BIOGRAPHYALAN WILDER
Alan Charles Wilder was born June 1, 1959 in London at the Hammersmith Hospital. He is the third child of Albert and Kathleen Wilder and the younger brother to Stephen, born in 1952, and Andrew, born in 1954. No exact dates were mentioned but Alan says, "My brothers are 5 and 7 years older respectively so they teased me a bit when they were bored but I think I was too young to be really bothered with."[1]
His place of birth was also mixed up many times which
tempted him to start almost every of those "who you are
actually and where are you from"-articles with:
"I don't come from Basildon in Essex."[2]
"I'm happy to say that my knowledge about Basildon is rather
limited, particularly I was there only about three times.
All my visits there were with DM and at a time within the
early days when I was very interested in photography and
always carried a shoulder bag with camera equipment around
with me. My most insistent memory of Basildon is to sit in a
disgusting pub and to get told I better shouldn't cross my
legs and should hide the shoulder bag because otherwise I could be
beaten up because someone might think I was a poof."[3]
(with friendly permission of Alan Wilder)
So no "Basildon boy". Instead, Alan grew up in Acton,
West-London, in a normal, and presumably conservative, middle
class environment. "The youth isn't so rebellion there like in Basildon,
where the others come from. My parents weren't rich nor poor."[4] They "wanted
their children to have a musical education. Classical
music was played at our house the whole time mainly due to my brothers
practising the piano.[5] One of my brothers is a pianist today and
accompanies different
singers. The other one teaches music in Norway.[6] I was forced to have piano
lessons and do grades[7]", when he was about eight years old.
"I didn't like practising but
my parents wouldn't let me stop. My interest has
always been with modern music starting from being four, five years old
when I spent some time at our neighbour's house - for babysitting, y'know? -
who heard a lot of music like Manfred Man and so on."[8]
Nevertheless he was a leading member of the school orchestra and the brass band.
As a second instrument, he learned the flute. And he did well in his piano lessons.
"I got up to grade 8 and now I'm really pleased that I did have them."[9]
Alan wasn't really enthusiastic for the boys' grammar school which
he attended. "I mostly stayed in the background. I was doing quite good, but
I wasn't interested in most of the subject-matter. I only found music and
languages to be absorbing.[10] I simply hadn't the desire
of listening to the teachers. Maybe because it wasn't interesting
enough what they had to tell. I couldn't take schooling seriously
(although I'd love to go back and really learn now) - it wasn't what I
needed at the time. My mind would wander."
He summed up his teenage life with, "I was rude, scruffy, obnoxious,
arrogant and blushed in front of girls." He also didn't keep in touch
with anyone from school, had to learn to discern friends from friends.
"It's a well known English trait to resent success in others and I
found most of my 'friends' didn't want to know when things took off for me.
True friends are not like that of course."[11]
"I only got three O-levels because I was lazy [12], left school during the sixth form and went on the dole.[13] There wasn't an idea of what I wanted to do but a lot of things I wouldn't want to do. Then I went back to school once again and tried to study for the A-levels but it didn't work really.[14] My parents pushed me into writing off to recording studios, the only thing I'd expressed an interest in. After being turned down 40 times I got a job at DJM Studios in New Oxford Street. I was a tea boy, really, an over-worked gofer. The only good thing about DJM was that when bands finished studio sessions they'd often leave their instruments behind so I could muck about on a keyboard or bash some drums.[15] It became a strong ambition to be a musician. I was very single-minded about what I wanted to do from the day I got the job at DJM Studios. And, as arrogant as it sounds, I always had absolute conviction that I'd be able to forge a career for myself in music. I had to pay my dues by making tea for other people (for no money), living in a floorless building once, in Hammersmith (much to my mother's dismay, didn't bother me though), and slumming around the toilets of England in various unknown bands for a few years but I still enjoyed it and, more importantly, it made me appreciate success much more when it came.[16]"
The first band Alan joined was The Dragons. He moved to Bristol to work
with them. The first song he was part of was Misbehavin (sort of 70's
soft rock stuff) what appeared as a single on DJM records
around 1977.
"After two years in Bristol, life got too lethargic so I was glad when a
friend dragged me home to join a band called Daphne And The Tenderspots.[17]
They were playing 5 nights a week at 'Obelix' - a specialist restaurant. They
were playing a mixture of jazz, R&B (in the traditional sense) and blues etc.
I was roped on keyboards for a few quid in my pocket and a free cheese, ham
and tomato pancake at the end of the night. We were also starting to write
our own songs and jumped onto the new wave bandwagon.
After many weeks rehearsing on Graham & Daf's houseboat in Datchet, we managed
to get a rep from MAM records along.[18]
We had all these terrible clothes made and worse skinny ties. We were awful
but again we had a deal and made a single, Disco Hell."[19]
According to insinuations his parents weren't that enthusiastic about
his way of life and wouldn't give him any financial support (or maybe he had
been too proud to take money from them.)
It seems as if this led to a longer break of relationships. So Alan
would say many years later that one of the things he regretted was that he
hadn't been in touch (or seldom in touch) with his parents for a while
because of "some sort of teenage angst".
The life as a musician (in 1977 The Dragons, in 1978
Dafne And The Tenderspots with some kind of jump-on-the-bandwagon
New Wave, in 1979 Real To Real with white man reggae and
in 1980 The Hitmen with 80's Bowiesque rock)
definitely had its shady sides - so there often
wasn't any money left for quite simple, essential things.
Before Alan joined DM in the end of 1981 he was once arrested for
shoplifting. "I stole a chicken and got caught. I was a struggling musician
at the time, destitute and hungry ..."[20]
(with friendly permission of © Paola Gravina Red)
Today Alan is father of a daughter, Paris (born in September 1995),
and a son, Stanley (born in January 2001). They date from his
second, meanwhile divorced, marriage with Hepzibah Sessa. His first
marriage was with Jeri Young.
Alan now works solo as Recoil and has released the following:
1+2 (1986), Hydrology (1988),
Bloodline (1992), Unsound Methods (1997),
Liquid (2000) and SubHuman (2007). With
Selected followed some kind of Best of in 2010.
Other than in Vince's case I decided not to leave out Alan after he had left
the band. On one hand his story is too fused with the history of the band
(especially in 2010 I was glad about this decision), on the other hand
he (and his website) is an important source. In fact Alan got a lot of room
in this biography simply because there are much more quotations from him than
from any other band member - and: most of them are written by himself, so it is
for sure that they are correct.
References:
[1] recoil.co.uk
[2] A Broken Frame Tour Programme, 1982
[3] recoil.co.uk
[4] Depeche Mode Prive (part one : Alan Wilder), unknown author, media and date
[5] HotNewsTV.ro 2nd April 2010
[6] recoil.co.uk
[7] Alan Wilder: The Band Boy, No. 1, 25th May 1985
[8] HotNewsTV.ro 2nd April 2010
[9] Chatting with Alan Wilder, Henrik Wittgren, September 1997
[10] Depeche Mode Prive (part one : Alan Wilder), unknown author, media and date
[11] recoil.co.uk
[12] Chatting with Alan Wilder, Henrik Wittgren, September 1997
[13] Alan Wilder: The Band Boy, No. 1, 25th May 1985
[14] recoil.co.uk
[15] Alan Wilder: The Band Boy, No. 1, 25th May 1985
[16] recoil.co.uk
[17] Alan Wilder: The Band Boy, No. 1, 25th May 1985
[18] The Palace and the Punks, Northern Lights Ltd., 2011, author: Tony Hill
[19] Alan Wilder: The Band Boy, No. 1, 25th May 1985
[20] Depechemodebiographie.de
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