the day - for songs, produc-
tion, artwork and labels. For years Daniel Miller had been a
huge fan of German electronic and Krautrock bands and now
he needed a label for his own one-man, electro-punk music
project, The Normal. The do-it-yourself ethic of the punk
movement convinced Miller straight away, because he had no
ambitions to be with a commercial label - they would only
meddle with his music. So he founded the label Mute Records
in 1978 at the age of 27, without a clue about how a label actu-
ally worked.

The Normal’s debut single called T.V.O.D. / Warm Leath-
erette was released on 1 May 1978 and sold 30,000 copies
- a huge success for an indie label - bringing Daniel Miller
a great deal of recognition even though it wasn’t picked up
in the charts or mainstream press.

The Silicon Teens, Daniel Miller’s second project, consisted
of arranging old rock'n’roll cover versions for synthesizers.
In fact, the project was a shrewd sham: the band’s “musi-
cians,” who appeared on records and flyers as Darryl
(vocals), Jacki (synth), Paul (e-beats) and Diane (synth),
didn't actually exist. Vocals and music were all by Miller,
who, just like in his previous project, The Normal, played
all the instruments himself.

Real bands like Fad Gadget and, for a while, the German
band DAF, were also signed by Mute. Even Soft Cell was
under discussion at some point. “It was a decision between
signing Depeche Mode or Soft Cell,” Daniel later recalled.
He decided to go with Depeche Mode, and Soft Cell went
to Some Bizzare and Phonogram. However, in 1981 Daniel
produced Soft Cell’s first single entitled Memorabilia.

Mute became a record label that was similar to the music
it sold and exemplary of post-punk development: it was
independent. This independence applied to both its artis-
tic and financial decision-making. Daniel Miller only collab-
orated with bands whose music he found personally
appealing and he was accountable to no one. On the other
hand, the bands kept control over their creative process.
And that made authenticity possible, which was invaluable,
not only for indie labels. It wasn’t the target groups and
sales figures that determined the programme but the music.
This may sound naive from a financial point of view, but for
Mute Records it worked.

And precisely because indie label bands were often more
authentic than the products of major labels, they found
greater acceptance, and their records sold well even if they
started off as niche products.

At first Daniel ran his label from home but soon after-
wards he teamed up with Rough Trade as his distribution
partner.

SILICON TEENS • MEMPHIS TENNESSEE

Promo poster for Memphis Tennessee, the first 7-inch by the Silicon Teens
released on Mute

Having started off as a record shop in 1976, Rough Trade
soon expanded its activities to include a small label and a
distribution warehouse where Mute was able to store its
record releases in the beginning. This was the start of Dan-
iel’s one-man enterprise and no one guessed back then
that Mute would progress to become one of the most suc-
cessful and durable independent labels of all time.

► Basildon ► Dreaming Of Me

20

DREAMING OF ME

It was no longer about getting a demo tape together, it
was about making a vinyl single for record shops, clubs,
radio and even TV stations. For their first Mute release,
Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller chose Dreaming of Me
from the band’s live repertoire, a sweet, flowing song with
a good drive. In the small London Blackwing studio, they
recorded it with Ice Machine on the B-side. Daniel took
the role of producer as he’d had some experience while
recording The Normal and Silicon Teens. But would the
single make it onto the airwaves?

For all these first steps, Depeche Mode relied on the sup-
port of their Basildon circle of friends. They didn’t just
come to the band’s gigs: the drawing for the cover of
Dreaming of Me came from Mark Crick, a friend of Martin
Gore's who later went on to become a photographer and
writer. They lived in the same street and went to the same
school. Around this time, the first roadie also happened
to join the band - Daryl Bamonte, younger brother of
Perry Bamonte who went on to play guitar with The Cure.
Daryl was to stay with Depeche Mode until the mid-1990s
and become a close friend of its members.

Dreaming of Me was released on 20 February 1981 in
the UK, around the same time as Heaven 17’s highly polit-
ical debut single (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove
Thing. Shortly before, the iconic New Romantic band, Vis-
age, had topped the British charts with Fade to Grey. A
surprisingly short time after its release Dreaming of Me
was being played on the radio and climbed the charts to
number 57. This wasn’t sensational but it was a good start
as none of Mute’s releases had made it into the charts at
all until then. The band’s mood was euphoric. Martin
remembers: “We felt if we concentrated a little bit more
on the band, maybe we could give up our day jobs and
actually make it.”

HANDSHAKE WITH DANIEL MILLER

Wanted: young synth band. With acts like Visage, Spandau
Ballet or Soft Cell, British record companies saw a trend
coming and young electronic musicians were suddenly in
demand. Depeche Mode received a wide range of offers:
Roger Ames, A&R manager at Phonogram, contacted the
band and offered them a record deal including a generous
advance. Other major labels also showed interest. Daniel
Miller was not able to compete with these kinds of financial
incentives.

Mute's first press release for the UK single. This letter was enclosed with the singles
and distributed to radio presenters and DJs as release information.

► Handshake With Daniel Miller ► Basildon

DREAMING OF ME 7" • MUTE • MUTE 013 • UK

The first pressing of the UK single Dreaming Of Me bore the information "Distributed
by rough Trade" on the back cover. Later pressings listed Spartan as a second distri-
butor

In. West Germany, Dreaming Of Me was not released as a single. Intercord distribu-
ted some copies for promotional purposes to the press and DJs. However these were
English pressings of the single with a sticker listing Intercords catalogue number
197.206 on the back.

The single was mentioned in Intercord's press information for the West German re-
lease of Speak & Spell.

Poster with the motif of Dreaming Of Me for the concert in Londons South
on 1 May 1981. The illustration was by Mark Crick, a friend of Martin of Martin Gore's.

But Rod Buckle (co-owner of Sonet Records and Mute
Record’s cooperation partner) and Neil Ferris (Mute's radio
promoter) recommended that the band stick with Daniel as
he would look after them better. The band followed this
advice and stayed because they trusted Daniel and felt that
rather than create short-lived hype, Mute would be able to
develop Depeche Mode. “Why shouldn’t we have been able
to? The other record companies were quite old-fashioned
and very pop-oriented, but we worked in a completely dif-
ferent way,” recalls Daniel Miller. With a handshake they
agreed to a fifty-fifty share of the UK profits.

The deal also bound Mute Records to finding licensees
in other countries. A modest advance was organised by Rod
Buckle from Sonet, and the record company Intercord in
Stuttgart became the German partner for Mute’s artists.
From then on, Intercord released all Depeche Mode's
records in West Germany until 1989.

It’s only by looking at what happened to other bands
who were signed up to major labels around the time that it
becomes clear how right Depeche Mode’s decision was to
stay with Daniel Miller and Mute: many of the others soon
slipped into oblivion.

NEW LIFE

Over the moon at the success of their first single, the band
followed with New Life on 13 June. For the first time, a
12-inch single of the song was also produced. New Life
brought the hotly anticipated invitation to perform on Top
of the Pops. Following this, the band’s single climbed to
number 11 in the UK charts, making it a hit. Various offers
followed from European TV broadcasters for pre-recorded
performances on TV shows. The next step was obvious: an
album had to be made.

BLACKWING STUDIOS

Daniel Miller had come across Blackwing while looking for
a studio to work on his Silicon Teens album. The owner
Eric Radcliffe and his sound assistant John Fryer showed
that they were open to Daniel’s way of working and to new
electronic music in general, which was very rare back then
within the rock-oriented studio scene. To boot, the Black-
wing Studio had a large control room at its disposal where
the synthesizers could be plugged in directly. The studio
was located in a small side street in south-east London,
inside a former church that was partially destroyed by
bombs in 1941. For economical reasons, the founder Eric

23



Radcliffe was only able to equip the studio with an eight-
track recording system. No one, least of all Radcliffe, could
have suspected that Blackwing was to become the legend-
ary birthplace of numerous Mute albums in the years to
come and would also be much in demand by other indie
labels such as 4AD and Creation Records. Apart from Dep-
eche Mode, in the following decades, albums would be
recorded there by bands such as Dead Can Dance, My
Bloody Valentine and Nine Inch Nails.

For the recording work on Depeche Mode’s first album,
Daniel set up his analogue Arp 2600 synthesizer and sequencer
in the studio, quite considerably enhancing the band’s sparse
equipment. As Vince was unemployed, he spent the day at
Blackwing with Daniel; the others turned up after work.

Because of the limitations of the eight-track system, the
songs were mostly recorded live. “I would capture as best I
could the atmosphere and the vibes of the songs the way I’d
seen them live. Just to have a good electronic pop sound that
wasn’t a copy of something else,” explained Daniel Miller. But
the real benchmark came after the mixing. Then they would
all leave the studio, get into Eric Radcliffe s car and shove a
cassette into the player: if the songs sounded good on a tape
on an old car Stereo, they’d sound good on any hi-fi system.


A sign at the All Hallows Church 2012, formerly the Blackwing Studio
------------------------------------------------------------------
History (Part Two)

The All Hallows Mural and Hans Feibusch

George Reindorp commissioned the renowned WW2
artist. Hans Feibusch. to paint a mural for the church
All Hallows' links with WW2 are further strengthened
by the artist's personal history. Feibusch fled
Germany in the 1930s to escape the Nazi regime He
was one of Hitler's so-called 'degenerate artists ,
exhibited by them at a show In 1937 to highlight
modernist art trends the regime opposed Feibusch
was. In fact, a conservative painter, but was probably
included In that exhibition because he was Jewish
The All Hallows’ mural. Noli me Tangere ('Let Me Go').
depicts Jesus appearing before Mary Magdalene after
his resurrection. The mural remains in All Hallows,
but has been bricked up for decades.

For a period of time In the early 1980s. All Hallows
Church was converted into a recording studio and
became the home of the hits Blackwmg Studios was
where Depeche Mode laid down their debut album.
Speak and Spell, and it was also here that Yazoo made
their early recordings. Blackwing was one of the
studios that led the way In producing the synth sound
associated with Brit Pop. The studios closed i
September 2001. The building has been empty ever since.
------------------------------------------------------------------


► Basildon ► First Photo Shoot With Tim Williams

28

FIRST PHOTO SHOOT WITH TIM WILLIAMS

In June 1981, Vince Clarke asked photographer Tim Williams
- who had been a Depeche Mode fan from the word go - if he
would take some pictures of the band. Endless requests for
autographs were arriving in the Depeche Mode Information
Service letterbox, founded by Deb Danahay, Vince Clarke’s
girlfriend at the time, to regularly inform the rapidly growing
Depeche Mode fan base about the band’s activities.

So on 21 June 1981, a photo shoot took place in Basil-
don during which the first three official shots for auto-
graphed postcards were taken. The cards could be ordered
from the Information Service and were also sold as mer-
chandise at gigs.

FASHION & FAME

Another way for a band to cultivate its image, aside from its
music, live performances and record covers, was its dress
code. In 1981, Depeche Mode turned themselves out in
dark suits, white shirts and ties, in the swing-boy style of
the forties, or in leather gear - the kind that was fashion-

----------------------------------------------
This photo was taken in front of Vince Clarke's parent's house. The car whose bonnet
the band is casually posed on belonged to Deb Danahay's father. Deb was Vince
Clarke's girlfriend at the time and the founder of the Depeche Mode Information Ser-
vice, the band's first fan club. 500 autographed pictures were printed using this
photo.

Autographed pictures from the London-based firm Walkerprint rate highly among collectors. 1,000 copies of this picture were printed.
----------------------------------------------


29

► Fashion & Fame ► Basildon

Depeche Mode in June 1981, photographed on an embankment on Vange Hill Drive in Basildon. 500 autographed pictures were printed with this photograph.
------------------------------------------------

able at gay clubs at the time. The band wavered between
these styles, not quite deciding which way to go, and not
associating its look with its music. That was to come much
later. At the time, however, their mix of styles was quite
common. Many other bands, Soft Cell among them, also
varied their look.

The British music press, which was dominated at the
time by New Musical Express, Sounds and Melody Maker,
branded Depeche Mode as a teenybopper phenomenon
after their first single was released. Perhaps this was because
minor chords were lacking in Dreaming of Me, or because
the lads looked too optimistic in photos, unlike other new
wave bands whose world-weariness and arrogance was
etched on their faces. “People didn’t take us as seriously as
Heaven 17 or The Human League, or bands like them,
which was very depressing,” recalls Mute’s radio promoter
Neil Ferris.

This improved slightly after New Life, but the band
found it hard to explain that chart compatibility didn’t
preclude seriousness and an independent attitude. “Dep-
eche Mode are too young for the melancholy of Kraft-
werk, and their underpants are too clean for the despair
of DAF. At an extreme - when the three synths splutter,
jam, and freeze on I Take Pictures, they are only children
staging pile-ups with toy cars,” wrote the NME in August
1981.

The German magazine Musikexpress, on the other
hand, believed that Depeche Mode was merely a product
created by Daniel Miller and condemned them with the
searing words: “Untaxing, ultra-synth glamour-pop by
four pretty boys that Daniel Miller (Fad Gadget, Silicon
Teens) has soldered together in his electro garage to form
a commercial power package. The packaging reads some-
thing like: ‘Every single a hit!’ Despite the fact that, in
Germany, the band was an inside tip at the time (unlike
in the UK), the readers of German magazine Sounds voted
Depeche Mode to number 4 on its Best International
Newcomer chart. They were beaten by the Au Pairs, Bow
Wow Wow - who soon disappeared from the face of the
earth - and Heaven 17.

► Basildon ► Just Can't Get Enough

32

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH

Before their debut album was released, the band’s third single
Just Can’t Get Enough was released at the beginning of Sep-
tember and soared to number 8 in the UK charts. Once again,
they managed to get on to Top of the Pops. And after a long
period of uncertainty, it seemed that the moment had come:
the lads resigned from their jobs to focus entirely on music.
There was no turning back any more.

TOP OF THE POPS

Depeche Mode with Just Can't Get Enough on Top of the Pops. The music show was
one of the most successful BBC productions in the 1980s. But due to falling viewing
figures it was dropped after over 42 years on 20 June 2006.

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH Press Release
for Just Can't Get Enough in the UK. As was common at the time, there was no de-
tailed information about the band or the material contained on the single.

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH 7 • MUTE • 7MUTE016 • UK

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH 12" • MUTE • 12MUTE016 • UK

======================

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 1444
Joined: Thu Dec 26, 2013 3:51 pm
Location: USA

Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby obs » Mon Feb 06, 2017 11:25 pm

Holy crap, thanks for that!
obs
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 1909
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 3:59 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby schwenko » Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:48 am

obs wrote:Holy crap, thanks for that!



Ditto!
Sugoi !!!
schwenko
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 5375
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2003 12:20 pm
Location: USA

Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby negative1 » Tue Feb 07, 2017 10:47 am

sure guys.. i will post links to the Word documents for some more chapters... here is the 2nd part.. from speak and spell up to get the balance right:
=================

► Speak & Spell

34

► SPEAK & SPELL

Shortly before Speak & Spell was released on 29 October
1981. the October issue of the popular magazine Flexipop
included an inlay of a 7-inch flexi-single by Depeche Mode
with the title Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead - a good promo-
tional stunt for their forthcoming debut album. There were
60.000 pre-orders for the album in the UK alone. Expecta-
tions were high.

In November, Speak & Spell rose to number 10 in the
British album charts, which was an impressive result for a
newcomer band from an indie label. The album title Speak
& Spell was suggested by Daniel Miller in reference to an
electronic toy on the market in the UK at the time - a fitting
name for a band taking its first steps. Depeche Mode was
never to sound quite as optimistic or as downright naive as
it did during its infancy.

Nine of the album’s eleven songs were penned by Vince.
Tora! Tora! Tora! and Big Muff were composed by Martin
who was also lead vocalist on Any Second Now (Voices). As
Dreaming of Me was only released as a single in the UK, the
song appeared on international pressings instead of I
Sometimes Wish I Was Dead. In the tradition of electronic
bands from the seventies there was an instrumental track
on the album: Big Muff.

The record cover was designed by photographer Brian
Griffith, who had already worked with Elvis Costello and
Iggy Pop. His agency was in the same building as Mute, so
he got the job. “I developed the setting on my own, I didn’t
have any help. I don’t know where I had the idea for the

------------------------
FLEXIPOP! MAGAZINE NR. 11/1981

Speak & Spell learning toy from Texas Instruments. Not only was Depeche Mode's
first LP named after the successful children's toy: director Steven Spielberg's hero E.T.
phoned home on one of these machines in the 1982 film named after him.
-----------------------

swan in plastic, no idea,” says Brian on how the picture was
created. The band wasn’t sure what to make of it either,
and the fee of £1,000 seemed brazenly inflated at the time
- but the swan is what ended up on the cover. And even if
it isn’t the greatest cover the band ever had, it kept people
puzzling about the significance of the image: no one could
quite work it out.

THE FLEXIPOP! ALBUM LP • LYN1 1965 • UK

► Speak & Spell

36

INTERCORD PRESS INFO [ORIGINAL]

LONDON IN DEPECHE MODE FEVER

The news item came by telex on 19 October - exactly ten days before the release
of Depeche Mode's first album. Daniel Miller, boss of the one-man record label, sent
it by ticker: "60,000 pre-ordered LPs - that's silver, people." One day later, it was
corrected. "Forget 'silver'. We've got gold!" To get gold, the band needed to sell 100,000
LPs in England: Depeche Mode's album already had 100,000 pre-orders, nine days before
its release. For Melody Maker the verdict was clear: "The London
is in Depeche Mode fever. It started off innocently, in the little country town of Basildon,
Sussex. That's where the four young lads met about a year ago: Vince Clarke,
the eldest at 20, was a guitarist in an acoustic duo, Martin Gore, 19, a keyboard
player in a rock band, Andrew Fletcher just strummed around by himself on his old
Fender and Dave Gahan, 18, thinks that ever since his voice broke, he's "got real
sex in his voice."

The four decided to start a band. And because they were united by a weakness for
synth sounds as well as their love for music, the direction was clear: "synthesizer
music". A name was quickly found: Depeche Mode. "We just liked the sound of
those French words," mused Vince Clarke. Depeche Mode ('fashion dispatches')
was the name of a French music magazine. Only a year later, the name was syn-
onymous with a refreshingly new electronic sound. Daniel Miller played a large role
in this. Miller, a dabbler in electronic music in his own right and boss of the Mute
label and produced the second LP by German band Deutsch Amerikanische Freund-
schaft (DAF) in the past. Now he began fully concentrating on the band's technical
support: Miller gave the lads tips, made sure they found the right equipment and tu-
ned the sound to its optimal level. Success came quickly. Their first single, Dreaming
Of Me, was released in March 1981 and made it into the UK top thirty. Their sec-
ond s:ngle. New Life (May 1981) made it into the top twenty and their latest single
Just Can't Get Enough made the top ten. In between, the band gave concerts that
fans turned Into real dance orgies. "You could say that the fans just can't enough of
Depeche Mode's new pop," wrote the NME - and this was during times that didn't
exactly look rosy for British youth. "The empire is collapsing and the fans are dan-
cing,' noted Bernd Gockel from Musikexpress. For German sounds, Depeche
Mode's music was the most up-to-date state barometer of England's mood,
Depeche Mode's first album was now out. And not just because of the 100,000
pre-orders, Melody Maker believed that "things have only jus! begun for the synthy-
popper's. Sneak previews of the album had some journalists in raptures: ”... so
transparent, bright, so clear, glittering, full of new life - it's a miracle that they don't
burn permanent dance shadows onto the walls..." begins the enthusiastic review in
Melody Maker. Manfred Gillig from Audio is less poetic, but perhaps more insightful:
’Depeche Mode shows a sixth sense for the stuff that hits are made of. Simple and
fresh.' And Daniel Miller is excited about the reactions: "England is in Depeche Mode fever ..."

SPEAK & SPELL LP • INTERCORD • I NT 146.801 • GER
LIMITED FIRST EDITION LP WITH POP TRANSFER

This edition is one of the most sought-after rarities among collectors. Intercord re-
leased the first pressing in West Germany with a transfer as an incentive for new
listeners.

These iron-on transfers were a hugely popular sales gimmick for children and teen-
agers in the eighties. But the transfer covered the back sleeve and the track list, so
a slip was inserted between the transfer and its plastic wrapping to show it to inter-
ested shoppers. Finding records with the transfer still intact is very difficult more than
30 years after its release. There is no information about the size of the pressing.

► Speak & Spell ► Depeche Mode Live

42

DEPECHE MODE LIVE

In 1981, Depeche Mode played more than sixty shows in
England and Europe. No matter that they’d barely left
Basildon in their early years, by September, Paris, Brussels
and Amsterdam had been on their itinerary. Not long after-
wards they went on their first trip to Germany. On Friday
25 September they played at the Markthalle in Hamburg.
That month the first long article was published about the
band in the German-language magazine Sounds. Journalist
Diedrich Diederichsen, later chief editor of the Cologne-
based magazine Spex, casually condemned them: “Depeche
Mode are absolutely here today, and very probably gone
tomorrow.” Just how wrong he was going to be was some-
thing no one could have guessed back then.

Merchandise from the band's early days. These badges were sold along with t-shirts
and autographed photos at the concerts in 1981 and 1982. The newly founded
Information Service, set up by Vinces girlfriend Deb Danahay, offered various mer-
chandising items in its monthly newsletter. Interest from fans grew with every concert.

Concert manager Dan Silver, who also managed Fad
Gadget, put together a longer UK tour for the end of Octo-
ber/beginning of November. The concert on 6 November at
the University of Liverpool was recorded by the BBC, who
later broadcast some of the songs. Tour manager Andy
Franks remembers: “People would come with strange sorts
of expectations about what they were going to see ... it was
probably one of their first shows that didn’t actually have a
band playing conventional instruments on stage. We were
a bit surprised about it because we hadn’t done a show
before with a band who didn’t have a drummer.”

On the stage where the drummer normally sat there
stood a huge tape machine playing beats and some pre-re-
cordings. Interest in the band was phenomenal. Up to
20,000 people came to each concert, among them many
teenagers. As Vince, Andy and Martin didn’t have much
room to move behind their synths, it was mostly up to
Dave to put on a good show. “Dave had a pretty impres-
sive presence even then. Extrovert but shy, and very char-
ismatic,” as roadie Daryl Bamonte described Dave Gahan
in a later interview with Musikexpress. Although Dave did
not sweep as wildly across the stage as he would do at
later concerts, some of his later legendary dance move-
ments were already discernible. He limited his interaction
with the audience to introducing the next song, and occa-
sionally prompted them to clap and dance. And that’s
exactly what they did.

Set lists from early concerts from Daryl Bamonte's private archive. Some of these
songs only exist on paper nowadays. Recordings of the live songs, such as Mouldy
Old Dough, a cover version of a song by the band Lieutenant Pigeon, and Dance
and Radio News are no longer known. Depeche Mode's first single Dreaming Of
Me is called here Dreams Of Me.

43

► Vince Leaves ... ► Speak & Spell

VINCE LEAVES ...

Depeche Mode was surfing on a wave of success. Their
debut album Speak & Sound was selling fantastically and
their concerts were well attended. But not everyone in the
band felt comfortable about this. Right in the middle of the
album’s success and during the first proper tour, Vince
Clarke announced that he was leaving - to everyone’s sur-
prise. Even today, he’s never talked about the real reasons
behind his departure. But the most likely cause is that the
hype of stardom and the sudden routine of press inter-
views and concerts was too much for him: he preferred to
retreat into the studio and write songs.

Daniel Miller was able to convince Vince to stay until the
end of the UK tour. The last joint performance took place
on 3 December 1981 at Chichester Festival Theatre. “I think
the band was really pissed off. They were, I know. They
think I left them in the lurch,” summarised Vince. For a
while he even contemplated giving up music-making alto-
gether. But then he responded to an ad in Melody Maker
placed by Alison Moyet: she was looking for a band to join.
They met up and put together a joint demo tape.

Clarke and Moyet had known each other from their ear-
liest childhoods. They’d even gone to Saturday morning
music school together in Basildon. Together, they took a
demo tape with Vince’s song Only You on it and played it
to Daniel Miller, who immediately signed them up. The
new band - Yazoo - were initially even more successful
than Depeche Mode. Initially, that is...

------------------
Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet: Yazoo

Concert ticket signed by the band for the last gig on the Speak & Spell tour on 3 December 1981 in the Festival Theatre, Chichester,

It was also the last concert with founding member Vince Clarke, who left the band afterwards. Although his departure had been on the cards for weeks, Daniel Miller persu-
aded him to finish the tour.

45

► Depeche Mode Live In Hamburg In 1981 ► Speak & Spell

DEPECHE MODE LIVE IN HAMBURG IN 1981

Rainer Dreschler photographed Depeche Mode at their
first German concert in Hamburg in September 1981. On
the band’s 30th anniversary in 2011, he recalled in an inter-
view with Musikexpress: “In September, Depeche Mode
was playing for the first time in Germany at Hamburg’s
Markthalle on a short European tour. I was allowed in dur-
ing a soundcheck to take photographs and noticed how
serious they were about what they did, and how important
the right tone was. That surprised me. Personally, I didn’t
like their synth sound - I was more into hard rock at the
time. And if there had to be a keyboard on stage, then let it
be a good ol' Hammond. But anyway. In the evening, the
concert was packed. The Markthalle was too small for the
lads by then. It was a huge crush but the mood was elated.
Everyone felt that something special was going on. The
wave from England had hit Hamburg with full force.”

The Markthalle in Hamburg near Klosterwall is one of the oldest concert venues in
Germany. Built in 1913/14, the long, Hanseatic-style red-brick building was first
used as a vegetable market, then later as a flower market until after the war it be-
came a post stockroom for some years. After that, the building was empty until 1975
when a group of investors were found who wanted to fill this central location with
new life. After extensive renovations the Markthalle reopened its doors on New
Year's Eve in 1976/77 to host a huge party and a concert by the German Krautrock
band, Embryo. The Markthalle became well known for hosting gigs by new bands
among them British acts. Besides Depeche Mode, The Damned, Ultravox, The
Stranglers, The Clash and The Police also played there.

Concert tickets and a concert poster for the first Depeche Mode concert in West Germany.

51

► The Difficult Second Album ► A Broken Frame

► A BROKEN FRAME

THE DIFFICULT SECOND ALBUM
Morrissey couldn’t stand Depeche Mode. At the beginning
of 1982 he wrote in the Record Mirror: “Depeche Mode
may not be the most remarkably boring group ever to walk
the face of the earth but they’re certainly in the running.
Their sophisticated nonsense succeeds only in emphasis-
ing just how hilariously unimaginative they really are.” But
at the time the opinion of some bloke in Manchester was
not really of concern to Depeche Mode.

After the Depeche Mode concert in Rafters, Manchester, on 5 August 1981,
the still-unknown Steven Morrissey penned a damning judgement of the
band in the Record Mirror on 13 February 1982. Morrissey, who was
known for his provocative statements, later made British music history with
his band The Smiths and is considered a pioneer of English indie rock. In
2004, Steven Patrick Morrissey was elected by the NME as "the most influ-
ential artist of all times."

Vince Clarke’s sudden departure had left a gaping hole. Until
then Vince had pulled all the strings in the band and written
most of the songs. But Martin, Andy and Dave had given up
jobs and university courses and didn’t want to go back to
humdrum life after their first success. “It should worry every
other band when your main songwriter departs. But we didn’t
even think about it, we just carried on,” said Andy Fletcher,
remembering the positivity of the remaining members.

---------------------
in its first newsletter of the year, the Depeche Mode Information Service announced
Vince Clarke's departure. The English media had already reported on this in Decem-
ber 1981 and predicted that the band would fold quickly without its main songwriter.
For the remaining live performances, among them in the USA, a quick substitute for
Vince was sought.
-----------------------

SEE YOU

In December 1981 they went back to Blackwing Studios
and recorded a new single. See You had been penned by
Martin Gore when he was a teenager on his guitar, and now
the band rearranged it.

On 29 January 1982, not even two months after Vince
had left, See You climbed to number 6 in the UK charts. Its
high position showed that Depeche Mode was popular
even without Vince. Nevertheless, the song sounded a bit
goody-goody and coy and the underrated B-side, Now, This
Is Fun had much more drive and was far fresher. At almost
the same time, Kraftwerk’s The Model reached number 1 in
the UK charts. Electronic music was everywhere.

Promo posters for the UK release of See You, 1982

With the cover for See You the group underlined its attitude
towards sub-culture and its position outside the main-
stream. The design came from East German painter Moritz
Reichelt, who had relocated to West Germany in 1957.

Reichelt, whose works were displayed at Kassel’s docu-
menta IV exhibition in 1968 when he was only 12 years old.
founded the new wave gallery Art Attack in Wuppertal in
1978 and was a forerunner group of new German wave
(Neue Deutsche Welle or NDW), called Der Plan, in Dussel-
dorf in 1979. Following this, he set up the record label Ata
Tak in Dusseldorf in 1980, an indie label that Martin Gore
and Daniel Miller were already big fans of in 1982.

► A Broken Frame ► Wanted: Keyboard Player

54

WANTED: KEYBOARD PLAYER

After Vince had left, Daniel Miller suggested finding a
replacement for the band; this was rejected by the other
members at first. However, for the remaining bookings in
1982 it seemed sensible to look for a substitute keyboard
player. So the band put an ad in the December 1981 issue
of Melody Maker for a keyboard player: “name band, syn-
thesize, must be under twenty-one.” Among the applicants
was Alan Wilder, born 1 June 1959, from West London.
Alan came from a middle-class family and was a trained
musician who had already played and released records
with the bands Dafne And The Tenderspots, Real To Real
and The Hitmen, but without much success and in musical
genres very different to Depeche Mode.

At first, he lied about his age so that he didn’t get rejected
straight away. Dave recalls: “We auditioned at Blackwing,
and all these strange and wonderful characters showed up.
And they were all dressed up to the nines, but couldn’t
play. And Alan came along and could play anything.” The
band took him on, first as a live musician, and paid him a
weekly wage of £100. In January 1982, he played his first
concert with Depeche Mode in Crocs in Rayleigh and
shortly afterwards went with them to New York to promote
the new US release of Just Can’t Get Enough.

Just as with the hit single Just Can’t Get Enough, the
group decided to produce a video for See You. It was direc-
ted by Julien Temple, a young London music and video
director who had made a name for himself at the end of the
1970s with a film about the legendary punk pioneers, the
Sex Pistols: it was called The Great Rock 'n’Roll Swindle.

Depeche Mode threesome: transfer picture by Target Transfers from the UK, 1982

The Depeche Mode video was partially filmed on loca-
tion at a Woolworths store in Hounslow, Middlesex. Video
producer Siobhan Barron described the difficulties they
experienced during the shooting of the film in an interview
with the teen mag Look In. Barron and her production firm
Limelight, who produced several music videos in the Eight-
ies for bands such as Culture Club, The Human League and
Peter Schilling, a NDW star, described the chaotic day’s
filming: ‘At some point, we had 500 people watching us.
Some of them just walked right through the takes. When
we’d finally cleared the shop, more people suddenly turned
up and pulled faces into the camera. In some scenes, the
band was supposed to play keyboards in the middle of the
shop. But some people thought they were salesmen and
came up to ask questions like: “How long will it take before
I can learn to play this instrument?” or “Can I buy this on
interest-free credit?”

The video itself didn’t appeal much to the band, who
saw the filming more as a necessary evil. In 1985, when
their first collection album The Singles 81 - 85 was released.
See You was included but the video collection that was
released at the same time, Some Great Videos, did not con-
tain Temple’s video. It was the first video featuring an
appearance by newcomer Alan Wilder.

Substitute keyboard player Alan Wilder on 24 March in 1982 at the Trinity Hall in
Hamburg.

► A Broken Frame ► The Meaning Of Love

58

THE MEANING OF LOVE

Without Alan, however, the band then recorded another
single at Blackwing studios: The Meaning of Love, which
was released on 26 April 1982. Again, the cover was
designed by Moritz Reichelt and Ata Tak. This cheerful,
naive song managed to make it to number 12 in the UK
charts. Despite this considerable success, singles by ex-band
member Vince Clarke and his new project Yazoo were
doing better in the charts. Many British music journalists
interpreted this as Depeche Mode’s gradual decline and
predicted that they wouldn’t last long without their main
songwriter. What’s more, the group was still being dispar-
aged in the music press as a teenybopper band after a few,
sometimes dubious TV appearances on unsuitable shows.

One of these bizarre performances was for the German
TV show Bananas on 27 April 1982, when Depeche Mode
performed See You in an imitation shed holding chickens.
Musikexpress also dismissed the group as a one-hit won-
der: "Bland, synth-pop for party people who want to shake
a leg. But even so, your legs soon get tired of shaking.”

WANTED: AN IMAGE

The band’s lack of orientation was showing in its image in
particular. They had traded in their forties’ suits from the
era of their first singles for conspicuously boring pullovers.
They’d also developed a strange taste for boldly checked

58. Depeche Mode on 27 April 1982 on the West German music show Bananas

Bananas was a popular music and former comedy show on the channel WDR,
which then changed on 24 March 1981 to ARD. The show consisted of several 'live'
appearances by different bands that were elaborately produced and of almost the
same quality as the music videos of the era. In between the music performances,
there were one or two comedy sketches.

Even the bands who appeared without an audience were shoehorned into the com-
edy concept of the show with various stage and costume techniques.

This is how Depeche Mode ended up singing See You to a farmyard backdrop,
holding chickens. Additional musical guests in the show were Status Quo, Stefan
Waggershausen, Shakin' Stevens and Robert Palmer. In November 1984 the show
was dropped.

THE MEANING OF LOVE 7" • MUTE • 7MUTE022 • UK

Finding a name for the B-side instrumental of The Meaning Of Love was not easy.
Daniel Miller asked Martin several times in vain.

The deadline for the artwork drew near - the single was due out on 26 April 1982.
Daniel pressed him on the matter.

Depeche Mode was on the European leg of their tour near Oberkorn in Luxembourg
and Martin wanted to order an egg for breakfast. Unfortunately, they were out of
eggs because, according to the waiter: "Oberkorn - it's a small town". This became
the song title.

Later releases of the single on CD used the 12-inch sleeve design also by Moritz
Reichelt and Ata Tak.

THE MEANING OF LOVE 12" • MUTE • 12MUTE022 • UK

59

► Wanted: An Image ► A Broken Frame

THE MEANING OF LOVE 7" • INTERCORD • INT 111.804 • GER

For promo purposes Intercord distributed regular singles that were simply marked
'Promotional Copy".

shirts - all in all, not a good look for an electro-indie band.
"We didn’t have a vision at all. We were torn between being
a pop band on Smash Hits and a cooler, alternative band,”
says Andy about their confusion at the time. To improve the
band's credibility, Mute hired the PR adviser Chris Carr and
his firm Ark PR, who were working with artists like The
Cure and Siouxsie and The Banshees at the time, as well as
with labels like 4D. Mute and Depeche Mode wanted to be
in the same league as these bands and not just a flash in the
pan. Regrettably, neither Mute nor the group had thought
about the quality of their music videos at this stage. The
videos that the band made from 1982 to early 1983 with
Get the Balance Right! are, in the worst case, embarrassing,
and at best, records of these innocent times. All of them
have been left out in later video collections. But perhaps
this is also a reason why Depeche Mode was so popular
with their fans from the beginning: they were not perfect.
Singing a love song while holding a chicken was not some-
thing that happened every day in the music industry.

In July 1982 the band had a difficult journey ahead: the
tricky second album loomed. With Daniel Miller as producer,
they rented the Blackwing Studio again. Eric Radcliffe and
John Fryer were once again involved as sound engineers.

Although Alan had played in all the gigs, TV shows and
videos since January, the band decided to produce the
record without him. The three core members wanted to
prove to themselves and the rest of the world that they
were capable of making a good album. Even without Vince
Clarke.

The single's limited first edition release in West Germany was once again on red
vinyl. Despite this limited edition, the subsequent black vinyl pressing counts today
as a rarity among collectors. To get a copy of this issue you require luck and
patience.

THE MEANING OF LOVE 7" • RCA • SPBO-7333 • SPA • PROMO

The only true promo pressing of the single was issued by RCA in Spain in a com-
pany sleeve. The size of this pressing must have been relatively large as it is not a
true rarity.

► A Broken Frame ► Leave In Silence

60

LEAVE IN SILENCE

Although See You and The Meaning of Love appeared on
the next LP, Leave in Silence was the first release from the
next creative phase. “I look back fondly at Leave in Silence,”
Martin said later. “I think it was a turning point for us and
we realised that this was a way to go forward.” The song left
behind the happy-go-lucky pop of the 1981 singles and The
Meaning of Love, yet was still very danceable. Martin had
successfully taken up his new role as the main songwriter
for Depeche Mode, even if the single only reached the top
20 in the UK singles chart.

Leave in Silence was released on 16 August 1982 and it
was the first single that was designated with the BONG
label in addition to its catalogue number. “Having a bong,”
Australian slang for smoking hashish, was a phrase that
Martin stumbled across in a magazine and found so funny
that since then, every Depeche Mode single has been given
a consecutive BONG number.

In North America, Leave in Silence was not released as a
single. After the band came back from a short US tour they
wanted to concentrate primarily on the album recordings
that they’d been working on under a lot of pressure since
July 1982. The highly successful European release of See
You had only just been issued in the USA, half a year after
its UK release - so there wasn’t any need for a new US sin-
gle.

The 12-inch UK version of Leave in Silence made its way
later to North America and Japan instead of the album A
Broken Frame.

MERCHANDISE T982 Notenheft zu See You von Music Sales Ltd London

LEAVE IN SILENCE 7" • MUTE • 7BONG1 • UK

The lettering was designed by Ching Ching Lee, a master of calligraphy. The sleeve
design for the single was created by Martyn Atkins. The photography on the 7-inch

LEAVE IN SILENCE 12” • MUTE • 12BONG1 • UK

was by Brian Griffin. The only Leave In Silence promo pressings were issued by RCA
in Spain as 7-inch and 12-inch versions.

63

► A Broken Frame ► A Broken Frame

A BROKEN FRAME

At the end of September, A Broken Frame was released and
made it to number 8 in the British album charts. Even in
Germany, it made it to number 56 without much publicity,
as did the other singles in 1982. Similarly to Speak & Spell,
there was an instrumental track and a song with Martin on
lead vocals, Shouldn’t Have Done That.

Unlike the songs that they had recorded the year before
on Speak & Spell, nearly none of the new songs were
recorded live. Martin had written some of them as a teen-
ager, others were created in the studio. Their mood and
quality varied from sugary pop songs like Photograph of
You, to more mature tracks such as The Sun & The Rainfall.

Newly acquired synthesizers also enabled the band to pro-
duce more diverse sounds and the song arrangements were
becoming gradually more complex. It was useful that a
16-track recording machine had been acquired by Blackwing
since the band’s last session, making it much easier to work
on songs and carry out adjustments after the recording.

Even if these days A Broken Frame is considered by both
band and fans as one of Depeche Mode’s weaker albums, it
already has traces of their music’s hallmark melancholy,
bordering on bleakness in places. The old teenybopper
frame of mind had certainly been broken, adding a figura-
tive meaning to the album title.

For the first time the band experimented with sound while
recording, without using pre-recorded noises: for Shouldn’t
Have Done, for example, Daniel Miller and the band wan-
ted to integrate the sound of marching feet. As their friends
in the band Blancmange were recording their new album
in the studio next door, they were asked to come over and
march in front of the mike for a minute.

Depeche Mode’s musical progression was also reflected
in its artwork. The cover for Leave in Silence and the LP

The album photo appeared on the front cover of Life magazine in winter
1990 under the title "The World's Best Photographs"

were designed for the first time by Martyn Atkins, who was
already working for Factory Records and had created Joy
Division’s cover for Closer. Sticking to the decision made
during the last album, the band was not pictured on either
cover. By not doing so, Atkins and Mute wanted to empha-
sise that Depeche Mode was a group of serious artists
whose good artwork reflected their music and that this was
more important to them than boosting sales by putting pic-
tures of their faces on the covers.

Brian Griffin shot the cover for A Broken Frame. His
image of a peasant woman in a field compensated not only
for his first botched cover design but was even judged by
Life Magazine to be among the best colour album cover
photographs in 1990.

Despite the fact that A Broken Frame didn’t sell as well
as Speak & Spell, the UK tour of the following October was
a sell-out. The concert at Hammersmith Odeon on 25 Octo-
ber was filmed by a team from Mute Records. At this stage
they were planning a video of the live gig for 1983. But only
eight months later the band felt that they had outgrown
these songs and abandoned the release. Nevertheless,
some of the live recordings made it onto the B-side of lim-
ited edition 12-inch singles in 1983.

Following the UK tour, fourteen European dates were
scheduled for November and December, nine of which
were in Germany. In March 1983, the band began a short
North American tour and then played in April in Bangkok.
Hong Kong and Tokyo. From Basildon to Asia: the Essex
lads were beginning to get to know the world.

► A Broken Frame ► Alan Wilder

64

A BROKEN FRAME LP • MUTE • STUMM9 • UK

There were no conspicuous differences between the different license pressings to A
Broken Frame. Only a nondescript photo of Andy Fletcher on the inner sleeve varied
from pressing to pressing. Why different photos were used is not known.

ALAN WILDER

Alan Wilder’s status in the band was still unclear. He had
proven himself to be an excellent stage performer and after
being left out of the recordings for A Broken Frame, he
wanted to know at last where he stood.

Long overdue, he was finally accepted as a full member
of the band during the UK tour in October 1982, as was
reported in the Depeche Mode Information Service’s
monthly newsletter. His official acceptance was typical of
Depeche Mode’s style at the time: it was modest and
unspectacular, with no party or drinking spree. Daniel
Miller simply phoned him and told him and from one
moment to the next, he was in the band.

The autographed Walkerprint photographs of Alan Wilder sent out by the
Depeche Mode Information Services in 1982. The portrait tried Wilder's
patience for although he had played in all the band's videos from early
1982 and was pictured in various band photos, the band still recorded the
album without him.

A BROKEN FRAME LP • SIRE • PRO-A-1084 • USA • PROMO

► A Broken Frame ► Depeche Mode Live 1982-83

66

DEPECHE MODE LIVE 1982-83

The first concert of the See You tour took place on 20 Jan-
uary 1982 in Crocs in Rayleigh as a kind of warm-up show
for the band’s new stage line-up during its forthcoming
US concerts.

The set list consisted mainly of songs from the Speak &
Spell album, with some surprises such as the song Televi-
sion Set and a cover version of I Like It by Gerry & The
Pacemakers, whose hit had managed to make it to num-
ber 1 in the UK charts in 1963. In March 1982, the band
toured Germany again where it played three concerts in
Hamburg, Hanover and West Berlin.

In May, Depeche Mode finished their first short US tour,
ending on 16 May 1982 in Los Angeles. Then, with their
new album A Broken Frame, the band went on a longer
world tour. At this point they were already focused on the
German market. They played a total of 13 concerts in Ger-
many, their final concert being on 28 May 1983 at the
Schuttorf Open Air festival.

Tour books for the See You and A Broken Frame tours. Alan is listed in the first book
but apart from a small photograph and his age, there are no other details about him.

New Romantics on Tour ... Poster for the two concerts at Berlin's Metropol during the
See You Tour on 26 March 1982 and for the A Broken Frame tour on 3 December
1982. Although A Broken Frame had already been released on 27 September

1982, the posters still used the Speak & Spell album motifs, at least in Germany.
Special guests at the West German concerts on the A Broken Frame tour were the
Neue Deutsche Welle musicians, X-AGENTEN, from Hamburg.

► A Broken Frame ► Get The Balance Right!

68

GET THE BALANCE RIGHT!

As early as mid-November all four members of the band
went back into the studio to work on their next single, Get
the Balance Right! It was released at the end of January
1983 in the UK and climbed the charts to number 13. The
B-side of the single, The Great Outdoors, was already being
produced in the studio by Martin and Alan.

This time the band invested much more in the 12-inch
version of the single. “That was kind of the beginning of
when everybody realised you had to make a 12-inch mix to
help sell your single. It was a good marketing tool,” remem-
bers Alan in reference to his first recording at the Black-
wing Studio and to creating the mixes for Get the Balance
Right! “We did a long 12-inch and I can remember chop-
ping up the tape. Just literally running off parses from the
track. From the mixing board, on the tape, then chopping
the tape up. I remember spending hours and hours chop-
ping up tapes to put them together. People can’t imagine
how you used to have to do things actually.”

Although the release of A Broken Frame was only four
months old, the new single’s catchy hook and the beefier
sound in general showed the band’s clear musical progres-
sion. The single and 12-inch artwork was also a new depar-
ture. The clear graphic structure, which used the abstract
image of a worker with a heavy hammer, was to become
part of the band’s iconography over the next years in vari-
ous forms. Gradually, Depeche Mode was developing its
own, distinctive artwork. But they were still far from being
self-confident performers.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Martin Gore
recalls shooting the video with an inexperienced director:
"He was totally nervous and didn’t know who our lead
singer was. He singled out Alan, which is why you get to
see Alan most of the time in the video. The rest of us were
just extras.” But the lads were too shy to clear up this mis-
understanding during the him shoot.

The 12-inch version led to an unexpected development:
an unremarkable promo of the song with no information
about the artists found its way into the US underground
club scene, and DJ Derrick May in Detroit was among those
who played it on his turntable. His verdict was that he
found it “really funky.” So much for being “the most boring
group ever to walk the face of the earth”: back then, many
US DJs and clubbers had never heard of Depeche Mode,
and little did they know that no one in Europe would say
they were “funky.” Certainly not Morrissey.

GET THE BALANCE RIGHT! 7" • MUTE • 7BONG2 • UK

GET THE BALANCE RIGHT! 12" • MUTE • 12BONG2 • UK
=====================

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
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Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby negative1 » Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:43 pm

PM me for the link to the Word Document for the first chapter or so.

later
-1
negative1
Room at the Top
 
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Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby obs » Fri Dec 15, 2017 6:52 pm

The book has been released in the US. Cover price is 60USD. Got mine from Amazon.

Preface states that it is an updated version, which includes Spirit.

Curious. There are subtle differences.

First English edition, as Negative One writes above:
"Around this time Martin had a keen interest in Germany ..."

New edition, which has a typo, with "Martin" missing:
"Around this time [Martin] developed a keen interest in Germany ..."

Seems the US fucked it up again :D .
obs
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Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby df118 » Sat Dec 16, 2017 6:11 pm

obs wrote:The book has been released in the US. Cover price is 60USD. Got mine from Amazon.

Preface states that it is an updated version, which includes Spirit.

Curious. There are subtle differences.

First English edition, as Negative One writes above:
"Around this time Martin had a keen interest in Germany ..."

New edition, which has a typo, with "Martin" missing:
"Around this time [Martin] developed a keen interest in Germany ..."

Seems the US fucked it up again :D .


Just got mine from Amazon for $38 !
df118
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Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby negative1 » Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:35 pm

Thanks for posting the update.

Yeah, sometimes things get left out in the new edition.
I know a couple of people are going to get this new version.

I'm about halfway done scanning it, and will scan and update the new sections
once I borrow the book from someone.

later
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Room at the Top
 
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Re: Depeche Mode Monument Book

Postby obs » Sun Dec 17, 2017 11:34 pm

One thing I noticed is the American spelling of "gray" (which is normal, seeing as it is an American publication :) ).

Mine has no dust jacket, and was not sealed in plastic. Kind of miffed about the seal, since there is a drop of glue on the back. I think I can get it out. Too much hassle to return it.
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