Birthday of the soloist of dispatches mod. Last year's interview with Dave Gahan, lead singer of Depeche Mode. Work in Depeshe Mode and solo career

The Depeshe Mode quartet had a great influence on the development of such genres as synth-pop and alternative rock. The face of this group and its most famous member is vocalist David Gahan. He managed to make a successful solo career, but still received star status in the group. For most people, David Gahan and Depeche Mode are inseparable concepts.

Childhood and youth

Like all the other band members, David is British. His homeland is Essex, where he spent his childhood. David grew up in the town of Basildon and was famous there as an incorrigible hooligan who only wanted to go to prison.

This behavior had its reasons, because not all was well in his family. David's father abandoned the family when his son was only six months old and returned immediately after his stepfather's death. For a ten-year-old child, this was a real shock.

David Gahan's early biography is full of dubious exploits: smoking, stealing and setting cars on fire, drawing graffiti on walls. His favorite musicians were the newly emerging The Clash. Already at school, he tried to earn money, but it ended with David not being hired after learning that he was registered with the local police. The offended teenager smashed the office of the officer supervising him to smithereens. David was eventually sentenced to a year in Romford Correctional Centre.

After graduating from school, David Gahan went to work. He managed to work as a lawnmower, handyman, cashier, and thus changed two dozen jobs. In 1977, he entered Southend College of Art and received a diploma in retail design.

Work in Depeshe Mode and solo career

Back in the late seventies, David Gahan became seriously interested in music. First, he became a sound engineer in the French Look group, and then at one of the rehearsals he met Vince Clarke. This was in 1980. Clark's new band, called Composition of Sound, was missing a vocalist, and he persuaded David to join him.

Now there were four members in the group: Andrew Fletcher also played there along with Vince Clarke and David Gahan. It was David who came up with a new name for the team. While in college, he sometimes read the French magazine "Fashion Messenger", or Depeshe Mode, and now suggested that the group should be named the same.

Already the second single Depeshe Mode climbed high in the British charts, and their first album brought real success to the musicians. The group's popularity grew rapidly. At this time, Vince Clarke left the team. A few years later he founded the duo Erasure with Andy Bell. Alan Wilder became the new keyboard player.

Depeshe Mode's music itself also changed: it became darker, a little industrial was added to it, which, however, disappeared after the Some Great Reward album. Year after year the music became more and more atmospheric. The lyrics also became more serious - they now touched on sensitive topics such as racism or extramarital sexual relations.

At a certain point, the popularity of Depeshe Mode crossed the borders of Great Britain, and then Europe, and became global. They became “trend setters” among the emerging Goth subculture. Even in the USSR, they gained a lot of fans, and their style of dressing and David Gahan’s vocals were copied by the Soviet group “Technology”.

In the mid-nineties, Depeshe Mode almost broke up due to Gahan's drug addiction. He was treated for drug addiction for a long time, and in the late nineties he was able to return to the group. Around the same time, David began his solo career, releasing his first album in 2003. He has released two solo albums in total (2003's Paper Monsters and 2007's Hourglass). Not everyone received them as warmly as Depeshe Mode's work, although Hourglass achieved quite high positions in the charts, and reached number one in Germany. In addition, Gahan collaborated with such groups as Soulsavers and Junkie XL.

David Gahan also shot videos, for example, for his song Dirty Sticky Floors.

And yet his main occupation was and remains work in Depeshe Mode. He not only sings, but also writes some songs for the group.

Health problems

In the early nineties, Gahan became seriously addicted to heroin. He behaved increasingly inappropriately and irritably, quarreling with other members of the group, which almost brought it to the brink of collapse. Once David had a heart attack, another time he almost died from an overdose. In 1995, he cut his wrists and was in a state of clinical death for two minutes. This became a kind of turning point - Gahan decided to undergo treatment. After completing a rehabilitation course, he quit drugs and returned to Depeshe Mode.

Personal life

David Gahan has been married three times. He got married for the first time in 1985. In 1987, his son was born. The musician left this family when his drug addiction worsened.

Drugs also destroyed David's second marriage - in the mid-nineties, his wife, Teresa Conroy, announced that she was leaving him. In 1999, Gehan married for the third time, and at the same time his daughter was born. In addition to his daughter, he is raising his wife’s son from a previous marriage, whom he adopted in 2010.

09.02.2017 - 15:41

UK News. July 17 as part of the world tourGlobal One of the most successful musical groups in the world will give a concert in Minsk Depeche Mode. Let's figure out what allows the British band to remain at the top of the musical Olympus for almost four decades.

“We simply love what we do best, and we invest all our energy, time and money into what we love.”

Depeche Mode in the 1980s. Photo: Dave Moore

From bank clerks to world stars

Last Friday, Depeche Mode presented the first single from their upcoming album to the public. Spirit − Where's the Revolution. The group's new album, the release of which was announced on March 17, is one of the most anticipated this year. This is already the 14th studio album by the British, who have been steadily releasing a new collection every four years since 1993.

The band released their very first album, Speak & Spell, on the independent British indie label Mute Records. Collaboration with emerging musicians brought label owner Daniel Miller profit and popularity. At the time of recording their first album, Depeche Mode were already quite famous and received many offers from major record companies. But the musicians chose Miller and entered into an agreement with him, according to which income from sales of the record in the UK was divided 50/50, and from foreign sales - 30/70 in favor of the group.

Photo: Anna Von

Despite numerous offers from major studios to buy the group, Depeche Mode remained loyal to Mute for a very long time. Moreover, the shares into which the label and the group divided the income remained approximately the same as at the very beginning of the collaboration, only the sales volumes changed significantly.

However, at first, income from single sales was not very high, and the musicians had to earn extra money. Gore and Fletcher, for example, worked as bank clerks until Speak & Spell sold more than half a million copies. Such success pushed aspiring musicians to give up everything and take up music in earnest.

Martin Gore. Photo: Electronic beats

Each tour is sold out and brings in millions in profit.

The band's latest album, released on Mute Records, Delta Machine, was released in the spring of 2013. It was well received around the world and was certified platinum. In support of the album, the musicians conducted a grandiose world tour, which ended concert in Minsk. The band earned $148 million from the tour, selling out 51 of 54 shows, and was the 9th highest-grossing tour of 2013, ahead of the likes of Madonna and Paul McCartney.

The band's previous tour in 2009, Tour of the Universe, was no less profitable, ranking among the twenty most successful tours of 2009. About 2.7 million people purchased tickets for it, bringing the group over $45 million. One and a half million of the funds earned by Dispatches from this tour were donated to charity:water, which provides clean water to the people of Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda.

Photo: Atom entertaiment

The band's highest-grossing album remains the legendary Violator(1990), which provided its authors with worldwide fame. This album began the Depeche Mode craze in the United States. In 1996, Violator was certified platinum three times! The record has sold over seven million copies worldwide and was included in the top 500 best albums of all time and one of the top 100 albums of the 90s, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

Depeche Mode is one of the few bands that has not lost popularity for several decades. Every year the number of their fans is only growing, and the amounts earned from sales of CDs and concert tickets are becoming larger and larger.

What Dave Gahan, Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore spend their money on

Members of Depeche Mode are not included in the lists of the richest musicians, but considerable earnings from album sales allow them to lead a comfortable life. For example, the state Dave Gahan estimated at $45 million. Since 1997 he has lived in New York. As a child, the future vocalist had to sleep on the floor, but now he owns a penthouse worth $6 million in Manhattan, next door to Leonardo DiCaprio. Gahan has repeatedly said in interviews that he loves simple things - he spends a lot of time with his family, loves pizza very much and does not read much. The soloist invests a lot in his professional activities. He owns the private recording studio Blanco in New York, designed and equipped by Swedish recording engineer Kurt Unala. The average cost of equipment for such a studio is in seven figures.

Dave Gahan with his family. Photo: Daily News

Keyboardist of the group Andy Fletcher owns a fortune of $40 million. The musician says that all the band members have long since settled down - they all have families and children, and he is the only one who still occasionally drinks alcohol. Fletcher lives in London, in the 90s he owned his own restaurant there, and now often performs at various venues as a DJ.

Personal capital Martina Gora, who lives with his family in Santa Barbara's upscale Monticetto area, was valued at £25 million in 1995 and is now rumored to be worth as much as $65 million. It is known that Gore is involved in investments - the band's guitarist has his own label, Grabbing Hands Music Ltd, and property at one of the London ship repair plants.

Andy Fletcher. Photo: The Van Lear Agency

The main investment is in music

However, the main investment of Depeche Mode members to this day remains music. The band carefully works on all the components of each song. They have always spared no expense on equipment, sound equipment, post-production and the team that helps them create, and each new release comes with something special for the fans. As Andy Fletcher said in an interview, “apparently, this is the secret of the success of the forever young Depeche Mode”. It is this investment that never ceases to bring Depeche Mode the maximum and most valuable income, and their listeners - incomparable pleasure.

Concert in Minsk in 2013. Photo: Ultra music

Depeche Mode, consisting of Dave Gahan, Martin L. Gore and Andy Fletcher, has been unconditionally recognized as the most popular electronic band of all time for decades. However, even if Dave Gahan and his band did not have such recognition to their credit, he would still remain a classic rock star. With all the advantages and disadvantages that accompany this status.

Bright, gifted and charismatic, he lived such a biography and did so many stupid things that would be more than enough for several mediocre rock heroes. Gahan alone had four “dates with death” during his stormy creative career. And each time Dave was saved either by a miracle, or by heaven’s decision that the musician had not yet said his last word to the world, or by a more earthly deity located next to him, which he himself more than once called an angel.

Destroying myself
It was '93. Depeche Mode have just released their super-successful (the album topped both the American and English charts) disc “Songs of Faith and Devotion”, which marked the beginning of a more “heavy”, fatal stage in their work. Dave has changed too. There is no trace left of the neatly cut and polished boy from the 1980s. He was covered in tattoos and grew his hair and beard in the style of the “rebellious” 60s and looked with displeasure at the constant bleached bangs and short leather shorts of the “Depechemod” composer Martin L. Gore.

Dave during his "rock" period in the 90s

To match the image, the life of frontman DM has also changed. From England he moved to the most suitable place for a rock hero - the “sin city” of Los Angeles, and happily plunged into its vices. The usual alcohol was replaced by more serious “rock and roll” drugs - cocaine and heroin. Such stimulants caused the musician to grow wings, albeit for a very short time.

The first meeting with the old woman with a scythe occurred in 93 during the “Songs of Faith and Devotion” tour. In New Orleans, Dave suffered a heart attack right on stage. However, a beautiful rock and roll death did not work out; the musician was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Doctors suggested that he interrupt the tour, but Dave only winced - how could a real rock hero think about any kind of health? The tour continued, although no one in DM thanked Gahan for it. No one inside the team had spoken to him for a long time; everyone was already fed up with his constant playing at being a rock god and his stoned state.

At the end of the tour, musician Alan Wilder announced his departure from the group. As for Dave, he returned to Los Angeles to his “friends”, among whom he felt like a real rock star. They gladly bought drugs at his expense and held orgies in his house, only to disappear without a trace when everything had already been drunk, injected or smoked.

This is what the legendary Depeche Mode look like today

Gahan would later describe this gloomy period of his life in the song “Dirty sticky floor”: “No matter how my day turns out, I’ll still end it lying alone on my dirty sticky floor.” In August 1995, after one of these days, he would cut his wrists. “It really was a suicide attempt,” he admits later, “But at the same time, it was a cry for help. I knew they had to find me."

But the cry for help was not heard, or rather, he himself did not want to accept any help, and his friends turned away from him, because it was painful for them to watch him harm himself despite their advice and requests. In May 1996, after a cocktail of heroin and cocaine, Dave’s heart could not stand it and stopped. Exactly 2 minutes, that’s how long it took Los Angeles paramedics to bring the musician back to life.

By the way, local doctors nicknamed Gahan “The Cat” for his incredible vitality. The singer himself describes these terrible two minutes between earth and sky: “All I saw and felt was absolute darkness. I've never been to a blacker place. I also had a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing. Then I saw myself lying on the floor near my bathtub, and there was a lot of fuss around me. “I tried to shout, ‘Hey, I’m up here!’ from where I was hovering, but no one heard me.” And then he heard her.

Dave Gahan's wife Jennifer Sklias-Gahan

Salvation by love
We cannot verify whether this is fact or fiction, but Dave claims that while in that vague and dark place between heaven and earth, he heard the voice of his beloved Jennifer, who asked him to return. However, the fact that it was the musician’s third wife who became the good angel who literally returned him to a full life is beyond any doubt. However, Dave himself admits this.

This is exactly what is said in the video for his song “Suffer Well”. It shows the two paths that lay before him. One is the path of sins and self-destruction, the other is love and family happiness. Jennifer played in this video the role of an angel and the role of the main character’s wife, which is practically the same thing for the singer himself.

Jennifer and Dave on the set of the Depeche Mode video

Unfortunately, Jennifer again had to show her qualities as a guardian angel when, in the midst of the Tour of the Universe concert tour, Dave was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his bladder. Fortunately, the musician was successfully operated on, and less than a month later he returned to the stage again. When asked where he gets the energy for his energetic performances, Gahan today invariably answers that he is fueled by the devotion of his fans and the love of his wife and family.

On June 29, Ukrainian DM fans gathered at the Olimpiysky NSC will have the opportunity to inspire Dave and his colleagues to the best concert in their entire long and legendary career.

Yaroslav Stepanenko

All photos from Facebook of Depeche Mode and Jennifer Sklias-Gahan

Martin Lee Gore is a resident genius. Yes! It is he who is the brilliant author of almost all the songs of the Depeche Mode group. Moreover, both texts and music. His songs represent the world as such for the band's multi-million army of fans across the planet.

But let's take things in order.

He was born on July 23, 1961 in London, into a working-class family. My stepfather and grandfather worked at the FORD car plant, and my mother worked at a Basildon nursing home. In addition to the green-eyed baby Martin, the family had two more children (female). At the age of 10, modest and shy Martin understands that the music of his mother’s idols - Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Del Shannon - really touches his childhood soul. And at the age of 13, he learned to play the acoustic guitar (a fateful moment!), developing this skill more and more over the years. Soon he takes up the piano. It turns out quite well!

Until the age of 18, he was a quiet, homely boy. Didn't party or drink alcohol. He played cricket for his school team, St. Nicholas, and studied French and German, but hated history. However, I also studied with flying colors in my least favorite subjects. Well, that’s how he was - responsible and diligent. After graduating from school, Gore is hired to work as a cashier in a London bank. A few meters from his office, by the way, is the Sun Life insurance company, where a certain E. Fletcher then works. At work, Martin was treated mediocrely. Young, shy and lacking initiative. But by that time (if only his colleagues knew this!) he was already playing with all his might in the guitar duet “Norman and the Worms” together with his school friend Phil Burdett. One day, having showed up for another performance with a simple synthesizer, Gore meets the guys at the club - Vince Clarke and Andrew Fletcher, who were already a musical group back then. This, in fact, is where the history of the current Depeche Mode group began.

Now Martin is the head of the family, married to German Suzanne Lee Gore, the father of three children - recently born baby Keilo Leon, Britney Spears fans Eva Lee and Viva Lee. He now enjoys living in California. He plays football and computer games, drinks red wine, eats sushi and can't stand any radio stations, having his own huge collection of music CDs. Knows how to cook soup. Believes in ghosts and reincarnation, supports Arsenal, and sometimes hates being one of Depeche Mode.

David Gahan

Face, voice, heart, soul and pain Depeche Mode is an amazing man of contrasts. That's who Dave is. One can talk endlessly about his life opposites. Let's try to briefly and succinctly hint about the uniqueness of the frontman of the Basildon Four.

Dave was born on May 9, 1962 in the English town of Epping. His family was religious. My mother and grandmother worked for the Salvation Army. True, his own father behaved strangely, for some reason leaving his wife Sylvia Ruth with their eldest daughter and 5-year-old baby Dave. Later, two more sons appeared in the family, with a new head. Now Dave has acquired the status of an older brother, and has gone to great lengths. At school he barely made ends meet. But he desperately stole cars, painted graffiti on walls, listened to the Clash and Sex Pistols, behaved like hooligans, smoked, and was generally a rare vandal. Until the age of 14, he was repeatedly brought to the police for these “arts”. And after 14, by the way, too. Mom was sad, said that “Dave apparently needs more love,” was upset, and did not sleep well. Only sleeping pills helped. And “our punk horror story” quickly realized, most likely at someone’s suggestion, that my mother’s sleeping pills could be used for a completely different purpose. In general, “wheels, girls, punk rock.”

At the age of 16, after “graduating half-heartedly” from his favorite school, Dave rushed to work. He worked as a laborer in construction and in a supermarket, sold drinks and expressed his creativity in the band "The Vermin". He had to change a couple of dozen unskilled jobs before the idea came to him to start studying again in a good way. In 1979, he attended Southern College of Art, where he studied window display design, hoping for a future in the changing fashion industry. And in 1981, during a spontaneous concert in a club, a certain Vince Clarke from the group “Composition of Sound” liked his fantastic voice, which he invited Dave to join immediately. Immediately gaining influence in the group, Gehan insists on changing the name of the ensemble. Depeche Mode. That's what he suggested to be called.

What happened to Dave all subsequent time needs to be given a separate, no small place. That's what we'll do. And now we can tell you that he now lives in New York with his beloved Jennifer. She takes her son Jimmy to school and dotes on their common daughter Stella Rose, not forgetting her eldest son Jack. He drinks French wines, runs in the morning, watches hockey and the news, sometimes sits with a fishing rod, draws pictures and drives his car with passion, listening to classic rock radio stations in New York. And he is no longer afraid of real life.

Andy Fletcher

Just a good person. Here it is, the most accurate definition of the essence of Andy Fletcher. He is a bit of a musician, a bit of a producer, almost not a singer and absolutely not a writer. But much of Depeche Mode that could have once fallen apart was preserved only thanks to him.

Andrew John Fletcher was born on July 8, 1961 in Nottingham, into a family of ordinary workers. It cannot be said that the street was involved in his upbringing, but Andy very often emphasizes his working-class background. At a very early age, the blue-eyed red-haired boy enthusiastically began to play football, and through football, oddly enough, he came to church and Sunday school classes. And, in addition to sports and religious activities, from his early youth he worked for the benefit of his family. He delivered newspapers, cleaned public toilets, and was a laborer at a grocery store. He even managed to work as an agent for an insurance company and serve in a bank. From the age of 13 he played the guitar, and at 17 he began to master the keyboard. Neat and self-possessed, Fletch always manages to do everything, studies well, and with his kindness and tall height (meter ninety) often conquers beauties of the same age. In particular, one of his girlfriends later became Martin Gore's "girlfriend". Being one of the active members of the Boys Brigades church organization, Andy became friends with another leader of this organization, the well-known Vince Clarke. It was they who would later become the founders of the musical group known to us.

We should be grateful to Andy for the fact that he has always been the core of Depeche Mode, has always been and will be a haven of peace and stability. Wife Grain, daughter Megan and son Josef - this is Andy’s marital status at this time. He lives in London, like a true Englishman, looks through the Times in the morning, runs his own restaurant "Gascony", has a great knowledge of cooking, reads the Bible, still loves football and table tennis, tries to never be late and has no clear taste in music .

Alan Wilder

“The great wizard of sound”, “the force of gravity” and “the point of concentration of gloomy mystery”... This significant figure in the life of Depeche Mode has been called various names by fans and the musicians themselves. Having existed as a unit with this group for 14 years, Mr. “Slick” is still the “Man of Depeche Mode”. It’s impossible not to talk about him.

Alan Charles "Slick" Wilder was born on June 1, 1959, in Hammersmith, West London. In the family, he was the youngest child, in addition to three more brothers. Surrounded by music since childhood, loving and understanding it, little Alan was sent by his parents to study piano at a music school. And when he turned eleven, he studied well at St. Clement Danes Grammar School, and had already achieved some success in the musical field: in addition to the piano, he began to learn to play the flute. Soon Wilder even becomes a soloist in the school symphony orchestra. By the age of sixteen, Alan, continuing to diligently learn fugues, had already acquired his own musical taste, loving the music of David Bowie and Marc Bolan.

Soon, in 1975, Wilder decides to look for work in his specialty. After visiting all the London record labels, he finds a vacancy as an assistant sound engineer at DJM Studious in the West End. Since then, he has worked with many musical groups as a session keyboard player, and his talent, backed by hard work, has finally emerged. In 1976, he became a member of his first group, The Dragons. After the collapse of the Dragons, Wilder joined the Dafne And The Tenderspots team. The group played in clubs, and at one concert they managed to sign a contract with MAM Records. This group did not last long, and accordingly Alan was not in it either. Then there were Real To Real. You might be surprised, but this group also suffered the same fate as the two previous teams. In 1981, our experienced keyboard player read an ad in Melody Maker magazine: “The band is looking for a keyboard player. If you are under 21 years old...”. Alan was already 22. But he kept silent about it. But he only played a few pieces, including one of Depeche Mode’s latest hits - “New Life”. This, probably, defeated three already popular and vain fellows! Then you know everything. As for his solo work, Wilder was engaged in it while still a member of Depeche Mode. In 1986, he released his first own recording. Recoil project. This is still his life's work.

Today Mr. Wilder is full of enthusiasm and zest for life. He is happily married to his wife Hepsiba Sessa (former member of the group Miranda Sex Garden). Daughter Paris and son Stanley Duke. A beautiful house and a state-of-the-art private studio. Work with many stars and world recognition. What else does a person need to be happy...? :)

On July 19, the Depeche Mode group will perform at the NSC Olimpiyskiy arena, where they will present to Ukrainians their hits and new compositions from their latest studio album Spirit. Many fans from other countries will come to the Kiev concert, and it is not surprising: one of the American publications recently described the fans of the British group as follows: “These are not some Coldplay fans. The Depeche Mode audience is a sect, a diaspora, a black brotherhood with its own rituals and traditions. Even the band members themselves have mixed feelings about them: it’s a mix of love, respect, surprise and fear.”

Where did Spirit go?

Depeche Mode's latest album turned out to be more socially acute and topical than ever. The musicians recorded it as Britain announced its exit from the European Union and Donald Trump's presidential campaign was underway in the United States, all against the backdrop of a new wave of refugees in Europe and brutal terrorist attacks around the world. According to the band members, during breaks between recordings in the studio, they watched television news and kept saying to each other: “Lord, in our youth we thought that nothing could be worse than the years of Margaret Thatcher’s rule.” Frontman Dave Gahan shared that the musicians decided to call the new album Spirit, because spirituality and faith in humanity occupy them most now. “Where has the spirit gone?” or “Where is the spirituality of humanity?” “These are the questions we asked ourselves,” Gahan shared. - Both Martin and I now live in America, so we were simply shocked by the latest presidential elections. Martin said: “I know to a lot of people we're rich rock stars who live in our big mansions in Santa Barbara and New York and we don't give a damn about what goes on behind our fences. Well, we're lucky - we're rich. But this does not mean that we have stopped worrying about what is happening in the world. No, it really worries me." And I replied: “Yes, I understand you, I feel the same.”

Private school and probation

Depeche Mode was formed in 1980 in England on the basis of a group that included Martin Gore, Andrew Fletcher and Vincent Clarke - the guys studied together at the prestigious James Hornby private school in Basildon. It was there that their first performance took place in May 1980, as evidenced by the memorial plaque on the walls of the educational institution. Vocalist Dave Gahan was the only one from the group who went to a regular school “for the poor” and by the beginning of his musical career he had already received a suspended sentence for hooliganism and petty theft.

At the age of 10, Gahan learned that his real father was a bus driver, Malaysian Len Callcott, who abandoned his family immediately after the birth of his son. Surprisingly, the same story happened with Martin Gore: at the age of 13, the boy was discouraged by the fact that his biological father was an African-American soldier who served in England. So Depeche Mode can rightfully be called a “colored” band, because both Asian and Negro blood flows in the veins of its members.

“Then, at the age of 17, music saved me from the fate of a criminal, there is no doubt about that,” admits Dave. According to him, the group always maintained a division between “guys from a good school” and “a hooligan with a suspended sentence.” “Sometimes during discussions at rehearsals I wanted to shout: “Hey guys! Look at me, I'm here too! I could use a little attention." Looking ahead, we will say that Gahan still complains today that Martin Gore, the brain and main songwriter of Depeche Mode, pays little attention to him during their collaboration and with great reluctance agrees to include his songs on albums.

But be that as it may, the guys recorded their first album with electronic dance hits and became popular. Soon Vince Clarke left the team to later create the bands Yazoo and Erasure, and Alan Wilder took his place. This created a lineup that most DM fans consider classic. Here's how British star Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys describes the group's performance of that period: “Dave Gahan learned to confidently “work” both his pelvis and his ass on stage in a very unambiguous manner. If you imagine Depeche Mode as techies tinkering with synthesizers, you'll be surprised by the intensity of their audience's screams. Much of the credit goes to Dave, whose high-energy performances are some of the sexiest right now.” I think that many fans of the team today, more than 30 years later, will agree with every word Tennant says.

However, Gahan's stage tricks and Gore's electronic super hits made little impression on the music critics who make the weather in Foggy Albion. They pointedly ignored the group from Basildon, considering it something like a fly-by-night boy band. In the USA, the band was taken much more seriously, especially when in the early 90s Gahan abruptly changed his image, making it more “dirty” and rock. The problem, primarily for Dave's health, was that he decided to be a real rock star not only on the outside, but also on the inside.

Between demons and angel

In 1992, Gahan came to Spain to record a new album with the rest of Depeche Mode. He had not seen the team for almost two years. During this period, the vocalist managed to divorce his first wife Jo Fox, leaving her with his 5-year-old son Jack in England, and move to live in Los Angeles. The appearance of the new Dave shocked his colleagues. He grew his hair and beard and was covered in tattoos and piercings (in one interview, Gahan either jokingly or seriously stated: “There are so many holes in my male apparatus that I urinate like a watering can”). He lost a lot of weight and was heavily addicted to heroin. “Guys, the world is changing, and we must participate in it,” he energetically told the guys, “we need to play harder, rockier,” after which he went to his room on the second floor and did not leave it for several days. There he took drugs and... painted.

When the famous photographer Anton Corbijn, who has been working on creating the visual image of Depeche Mode for many years, visited the musician to find out how he was feeling, he found Dave looking at a large painting of a cat. Gahan recalls: “Anton said: “I really like your cat, but you haven’t left the room for several days. The guys ask, maybe you can come down to them and sing something?” And I went down. I knew they hated me, but I didn't care. It was even somehow liberating.”

The album the group was recording at the time was called Songs of Faith and Devotion. He became wildly popular, and Gahan's new image turned into a real sensation. Dave suddenly fell in love with the music press, especially when news of his short tryst with death began to flash in the headlines one after another. He suffered a heart attack at a concert, cut his wrists during a bout of depression (at that moment he was talking on the phone with his mother) and suffered a real clinical death due to a drug overdose. When the ambulance arrived, his heart had not been beating for two minutes. Of course, the reason for the musician’s self-destruction was his addiction to drugs, but Gahan himself felt that some part of him really wanted to die in order to turn into a true rock and roll legend.

“For most people these days, being a rocker is just a game, but I really was the guy you see in the videos,” Dave says. - I lived that life, and it worked. I felt omnipotent. This life looked cool on the news, and suddenly I felt cool too. I thought I was king of the hill."

In Los Angeles, the musician married their band's tour manager, Teresa Conroy, for the second time, but the marriage was short-lived. “We had a good time together. It's not her fault that everything ended so quickly. Everything happened because of me, I was just a wreck. When she left me, I realized that if I stayed in Los Angeles, I would most likely really die,” Gahan recalls.

The straw that Dave grabbed was his New York friend, actress Jennifer Skliaz, with whom he had been together for 20 years. “I just hid from the whole world under her skirt,” the rocker shares. “She loved Billie Holiday and John Coltrane, didn’t listen to Depeche Mode, and to her I wasn’t Dave Gahan, just a friend who needed protection.” In his song Suffer Well, dedicated to his meeting with Skliaz, the musician sings: “I found a treasure in a completely different place than where I was looking for it,” and calls his third wife his savior angel. In 1999, Dave and Jennifer got married according to the Greek Orthodox rite (Skliaz is Greek). That same year, their daughter Stella Rose was born. Gahan also became an adoptive father for Jim, Jennifer's son from her first marriage. The musician also maintains a relationship with his eldest son: in 2015, he flew to Israel for Jack Gahan’s wedding.

Family style and without storms

The lives of the other two members of the current Depeche Mode are not replete with such tragic events. Gahan himself explains this by saying that both Martin and Andrew always felt in their place in the group. They had no need to look for something or rush around, they were happy just working in the studio and at concerts.

In 1994, after five years of unofficial relationships, Martin Gore married American designer Suzanne Boisvert. Three years earlier, the couple had a daughter, Viva, in 1995, Eva, and in 2002, a son, Keilo. Martin admitted that it was his American wife who persuaded him to move to the United States. Since then, the musician has lived in Santa Barbara and says that only a “very impressive earthquake” would force him to change his place of residence (small earthquakes are not uncommon in California).

In 2006, Martin and Suzanne unexpectedly separated, and in 2014, the musician married Kerilee Caskey. And he immediately developed a vigorous activity, this time non-musical. In February 2016, she and Kerilee became parents to daughter Joni, and more recently, 55-year-old Gore gave birth to his fifth child, daughter Mazzie. Martin admits that his attachment to his family and children from two marriages does not allow him to record albums at the same speed as before. “We have different priorities now,” he says of the group. - We all have families. We need breaks between albums to be with our children and wives. Not only the quantity of time we are together is very important, but also its quality.”

Depeche Mode's quietest member, Andrew Fletcher, has lived in London with his wife Grainne Mullen since 1991. They have two children: daughter Megan and son Joseph. He is the only one of the group who remained faithful to Foggy Albion, and also the only one who cannot imagine his life without football.

"Calm" old age

Despite the fact that tickets to the musicians' stadium shows are now selling much faster than in their youth, and despite the fact that the 55-year-old members of Depeche Mode look like just youngsters compared to the grandfathers from the Rolling Stones, who are still touring, Dave Gahan admits that he is terrified by the idea of ​​meeting old age on stage. “It terrifies me to think that I might have to perform at 70,” says the rock star. - It's just terrifying. When I'm old, I imagine myself walking along some secluded beach, hopefully still hand in hand with Jennifer, a couple of dogs with us, and a beard down to my belly button." And at the same time, the musician knows that he does not have the strength to give up the absolutely legal, and yet the sweetest drug - the stage. “I feel some kind of calling, a mission, thanks to which I still continue to remain in Depeche Mode. This affection cannot be compared with anything else in my life; I even left my wives twice. And although our relationship with Martin has always been strange, the stage is the only place in the world where I don’t feel my age,” admits Dave.