Keyboard player dead – Fletch was the ‘Depeche Mode’ star in the background

After I, the BILD reporter, first heard the music of “Depeche Mode”, I was 12 or 13 years outdated. I was sharing Walkman headphones with my buddy Nils on the faculty bus and did not even know the title of this band when songs like “Simply Cannot Get Sufficient” and “Boys Say Go” grabbed me.

Since the mid-Eighties, the music of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher (after all additionally Vince Clarke and Alan Wilder) has accompanied me by means of life. I collected tons of of information and CDs, went to dozens of live shows.

Depeche Mode founding member Andrew Fletcher has died at the age of 60.

Fletch of all folks, whom I at all times admired for his quiet method. Throughout the live shows that I was allowed to attend, he stood behind his keyboard. Often he pressed the keys and one obtained the impression that he was extra busy entertaining the viewers by clapping.

Whereas Dave Gahan danced like a dervish round the stage and rocked with Martin Gore on the sidelines, Fletch appeared to take pleasure in his position in the second row. No hint of self-portrayal, no star posturing.

He appeared content material with himself and at the identical time alien in this colourful staging. He did not want flamboyant costumes like bandmate Gore, nor may he flaunt a toned physique like Dave. His little tummy may not be neglected sooner or later.

I believed: He did every part proper. He was profitable and at the identical time appeared to guide a relatively unspectacular life – for pop stars.

I would by no means learn something about Fletch’s drug or alcohol excesses, not like Dave Gahan, who narrowly escaped dying from a heroin overdose in the Nineties. Or Martin Gore, who was hooked on alcohol for a few years and eventually went into rehab. Fletch, on the different hand, appeared to guide a superbly wholesome life.

He was working a restaurant in London at the time, and it was well-known amongst followers that in case you had been fortunate, you could possibly discover him there and get him for a photograph collectively.

On the band photographs of “Depeche Mode” Fletch principally stood in the background. Not as a result of he was unimportant, however as a result of he towered over his colleagues at an excellent 1.90 meters tall. He was identified to maintain the band collectively once they went by means of their largest crises.

We followers knew that it was due to Fletch that “Depeche Mode” was releasing new information with nice regularity after which happening intensive world excursions. The “black swarm” – as the band as soon as known as their loyal followers, most of whom dressed in black, adopted them from live performance to live performance, typically throughout Europe.

At the finish of every live performance, Fletch would step out from behind his keyboard, smile, clapping the viewers and saying goodbye, first one aspect, then the different. He was at all times the final to depart the stage.

Now he is the first to depart us ceaselessly.