Andy Fletcher will be there in spirit

Dave Gahan can get enough after all. The famous lead singer of the famous band Depeche Mode, which had world hits like “Enjoy the Silence”, “People Are People” or “Just Can’t Get Enough”, who hypnotizes packed football stadiums as a hypercharismatic sorcerer; who narrowly escaped death on at least two occasions (attempted suicide in 1995, overdosed with a heroin-cocaine mixture and suffered a two-minute cardiac arrest in 1996); who overcame cancer in 2009; who has endured it for 42 years in the midst of the long, mighty machinery that Depeche Mode calls itself, and at some point wrested from the hitherto sole songwriter Martin Gore the right to put his own songs on the albums – this Dave Gahan is sometimes still slightly upset bring to. For example, by asking a journalist, in this case mine.

The day before I was in Berlin, as one of many journalists invited to a “special talk” with the band. Anyone who follows their path a little longer knows the procedure. Every four years, Depeche Mode invites you to a PR event at which they announce an album and a tour, often in select locations: in 2008 it was the Berlin Olympic Stadium, in 2012 the cultural center Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, and in 2016 the Teatro dell’Arte in Milan . In 2022, two years late, we are back in Berlin, in the Berliner Ensemble, where journalists from all kinds of countries are queuing this Tuesday morning.

On another corner, lucky sweepstakes winners are waiting, who are allowed to go to the theater, which is also a tradition: for the touchingly loyal Depeche Mode fans, even such a press event is a celebration. The ritual is a bit reminiscent of giving presents at Christmas, with the difference that everyone here knows exactly what they are going to get – and that Santa Clauses are well paid for their gifts.

Most music is crap

It is probably my first mistake that I start the zoom interview with Dave Gahan the next day with the faint joke that he will certainly remember our last conversation – ten years ago in Paris (no reaction). My second mistake is bringing up the Santa Clause analogy, which he doesn’t understand. “We always have the same intentions when we make a record, we make it for ourselves,” he says after an awkward pause. And everything else, the expectations of the fans and everyone who makes money with Depeche Mode, can then be ignored? “It has to be like this,” says Gahan. “Most of the music you listen to is made for the industry to make you buy it. It’s crap, I can’t listen to it.” That the artistic incorruptibility of his own band is so fabulously successful commercially shouldn’t be unwelcome.

The hymns about strangeness and being lost are sung along by thousands of people today. It is said that Depeche Mode celebrate the outsiders with their songs and concerts; does he still perceive himself as such? “Yes for sure. In every respect.” Does that mean specifically? “I can’t access what I see on the news, what’s in the papers, which seems to interest most people,” he says. What means a lot to him: “a very small circle of friends, my family, the music I like, films and art, the beauty of the world and what life could be.”

Three gray armchairs

On the stage of the Berliner Ensemble, we switch back to the press conference, there are three gray upholstered armchairs and a table with water bottles; it looks more like a “literary quartet” than a music event. The moderator takes a seat in one chair, with Dave Gahan and Martin Gore in the others. Depeche Mode has consisted only of these two since Andy Fletcher died suddenly in May at the age of 60 from an aortic dissection. They missed “Fletch,” Gore and Gahan assure. “He will be there in spirit,” Gahan says of the upcoming tour. “And rate us.”