BIOGRAPHYFOUNDATION
The details on the formation of the group(s) are quite contradictory and confusing.
This base on two problems: First, there aren't any articles from 1980, and all
information about that time base on memories of the band members in later articles.
It is natural, that the farer this time was away the more unclear got the memories.
Second, in the early days often no clear questions were put forward but suggestions to
which the band members tended to "jump on". Journalists also often tended to refer
to earlier articles instead of asking their own questions. Another point is that DM
weren't taken seriously at all when they started.
However, it was somehow like this:
In 1977 Vince and Fletch founded No Romance In China, with Vince on vocals
and guitar and Fletch on bass. Another source says that No Romance In China was
founded in 1979. I tend to 1977 because
Fletch once said they had this band when he was 16, and he definitely was
16 in 1977.
There are two different sources that mentioned a band named The Plan with Robert
Marlowe on vocals and Vince on guitar in 1978.
Until 1979, Martin played guitar in an acoustic duo called Norman And
The Worms with Philip Burdett on vocals. Simultaneously, in 1979, Martin and
Vince were in another band.
David: "Vince had a band, French Look with Martin, Rob Marlowe, and Rob Allen
who I mixed sound for. Then Vince started Composition Of Sound with Andy and Martin.
The two groups fell out because both wanted Martin. Typically, he couldn't make up
his mind, being nice to everyone."[1]
Other sources say that The French Look had the following members: Martin,
Robert Marlowe and Paul Redmond.
(A tunnel in Basildon - with friendly permission of © Leah)
It's not quite sure how much Vince, Martin and Fletch were in touch with David at
this time. One time the impression is given that they knew him only by sight.
Another time Martin says: "It wasn't as if he was a total stranger. In
fact we've all known each other since schooldays."[2]
Of course, this could also mean that they knew him only by
sight, especially because they didn't go to the same school.
There is another source quoting David with: "Vince Clarke I met one day
outside a pub in the city centre."[3] So he might have known Vince better
than Martin and Fletch. On the other hand he must have known Martin because of
mixing the sound for The French Look.
However, in 1980 Vince, Fletch and Martin started Composition Of Sound with
two guitars, a bass (Fletch) and a drum machine.
Although Martin wrote some songs, too, Vince was the
head of the band, wrote the songs and did the vocals.
They had two gigs as a trio - one at Scamps in Southend and another at Deb
Danahay's party (the latter wasn't a real gig; Deb Danahay was Vince's
girlfriend). Unfortunately no one seems to be sure about the exact dates.
Vince: "They weren't even minor successes."
Fletch: "The crowd didn't react so Vince lost his temper with them - plugs
were kicked out."
Martin: "There were a lot of fourteen-year-olds who'd never seen a synth
before, so they were fiddling with the knobs going 'What does this do?'."[4]
Something was still missing in order to be successful.
Martin: "So although we desperately wanted a singer we were prepared to
take our time and be patient, and wait for the right person to come along."[5]
This right person ran into them short time later.
Fletch: "We needed a front man, a singer. And we got a front man. What
happened was, we got him just on the strength of him singing Heroes in a
jamming session. We weren't even sure if it was him singing it, there was so many
people singing!"[6]
This was apparently the first time the other ones really got aware of David.
Vince thought they should have him in the band because "he thought", so David later,
"I looked so pretty in my Marks & Spencer jumper and my corduroy trousers."[7]
"About a week later I got this phone call from Vince. He said 'Was that you singing?'
and I said 'Yes' - it was actually a bunch of people singing, but I said it was me.[8]
Vince asked me if I wanted to sing at a rehearsal. I was quite shy but it was
something to do."[9]
A little contradictory to this Martin said: "Dave started jamming with us in
rehearsals one day, so we asked him to join."[10]
And Vince: "Dave Gahan was the local fashion accessory of Basildon. He
was the New Romantic. He was rumoured to have attended the club Blitz in London,
so it was all very glamorous. So, we decided to get him in as a front man because
he was flamboyant and extrovert and very, very confident. So, we auditioned him."[11]
This really might have been a reason, so Martin recalls many years later:
"He did have a sense of style, and I think that was one of the reasons why we
recruited him as a band member. I think we recruited him because he was hanging
out with a core crowd of people. He seemed to have a lot of friends, which gave
us an instant audience." (laughs)
Fletch: "During the new romantic time, he looked amazing as a new romantic.
Us generally, when we tried to become new romantics, we weren't so successful,
especially me."[12]
However, the new band was complete now. It's not quite sure when the first common
gig took place. Some people say it was May 31, 1980, others say it was
June 14. Sure is: at both dates Composition Of Sound played at Fletch's
and Martin's old school in Basildon and acted as support band for The French Look.
(So probably it was May 31. There's also a story about that Martin was still
playing with The French Look too. It was said that he first played with Composition
Of Sound, then changed his shirt and got back on stage - this time with the French
Look.)
David was very nervous and needed - according to Fletch - "ten cans of Lager" to
calm down.
David: "All I can remember is repeatedly saying to myself: I don't want to
do it, I don't want to do it."[13]
But then it wasn't that bad. He invited a lot of friends - most of them so called
New Romantics - what was some kind of start-up for the project and made it go.
It seems that David was very useful at this early stage of their career because
he knew a lot of people.
Fletch: "Dave knew the Southend social scene, which enabled us to get gigs
playing in front of 300 people."[14]
David: "I had this bunch of friends who liked to dress up and go to gigs.
So we almost had a ready-made audience of about 30 people who were the cool people
of Southend."[15] (I don't know if this is a typo or if Fletch was exaggerating
the number of people.)
They started at the Bridge House in London where the promoter gave them
a chance to play. These gigs were very valuable as well as the ones at Crocs
in nearby Rayleigh. They also had someone here who helped them along.
David: "The resident DJ, Rusty Egan, liked us and so we then got a spot
on one of the Thursday nights he was running at the Venue."[16]
Fletch: "We must have played at Crocs fifteen times, and that gave us a lot
of encouragement.[17] Every Saturday we'd go along and play in front of 300 people,
280 of whom we knew.[18]"
It seems as if the other three were quite satisfied with just some gigs in
the front of some friends. In contrast Vince had ambitions to become big and
to develop musically: "When we started we wanted to sound very clear. You go and
see a band, and the drums and guitars and saxophone, it's like a wall of sound.
I'd rather have a sound where you can pick out each instrument, each melody line.
And also, we wanted the rhythm to be at the forefront, so you can dance to it."[19]
But it wasn't Vince then who gave the start for becoming a synthesizer band during
summer 1980. Martin was the first who bought a synthesizer. He admitted
that he had it for one month before he found out that he could change
the sound: "You know that sound that goes – WAUGH? I was stuck on that for ages. And
when we made our first demo all the tracks have the same sounds on it.[20] It didn't
take long for the others to follow suit. Synths're a lot easier to learn to play from
scratch than most other instruments.[21]"
David: "We didn't get into synthesizers just for the fashion. It just
happened that way. A few of our friends were into them and we just liked the sounds."[22]
Martin: "To us, the synth was a punk instrument because it was still fairly
new, its potential seemed limitless. It gave us a chance to explore."[23]
Fletch: "Vince'd spent about six months trying to save up to get a guitar,
and he was a bit annoyed when Martin bought his synth and it seemed pretty good so
then he saved up another six months and got a synth, so we had two, and then I was
playing bass. And then Vince turned round one day and said, 'I think it might be
good if you get a synth as well - make it all electronic.'"[24]
There were some other (known) gigs on June 21, July 2, August 16,
August 30, September 20, September 24 and October 11, at
Alexandra Pub in Southend-on-Sea, at Crocs in Raleigh and at the Bridge House
in London before they changed their name from Composition Of Sound to Depeche Mode.
From the start they weren't good with names and titles. So they thought of many
names - most of them quite strange (no examples were mentioned) - but nothing really
occurred to them.
Martin: "Dave was doing fashion design and window display and used the
magazine Mode Dépêche as a reference."[25] It means 'fashion news dispatch'
or 'fashion update'; but they didn't care much about the meaning. "It's always
a tough job trying to get something that you like and appeals to other people too.
We saw the name on the magazine cover and it clicked. We've never bothered to
find out what it stands for!"[26] (Hard to believe when you know that Martin had
an A-level in French.)
It's not quite sure on which date they appeared as "Depeche Mode" the first
time. Some people say it had been October 16, 1980 at the Bridge House,
others say it had been October 29 at Ronnie Scott's in London. I guess it was
October 16 because there are some newspapers with ads for this gig.
Things developed step by step then. At Crocs DJ Rusty Egan introduced them
to Stevo Pearce, another DJ, who asked them whether they wanted to contribute a song
to the Some Bizarre Album. The album consisted of tracks by unsigned new wave
groups. Stevo believed in the music that was included on the album as opposed to the
fashion or style aspects.
Vince: "At the time we had no record company contract and we were kind of
interested in this sort of thing so we did it. We kind of regret it now because of
the futurist connotations."[27]
(In fact it took them years to get rid of this futurist thing and also to get
rid of the New Romantics image.)
During that time they (or at least Martin, Fletch and David) still hadn't ambitions
to become a big successful band. But nevertheless they were interested in making a
record. So they recorded a demo tape and went to all sorts of record companies. (Many
years later some of these tapes appeared on ebay what caused a little sensation
among the fans.) But it took its time until someone got interested in them.
Fletch: "When we first took our tape round we didn't get anything from any
of the record companies."
David: "Yeah, me and Vince went everywhere, visited about 12 companies
in one day.[28] We got turned down, and no-one was interested [29] except for this
Rastafarian who wanted to turn us into an electronic reggae group. Seriously!
It was really weird - he had this plan to take us to Nigeria ...[30] Even Daniel
[Miller of Mute Records] wasn't interested at first. We were at Rough Trade with our
tape.[31] They were our last hope, we thought at least we've got them, surely they'll
like it, after all they've got some pretty bad bands, but even they turned us
down! They were all tapping their feet and that and we thought - this is the one! -
then they went, hey, that's pretty good, it's just not Rough Trade. Then they said,
how about this man, pointing at Daniel who'd just walked into the room. He took one
look at us, went 'Yeech!', walked out and slammed the door![32]"
But on November 11, when DM played as a support band of Fad Gadget
(later Fad Gadget would play the support for DM) at the Bridge House, Daniel Miller
approached them and invited them to do a one-off single.
Vince: "We've got a better chance on Mute. Daniel's been good to us and we
like the way he operates. He had a big success with the Silicon Teens, and we've
got that same sort of lightweight feeling to us.[33] Mute are one of the most
honest companies going. We like the one to one way of working. We spoke to all
the majors and found they weren't nearly as pleasant as they first appeared, we
were a bit dubious about them. I suppose we were just lucky to meet the right
person at the right time ..."[34]
David: "Daniel was the first one we could trust; he said that if either
party didn't like the other, we'd call it a day."[35]
The contract was sealed by handshake only - and DM became, after Fad Gadget and Non,
the third band of Mute that didn't even have an own office at this time.
Daniel Miller (by the way - did you know that he studied at film school and became
a film editor after leaving college in 1971?) started his career as the
founder and head of Mute Records in 1977,
when he released the single TVOD / Warm Leatherette on his own. He never thought of
approaching a major label. In fact he didn't like them at all. The idea of being
an independent appealed to him, and he started with 500 copies of TVOD / Warm
Leatherette. Due to the success he started a cooperation with Rough Trade.
When he met Fad Gadget, Miller decided to work with other people's music.
He became some kind of "musical father" for DM, and for a long time he was something
like the "secret fifth member" of the band.
(New Life - with friendly permission of © Sandra Lara)
The band appreciated this very much and would stay with Mute, although some bigger
companies approached them after the first successes and tried to recruit them.
David: "All of a sudden, everyone was interested and the majors were
queueing to sign us. Suddenly that style of music came in, and they were all
after us.[36] They'd come to the gigs, buy us meals and generally fatten us up.
They offered us loads of money, it was quite tempting really, but we trusted Daniel,
didn't want to let him down."
Fletch: "I think we lose out a bit because there's things we can't do as we
haven't got hundreds of thousands of pounds behind us. We've got a partnership
deal, so anything we do we pay for ourselves."[37]
On the other hand they could release whatever they wanted to and were in control of
everything concerning them. They were allowed to (as Alan would say many years
later) develop and make their own mistakes. Something many other artists aren't
able to because most of them are more victims of their record partners than their
partners. There are many examples of young bands that are puppets of their record
companies. Some have to release one album after the other, others aren't able to
make a record at all because they are blocked. It's a dirty business. DM would learn
that but they always would be in a very lucky position. On the other hand they
always have had a state of being outsiders in the music business.
Martin: "With Mute it was always step by step, as it still is. Originally
it was just a one off single deal where everyone else was trying to get us to sign
up to make nine albums. That seemed too much."[38]
But there was still the Some Bizarre-project. But as Miller also had some connections to Stevo finally both projects were done. End of 1980 DM recorded Photographic for the Some Bizarre Album - with Daniel Miller as the producer. The band set up their equipment in the studio and ran through some of their tracks live to choose Photographic finally. It was recorded and mixed within one day.
References:
[1] Dave Gahan: The Wild Boy, No. 1, 4th May 1985
[2] Angels with shining Faces, Record Mirror, 1st August 1981. Words: Mike Nicholls
[3] Dave Gahan: The Wild Boy, No. 1, 4th May 1985
[4] Going U.P.!, Smash Hits, 9th-22nd July 1981. Words: Steve Taylor
[5] Depeche Mode, Bobcat Books, London 1986. Words: Dave Thomas
[6] Depeche Mode: Hurried Fashion, The Face, June 1981. Words: Ian Cranna
[7] Depeche Mode, Published by HMV / Melody Maker, 22nd September 1990. Words: Uncredited
[8] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[9] Dave Gahan: The Wild Boy, No. 1, 4th May 1985
[10] Angels with shining Faces, Record Mirror, 1st August 1981. Words: Mike Nicholls
[11] The Story Of Depeche Mode, BBC Radio London Live94.9, May 7th 2001, Producer: Tony Wood
[12] My interview with Depeche Mode, 29.01.2010, words: oyvindholen
[12] Going U.P.!, Smash Hits, 9th-22nd July 1981. Words: Steve Taylor
[13] Andy Fletcher: The Brigade Boy, No. 1, 18th May 1985
[14] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[15] Angels with shining Faces, Record Mirror, 1st August 1981. Words: Mike Nicholls
[16] Going U.P.!, Smash Hits, 9th-22nd July 1981. Words: Steve Taylor
[17] Mode Ahead, Muzik, July 2001. Words: Ralph Moore
[18] Play for Tomorrow, New Sounds, New Styles, August 1981. Words: Pete Silverton
[19] Modish Musings, Sounds, 7th November 1981. Words: Uncredited
[20] Angels with shining Faces, Record Mirror, 1st August 1981. Words: Mike Nicholls
[21] Basildon a La Mode, NME, 21st March 1981. Words: Chris Bohn
[22] Depeche Mode, Published by HMV / Melody Maker, 22nd September 1990. Words: Uncredited
[23] Depeche Mode: The Interview, Talking Music SPEEK013, 1988
[24] Martin Gore: The Decadent Boy, No. 1, 11th May 1985
[25] The Name's the Game! Zig Zag, November 1982. Words: John Kercher
[26] Basildon a La Mode, NME, 21st March 1981. Words: Chris Bohn
[27] The Bright Side of the Moon, Sounds, 4th September 1982. Words: Karen Swayne
[28] Modish Musings, Sounds, 7th November 1981. Words: Uncredited
[29] The Bright Side of the Moon, Sounds, 4th September 1982. Words: Karen Swayne
[30] Play for Tomorrow, New Sounds, New Styles, August 1981. Words: Pete Silverton
[31] The Bright Side of the Moon, Sounds, 4th September 1982. Words: Karen Swayne
[32] This Year's Model(l), Sounds, 31st January 1981. Words: Betty Page
[33] Mute Speak, NME, 2nd May 1981. Words: Vivien Goldman
[34] Going U.P.!, Smash Hits, 9th-22nd July 1981. Words: Steve Taylor
[35] Modish Musings, Sounds, 7th November 1981. Words: Uncredited
[36] The Bright Side of the Moon, Sounds, 4th September 1982. Words: Karen Swayne
[37] Everything Counts (in Large Amounts), Number One, 19th October 1985. Words: Paul Bursche
To the
Message-board.
About DM in general & News, questions,
discussions and feedback.
(You don't need to become a member to reply to topics in public forums.)