Depeche Mode

Let Me Take You On a Trip

Victor, you just tested negative for COVID. What are you going to do now?

I’m going to see Depeche Mode at the United Center!

Overall, it was a good show. It wasn’t as sad as I thought it would be, considering Fletch’s absence. Perhaps it helped that the song designated as a memorial to him, “World in My Eyes,” is an upbeat crowd pleaser. It’s not easy feeling sad when that song is playing.

As with other DM shows I’ve been to, the new songs were decidedly hit-or-miss and the older numbers were definitely the highlight (including an incredibly fun rendition of “Everything Counts”). I don’t think I needed to hear three songs from Playing the Angel, and I’m not quite sure what “Sister of Night” or “Wrong” were doing on the setlist. But it was cool hearing “Condemnation,” one of my favorites and a song they’ve only played a handful of times since 2001.

Mostly, it was just nice seeing them live again. Depeche Mode was the last concert my wife and I went to before the pandemic and the first one we’ve gone to since. After Fletch died, we assumed we’d never see them perform again since they would surely break up.

As Dave would say: “Wrong!”

(Legal) Career Killers: Michelle Branch and her Warner Bros. Contract

Welcome to (Legal) Career Killers — a series that looks at how the law, lawyers or lawsuits killed a band’s or artist’s careers. In other words: They fought the law and the law won.

When Michelle Branch was arrested in August for assaulting her husband, Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, it raised so many questions:

“Wait, she married the drummer from the Black Keys? When did that happen?”

“And he allegedly cheated on her? One of the hottest and biggest stars of the early 00s and someone who’s music is still widely beloved by people of a certain age?”

“Speaking of which, what happened to her anyway? Where did she go for 15 years?”

Well, the answers are yes (they got together shortly after Carney produced Branch’s 2017 comeback album, Hopeless Romantic), that’s what she said on Twitter (although she later deleted her Tweet and suspended divorce proceedings), and it’s complicated.

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Farewell Fletch

“Martin’s the songwriter, Alan [Wilder]’s the good musician, Dave’s the vocalist and I bum around,” Andy Fletcher on his role in the band, taken from the Depeche Mode concert film 101.

“Depeche Mode’s unique division of labor has been long established, with each of the three remaining members having a distinct role: Martin Gore writes the songs, Dave Gahan sings them and Andy Fletcher shows up for photo shoots and cashes the checks,” Gavin Edwards, wrote in Rolling Stone in 2005.

That wasn’t entirely true.

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Career Killers: “Yes Please!” by The Happy Mondays

When it comes to movies, there are box office bombs and then there’s Heaven’s Gate.

The 1980 western epic went massively over-budget thanks to a disastrous and well-publicized troubled production and received infamously bad reviews upon release. The film ended up being such a box office bomb that it single-handedly killed director Michael Cimino’s Hollywood career and star Kris Kristofferson’s potential as a leading man (one particularly brutal review from Vincent Canby of The New York Times wondered if Cimino had made a deal with the devil to produce his last movie, Oscar-winning classic The Deer Hunter, and now the bill had come due).

And that was just the beginning. According to the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, the movie may have also killed off United Artists, the studio that produced it. Shortly after writing off the film’s entire $44 million budget (equivalent to nearly $140 million in today’s money), UA was sold to MGM and ceased being an independent studio. The movie may have even killed the era of the all-powerful director, as runaway disasters like Heaven’s Gate, Apocalypse Now, At Long Last Love and others caused studios to step in and start asserting control.

By those standards, Yes Please! by the Happy Mondays is the Heaven’s Gate of albums.

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Career Killers: “The Final Cut” by Pink Floyd (Updated)

Editor’s note (06/13/2023): Updated to include current developments relating to ongoing war in Ukraine.

When we think of the most accomplished and popular rock bands, they tend to have one or two people in charge – usually the songwriters. Glenn Frey called it “song power” and used it to explain the power dynamics in The Eagles:

“A rock band is not a perfect democracy. It’s more like a sports team. No one can do anything without the other guys, but everybody doesn’t get to touch the ball all the time.”
Glenn Frey, History of the Eagles.

History tells us that, at some point, the other guys in the band will often get fed up with being in the background and either leave the band or raise such a stink that they get some concessions. Stu Cook and Doug Clifford forced John Fogerty to let them write songs for a Creedence Clearwater Revival album with disastrous results. Jason Newsted quit Metallica. Alan Wilder left Depeche Mode while Dave Gahan threatened to unless he was allowed to write songs for the band’s albums. As for the Eagles, Frey and Don Henley may have been happy in their roles as was benevolent dictators, but others in the band, particularly Don Felder and Joe Walsh, resented being underlings and this underlying tension was one of the main reasons why the band broke up.

Pink Floyd was no different, and when things finally came to a head in the early 1980s, it touched off years of litigation, decades of inconsistent artistic output from all parties involved, and sustained personal enmity and hatred that not even the promise of a triumphant one-off reunion at the biggest charity concert of the 2000s could fully fix.

This is the album that started all of that.

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Career Killers: “Van Halen III”

September 4, 1996. The MTV Video Music Awards are in full swing and the evening is full of historical moments. 2Pac, in his last televised appearance before his death, announced the formation of Death Row East – a provocative incursion onto rival turf at the height of east/west tensions in the hip hop world. A then-unknown No Doubt rocked the pre-show, serving notice to the musical world as to what was to come. A reeling Smashing Pumpkins gave one of their first performances since touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on heroin and died the previous July.

But the moment that had everyone talking was a reunion over ten years in the making, and one that fans, music executives, MTV personnel and fellow musicians had been dying for. When David Lee Roth walked out on stage with the other members of Van Halen, it was the first time he, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen had stood together on stage in over a decade. The four had made magic together, establishing Van Halen as one of the greatest and most loved bands of its era.

In 1985, at the height of its popularity, Van Halen and Roth parted ways amidst plenty of recriminations and bad feelings. Sammy Hagar had taken over and had done great business for Van Halen. But Roth was the one that we all wanted to see again (heck, in the weeks leading up to the show, MTV ran a 45 second spot featuring some of Dave’s greatest music video moments set to the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme). By appearing together at the VMAs, the classic lineup was surely going to let the past be the past and record a kick-ass record that would restore them to supremacy in a musical world increasingly dominated by alternative music and hip-hop.

Instead, we got Van Halen III.

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Depeche Mode – “Global Spirit Tour” at the United Center

Again, not so much a review as an observation. I enjoyed this show much more than the last Depeche Mode show I attended. The band sounded better and tighter (although that may have been because of the change of venue – Barclays Center had well-documented acoustics problems back then). Dave Gahan and Martin Gore sounded great, Peter Gordeno did a good job playing the “Alan Wilder” role on keyboards and background vocals and Christian Eigner was solid on drums. Fletch showed off some new dance moves, adding an awkward double Durst to his extensive repertoire (which includes the “Funky Cello” and the “Snack Break”). The band only did four songs off the new album, “Spirit” – the same number of songs they did from 1997’s “Ultra.” That’s too bad, because I actually like some of the songs off the new album, especially show-opener “Going Backwards.”

We’re going backwards
Turning back our history
Going backwards
Piling on the misery

We’re going backwards
Armed with new technology
Going backwards
To a caveman mentality

In fact, “Spirit” is quite political – especially when compared to the band’s last few albums. Maybe Trump, Brexit and everything else going on in the world inspired them. Or maybe it was being co-opted by the alt-right. Either way, it made for a great show!

“Urban Hymns” Turns 20

1997 was a banner year in British music. Radiohead gave us “O.K. Computer,” one of the best albums ever made and one whose central theme of being consumed by technology seems prescient given the world we live in today. The Blur/Oasis war entered a transitional phase, as Blur took a step back and released its low-fi, American style self-titled album while Oasis charged full-steam into pretension and excess with “Be Here Now.” The Chemical Brothers and Prodigy both released successful electronic albums, while one of their forerunners, Depeche Mode, made a nice comeback with “Ultra” (arguably, the band’s last good album). It was a good year for British pop, too, as the Spice Girls had two albums hit #1 on the charts, and Gary Barlow had his last solo chart-topper before reuniting with Take That.

But one album towered above the rest.

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Album Review: “Hardwired… To Self Destruct” by Metallica

Latter-era Metallica projects have all ignored the age-old maxim that less is more.

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Well Oiled Machine – A Concert Review of Depeche Mode at the Barclays Center

Concert Review:

Depeche Mode

September 6, 2013

Barclays Center

The reason I didn’t review the latest Depeche Mode album, Delta Machine, is because Stereogum summed it up better than I ever could:

At this point, Depeche Mode are pretty much new-wave synthpop’s Rolling Stones. They have such a deep and unfuckwithable catalog of hits that they could continue touring arenas until their bodies just completely give up. Nobody really needs them to keep recording new music, and yet they keep doing it.

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Browsing Category

Browsing Category

Let Me Take You On a Trip

(Legal) Career Killers: Michelle Branch and her Warner Bros. Contract

Farewell Fletch

Career Killers: “Yes Please!” by The Happy Mondays

Career Killers: “The Final Cut” by Pink Floyd (Updated)

Career Killers: “Van Halen III”

Depeche Mode – “Global Spirit Tour” at the United Center

“Urban Hymns” Turns 20

Album Review: “Hardwired… To Self Destruct” by Metallica

Well Oiled Machine – A Concert Review of Depeche Mode at the Barclays Center