Grief is known to be a complicated being, mostly unfathomable and playing by its own rules. That’s what Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan said after the death of bandmate Andy Fletcher.
In an extensive interview with Britain’s Guardian, Gahan spoke about the loss of his friend and what it means for the band. He also spoke about the funeral, which was a very intense emotional experience for him.
Gahan said he was so stunned that Fletcher’s death only really hit him at the funeral when he saw Mute Records founder Daniel Miller. As a reminder, Miller signed Depeche Mode as a teenager and continued to believe in them even after lead songwriter Vince Clarke left them after their debut album (“He Let Us Experiment and Grow at Our Own Pace”).
It was only when she saw her longtime sponsor, who still contributes ideas to her albums, that Gahan realized that an era had come to an end and that her own mortality was in the air.
Gahan: “He came in with his wife and Martin and I got up and kind of fell into him and he put his arms around us and we were all just… I was sobbing. It was just the three of us. I can’t explain it, but at that moment I completely broke down.”
Miller instilled an at first bitter nostalgia in the singer at that moment: “He pointed out that when he met me and my band, I was a teenager turning 19. I thought of that. That was over 40 years ago now. My whole adult life.”
For Dave Gahan, there really wasn’t a new album on the table
In an interview with the Guardian, Dave Gahan also indicated that when the corona pandemic broke out, he realized that there would never be a new Depeche Mode album. In addition to new priorities in private life, the stage experience with the Soul Savers also contributed to this. But when Martin Gore sent him demos after the more political songs on “Spirit,” which dealt heavily with grief and the end of life, he felt a new passion for the band and a desire to make those songs as perfect as possible design. Little did he know then that six weeks before the recording of their 15th album, Fletcher would suddenly die in his London home. The veteran of the British was only 60 years old.
It was also a shock because Fletcher kept Depeche Mode together with his calm demeanor in the early 90s, when everything threatened to collapse and Gahan became addicted to heroin. It was always thought that he would survive everyone, says Gahan.
Depeche Mode will release their new album Memento Mori on March 24th. Then they go on tour, during which Dave Gahan and Martin Gore will also make several stops in Germany: on May 26 in Leipzig, on June 4 and 6 in Düsseldorf, on June 20 in Munich, on June 29 and 1 July in the Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt am Main and most recently on July 7th and 9th in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. Most recently, the band presented their first new songs live at a secret gig in Munich.