No 1 19 October 1985 EVERYTHING COUNTS (in large amounts) Depeche Mode are celebrating their coming of age with a singles collection. No.1 chronicles their career from leather through suits to leather, from futurism through sex to the future, with Dave Gahan, Andy Fletcher, Martin Gore and Alan Wilder. Interview Paul Bursche. Group portrait John Stoddart. DREAMING OF ME Dave: "We were all eighteen or nineteen at the time. And it wasn´t the most exciting event of our lives. Martin and Andy were still working and they´d get to the studio after work, still eating their chinese takeaway or whatever. It wasn´t taken seriously at all, we weren´t thinking about going into the charts at all, we just wanted to make a record." Andy: "D´you remember Scamps?" Dave: "Yeah, we took the record down to a club called Scamps in Southend and they played it and our friends liked it which was the best thing." NEW LIFE Dave: "This time when we went into the studio we did wanna make a record that would get into the charts, we were playing with sequencers and stuff." Martin: "After the success of 'Dreaming of me' we thought that this game wasn´t too difficult after all." Dave: "Yeah, we thought we´d make a few more singles quick." Martin: "We all earnt a hundred quid or so we thought: 'Blimey, we´re laughing'" Dave: "We all got hundred quid advances from the publisher and we couldn´t believe it, 'This silly prat´s giving us a hundred quid for nothing'. I also remember that Vince and I used to go round all the publishers because there was quite a lot of people after us." No.1: So why didn´t you sign away from Mute records, wich was just a small independent label? Dave: "It was just a bit too confusing at the time, we couldn´t really take in all that was happening. We didn´t trust anyone. It wasn´t something that we were sure we wanted to do the rest of our lives." Martin: "With Mute it was always step by step, as it still is. Originally it was just a one off single deal where everyone else was trying to get us to sign up to make nine albums. That seemed too much." Dave: "Yeah, to look that far ahead. I think Vince was most against it, thats was when he really started thinking about whether he wanted to go on." No.1: Do you remember the first Top Of The Pops appearance? Dave: "Course. There was Gillian, the 'Whicker Rap' - I remember it really well, even more so than the one we did the other day." Martin: "We still get nervous even today, but looking back to that first one..." Dave: "And we were so young..." JUST CAN´T GET ENOUGH No.1: Were you New Romantics at this stage? Dave: "We were futurists, we were always futurists, because we were involved with futurist people, people who wanted to be individual. The New Romantic thing meant people all looking the same, however flamboyantly. Futurists were an extention from punk. That was our following at the time." No.1: You were also the Boys From Basildon, was it hard continuing to live in surburbia? Andy: "We were harrassed." Martin: "It wasn´t adulation, more derogatory comments." Dave: "We get more abuse there than anywere else but that´s the sort of place it is, very young. I live there now and I can go out and do the shopping okay. You learn. You know that if you go to the wrong areas you can get beaten up, so you stay away from those areas. It´s a good place." SEE YOU

Martin: "Was the first single I´d written although it had been around a long time, I wrote it when I was 17. So when Vince left it seemed quite a good single to do, a nice commercial one."
No.1: It´s sad, as a lot of your love songs.
Dave: "That´s because it´s personal, that´s what makes them sad."
Martin: "I think we´ve always - not shocked - but surprised people."
Dave: "Oh, I think we´ve shocked in our time."
Martin: "But we´ve never continued in one steady pattern, one direct line."

LEAVE IN SILENCE

No.1: Why have you never had your picture on a single sleeve?
Andy: "We like to be a bit of a faceless group, really. We want people to buy the music, not our image. The first Duran album, for instance, they must regret what they look like. Perhaps they don´t..."
Dave: "I bet they do, they must do. It´s really a horrible sleeve."
No.1: Well why do you appear in videos then?
Andy: "We only make videos to sell our records and there are certain rules to follow: You must appear."
Dave: "We try to make them a bit obscure, not your general run of the mill ones."
No.1: 'Leave In Silence' was a real shock to people.
Martin: "After the 'Meaning Of Love', which isn´t on the LP, had bombed we felt we should be taking a few more chances as trying to make records that we thought were going to be hits wasn´t the way to go about things. We released something we were very happy with, that we hoped would appeal to people."
Dave: "It´s very rare to capture an atmosphere on a single, but that´s the one we did it on. The whole album 'Broken Frame' is very moody throughout but a little disjointed. 'Leave In Silence', though, had everything, melody, sound, mood, everything. One of my favourites."

GET THE BALANCE RIGHT

No.1: Your first single as a member of the group, Alan. What difference did you make?
Alan: "Yeah, it was my first single but I don´t think I made a great deal of differance. I probably made it worse."
Martin: "Well that is actually our least favourite single. It was hell to record."
Andy: "We had a lot of problems, it was a kind of interim period between equipment and it just didn´t happen."
Alan: "I´d been involved for about a year, I wasn´t comming into it cold."
Dave: "Yeah, we were paying you a good wage though, Alan!"
Alan: "They were paying me a pittance."
Andy: "You did travel the world - and get free records!"

EVERYTHING COUNTS

Martin: "It´s strange, but we went from one of our unhappiest singles to one of our favourites."
Andy: "As with the previous one we were experimenting with various new technology that money and business.
Martin: "Again, the time just seemed right to have a change from what we´d been writing about before."
Alan: "We wanted, also, to be able to capture our live sound, in the past we´d sounded a bit lightweight on record."
Dave: "Once more, that single captured a brillian atmosphere."
Martin: "Anyway, a lot of people liked the single which was nice because we were attempting, again, to go off and do someting a little bit different."

LOVE IN ITSELF

Dave: "This is the s-s-s-s´s track. It had a very soft vocal, with a lot of s´s, it sounded awful. I was a bit disappointed with this, it could have been brilliant."
Andy: "We had a lot of problems with the equipment with this one, just trying to get that softness of sound we wanted without it all blurring was a real nightmare. It´s one that´s always good live, though."

PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE

Alan: "We all look upon that period of recording as one ofthe most exciting. We´d gone to Berlin and the feeling in the studio was very dynamic. We were aware that the single was quite close to being a disco single and we didn´t want it to be like all the millions of others that were out. We wanted it to have this hard metallic sound while keeping it fairly soulful.
We had a great time in Berlin and we also had fun experimenting with all these synclaviers and so on. It was an exciting period with a good end result. We weren´t sure about it at first, although we thougt it was good."
No.1: You were building up a very large following in Europe at the time, why was that?
Andy: "It had been bulding up I think. Every time we went over there the audiences were getting bigger and more responsive and thats the single that really cracked it."
Dave: "That was also our first ever hit in America, although it was released later over there. It was obviously a single that appealed to a lot of people."
No.1: You were really getting more into leather at this point.
Andy: "We were thinking more about our image than we ever had done really."
Dave: "We went through a period where we´d worn suits to go with songs like 'See You' which I think was the worst period. But before, when we first started, we were wearing leather, basically the leather gay look. That was from most of our friends. It was our best look. Gradually we just came back into it. It´s a good strong image, a powerfull one. It´s not really an image as such but it looks good and it´s the sort of stuff we´d wear anyway."
Alan: "We´re not the sort of group that´s ever really though about clothes a great deal..."
Andy: "But we just can´t help it if we look damned good, can we?"

MASTER AND SERVANT

Dave: "We wanted to get across a very manic feeling and I think we did do that. A very powerful song."
Andy: "It rubbed off a bit from 'People Are People'."
Dave: "Yeah, but lyrically it was very different."
No.1: About those lyrics...
Martin: "No, I´ve explained this a million times... it´s about domination,
Dave: "Yeah, but on the records it´s sexual, isn´t it?"
Alan: "No, it´s not, it´s not just about sex. Martin?"
Dave: "On the record it is, I think it´s pretty obvious from the lyric."
Martin: "Alright then."

BLASPHEMOUS RUMORS

Andy: "When we went to America we thought we´d get a lot of the same stick for this record that we´d get over in Europe but we didn´t. We got a lot of letters slagging it."
Alan: "In Europe, the problem was they couldn´t say it."
Martin: "Neither this nor 'Master And Servant' had any shock value, they weren´t intended to shock people. They both had a good meaning."
Dave: "I think the problem arose because it had the word 'Blasphemous' in the title, so the record itself must be, whereas it´s just the thoughts of one man looking for some kind of a reason in the goings on in the world. We did get response from Christian Associations saying that they understood what we were trying to say."
Andy: "There was also a feature in a Christian magazine, which I used to read, putting across our side."

SHAKE THE DISEASE

Dave: "Another one of those tracks which I think is a great song where we didn´t really give it enough in the studio. We were touring and trying to make a record at the same time. It was the first single where we had nothing to do with the mixing."
Andy: "When we came back from America there were loads of things we didn´t like about it."
Dave: "It was crying for a great big chorus but it didn´t happen."
Alan: "It is a great song. Sould have been a very big hit. It did very well elsewhere."
Alan: "It was the sort of song you needed to hear a few times."

IT´S CALLED A HEART

Dave: "Our latest. I do find it very hard to enjoy singles until a good while after they´ve been out. At the time there are just too many other things to do to sit back and think about the single."
No.1: Why have the singles compilation?
Dave: "It´s the end of a period for us. We need to start afresh on the new LP and this will give us enthusiasm."

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