![]() ![]() Then, they returned with their biggest smash album in 1990, Violator. They took their first pause from recording in late 80s, although the classic live album 101 came out in 1989. Still, from mid-80s Depeche Mode‘s profile increased a lot in continental Europe.įrom 1987’s Music For The Masses, they were superstars there, selling bucketloads in countries like France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, etc. That being said, their albums were struggling to reach Gold (100,000 units) in their homeland, while both Vince Clark‘s bands Yazoo and Erasure had albums which reached Platinum status (300,000 units) already. This delayed success over there led their label to exploit their new popularity with two local compilations, People Are People titled after the hit single and Catching Up with Depeche Mode.īoth the compilation The Singles 81-’s effort Black Celebration continued the sequence of the band to claim at least 2 UK top 20 hits from each of their first 6 albums. 1982’s A Broken Frame and 1983’s Construction Time Again got one UK Top 10 hit each, and kept the band name growing across Europe.ġ984’s Some Great Reward provided them their first US hit with People Are People. In their early years, they were very prolific, with the release of one album per year. This led the band to adopt a darker approach to their lyrics and instrumentals. While Wilder was a skilled arranger and producer, Martin Gore took over songwriting duties. To replace him, the group recruited trained musician Alan Wilder, who appeared to be a highly valuable asset too. In fact, Clark went on to create Yazoo (1981-82) and Erasure (1983 to date), two bands which actually got bigger than Depeche Mode in their homeland. It was a huge loss as shown by his later success. ![]() While all indicators were green, the band’s songwriter, Vince Clark, left after the first album. Influenced by electronic music pioneers like cult German band Kraftwerk and English icons OMD, as well as booming fellow New wave band The Cure, Depeche Mode immediately imposed its music heavy on synthetizers.įor purists, while they debuted with affordable instruments, they mostly used an ARP 2600, a real pop culture mastodon as its presence went from David Bowie to Michael Jackson‘s Thriller to Star Wars‘ R2-D2 to Jean-Michel Jarre. The music sounded very fresh with a whole lot of fun. The following one, 1981, saw them get famous with their hit Just Can’t Get Enough, supporting their debut album Speak & Spell. They recorded their first single – Dreaming of Me – before the year was over. Dave Gahan, who was interesting in fashion design back then, came with that idea, and other band member agreed it sounded great.įrom the moment the four young boys got together, everything went very fast. So it’s more about fashion news, and that’s exactly what it was, as from 1979 to 2001 this was a French monthly fashion magazine. In truth, Dépêche also means a short, brief news coming from press agencies, typically AFP. In French, “dépêche” means hurry, while “mode” stands for fashion, which led a lot of people, including Martin Gore, translate it as “Hurried fashion”. These four, all 20 or below back then, were the British band’s original founding members.įirst called Composition of Sound, they changed their name to Dépêche Mode this latter year. They were joined by guitarist and keyboardist Martin Gore as well as lead singer Dave Gahan in 1980. Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vince Clarke started pairing with schoolmate keyboardist Andy Fletcher in 1977.
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