• BIOGRAPHY - Preface

• Vince Clarke
• Andrew Fletcher
• Martin Lee Gore
• David Gahan
• Alan Wilder
• Foundation

• 1981
• 1982
• 1983
• 1984
• 1985
• 1986
• 1987
• 1988
• 1989

• 1990
• 1991
• 1992
• 1993
• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998/99

• 2000/01/02
• 2003/04
• 2005/06
• 2007/08
• 2009/10

1992

Overview: Released this year were Alan's solo single Faith Healer and his album Bloodline (Recoil).

---

There wasn't much that had been published about the band in the media this year. There was only a questionnaire in the BONG-magazine, in April 1992.
Question: "You always seem so easy-going, but do you ever get in a temper and start shouting? If so, what is usually the cause?"
Alan: "Sometimes, for various reasons."
Question: "If one of the other band members showed up drunk for a show, what would you do?"
Alan: "Nothing. Each band member is aware of his responsibilities."
Question: "Do your parents listen to your music and if so, what do they think of it?"
Alan: "Yes they do, but I don't think they like it much."
Question: "What or whom do you miss most when you're on the road?"
Alan: "My independence, family, QPR (Queen's Park Rangers) home games, cooking for myself and driving."
Question: "Which do you prefer, working in the studio or playing live?"
Alan: "Working in the studio."
Question: "Do you see yourself being in Depeche Mode for the next ten years?"
Alan: "No."
Question: "What are your feelings now that you're faced with recording and touring again?"
Alan: "Apprehension."[1]
The question here is: When were these questions answered? In April or before the first meeting of the band in February? Knowing this would help to understand the incidents better. Unfortunately the Bong Magazine doesn't give any answer to this.

The rest of the story appeared within later years and was anything but pleasant. The first meeting of the band in a villa near Madrid to record Songs Of Faith And Devotion (SOFAD) was a disaster.
Two sessions - each about six weeks long - with a break of a month in between the band lived together there. (This was nothing special by the way. At this time (in the beginning of the 90's) it was "hip" to rent a house, live there like some kind of family and produce an album.)
David: "In theory, it was a really good idea, but we found that our personalities clashed incredibly when living together 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I didn't mind it so much, but Alan detested it and Fletch had a hard time.[2] However, I'd changed, but I didn't really understand it until I came face to face with Al and Mart and Fletch. The looks on their faces battered me.[3]"

Alan (trying to be diplomatic): "The fact that we took a break away from each other, that people went and did things with their own personal lives - had children and moved to different parts of the world - has given us all a different perspective on what the group was and is, and what it means to us all. Coming back together has taken a long time to get used to. I think, for a long period this year, there were a lot of disparities between the different members of the group."[4]
Fletch: "Dave would come forward on a real burst of energy, do a vocal, then disappear to his room for a couple of days. It was a bit odd."[5]
David: "A lot of the time it was hard for them to even want to be in the same room as me."[6]
Martin: "It was an absolute disaster. We all hated it there, because it wasn't really in the centre of Madrid. It was about 30-40 minutes outside. So every time we wanted to go out, we had to get cabs into town. Also living on top of each other became difficult. We never had space from each other."[7]

I find it difficult to see David alone being "guilty" for the following. Of course, it's difficult to live together with a junkie but there are nevertheless some contradictory or unclear things. On one hand Alan felt disturbed by lots of acting up but on the other hand it is said that David was in his room most of the time and Martin was out partying. What did he mean exactly? The only one who obviously was in the studio often was Fletch because he felt disturbed in his privacy. The same here: if David wasn't around and Martin wasn't around - how could he have felt disturbed? Now one could think that Fletch was disturbing Alan when he was spending most of the time in the studio but his depressions were known to Alan meanwhile. It is said that Fletch wasn't well. Sometimes he was hyperactive when he had taken antidepressiva. Sometimes he didn't say a word, just sitting silently in a corner of the room. Sure this can go on your nerves but again - where is the acting up?
David: "Alan was angry that he spent 12 hours in the studio while Mart was getting drunk somewhere and I was doing something different. He was the one who was trying to keep things together while everyone else was busy with their ego-sh**. But nobody thanked him."[8]

Something that goes on your nerves, too, but nevertheless all quotations seem to keep out the main reason why the situation was that awful. It seems to me that Alan was well aware about Martin's "speechlessness" and could see Fletch's disease as well as David's as human weaknesses. He also had known before that Martin hadn't a great interest in studio work. A few years ago Alan had called that "a good job sharing". And there had always been disagreements about the musical approach.
Alan also says that, "a lot of the time it's myself and Flood who are left there in the early hours of the morning, doing what we call 'screwdriver' work. It's sifting through bits of performance and restructuring it, which bores Martin most of the time and Dave to an extent, but I actually quite enjoy it."[9] So, where is the point when he enjoyed it? Really that nobody thanked him?

And why exactly Martin didn't feel well? He knew the depressions of his friend, he knew how fixated Alan was on studio work. So what exactly was different or worse in comparison with Violator? Why did something that had worked before not work anymore?
Martin: "I felt totally distanced from the rest of the band, I really didn't want to be there. Up until that point we always felt like a gang - then suddenly it felt really wrong for the first time.[10] I think when we first got together in Madrid it became obvious that there wasn't a real feeling of band unity.[11]"
So maybe this is the main point. They didn't feel as a band anymore. But why not? The only reasons that make sense here are the changes in the individual lives that took place in 1991. But then, on the other hand, you'll find people basically the same, or in other words: you don't change over night or within a year (except from David maybe).

The band members had very different ideas of what the album should sound like, so the studio work took a lot of time. It needed some jam sessions to find a basic sound for it.
Alan: "With all DM albums, we tried to move away from the previous one and after some discussion between myself, Flood and the others, we agreed that our approach should be more towards performance and to try to push ourselves into areas we hadn't explored. Some of the songs like I Feel You, In Your Room and Rush suggested a looser, more 'live' feel."
But it had been a difficult process before they were able to get in creative working flow. "Everybody tries to pull a record in their preferred direction. Sometimes those tensions help but normally they slow down the process while the person who has a problem argues their case, after which either a compromise is reached or they lose the debate and go off and sulk for a bit. Personally I find continually having to put your ideas to a committee wears you down after a while and ultimately stiffles the creative flow."[12]
This is what he said later, after leaving the band. In 1993 he explained: "Martin gets bored very quickly in the studio, Dave gets very enthusiastic, but he's not a musician as such, so he can only contribute to a degree, and Fletch doesn't have a musical role at all. Martin always errs on the melodic side, he's a pop merchant, so he pulls in one direction a bit, and I always try to pull it in a darker direction 'cause that's the music I tend to listen to. We meet in the middle and end up with pop music that's got an edge to it, so it's more interesting, it's got more depth plus it's all melodic."[13]
(By the way - this is the best description of what DM's music "in the old days" made special and what the "old fans of the DM with Alan" mean when they're trying to explain why Alan was such an important part of the band for them. The point is not that Alan is such a great musician and producer but that he was a counterpart to Martin.)

But it was difficult to "meet in the middle" this time and so they finally did something that was quite unusual to them: "I can remember the first time we recorded Walking in My Shoes. It was the first, and possibly only, time the band has ever jammed together. We were never that kind of group; we just meticulously programmed music. Yes, there would be performance elements, but they tended to be overdubs and single-person performances. We were getting nowhere; we had tried different ways of recording that track, and none of it sounded any good. So after the third or fourth time, Flood finally said, Look, just all sit down, pick up an instrument and play something together. And that was met with derision. What? What are you talking about? Play together? Alien concept to Depeche Mode. So Martin had a guitar, I had a bass, someone else had a tambourine, we had a little rhythm box going, and we just made this noise. And after that, we got the main groove for that song, the bass line and guitar lines. I'm not saying it was anything special. All I'm saying is that the process was so different and so unusual, and we did get a result from it. I wish we had done more of that kind of thing."[14]

It seems that Alan's main problem really was Martin (although - as I said before - he was used to) because about David he said, "with this record we've tried to make Dave sing in a different way. In simple things, like raising the register of the song so he has to sing higher than he would normally, forcing him to approach songs differently and making him go over and over things, trying different environments in which he hasn't sung before, not using headphones like we normally do, anything to try and get a different performance. He's responded really well. Dave has a very good attitude. He's willing to try things even if he doesn't understand why he's being asked to at the time."[15]
On the other hand - when he was longing for some rest after studio work - Alan had to bear David's exercises on E-guitar next door. "Although Dave was filled with enthusiasm by the idea of a new album actually, he committed himself no longer strikingly soon. But he came down into the studio now and then and praised Flood's and my work as the only one. He was at least worried about the group, in which constitution he himself identically was."[16]
This constitution got worse over the course of time.
David: "Alan was the first who confronted me with that."
Martin: "Then we had our first ultimatum-meeting with Dave. We said to him, You've got to sort yourself out. You're putting yourself in danger."
David: "They were genuinely concerned about my health. Of course, I couldn't see that. I said to Mart, F*** off! You drink fifteen pints of beer a night and take your clothes off and cause a scene. How can you be so f*** hypocritical?"[17]
Martin: "Dave was taking a lot of heroin at the time, which took me a while to realise. I'm not a drug expert, I don't know all the symptoms."[18]
During the meeting Alan organized in London, he realised what was going on. (He at least was quoted this way). "To be honest I was really ignorant, but once the pieces of the puzzle had been put together for me then it all made sense."[19]

In between - almost overseen - on March 9 the single Faith Healer was released, followed by the Recoil-album Bloodline that was released on April 13.
It was strongly different from Hydrology, particularly since Alan had taken a complete new direction. So he worked with some vocalists like Moby, Toni Halliday and Douglas McCarthy. He improved on the piano (Freeze), worked out an homage to Kraftwerk with The Defector and gave a new tune to recordings of Bukka White: "The original Bukka recording is virtually acapella - he is actually singing to an acoustic guitar but the guitar is just about inaudible. It therefore seemed to be a very interesting source of material to try and do something unusual with. I also loved the sound of his voice - particularly when he talks in his own unique language / babble. Certain lines were sampled, re-structured and then filtered.
I didn't feel any pressure to make an album which was more conventional but I couldn't produce ongoing experimental instrumental music either.[20] However, I didn't really see it through in the way I should have done; I think I lacked the energy. I had Depeche Mode commitments, and I was really fitting Bloodline into the first real break the band had taken in 10 years. By the end of that year - while also producing a Nitzer Ebb album - I'd just run out of energy. I think the album suffers a little bit because of it, especially the vocals."[21]
For a while it was planned to release Edge To Life as another single but "by that time, I had already moved off into another DM project so I didn't have the time to promote it."[22]

In April David got married to Theresa. No other band member took part at the ceremony. He also had a lot of tattoos done, activated by Theresa.
Within the later years some biographers and journalists tried to represent the relationship as if David would have influenced Theresa more than reversed because she was willing to fulfil his desires to drugs and sex. David obviously isn't a choirboy at all but reading between the lines you come to another conclusion about who had influenced whom.
David: "I mean, my wife's American, and you know, she's really aggressive, and I've definitely picked up on that. And most of the time she's dead right about what she thinks. She's said things to me over the last year that've completely changed my view about a lot of things I was doing, and she's done nothing but encourage me. So I came back fully loaded with plenty of passionate ideas, and everybody else was kind of like, 'Well, actually, we've just been at home with the wife and kids for the last year, so calm down a bit there, Dave.' Now I realise it, but, at the time, I just felt like it was me and them. I'd just shut myself up in my room in Madrid and start painting. I hadn't put brush to canvas for 10 years. I spent four weeks in the studio all day, after which I couldn't sleep, so I'd be up all night painting [for Theresa]. I remember when I'd finished, Martin said to me 'Oh yeah, you know, I didn't realise you could paint.' And I said, well, yeah, that's what I used to do, Mart, that's all I could do. I was in art college for three years, and the only thing I was even any good at was painting. ... I have more rocky and bluesy influences than the others in the band. So when Martin started sending me bluesy demos for the new record, I thought, great! And the lyrics were completely appropriate to the way I was feeling. It was almost like Mart was writing the stuff for me. I think Condemnation is by far my finest vocal performance. When I came into the control room everybody went all quiet and turned around, and suddenly Flood said, 'That was f*** great!' And Alan and everybody said, 'That's probably the best vocal you ever did' - and I thought, yeah, it was. It was completely breaking me up inside, and, at the same time, it was really optimistic and uplifting. ... I definitely won my battles, to be quite honest - cos when we began this record, I knew it would be good for us to get a drummer. So I kept pushing and pushing and, in the end, Alan got on the drumkit and said, 'Well, I'll f*** do it, then!'"[23]
It seems as if Alan had a different memory to this point: "I'd been considering it for a while and eventually mentioned it to Dave who thought it was a good idea."
About David's vocal performance Alan said: "I worked personally with Dave for many years to get the optimum performance out of him and I actually believe that some of his best vocals are on the SOFAD album. Dave's voice on tracks such as In Your Room, Condemnation, I Feel You and Walking In My Shoes absolutely mirrors the intensity of the music. Obviously there is a degradation in his vocals during some of the live performances from Devotional but this is purely down to the stresses and strains of extensive touring and perfectly understandable. That said, I would rather hear a cracked and 'rough' sounding voice that is full of emotion, to one that is technically perfect but bland and lifeless."[24]
Later David explained that he planned the transformation of simple Dave from Basildon to a monster: "Well, I did. During the Violator-tour. Not overnight. There were a couple of ingredients missing: a companion in doing everything it took to be a rock'n'roll star - which turned out to be Teresa, my second wife – and ... the drug. I wanted to lead that very selfish lifestyle without being judged. She was joining in. In fact, she introduced me ... she didn't make me take heroin, she gave me the opportunity to try it again. I'd actually played around with it back in Basildon, didn't inject it at that time, however."[25]

In the meantime the relation between Fletch and Alan collapsed.
Martin: "Alan really didn't get on with Andy. We've always been honest about the fact that Andy's not really musical. And Alan around that time was heavily involved with what made Depeche Mode, in production and arrangement. I think he felt that it was wrong that he was making the same money as Andy, who basically doesn't do anything in the studio."[26]
I don't doubt that these two characters didn't get on with each other really because they are completely different but I don't think that money was the point. I'm afraid that Alan can be very cynical (and offending) sometimes because of being a very realistic and focused person. While many fans share Martin's opinion - "Andy, I think, finds it most annoying when he goes into interviews and has to basically just talk for the whole interview about the business side of the band. Everybody thinks that he's totally incompetent as a musician, and think that even when he's onstage playing with us that he doesn't play a note 'cause he's not capable"[27] - Alan, Fletch himself and many other fans think that Fletch's role really is a different one. But, of course, in Fletch's state of mind at that time it can hurt you badly when there's someone who gives you the feeling of being useless. Alan never said this in public really but when he talks about studio works or preparing a live show - Fletch never had any role in it. It's obvious that Alan didn't take Fletch seriously (understandable from his sight of view) and Fletch couldn't get on with that at this time (what is also understandable.)

Also the relationship between Alan and David - maybe no real friends but good mates at least - suffered from an event when David provoked a group of Hell's Angels in a bar in Madrid.
Alan: "I think Dave's words to one of them were: What are you looking at, you fat c***? About 10 minutes later, all hell broke loose with several resulting 'autographs' in the form of bruises and black eyes - none received by the bikers though. Miraculously, none were received by me either. I have an uncanny knack of making myself invisible during times of extreme violence. It was disappointing for me [when I found out that Dave was using]. Not for any moral reasons but because his drug use adversely affected his personality and more specifically his greatest asset, his sense of humour. There was also an increase in general apathy. It didn't necessarily turn him into a monster or anything but, obviously, Dave was in his own world. Consequently this made normal communication more difficult, which was an added pressure in an already quite tense group relationship. It was just a bit sad from my point of view because he wasn't really 'there' a lot of the time and I missed his sharp wit. Nobody else in DM has ever taken heroin as far as I know so I imagine Dave felt alien to the rest of us at this time. A distance arose between Dave and me which made me sad, particularly because he is actually an enthusiastic and vigorous person. Dave is also very generous and frank but perhaps this is the problem, and yes, of course, everybody tried to help him but I don't think that someone of us really understood what the matter was actually. It isn't easy to help someone who's on a mission."[28]

The band had a break and then met in Hamburg again where they worked from August 10 till 29 in the Chateau du Pape-Studios. Things run a little more smoothly there.
(By the way: did you know that the German Heavy-Metal band Helloween and DM were recording at the Chateau du Pape-studio at the same time? Helloween's Michael Weikath says that, "there were girls everywhere but they weren't there because of us. We had to fight our way into the studio through lots of 15-year-old girls. Depeche Mode were nice, we often talked to them."[29])
Alan: "Fletch went back to England and booked himself back into The Priory" (because of his depressions) "Dave only really showed up to do his vocals, and that left myself, Flood and Martin to get on and knock the album into shape."[30]
But Martin also should have done pub crawls lasting for days at this time and David sometimes disappeared for days. His drug addiction was so obvious by then that there are rumours about some quarrels.
In other sources it is said that things between Alan and Martin went well in this time and that they often had some "hotelbar-gigs" with Alan playing the piano and Martin singing. This is, however, nothing special, although especially Malins stresses this in his biography.
Alan: "We had hundreds of imprompu sessions around bar-room pianos the world over. It was quite a common thing for myself and Martin to take over the piano in hotel bars. My sight reading is poor (mainly through lack of practice) but it's never been a problem for me to play by ear or from memory. I've always been able to improvise quite easily and Martin seems to know the words to every song ever written."[31]

Nevertheless, things like these are contradictory to the "very bad relationship" between these two characters. In one statement Alan differs between the "human side on which we went on well" and the "working / musical side", but there's also a later statement (around SubHuman) when Alan said Martin might have never liked him really.
Martin should once have said that Alan was more communicative in Hamburg so it had been easier for him to get along with him, while Alan said that the "smaller producing team" made things easier.
It's possible that these things are so contradictory because of journalists and biographers quoted or translated them in a wrong way. But the main confusing point is Alan's official statement about leaving the band. I'll come back to this point later.

The last session took place in the Olympic-Studio in London. There they worked with a gospeltrio - Hildia Campbell, Bazil Meade and Samantha Smith - a pipes-player, Steafan Hannigan, and a string-orchestra.
Martin: "We got the choir in and I was just sitting at the back thinking 'this isn't going to work, I don't know why we're trying this', I was really nervous about the whole thing. But the moment they started singing, for me, it lifted the track onto another level, it was just up there somewhere, and so then I decided I shouldn't be so closed-minded about the whole thing."[32]
Alan: "Once we decided we wanted 'real' strings, there was only really one or two choices as to who should arrange them. Will Malone arranged the strings for Massive Attack's 'Unfinished Sympathy', a particular favourite of both myself and Martin. The strings were recorded at Olympic Studios in London, using a 28 piece sting section, to which Martin sang the vocal 'live' - thus equalling the fastest ever recording of any one DM track, the other being Somebody."
While they had the same opinion about One Caress, they hadn't about Judas.
Alan: "Martin and I didn't really see eye to eye on Judas. We actually recorded that track in 3 or 4 different ways. The final version was completed very late in the day and Martin didn't say much about it which is his way of indicating he doesn't like something. I think Martin was quite attached to his demo version but I felt it needed more atmosphere. He in turn didn't like the sequencer end-section. It was omitted for the live version because it wasn't really suitable in that particular context."[33]
In the end of December the album finally - with a big delay - was ready.

---

References:
[1] Ask Alan, Bong 16, April 1992
[2] Mode Three, Future Music, April 1997. Words: Uncredited
[3] They Just Couldn't get Enough, Q, March 1997. Words: Phil Sutcliffe
[4] Devout Moded, Vox, February 1993. Words: Martin Townsend
[5] They Just Couldn't get Enough, Q, March 1997. Words: Phil Sutcliffe
[6] In the Mode, Details, April 1993. Words: William Shaw
[7] Mode Three, Future Music, April 1997. Words: Uncredited
[8] Source can't be found anymore
[9] Biography, International Music Publications, 1993, author unknown
[10] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[11] Many Smack-Free Returns! Q, June 2001. Words: Dorian Lynskey
[12] www.recoil.co.uk
[13] The Highs and Lows and Rise of Depeche Mode, FHM, June 1993. Words: Andy Darling
[14] Bullz-Eye, 10th May 2010, Word: David Medsker
[15] Biography, International Music Publications, 1993, author unknown
[16] www.recoil.co.uk
[17] They Just Couldn't get Enough, Q, March 1997. Words: Phil Sutcliffe
[18] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[19] Many Smack-Free Returns! Q, June 2001. Words: Dorian Lynskey
[20] www.recoil.co.uk
[21] Unsound Recordings, Sound On Sound, January 1998. Words: Bill Bruce
[22] www.recoil.co.uk
[23] "I Never Wanted to Destroy Depeche Mode", Melody Maker, 3rd April 1993. Words: Jennifer Nine
[24] www.recoil.co.uk
[25] Tears of my Tracks, Q, March 1997. Words: Phil Sutcliffe
[26] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[27] Plugged In, Creative Loafing, October 2, 1993, words: Katherine Yeske
[28] www.recoil.co.uk
[29] Helloween in Hamburg, Metal Hammer, Issue 3, 2010. Words: Marc Halupczok
[30] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[31] www.recoil.co.uk
[32] The Life and Loves of Depeche Mode, I-D, October 1993. Words: Michael Fuchs-Gambock
[33] www.recoil.co.uk<

Biography: 1993

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