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The tour ended and I went home with a big habit, and that was all I was left with. Maybe at some point I thought I was something different or special, and certainly during the Songs of Faith and Devotion period I rode that train to the end of the line. To be quite honest, I’m just your garden-variety junkie alcoholic. I don’t think it was really a transformation that happened overnight. You got tattoos, grew your hair out, got a serious drug habit. Even though we use synthesizers, we still have that kind of ethic, because we can just pick up our stuff, go plug in our gear, and play.Īround the time of Songs of Faith and Devotion, you underwent something of a grunge makeover. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don’t have to be accomplished to be a musician. Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. I’ve always had that issue, and it’s always been sort of a thorn in the other guys’ sides. It went up so fast, and these guys are working away out there - really working, like a real job - and quite often, when we were stuck on something or bitching or whatever, we thought, “That’s really hard work out there.” And making music? It’s fun.Īs a die-hard rock’n’roll fan, do you ever find it odd that you are the frontman for the world’s most famous synth-pop band? It’s funny, we watched a building go up in front of my studio. I think that was one of those flippant comments made at the end of the tour. In the 1989 documentary Depeche Mode 101, you said you were happier stocking shelves at a supermarket than being in a band. I think there’s a competitiveness that’s always been there, and it’s key to what Depeche Mode is.Īlso Read The Spin Top 40: The Most Vital Artists in Music, 1997 I can see now that the problem was my frustrations with my own limitations. It must be hard to write songs and have someone else sing them for you.

I realize the position he’s been in for 27 years and the pressure he’s been under. I felt him there by my side all the time. The last tour was great we got along really well. In the past you and Martin have used the press to air your issues with one another, but you sound pretty fond of him right now. I’m not saying it’s the best record I’m ever gonna make, but it’s definitely where I’m supposed to be, and I feel comfortable with that - certainly more so than I was with Paper Monsters. I’ve really started to find my own voice.

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I owe a lot of that to Martin, because, over the years, singing his stuff has rubbed off on me: how to develop a song, how to create an atmosphere, how to put myself in it. Recording a few songs for Depeche gave me confidence. With Paper Monsters, I was like, “I’ve got something to prove.” I had created this character to perform in, and it was getting old. You seem really enthusiastic about the new album.

“I know it starts here and it ends here, but what goes on in between is the confusing part,” he says, cueing up the album’s hypnotic, doomy opener, “Saw Something.” Then, with a smirk: “But that’s kind of a metaphor for my life.” He’d rather discuss his excitement over Hourglass and the difficulty of organizing its track list. He won’t even say a bad word about bandmate Martin Gore, whose reluctance to share songwriting duties has led to constant bickering over the years and drove Gahan to first seek solo satisfaction on 2003’s coolly received Paper Monsters. In 1995 he slit his wrists in a Hollywood hotel room the following year an overdose of heroin and cocaine left him clinically dead for two minutes.īut a decade later, in the comfortable confines of his Manhattan recording studio, where large black-and-white photos of his wife and three children decorate the walls, and tiny boxes painted with the likenesses of the other Depeche Mode members clutter the shelves, Gahan’s joie de vivre is unmistakable. Back then, as Depeche were peaking in popularity, Gahan was essentially willing the clock to stop. “I feel like I’m racing against a clock.” That the 45-year-old singer is experiencing this urgency now, after nearly three decades with a band that has sold more than 72 million albums worldwide, is not totally surprising, considering how the Englishman (from the London suburb of Basildon) spent much of the ’90s: addicted to heroin, estranged from his bandmates, and, much to their dismay, living in Los Angeles. “I have this sense that I want to be somewhere that I’m not yet,” he confesses. After working all day on his second solo album, appropriately titled Hourglass, the frontman for synth-pop legends Depeche Mode sits on the edge of a couch and lights the first of several cigarillos.