TITLE: Coming Up Smiling
SOURCE: The Face (February 1985). Words: Sheryl Garratt
DESCRIPTION: "The first album was very young and twee, and ever since then people have been saying we were trying to grow up. Even by the second album, we were sick of the phrase. It's nothing you attempt to do - it just happens." Brief but comprehensive interview which finds the author grappling with the subject of women's clothing and leather wear in a mature, calm and insightful manner. Other topics include: Vince's departure; the 'Construction Time Again' Far East tour; the question of credibilty; sampling; and the 'Blasphemous Rumours' controversy.

--
Martin Gore is reading out a letter by a fan who somehow acquired a pair of his zipped leather undies and has now decided to send them back. She is anxious because she couldn't wash them first, and explains that her mother wouldn't let her hang them out on the line for fear of what the neighbours might think. "I enjoyed having them next to my bed," she writes. "It's probably the closest I'll ever get to you."

Does it ever get embarrassing? I wonder.

"Oooh no!" he grins. "I love it!"

Or another story...

In a hotel lobby in Bologna, Italy, a presenter sits between the Depeche boys, wearing a cap tilted at a rakish angle, a suitably thin 'New Wave' style tie, and the manic, false smile that seems to settle on anyone who sits in front of a TV camera regularly. "Right!" he exclaims breezily, pointing to a bored-looking Alan Wilder. "We'll start with you, Vince Clarke..."

Old ghosts linger on, and Depeche Mode are also victims of an assumption that pretty equals vacant, a pop group who are underestimated because they have huge adam's apples, spotless skin, and look as if they've never seen a razor blade, let alone used one. Yet apart from a few odd underwear fetishists, their audiences are remarkably free of screamers, although the preconceptions remain.

When I remarked that I liked their last album, "Some Great Reward", many of my friends fell about laughing; when I said I was going to Italy to interview them, they thought I was being deliberately perverse. People, it seems, find it hard to take this group seriously.

"What's credibility anyway?" ponders singer Dave Gahan, pulling his scarf a little tighter round a swollen throat.

"Credibility is usually lost when any band enters the Top Fifty, so for us that went out of the window five years ago. But there's a certain credibility you have to retain in yourself - you've got to know that what you're doing is valid. Not whether it makes people think or whether it changes things - this business is about entertainment, and it's whether you're just travelling along. I don't think we are, I think we're a very unconventional band."

And that, I'd submit, is the case for Depeche Mode.

In the late Seventies [not quite as early as this - BB] they were one of the first to reclaim the synthesizer from the Futurists, the Manic Depressives, Numanoids and Art School Boys, and to successfully use it instead as a pure pop instrument. The group have slipped in and out of the charts ever since with a series of inventive, intelligent, and unpretentious singles, although few will admit publicly to actually buying them.

Part of the problem is that Depeche Mode are such inarticulate spokesmen for their own cause. Some would say they need a Morley to turn "Master And Servant" into a "Relax", but Depeche aren't as malleable as Frankie: they manage themselves, they release records on the independent Mute label (with whom they have never signed so much as a formal contract), and in spite of his inability to offer an advertising budget or any great hype, they seem quite happy to go on making money for label head Daniel Miller to finance his more esoteric projects, and for themselves.

"This is the best job I've ever had," says Gahan, simply.

"It started in Basildon, Essex, a town built to house the spillover from London's East End. The synthesizers came first as a convenience - they were easy to carry to gigs on trains, and could be plugged directly into the PA, saving money on amps. It was, they claim, six months before Martin even changed the sound on his first keyboard, because he hadn't realised that you could.

"We were that naïve."

Yet when the big companies came down waving cheque books, they were unimpressed.

"We were told all this stuff about how we were going to be Top Ten in a week and megastars within the month, and we just didn't believe it," explains Gahan.

Then, Daniel came along and offered them, frankly, nothing. They took it. "At least he was honest."

The first single on Mute went into the Top Fifty [#57 in fact], favourable articles appeared in the music press and a debut album was recorded before the first bombshell hit: Vince Clarke, the main writer and generally considered the brain behind the group, announced that he wished to leave.

"It was a shock," recalls Gahan, "Like losing a part, having something taken from you. At first, I couldn't understand why - we'd only been together a year, and things were just starting to happen. It took me a long while to see how he felt. He could have been trapped into something he didn't want to spend the rest of his life doing."

Shy, retiring, and more interested in making music than all the work that goes with promoting it, Vince subsequently squirmed out of Yazoo for similar reasons, according to Alison Moyet. The Depeche split was fairly amicable: he continued working with them for some time after announcing his departure, and when the first single recorded without him was a success, the trio were optimistic. Then came their second shock.

The follow up - "The Meaning Of Love", a catchy tune they had expected to do well - was a flop, and their second album was trashed in the press. Previously only a sporadic writer, Martin Gore was finding his new role a strain, and although "A Broken Frame" sold respectably to the loyal, Depeche Mode's credibility had, it seemed, disappeared along with the unkempt Clarke.

"All that we need at the start is universal revolution (that's all)"
"And Then"

The group quickly dismiss any suggestion that the militant socialism of the next LP, "Construction Time Again", was a deliberate attempt to grow up.

"The first album was very young and twee, and ever since then people have been saying we were trying to grow up," sighs Gore. "Even by the second album, we were sick of the phrase. It's nothing you attempt to do - it just happens."

They credit their new awareness instead to a tour of the East that taught them there were worse places to live than even Basildon. But this in itself is not enough - The Police slummed it in India with no noticeable changes, so why did a short stay in Thailand affect the Depeche boys so?

"I think it's the way we've all been brought up," explains Gahan. "I had a bad juvenile background, I got into trouble with the police and mixed with a lot of people who got into trouble - all petty things, silly little things you do all the time. Then at school, I decided I didn't like the way I was treated, so I hardly turned up at all in the last year. From the age of about ten, I can remember things quite vividly that just didn't seem right, and I think we've all had that sort of general working-class upbringing.

"Then when you see things that are poorer than you've ever seen, when we saw people begging and little kids coming up to us with disgusting, dirty clothes hanging off them, showing themselves or holding their hands out for food... When you experience that, you begin to understand what a lucky position all of us here are in. We were in this really expensive hotel full of businessmen, but as soon as you went outside the gates, it was a totally different world.

"None of us would have seen that if it wasn't for the band. I was 17 when we started, and obviously I've grown up a lot in that time anyway, but I've matured a lot quicker than if I'd been working in Sainsbury's for the last five years."

Unlike many who wake up one morning with a social conscience, the group did not change overnight into urban commandos, nor were they seized with an uncontrollable urge to step out in Doc Martens and donkey jackets. They didn't change their tune, they just changed the words a little.

Suddenly everyone was humming the annoyingly catchy chorus of "Everything Counts" (basic message: Capitalism Is Not Very Nice), and after the bluster of the Clash clones or the Spandau manifesto that a depression needs hedonism and politics into pleasure don't go, these earnest, almost painfully sincere and simple discoveries were welcome. I believed Depeche Mode in a way that I've never been convinced by a Heaven 17 or ABC: theirs is a cosmetic socialism for the leisured classes, a Daily Mirror and a video in every home. And though the Basildon boys may not be so self-consciously clever, in the end they write better tunes.

Depeche Mode like sampling things, taping noises and converting them into rhythm tracks or notes. The last album featured amongst other things Martin coughing, a saucepan lid being thrown downstairs, and an air hostess making a mess of the customary safety announcement. They became, they say, a little obsessed with it all, working for days on single sounds, and have little patience with the idea that such techniques can verge on piracy. One of the most popular drum sounds on the Fairlight computer, for instance - the machine used by Trevor Horn to create many of Frankie's sounds - is that of Led Zeppelin...

Alan Wilder: "We nicked..."
Andy Fletcher: "Shhh!"
"No, I don't mind admitting it. We nicked a beat off one of Frankie's records and stuck it on our 12-inch. But I mean the actual sound, not the idea. It's not a drum sound that sells a record anyway, it's the whole song and the musical ideas. We'd be quite happy for people to nick our sounds and sample them. I don't think you can stand in the way of technology - you've just got to have the ideas and the imagination to put it to original use.

"We had this guy in while we were recording the album, and we wanted him just to play a beat on all these different percussion instruments. He'd got a big collection, and we were sampling them for later use. We said that we hoped he didn't feel raped by all this, and there's no doubt that he understood what we were doing. Then he sent us a bill for sampling fee, consultancy fee, God knows what else - he'd been talking to the MU [Musicians Union] who had obviously convinced him that what we were doing was totally immoral, and he'd charged us six times the amount we'd agreed."

"The trouble was, he'd been studying for years and knew all these master strokes or whatever, but all we wanted was one slap on the drum, and any one of us could have done that," adds Gore mischievously. "We should have just borrowed his drums!"

"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours but I think God's got a sick sense of humour."
"Blasphemous Rumours"

Parents buy their children Depeche Mode records for Christmas, and no-one would consider such fresh-faced, sweet-looking boys as unwholesome or subversive. They are under no illusions as to the effect lyrics will have, but they relish the fact that their image allows them a few more risks. The explicit analogies between sex and society in "Master And Servant" crept by in the shadow of "Relax", but their appearance on TOTP with "Blasphemous Rumours", a melodramatic tale that suggested God may be a little sick in the head, caused - they claim - a barrage of complaints and a reprimand for producer Michael Hurll.

"There was probably a war film or something on afterwards, or someone having their head blown off on the news before, but that's not the point," observes Gahan cynically.

On the way back to the hotel late one evening, Andy Fletcher admits that he still prays every night "which is a bit hypocritical really, isn't it?" Andy enjoys confessions, mostly about naff pop songs. He will admit in conspiratorial tones that he loves the latest Limahl / Julian Lennon / Shakatak single, and will then spend the next twenty minutes singing or analysing it, presumably as a penance. I meant to ask him if he was brought up a Catholic, but we got into a long discussion on public schools instead...

"My little girl won't you come with me... I'm going crazy with boredom... I'd put your leather boots on / I'd put your pretty dress on"
"Something To Do"

Martin Gore has a theory that in a place as tedious as Basildon, there are only two ways to go: "You can become what we call a total spam, which is like a real beer boy, out every night drinking, Cockney accent develops, all that. Or basically you start wearing women's clothing - it's all you can turn to."

Quite where this leaves the rest of the band is open to debate. Although they don't seem to drink much and they all share a peculiar aversion to Cockney, in public at least, they all wear trousers.

Onstage, Martin's current outfit is usually an off-the-nipple black lace slip he found hanging on their tour bus one night, leather trousers adorned with handcuffs, and a leather mini-skirt, as seen on the cover of Smash Hits. Gore now lives in Berlin, he speaks fair French and German and seems to read continually, yet his lyrics read more like the diary of an angst-ridden adolescent.

"I expect a lot of blokes in the audience think I'm a poof," he laughs.

"But it's how I feel happy. I've always admired Boy George a bit, and anyone who takes that stance to an extreme. We are in a position where we can influence to a certain extent - not to get everyone wearing a skirt, but it does open people up to that sort of thing slightly, especially if they're some of the macho types who like our music. But then, so much more is acceptable as far as image goes within a pop group."

"A lot of the blokes in the audience won't even think about the fact that Martin's wearing a skirt or whatever," adds Wilder. "In a different situation, they'd kick the shit out of him, but when it's onstage they love it. It's not as scary, it's more acceptable on a stage."

Fletcher weighs in with an example. "If Pat Nevin, for instance, walked into Chelsea with a leather skirt on, then he'd probably get a bad reception..."

The man is a master of the understatement.

During "Somebody", a wimpish and, the group insist, a more honest love song, the roadies at the side of the stage mime screaming guitar solos while Martin sings.

I'm fond of men who provoke such insecurity in the terminally macho, and in the end perhaps that's why I like Depeche Mode. It may also be why they are so often underestimated.

If Joe Strummer started dressing in frocks and dealing with emotions other than anger openly without shouting and without the protection of a guitar swinging round his crotch, would you take him seriously?

Think about it...