It’s fair to say that the fragility of life has been weighing heavy on Martin Gore’s mind of late. It’s prompted not only by his turning the big 6-0 a year ago – a critical milestone for Gore as it brought to the forefront the death of his stepfather at the age of 61 and the death of his biological father aged 68. The pandemic didn’t help either. “I live in America, and the death toll is way over a million,” Gore says. “That’s like one in 350 people in the country. I don’t have any close friends who definitely died of Covid, but it’s obviously omnipresent.”
These factors combined led to the theme of Depeche Mode’s 15th album Memento Mori – Latin for “remember you must die”. Many of the tracks are draped with its theme of mortality, giving a contemplative and slightly unsettling tone to the band’s already gothic feel.
The 12 songs were written and the album title decided before the morbid theme took a darker turn. On May 26th, 2022, Gore and David Gahan’s bandmate Andy “Fletch” Fletcher died suddenly at home, the result of a fatal aortic dissection (a tear in a main artery). It was a shock to friends, family and his bandmates, who knew him as the sensible one of the group, expected to outlive them all.
Instead, he left the band with just two members and, uncannily, an album that pressed upon the listener how finite our time on this Earth is. A chilling coincidence, I suggest.
After Andy died, you start thinking, ‘do you tap into something when you write songs, or is there something supernatural that goes on?’
“I’m not going to lie. Obviously after Andy died, you start thinking, ‘do you tap into something when you write songs, or is there something supernatural that goes on?’ But the logical side of me said it’s more to do with those other factors,” Gore says.
“Of course it makes you think about your mortality. But I don’t want to overthink it and I don’t want it to control my life. I still feel I’m quite a young soul.”
Comfortably sitting on a plush office chair in his record company’s London HQ in a biker jacket, jeans, trainers, a top of blond curly locks and a wide American smile, Gore certainly doesn’t look like your archetypal grandad, even though he technically is one. His clean living helps; he has given up alcohol since overindulging during the band’s heady days in the mid-1990s, and is vegetarian too.
Frontman Gahan is in another room also on promo duty; he too has cleaned up from his debauched era (his sobriety began after his heart stopped beating for two minutes after a drug overdose). And, like all good rock stars, he too ignored the memo of what people are expected to look like in their sixties: these days he’s not far off his poster boy look from the 1980s and 1990s, save for shorter, slicked-back hair and ever-present sunglasses.
Once the shock of Fletcher’s untimely death had settled, it was almost a given that the pair would carry on. “It wasn’t really a big conversation between us, because we decided it was better for our mental health to carry on and not wallow in the misery,” says Gore. “It had been a long time since we’d worked together because of the pandemic as well, and it was easier for us to deal with our grief by focusing on making an album.”
It was an admirable decision but in truth, there’s something a little disconcerting about the fact that the passage of time has whittled the band down to two. When Depeche Mode began in Essex at the start of the 1980s, they were four young guns – Gahan, Gore, Fletch and the band’s mastermind Vince Clarke – with barely-contained potential and a hunger to match. After the success of their first album, Clarke struck out on his own, first with Yazoo, formed with Fletcher and Gore’s former classmate Alison Moyet, then with Erasure.
It’s not like a triangle anymore where two votes wins. Now we have to talk things out if we don’t agree
To compensate, the remaining members gave songwriting duties to Gore, and brought in Alan Wilder. But in 1995, at the band’s highest success, riding high with their flagship albums Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion. and lowest ebb – Gahan was in the midst of his drug addiction, Gore’s alcoholism and stress culminated with seizures, and Fletcher was forced to temporarily step back from the band after a nervous breakdown – Wilder quit the dysfunctioning band.
Now, after 28 smoother years as a trio, Gahan and Gore are finding a new dynamic together. It’s not as easy as it might be; after that long, Fletch was well-established as the glue between them. “Andy was very outgoing and social. It was really brought home to me when I went to his funeral because I’d known him for 50 years, and there were 20 people there that had known him longer – that’s how liked he was. Me and Dave are more reclusive,” he says, offering an insight that differs to the exuberant impression that Gahan and the calm impression that Gore leave. “Because of that, we’ve had a bit of a distance.
“It’s inevitable that when there’s two of us left, we’re forced to work through anything that comes up. It’s not like a triangle any more where two votes wins. Now we have to talk things out if we don’t agree. We’ve worked on that and our relationship is better than it ever was.”
It’s been a lesson in negotiation. “There are certain areas that Dave is better at, and I give him carte blanche in those areas, and he gives me carte blanche in other areas. Dave’s much better at the visual side of things so if we do a photo session and we have to go through the sheets, I will usually say to him, ‘you pick, because you’ve got a better eye than me’.”
Happily, the decisions around the songs for Memento Mori had already been made, allowing them to start recording soon after Fletch’s passing. The album is led by the suitably haunting track Ghosts Again, but it extends to show off their breadth, as on the slow-tempo Don’t Say You Love Me, with its lush strings adding a maturity, or Soul With Me, which almost sounds like it was written for a crooner. “That song is definitely an outlier in our catalogue,” says Gore. “It reminds me of if Kurt Weill and Beach Boys circa Pet Sounds were put in a room together and asked to write a gospel song.”
It’s a gratifying way to tease out their sound, especially since they’ve settled on their electro-goth rock sound since moving on from the synth pop that the band began with. A hat tip to them for that: not many acts can travel from pop to profound enough that they surpassed the other chart-bothering alternative bands of their time, like The Human League and New Order, especially in international territories (it speaks volumes that the Memento Mori launch announcement took place in Berlin). Gore looks back on the early success of Depeche Mode as “a lot of luck”.
“If you had predicted how things would have worked out, it should have all gone horribly wrong,” he says. “If we’d have taken what looked like the easy path, we would have been one-hit wonders, probably. The guy that signed Wham! was chasing us and PolyGram were offering us a lot of money. Daniel Miller from Mute was offering us nothing, but we chose Mute. If we had signed with PolyGram, we would have been on an awful deal, we would never have owned our catalogue, and by the time the second album came along, they would have said, ‘that’s too weird, we’re dropping you, bye’. You’d find us in the bargain bin.”
Instead, taking the path of most resistance allowed them time to grow into their style, and eventually deliver five decades’ worth of big-hitters that kept them out of the bargain bin and put them in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (its 2020 virtual induction show was the last time Fletch appeared with the band). Even those with a passing interest in pop culture would know a song or several, from the anthemic People are People to iconic Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence. Most recently, their classic 80s hit Never Let Me Down Again became a motif in the first series of The Last Of Us.
In all, their press release assures, they have more than 100 million records sold and a total live audience more than 35 million fans worldwide.
The Memento Mori world tour comes to Dublin in June, with the band’s first Irish outdoor show at Malahide Castle. It’s a welcome return for both fans and the group, who have visited for work and pleasure: Fletch’s in-laws are in Co Armagh, and Gore has previously joined Fletch in a visit over. “We’ve always enjoyed going to Ireland. We even went to Belfast during the Troubles, which was a little bit scary because we were staying at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in the world,” he recalls.
With the continued help of long-standing visual creator Anton Corbijn – whose other anchor client is U2 – their next job is to iron out the finer points of their live show. And while there’ll be a notable absence on stage, Gore and Gahan are determined to troop on with aplomb.
“Me and Dave are still really passionate about music,” Gore says. “We’re very grateful that we still have an audience out there. And we’re grateful that we’re able to continue to do this after 43 years.”
Memento Mori is out on March 24th. Depeche Mode play Malahide Castle, Dublin on June 14th
