There was a running gag among Depeche Mode fans, and it went like this: “What does Andy Fletcher actually do?” he who hadn’t received a single songwriting credit on hundreds of songs created over forty years. “Martin [Gore] is the songwriter, Alan [Wilder] is the good musician, Dave [Gahan] is the singer and I hang around,” “Fletch,” as his friends called him, once described his role. That was in 1989 in the film documentary “101” by director DA Pennebaker, when Depeche Mode were already superstars.
At some point in Depeche Mode’s long career, singer Dave Gahan had begun to hide his insecurities behind a facade of clichéd tough masculinity, complete with LA rock star tattoos, binge drinking and drug abuse. And Martin Gore, for a while, cultivated the image of the extroverted, gender-fluid bird of paradise, despite being a shy little sensitive at heart. Andy Fletcher was just himself, staying in the background on stage and at public appointments, but was hugely important to the Depeche Mode psychological construct, holding the band together between two seemingly huge egos. When Dave Gahan publicly declared after the release of the album EXCITER in 2001 that he felt disadvantaged because he wasn’t allowed to write songs for Depeche Mode and threatened to leave the band, it was Fletcher who negotiated the compromise: In the future Gahan contribute a few songs to the band’s albums, but Gore remains the main songwriter.
Initially, Depeche Mode were laughed at
“Fletch” was born Andrew John Leonard Fletcher on July 8, 1961 in Nottingham, England. In the late 1970s he formed the short-lived band No Romance with his school friend Vince Clarke in Basildon, in which he played bass. After Fletcher met Martin Gore in 1980, Gore joined, the trio called itself Composition Of Sound from then on and all three musicians played synthesizers. In the same year, Dave Gahan joined as a singer, and at his suggestion the band called themselves Depeche Mode – after a French fashion magazine. Initially, Depeche Mode were ridiculed in England as a teen band, their pioneering achievements in electronic pop music were not acknowledged, but within a few years, with over 100 million records sold, they became the largest synthesizer band in the world with the most loyal fan base in the world.
Fletcher was the gentleman
Andy Fletcher was the gentleman among the Depeche Mode members, warm, smart and endowed with a wry sense of humour. He amused himself with fans politely addressing his friend Dave as “Mister Gahan”, (psycho-)analyzing his bandmates in off-the-record conversations aptly, and hanging out with old friends in backstage rooms with a dressing-room flair , and it was clear from the conversations that these friendships had existed for decades.
In 2002, Fletcher founded the Toast Hawaii label with the sole purpose of releasing the music of synth-pop duo Client. He had recognized that the music of Katie Holmes and Sarah Blackwood hit the retro-romantic zeitgeist and perhaps the client mix of synth-pop, electroclash and new wave also reminded him of his own musical roots. Once, during an interview with Client at the Hotel Mariandl in Munich, Fletcher appeared out of nowhere and sat at the table next to the interviewer, at the duo’s performances he “loitered” in the audience and exuded a caring father-like attitude watches his children grow up and is filled with pride and fear in equal measure at the thought.
In 2020 Andy Fletcher was inducted into the “Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame” as a member of Depeche Mode, and in April this year he made the headlines again when he broke his wrist in a bicycle accident in Barcelona. Andy Fletcher died on May 26 at the age of 60, the cause of death is not yet known.