The Wizards Of Id

""That’s it then," bellows the portly juggler, with some relief, on the train back to civilisation. "Done The Mode. Tick that one off." I’m reassured that it’s not only jaded journalists and the like who find these vast "events" oddly distancing, alienating, clinical and vaguely intimidating. It’s impossible to engage fully with "the music" or even "the image" at such huge centreless gatherings. Generally, you can’t hear much or see much, and, worst of all, there are all these people (indie kids to executives, goths to casuals). The common bond is an amorphous, irony-free flock worship, which fails to relate to any strand of human individuality of which I am aware.

Climbing to the back of the stands as Gahan sings the line "reach out and touch me", 65 times, I try to view the whole palaver as an intriguing pagan ritual wantonly subverting the green belt, but my directorial skills are inadequate. It is a sports centre. Unless given a ball and a pig-thick, six-foot-six defender to run at, I cannot lose myself or succumb to the id in a sports centre. Now surely live music should provide a field day for the id?

None of which, patently, is the fault of Depeche Mode or The Sisters Of Mercy, both of whom, in subtly contrary ways, try their levellest to be perverse pyromaniacs. Both represent something more sinister than "the norm", though the dark energies are necessarily a gentle undercurrent in such an arena. We can, however, take great joy in watching nigh on 30,000 people beatifically mouthing, say, "life is short and love is always over in the morning" (Eldritch) or "I would tell of the things they put me through/The pain I’ve been subjected to/But The Lord Himself would blush…" (Gore). All these sick warped bastards! Living in my city! F***in’ A!

Not strictly true – both bands’ only British appearance this year means Jackie from Leeds and Rob from Stockport are here in their thousands, and we must then afford due reverence to the consistently amusing Sisters and the increasingly cool Mode.

When exactly The Mode metamorphosed from The Nerds From Geeksville into Michael Foucault with a budget on springs is uncertain, but it definitely happened. "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" is that rarest of birds among successes, a beautiful record. I gave them a hard time once and will not do so again.

More songs about kinky sex and doom and being rich, oh, yes please.

But first – if not last and who knows, really, about always – The Sisters, who today are Mr Eldritch, two guitarists (Bruhn and Pearson) and the well-preserved Dr Avalanche.

In daylight, the dry ice is ineffectual and the low bodycount onstage means that the moody, mysterious (etc, etc) Andrew is forced to perform and project. The funny thing is, he does. Admittedly, and indisputably, every step, strut, crouch, glare, sneer and swagger is lifted directly from the David Bowie Mid-Period Guide To Intelligent Rock Star Posturing, but hey, it gets through my taste customs. It also dovetails neatly with the durably "heroic" spirit of such life-is-inordinately-wretched-but-God-am-I-handsome anthems as "Temple Of Love", "Alice", and "Detonation Boulevard". By the time David embarks on "Catpeople" – I’m so sorry, I must stop doing that – by the time Andrew embarks on "More", the mob forget how daft it is to be existential on a running track in SE19 and throw themselves into the abyss of having fun. (Willing suspension of disbelief? With fries? And a beaker of pissy lager? You got it!)

Andrew Eldritch, crowdpleaser, warms to the job. "Ah, a day at the beach," he mocks. "Funny the people who turn up at these things" is apparently guided at a Mr Hussey. "Don’t say I never give you anything – although of course I don’t" is a fine parting shot after an absurdly rockist and boppy "This Corrosion". Will they encore? Indeed they will! Shirt change and all! "We were going to do ‘Comfortably Numb’, but hey, we’re only the support band." What a wag! "Flood" and the severely Iggy-riffing "Vision Thing" – I think it’s "another motherf***er in a motorcade" that gets me hot – are topped by the pièce de resistance. "Enjoy the puppet show." Now if only he’d preceded that by "So long, suckers." Still, there was no way the Sisters should’ve pulled this off. That they did is down to Eldo being clever enough to be this stupid. Well bowled, sir. Possibly the last prima donna to know that "sha na na na", delivered just so, means "I have just finished the prose-poems of Huysmans but now, after a cold shower, I intend to lie naked among animals of the forest."

Slam it through!

And so to The Mode, the four chirpy Basildon boys who switched on to angst and weird religion and rubberwear and tattoos. The other quip that my portly juggler friend manages is: "If, when I get home, the wife and sister are in the same bed again, I swear I’m just gonna… turn the Camcorder on. Ha!" You can see why I have a theory that Depeche are now the totem band of mainstream fetishists.

So why don’t they suck? They sure used to. It could be that today’s white rock messiahs (Cobain, Rose, you name it) look so excruciatingly drab, as aloof and possessed as David Jason. By comparison, Gahan (now as overwhelmingly narcissistic onstage as they come – and they do) and Gore (Shirley Temple in Bacofoil) seem genuinely freaky. Gahan is a splendid showman – his much-improved dancing (and, for that matter, hair) are so unapologetic as to be very nearly sexy, and his repeated mic stand abuse is exemplary. Only an overt penchant for "Hello Lon-dern!" and "Awwwlraaat!" mar his footfall. "Yeah!" and "Wooh!" visit us a lot, too – rather spoiling the suspenseful section of the quite wonderful "Rush", a pity.

He has to move this much, as The Mode otherwise resemble "Thunderbirds" behind consoles, recalling Eldritch’s acid comment. Gahan’s physicality counters the technology. Gore does loosen up, claiming the spotlight (and a string quartet) for "Judas" and a glowing "One Caress" (he has a fine voice). The filmic tricks are sleek, although of course U2 have upped the stakes on this aspect of stadium rock.

What really impresses is their new-found range – techno to rockabilly, sludge-funk to operetta, they’ve developed beyond all recognition. Whenever this New Age jukebox seems a little too Next or Topshop, some laudably bleak or gorgeously deranged line creeps down the wire of "Behind The Wheel", "World In My Eyes", the tenderly sad "Walking In My Shoes", the bravely braggadocio of "I Feel You" (tragically appended by Gahan’s "Awwraat! Now yer makin’ some f***in’ noise! Yay-ah!"). And Gore’s songwriting has progressed from the laughable "People Are People" (wisely, The Mode concentrate on their maturer golden greats) to the delicious "your favourite mirror… your favourite slave". What woman – forgive me, what person – has done this to him? I would very much like to shake them by the hand.

I do lose patience with Dashing Dave when (during a finale of the exquisitely doleful "In Your Room") he adopts crucifixion pose and mounts the heads of his parishioners, who of course try feverishly to take home slices of the contents of their personal Jesus’ trousers. I expect I still need time to learn to love The Mode this way. I’d gladly proclaim "In Your Room" to be one of the three most immaculate songs I’ve heard this year, but they were once too far bad for me to spread just yet. That they can even serenade the correct window – from this barely conducive platform – is testament to their flowering attractions. Just that hint of dirt and danger, in these times of independent sexual dread and major lame "erotic" overkill, is perhaps enough, what with the id and everything. A gaggle of ids go home satisfied."

Chris Roberts
Melody Maker, 7th August, 1993

"The mind boggles and does triple somersaults… What fracas would ensue when the Essex kids of Depeche Mode’s hardcore following met up with the disaffected, black-clad witches and wizards of The Sisters Of Mercy’s acquaintance? How would the partisan hordes cope with Dub Syndicate’s bass-driven depth charges and Marxman’s future Communist rap?

Well, reality turns out to be both stranger and better than expectations. With an initial atmosphere of a garden fete on a grand scale, Dame Tolerance rules the roost, and the military scale planning and execution makes the multi-cultural bill curse the white homogeneity of XFM and Neil Young In The Park line-ups. The music industry at large might have come to resemble the drowning man waving his bloody stump on Scott Walker’s "Track Seven", yet there are still pockets of resistance where stadiums are not necessarily synonymous with gimmickry and fleeced punters.

Andrew Eldritch is fast becoming one of the last great showmen. With his trademark sunglasses, wry repertoire of putdowns for the unconvinced and Doktor Doom stentorian voice, he’s a fun figure – not a figure of fun – singing songs about drugs and buildings. The new slimmed-down Sisters Of Mercy attack rock’n’roll with a savage discipline, embodying its decadence whilst parodying its very essence. The buzzwords sting, the drum machine clatters, ‘More’ and ‘Temple Of Love’ are imbued with orchestral grandeur, and the swirling, scything guitars map out electronic circuits between riffage and showers of notes.

Respect is also due to Depeche Mode for waiting 13 years to muscle in on rock’n’roll territory. Even if they once swore they’d never use guitars, the new-found gothic tendencies and Messianic explorations of the twin tenets of faith and devotion make sense because there’s a brooding economy at work – DM never go too far. And even if the appropriation of Teutonic elements and the heartfelt humanistic socialism of ‘Construction Time Again’ remains their towering peak, both ‘Violator’ and the electronic proto-gospel of ‘Songs Of Faith And Devotion’ (that provide the bedrock for tonight’s communal celebration) prove they could still surpass that watershed.

Appearing to be blasphemous whilst fulfilling the functions of a rock’n’roll cartoon is a good ruse. And Depeche Mode inspire so much love purely because they use the voice of Everyman – like a less cryptic REM – to detail hurts, loves, hates, scenarios and aspirations that cut across barriers so everyone can understand. Idealism, not cynicism, rules them, even if they cannot fail to have been slightly tainted by the remorseless big-music machine. These days, Martin Gore has outgrown leather skirts and the mantle of ‘bad boy’ has fallen on Dave Gahan, who has metamorphosed into a long-haired Californian biker.

Like the Keith Carradine character in Trouble In Mind who comes back home with a quiff and kiss-curl after going AWOL and isn’t initially recognised by his wife, Dave Gahan wants the bigger outside world as opposed to former insularity. He performs with the relish of new-found freedom, pirouettes, has a meaningful relationship with his mic stand and emotes in his ‘older’ voice. Martin Gore sings and plays guitar on some showcase numbers with his ‘choirboy’ voice when he’s not on a podium with Alan Wilder, Andy Fletcher and a bank of keyboards. There’s also a guest string section for one song and real drums for the rocking Los Angeles groove of ‘I Feel You’.

Do Depeche Mode break sweat? What does it matter – the feeling is there and shared like euphoria, and even some sceptics are moved to obeying Gahan’s onstage exhortations.

When ‘World In My Eyes’ mixes the personal with the trans-global; when ‘Personal Jesus’ critiques the Basildon Boys’ position; when ‘Enjoy The Silence’ crystallises melancholy New Order; when you’re ‘Stripped’ down to your bone you know that Depeche Mode give great stadium. Period."

Dele Fadele
New Musical Express, 7th August, 1993

"The National Sports Centre in Crystal Palace is an outdoor music venue that is under-used. Not just because the crowd gets to touch (well, through a plastic sheet) the hallowed gravel where Donna Hartley and David Coleman have trod; it’s also the approach routes. You sweep up and down grassy slopes and modernist walkways and the stadium squats in the valley beneath like a huge beetle preparing to scuttle off. Depeche Mode, the new-town dream made flesh, can only flourish here.

The purity of the Basildon quartet’s aesthetic is not quite what it was. Fortunately, the sombre clarity of their sound is not compromised by the intervention of guitars, real drums, and even a string section. Only Dave Gahan’s formula rock-beast behaviour detracts from the tinny grandeur. Depeche Mode have rocked up the tone a lot, but Gahan’s mid-Atlantic yowl does not convince, and there is something incongruous about a man shouting "Yeah! All right! Let’s see those muthafuggin’ hands!" while standing in front of a pile of synthesisers.

The crowd, uniformly attired in newly purchased T-shirts, do not think so, and clap and sing along with plenty of commitment. The celebratory atmosphere might seem to be out of tune with the miserabilist tendencies of latter-day Mode, but there certainly is pleasure to be had from the skill with which this show has been designed. The tools of the group’s trade perch starkly atop square video walls while the nattily self-conscious video imagery of Anton Corbijn flickers beneath. Their old simpler virtues remain even as newer songs reach out for big themes with varying success. The debaucher’s apologia of "Walking In My Shoes" might be unintentionally comic – "the Lord himself would blush!" – but there’s no denying it has a nice tune.

They don’t do quite enough hits – a gothed-up "New Life" would have been fun – but under the moonlight a new suppleness and strength emerges in much of the more recent material. Depeche Mode’s attempts to grow up in public have made them an easy target for ridicule, but at least (unlike, say, the Cure), they have made the effort. Sometimes they try too hard. There is an ugly flash of misogyny in "Stripped", but for a band whose main songwriting talent left more than a decade ago, they are not doing too badly."

Ben Thomson
The Independent, 8th August, 1993

""Whoa, we’re home!" hollers Depeche Mode’s singer, Dave Gahan, his accent midway between the band’s home town of Basildon and his adopted city of Los Angeles. Dressed in a silver lame jacket and skin-tight black jeans, his hair grown to shoulder-length and minus the bleached highlights of his youth, Gahan is the local boy who returns from a long trip changed beyond all recognition. He left as a teen pop singer, and returns as a grungy, tattooed rock god.

The band’s other three members – Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder and songwriter Martin Gore – have been less affected by international superstardom, maintaining their melancholic demeanour; and the stage set at last Saturday’s Crystal Palace show makes fun of this divide.

The first song is played behind huge grey curtains, which drop to reveal a two-tiered stage; Gahan prowling theatrically below, while the others stand still and flick switches on their synthesisers, separated from the singer by a 30-foot bank of video screens.

Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but the divide is a neat expression of Depeche Mode’s contradictions. Back in the early Eighties, they were one of many pretty-boy synth groups; which seemed destined for obscurity when songwriter Vince Clarke left to form Yazoo. Clarke is still churning out Top 10 hits with Erasure, but his shoes have been filled by Martin Gore, whose ludicrous hairstyle concealed a songwriting brain.

Depeche Mode developed slowly, moving through simplistic politics ("People Are People"), metal-beating and S&M ("Master And Servant"), and Gothic obsessions with darkness ("Black Celebration", "Leave In Silence"), to their current fascination with sin and religion. The watershed album was 1990’s Violator, which confirmed them as bona fide world stars (in Europe and America, their popularity is on a par with U2), and introduced a rockier element.

The current album, Songs Of Faith And Devotion, is both pompous and impressive, bolstering the band’s electronic sound-base with live drums, electric guitar, gospel singers and even a string quartet; all of which, surprisingly, translates effortlessly to live performance.

Visually and musically, the dynamics of the show are carefully controlled, introducing new elements (backing singers, arty video images, a full-scale mobile light-show) gradually. It is very much in the style of Talking Heads’ famous Stop Making Sense shows.

Indeed, the only incongruity is Gahan himself, twirling his microphone stand and thrusting his pelvis in a display of rapaciousness which makes sense on guitar-toting, sexual rockers like "I Feel You" and "Personal Jesus", but seems bizarre on the confessional "Halo" or the coolly sublime "Enjoy The Silence". The latter, ironically, is marred by Gahan bellowing "Make some noise!" at a crowd already singing along.

The fans are a homogenous bunch: male and female in equal numbers, but almost all in their early twenties and clothed in black; a fact only partly explained by the support band Sisters Of Mercy, Goths in extremis. Depeche Mode are a supremely depressing group, albeit one fronted by an old-fashioned rock egomaniac.

Gahan has a strong voice, but it is at times rather cold and monotonous, and one of the night’s high points occurs on "One Caress", when Martin Gore takes over on vocals. He is accompanied by a string quartet who seem genuinely excited to be there, waving at the audience. Gore’s voice is endearingly vulnerable, and transfixes a stadium full of hyped-up kids into a reverential silence.

Although the set is culled mostly from their last two albums, the band’s dual nature is clear. Their English electro-pop roots are obvious in "Policy Of Truth" and "World In My Eyes", but some of the new songs seem based on a different musical heritage. "Condemnation" sounds like a slave song, all gospel backing vocals and bluesy piano, while "Judas" is almost hymnal.

This new-found soulfulness and eclecticism has its down-side: the dance beats are increasingly non-existent or buried under a mass of instrumentalisation, and Gahan’s posturing is often wildly inappropriate. But ultimately it is the show’s salvation, injecting some fun and hope into the prevailing gloom."

Sam Taylor
The Observer, 8th August, 1993