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A death-defying evening with Depeche Mode

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Forty-two years after the release of their debut album, the members of Depeche Mode — well, the surviving ones — are in on the joke of their somehow having become old guys.

As Dave Gahan, 60, and Martin Gore , 61, played their synth-rock classic “Enjoy the Silence” on Tuesday night at the Kia Forum, images of a bejeweled skull rotated on a wall of video screens behind them; later, Gahan noticed the thousands of glowing smartphones in the crowd and said, “Everybody used to have cigarette lighters, but I guess that’s not a thing anymore.”

That Depeche Mode would still be on the road in 2023 — Tuesday’s concert came just days into a lengthy world tour behind the band’s new studio LP, “Memento Mori” — is no great surprise. Rock nostalgia is a huge business, and right now business is good for Depeche Mode, which three years ago was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and which recently had its late-’80s “Never Let Me Down Again” prominently featured in HBO’s hit “ The Last of Us .” What’s more, echoes of the band’s signature style — sleek but hard-hitting, anxious yet darkly ecstatic — are detectable in music by younger acts like the Weeknd and Halsey, the latter of whom was in the audience at the Forum alongside the many OG types who looked like they’d been at Depeche Mode’s legendary Rose Bowl gig in 1988 .

Yet none of that assured that the group would feel as vital as it did Tuesday in a gutsy two-hour performance that didn’t defy age so much as question what age has to mean. “Memento Mori” follows the unexpected death last year of Depeche Mode’s founding keyboardist, Andy Fletcher, and though the material was written before he died (of an aortic dissection), songs like “Ghosts Again” and “Before We Drown” ponder mortality with the same blend of vulnerability and determination that the group once applied to its thoughts on religion, alienation and sexual obsession. The result, paradoxically, is Depeche Mode’s most alive-sounding album in years.

Andy Fletcher, Depeche Mode co-founder and keyboardist, dies at 60

Fletcher helped define the sound of 1980s and ’90s alternative music through hits including ‘Just Can’t Get Enough,’ ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘People Are People.’

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Dressed in a suit jacket he slipped off after two songs to reveal a vest with no shirt beneath it, Gahan had a Michael Imperioli-in-“The White Lotus” vibe as he crooned through the moody philosophy of the new LP’s “My Cosmos Is Mine” and “Wagging Tongue.” Gore, who wore an ash-colored jacket printed with more skulls, switched between guitar and keyboards and took over lead vocals for “Soul With Me,” a very pretty ballad from “Memento Mori” about “heading for the ever after.”

Against the throbbing bass and blipping synths of “Ghosts Again,” one of several tracks on the album Gore co-wrote with Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs, Gahan twirled across the stage like a goth(-ier) Stevie Nicks — a heartening sign that he and Gore are finding some solace in performing these songs suffused with grief.

As strong as “Memento Mori” is, nobody came to the Forum just to hear new stuff. Rounded out by Christian Eigner on drums and Peter Gordeno on keyboards, Depeche Mode luxuriated in the sensual gloom of oldies including “Walking in My Shoes,” “Precious” and “World in My Eyes,” during which a vintage photo of a young Fletcher appeared on the video screen. “I Feel You” was grinding and lascivious, “John the Revelator” funky and clanging; “A Pain That I’m Used to” rode a morbid disco groove that wouldn’t quit.

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Gahan and Gore began their encore with a bluesy acoustic rendition of “Condemnation” before revving up the chipper synth-pop of the band’s first big hit, “Just Can’t Get Enough.” Then they closed with “Never Let Me Down Again” and the happily inevitable “Personal Jesus,” both pumping with fresh blood you hope for their sake is still in supply by the time this tour circles back to Southern California in December for another six (!) arena dates.

“L.A., let’s see those hands,” Gahan told the crowd as the show reached its emotional climax. He took a moment to admire the sea of waving arms, then added, “It never gets old.”

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“You have to be all in. It’s all or nothing”: How Dave Gahan prepares for a Depeche Mode show

The synth-pop giants hit the road again later this month

Following a short break after spending much of 2023 on the road, later this month Depeche Mode kick back into action for what’s being touted as Leg 4 of the tour to support their 15th studio album  Memento Mori , released last year. But despite the fact the Basildon synth-rock titans have been playing the world’s biggest arenas and stadia since becoming huge in the mid- 80s, it still takes a gruelling amount of preparation for frontman Dave Gahan ahead of each jaunt.

Speaking to this writer back in 2007, Gahan said his central concern during a period when the band are on the road is the show. Everything he does is geared around it. “It used to be a lot of other things,” said Gahan, who’s been sober since the 90s. “But all I care about now is, how can I do my best performance? I’m old now, there’s a lot of things I have to do.”

Gahan explained that he had a daily routine when on tour. He’d wake up at 9am, drink lots of water, have some foods – eggs, or something similarly protein-based – then begin the long process of getting his head into Flamboyant Frontman mode. “All I’m thinking about is the gig which is coming at 9pm,” he said. “I get my head into that, stretch a bit, do a bit of yoga. You have to be all in. It’s all or nothing.”

 The mental prep begins 12 months earlier, he said. “It takes me a year. We’re making a record during that time, writing, recording, but I know the tour is coming. After all these years, all I really want to do is perform to the best of my ability. When I’m on the road and I’m doing this thing with Depeche Mode, all I care about is the show. I put my whole self into that.”

 The  Memento Mori  tour begins again on 22nd January at London’s O2 Arena, calling at Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin before the duo and their live band head over to the continent. Almost time for Dave to begin his stretches…

Depeche Mode tour dates 2024

Jan 22: London O2 Arena, UK Jan 24: Birmingham Utilita Arena, UK Jan 29: Manchester AO Arena, UK Jan 31: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK Feb 03: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland Feb 06: Antwerp Sportpaleis, Belgium Feb 08: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Holland Feb 10: Copenhagen Royal Arena, Denmark Feb 13: Berlin Mercedes-Benz Arena, Germany Feb 15: Berlin Mercedes-Benz Arena, Germany Feb 17: Hamburg Barclays Arena, Germany Feb 22: Prague O2 Arena, Czech Republic Feb 24: Prague, CZ        O2 Arena, Czech Republic Feb 27: Lodz Atlas Arena, Poland Feb 29: Lodz Atlas Arena, Poland Mar 03; Paris Accor Arena, France Mar 05; Paris Accor Arena, France Mar 07: Munich Olympiahalle, Germany, Germany Mar 12: Madrid Wizink Center, Spain Mar 14: Madrid Wizink Center, Spain Mar 16: Barcelona Palau Sant Jordi, Spain Mar 19: Lisbon Altice Arena, Portugal Mar 21: Bilbao BEC, Spain Mar 23: Torino Pala Alpitour, Italy Mar 26: Budapest MVM Dome, Hungary Mar 28; Milan Mediolanum Forum, Italy Mar 30; Milan Mediolanum Forum, Italy Apr 3: Cologne Lanxess Arena, Germany Apr 5: Cologne Lanxess Arena, Germany

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Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.

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5 April 2023 12:49 PM

Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on ‘Memento Mori’ and life after Andy Fletcher

Dave gahan on the genesis of the band's best album in years..

By Alma Rota

Over more than forty years of their career, Depeche Mode had to overcome many accidents and tragedies. They always have and came back ever stronger each time. In July 2022, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore returned to the studio to deliver cathartic album Memento Mori , their own way to mourn the loss of founding member and keyboardist, Andy Fletcher. Here, Gahan tells the story of that album to Rolling Stone France .

What does the title of the album Memento Mori mean for you?

Martin suggested this title when we were first recording together. We had already demoed maybe a dozen songs and heard about six of Martin’s songs and I had my owns. He told me that this expression directly translated to ‘Remember that you must die’ , and I felt it was the perfect title for this album.

What was your input into the album ?

 I wrote W agging tongue. Initially the ideas came from me, then Martin contributed a lot onit so we co-wrote the song together. Christian [Eigner] and Peter [Gordeno] have contributed to Before we drown . I’d love to say I’d written My C osmos is mine but it was one of Martin’s songs. It’s probably my favorite piece of the record at the moment. It sets up the record perfectly and Speak to me , which was mine, closes it perfectly. I felt that I should give also credit to Christian because he really helped me to bring the song where it needed to be at the time. I had the guitar part and there was one chord that I was missing underneath the melody. I called him on FaceTime and I sang it to him.He got on his organ and figured out something. Then, when we were in the studio, James and also Marta elevated the song again to another place. The lyrics and vocal melody stayed pretty much the same although there were some lyrical changes. Those are the three songs that really came from me in the first place. But I have to say that I love to collaborate!

Last t ime we spoke for Imposter, you weren’t sure you wanted to start anything new with Depeche Mode . What was the trigger for convincing you to work on the new album?

The song, Speak to me , was the trigger. I was on a vacation with my wife and we’ve been talking about what it meant to go into a Depeche Mode record. It’s not only making record but also going on tour. It’s at least three years of touring and planning. It’s a big thing and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that, especially after all the lockdowns because I became very comfortable in the life I was living with my family and friends at home. It is something good for me so I wasn’t sure I’d really want to take the risk to leave all that again. I had talked to Martin and Jonathan our manager early towards the end of March last year about making another album. The song kind of came about when I was in a place well I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make a record or not with Depeche Mode. I actually had mixed feelings about it so I kind of threw it out to the Universe :   « Am I supposed to do this? » And I have to be honest here… it sounds strange but this song came to me like a clear answer to my question. It’s one of those songs I’ve already heard in my head. I could hear the melody and some of the words. I remember running back to my hotel room looking for my phone so I could record quickly into a voice memo. I had a feeling for the whole song and that doesn’t happen very often to me but when it does, it’s a very strong message, coming outside of me. You just have  to be there with your antenna ready to receive it. It felt very spiritual in that way, because it came from somewhere else, out of space or something. I remember saying to Jennifer : « I think I got the answer ! I am doing this and I want to record this song with Depeche Mode, with Martin ! » .

Memento Mori is a reflection on L ife and D eath . D o you think hitting sixty affected you ?

I’m very blessed with the amazing life I have now. It’s beyond what I could ever imagine at the age of 18 or 19 years old. I’ve been very lucky and very fortunate. Yeah, I feel like turning 60 is a big thing. In my mind, I’m still 25 years old trying to figure things out quite often but you know there’s a part of me which feels very comfortable with who I am right now, what I do, who I spend time with… All these things are very important to me. I don’t think that would have been the case when I was 25 days old. These are big changes and of course your body, as much as I am working pretty hard at the moment to make sure that I’m ready to go back on tour, tells me something else ! It tells me : « Wait ! what do you mean ? I can ’ t do that ! » I love these things I can surprise myself about. I try to defy gravity loss ! (Laughs)

Is there a song you particularly connec ted to when you first listened to it?

Ghost s again . When I first heard the demo, it made me feel happy. I felt the joy from it.

The song evolved a bit and obviously I sang it. So it is different now from what Martin first presenter to me but not that much. The song was there. It’s one of those songs where you could do all of these fantasy ideas or whatever but the song is this song. The melody has this sort of tongue in cheek Gothic darkness but at the same time it brings joy and playfulness and almost humor. It’s what life is about !

How d id you approach this new album as the vocal performer ?

I created this way of working for myself, whether I’ve been working with Rich Machin from the Soulsavers or with Depeche Mode now : I spend a lot of time with the songs, the demos, the original idea. I developed this kind of place where I want to be to create a visual atmosphere for myself to live in when I try to embody the songs. Over the years, it has become a part I feel very empowered with. I enjoy it. I know what I want to do, how I want to sound like. Finding my own voice has taken years and years of trials, errors and disappointments.. like ‘ « Oh, I could have done better » . It has been a gradual process.I think it’s a good thing that I can still find in that place somewhere I’m able to go and feel very comfortable, very honest and real… even if the subject matter sometimes has got a morbid feel to it. You know even in a song for instance like G host s again to me it’s a perfect example of this melancholic sadness but there’s this feeling of joy. That is a place where I like to be in because Life is full of melancholy and sadness and disappointment but there is joy there too ! And you have to seek it and find it and sometimes in music, in a song, in a melody in someone’s voice…  I can hear it, I can feel it !

Are you anxious to go on tour again ?

Some days, I feel very excited about it and some days I just want to crawl under a rock and hide! (laughs). But most days, I tend to feel I’m ready to do it… well, I’m almost ready to do this…(laughs). I’ve been putting together the sequences of the songs we are going to do and integrate the new ones before we start rehearsing in January with Martin, Peter and Christian.

How did you feel about being inducted to the R ock ‘ n ’ roll Hall of Fame with Depeche Mode?

It was sort of ironic wasn’t it? (laughs). We were like a bit of a thorn in their side. But no longer ignored ! It’s kind of nice to be part of this Club. The way it happened was all very surreal : the way with Charlize Theron introducing us (she’s a big fan of the band and came on the Spirit Tour) and me, Martin and Fletch doing it on Zoom. It was so fun ! That will always be a strong memory for me because the three of us together were laughing at our old jokes and making fun of each other. This I will really miss with Fletch not being there. All the crazy things that happen when you are on the road, the experiences you have together, all the the things you go through together, the times when you feel you don’t like each other anymore ! The number of times we sat down together and just laugh so hard at stupid things… this is what I will miss the most about Fletch.

How would you say the absence of Fletcher has affected you and you r way of collaborating with Martin?

That has been challenging ! The last thing in the world Martin and I expected to hear was Jonathan our manager ringing us and telling us that Fletcher had died. It still feels surreal. We obviously went to his funeral with his family and friends. It was a heartbreaking day but it still feels strange him not being here. In the studio that didn’t change a lot of what we were doing musically because Martin and I and whoever we collaborate with (this time being James and Martha ) are kind of what Depeche Mode is about. Fletch unfortunately didn’t get to hear anything, not even the demos that we had ready to play to him. It forced Martin and I to communicate and get to know each other in a different way. Fletch had played a huge part in What Depeche Mode has been up until now. It was his presence, just him being there, being part of something. I don’t know if he kept us together but he was part of what we’ve built together over the last 40 years and him not being there is odd. It felt strange in the studio, when we will start rehearsing together, it will feel strange and when we will go on stage it will feel strange too. It’s all new experiences being part of Depeche Mode now. But the music and the band.. .and what is D. M., Dave & Martin (laughs)…There is so much there that will always live on even when Martin and myself will be gone too, because that is the power of Music !

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Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on Forging Ahead After the Passing of Andy Fletcher

"To say I miss him would be an understatement. I miss him a lot."

Depeche Mode experienced the tragic passing of founding member Andy Fletcher in May of this year. On Tuesday (October 4th), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band announced that it will soldier on with a new album and tour in 2023.

The new LP is titled Memento Mori , a Latin term used to describe an object that serves as a reminder of death. Despite the timing of the announcement, the name of the album and its subject matter had already been conceived prior to Fletcher’s passing.

In support of the album, which is set to arrive in Spring 2023, Depeche Mode will embark on their first tour in five years, beginning with a North American leg that kicks off March 23rd in Sacramento, California. Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, October 7th at 10:00 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster . For North American audiences, a  Live Nation pre-sale  is set for Thursday, October 6th at 10:00 a.m. local time (using access code  PUMPKIN ).

Shortly after Tuesday’s announcement of the tour and album, Consequence caught up with Depeche Mode vocalist Dave Gahan for a brief conversation via Zoom.

The singer discussed the decision that he and fellow founding member Martin Gore made to move ahead with an album and tour following Fletcher’s passing. He also shared his thoughts on returning to the stage next year, as well as his reflections on Depeche Mode’s classic 1990 album, Violator .

Read our interview with Dave Gahan below, and pick up tickets to Depeche Mode’s 2023 tour here .

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Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan on Forging Ahead After the Passing of Andy Fletcher

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Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on Forging Ahead After the Passing of Andy Fletcher

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

The post Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on Forging Ahead After the Passing of Andy Fletcher appeared first on Consequence .

Depeche Mode experienced the tragic passing of founding member Andy Fletcher in May of this year. On Tuesday (October 4th), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band announced that it will soldier on with a new album and tour in 2023.

The new LP is titled Memento Mori , a Latin term used to describe an object that serves as a reminder of death. Despite the timing of the announcement, the name of the album and its subject matter had already been conceived prior to Fletcher’s passing.

In support of the album, which is set to arrive in Spring 2023, Depeche Mode will embark on their first tour in five years, beginning with a North American leg that kicks off March 23rd in Sacramento, California. Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, October 7th at 10:00 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster . For North American audiences, a  Live Nation pre-sale  is set for Thursday, October 6th at 10:00 a.m. local time (using access code  PUMPKIN ).

Shortly after Tuesday’s announcement of the tour and album, Consequence caught up with Depeche Mode vocalist Dave Gahan for a brief conversation via Zoom.

The singer discussed the decision that he and fellow founding member Martin Gore made to move ahead with an album and tour following Fletcher’s passing. He also shared his thoughts on returning to the stage next year, as well as his reflections on Depeche Mode’s classic 1990 album, Violator .

Read our interview with Dave Gahan below, and pick up tickets to Depeche Mode’s 2023 tour here .

First and foremost, my condolences on the loss of Andy Fletcher. Was it a difficult decision for you and Martin Gore to forge ahead with Depeche Mode and the new album, Memento Mori , following his passing?

First of all, there was only one Fletch. It was a big shock to us, and very unexpected, of course. Martin and I, when it came to the making of the music for Memento Mori , we already had the title and songs that we recorded. And we had even begun working on some of those with James Ford producing and Marta Salogni, and Fletch had not yet heard any of the songs, nothing. I know he would have loved a lot of the stuff we were doing and he also would have been the first to say, “Why do you have to have so many songs about death?” So I miss that.

But Martin and I did have a brief conversation, and we both really came to the same conclusion pretty quickly that we were going to definitely continue making this record. And we were going to move forward, whatever that was going to look like without Fletch. Of course, we don’t know what that is, we didn’t know what that was gonna feel like, we don’t know what that feels like, each time we do something like this, or finishing the record, or when we did photos with Anton Corbijn for the first time without Fletch. All these things, they’re different. It’s the only way to describe it.

And Fletch and I, over the years, have always had differences. But we had one thing surely in common, which was that we both wanted the best for Depeche Mode and the music that we made, and the performances, and we were also friends. We spent the best part of the last 40 years together. We grew up together, we took our first airplane together, we jumped in a van and went up the motorway together for the first time. Everything that we did, we did for the first time and that involved myself, Martin, Vince [Clarke], and Fletch or Alan [Wilder].

And later, of course, [longtime touring members] Peter [Gordeno] and Christian [Eigner], as well. So, of course, everything’s different. But as a lot of hardcore fans know, Fletch over the years, in the studio didn’t have much to do with the shaping and sound of the musicality of a record or the writing and all those things. And we all know Fletch was Fletch on tour. But in the studio, he did have a really powerful presence and everything to say about what we were doing. So that, of course, is really different.

To say I miss him would be an understatement. I miss him a lot. Yeah, I miss silly things that about him that we would joke about, we would laugh about, that we would argue about. All those things when you lose somebody, when somebody leaves your life and you have no way to change that, there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to move forward. So the answer to your question about the record, yes, Martin and I decided that we were going to continue in that process of making this record.

How far along into the album were you prior to Fletch’s passing?

Martin and James Ward and Marta Salogni were working at Martin’s house. And I went out there for 10 days and recorded a bunch of vocals and stuff on a few of my songs, and also maybe half a dozen of Martin’s songs. And so they were all taking shape already. And the next phase was coming where Fletch was going to join in the  production process, come in, listen, have things to say — that would be the usual process. But yeah, we already were pretty deep into the recording. And all the songs that have now ended up on the record were all written and demoed before Fletch’s passing. Unfortunately, Fletch didn’t get to hear anything.

With Depeche Mode set to embark on its first tour in five years in 2023, and given the pandemic and Fletch’s passing, what do you think it will feel like stepping onstage for that first show?

I think it’s going to be a lot of things. Even when we start rehearsing, it’s going to be a bit strange without Fletch there. Fletch was a huge presence within Depeche Mode. Whatever he did or didn’t do, it doesn’t really matter. He was part of the band. He was part of everything that we’ve done. And he contributed to that in a very big way. You only realize this when something is taken away. It happened of course, when Vince left the band. It happened when Alan left the band. And now that Fletch is gone, we have to move forward.

And Martin and I made that decision to do so, but it is going to be strange, all the things that we do together, even announcing that we have a new record out. This is the first time Martin and I were doing these things together like taking photographs with Anton Corbijn. For Anton, as well, it was also strange. For everybody working as part of the Depeche Mode team, it’s different.

But we’ve made the decision to move into the future, whatever that might look like onstage and performing. And certainly we’ve made this record, Martin and I together, with the help of James and Marta, who contributed huge amounts of sound and production of this record.

Editor's Pick

Depeche Mode Announce New Album Memento Mori and World Tour

The 30th anniversary of Violator took place in March 2020, right as the pandemic started, and as a result, it feels like the milestone didn’t get the proper celebration it deserved. What are your thoughts on what that album did for the band’s career?

Well, it changed everything for us, actually. We were just moving forward. We didn’t know anything else. We’d worked really hard for 10 years, nonstop from album to tour to album to tour, we hadn’t stopped. And then Violator came out and suddenly became this huge thing. Everything about it. So it changed everything, but in a good way, as well. It gave us the opportunity to explore new musical directions. It gave us an audience that we couldn’t have imagined when we were kind of first coming up. … I like to feel that we’ve constantly tried to keep evolving. And these last few months we’ve been forced to evolve yet again … so here we are.

In speaking with a lot of metal and hard rock bands, many of them cite Depeche Mode as an influence. What do you think it is about your band’s music that has such a profound effect on heavier bands?

The feel and sound of the music inspires other musicians to do their thing. And a lot of the things we indulge ourselves in involve melancholy and darkness and life — and not just parts of life that we celebrate, but also those darker territories. We kind of go there, we always have. And I think that’s why we’ve maybe inspired bands that kind of have a heavier sound to the musicality of what they do. Because the subject matter and the way we do it as well, we’ve kind of carved out our own direction. And I think, maybe a lot of other musicians are inspired by that, as well by the fact that you can go your own way.

Our thanks to Dave Gahan for taking the time to speak with us. See a photo gallery and video footage from Depeche Mode’s special album and tour announcement event in Berlin below.

Photo Gallery – Depeche Mode album and tour announcement in Berlin (click to expand and scroll through):

Depeche Mode in Berlin, photo by Sven Darmer

Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on Forging Ahead After the Passing of Andy Fletcher Spencer Kaufman

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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- On a recent day in Los Angeles, hordes of Depeche Mode fans made their way toward the intersection of Hollywood and Vine for a free concert by their heroes on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

A smiling (!) Dave Gahan performs in Los Angeles in late April.

Most were clad in black T-shirts and black pants -- the uniform of the true Depeche Mode devotee.

The three members of Depeche Mode are still partial to wearing black, but their attitude is a lot lighter and brighter than their music and history would suggest.

Thirteen years ago, singer Dave Gahan famously died from a drug overdose and was brought back to life by paramedics at the Sunset Marquis hotel down the road. Since then, he's given up drugs and taken up yoga and songwriting, the latter being what used to be the exclusive domain of guitarist Martin Gore (who has since sobered up himself).

It's changed the dynamics of the trio, known for such hits as "Personal Jesus," but in a good way, says Depeche Mode keyboardist Andy Fletcher.

CNN: Have you looked outside the window to see the street closures out there, and 10,000 people gathering?

Andy Fletcher: (All three members laugh) It can't be happening. It's not anything to do with us. U2 are probably in town.

CNN: Closing down the street for a free concert is a big deal in Hollywood.

Dave Gahan: When we were first approached to do it, we were kind of in some trepidation about what it was really going to be, and if people were going to show up.

CNN: Were you afraid that only two people were going to show up?

Gahan: Well, we're always like that -- until we actually go on stage and see the people.

CNN: I can't believe it's been almost 30 years since Depeche Mode first formed.

Gahan: I think next year is our 30th year.

Fletcher: To be honest, I think at first when we found out it was going to be 30 years, I think it was, "Oh my God, how embarrassing. We're really old!" But I think now we've really got our heads around it, and I think it's something to be actually proud of.

CNN: On your last album, "Playing the Angel," there was a little tension because Martin, for the most part, had written all of the songs -- and Dave wanted to contribute to the writing process. But on the new CD, "Sounds of the Universe," it seems as though everybody was more comfortable sharing songwriting duties.

Gahan: When I kind of approached the band with a whole bunch of demos and said, "I want half the songs on the record," of course that didn't go down well (on the last album). I was a little bit overconfident, as well. But to me, it was just the excitement about this new thing, which was writing. There's no way I could go back to not being involved in the writing.

Martin Gore: To be honest, I think it's one of the big factors in Depeche Mode being much stronger now, and being better. I think Dave is a great frontman ...

Gahan: Thanks, man!

Gore: ... and singing someone else's lyrics, he's great. But I think now he really believes he contributes so much more to the band. So I think it's made the band -- the atmosphere between us -- much better, actually. So it's been a good thing.

CNN: Martin, you've given up drinking.

Gore: Yeah. It's been about three years now. It makes a big difference.

Gahan: He is a changed man. There's a different side of Martin that has always been there, but sometimes it gets clouded when the drinking and stuff becomes more important than anything else. I think it got to that phase on the last tour, and Martin was the one that stood up and said, "You know what? I've got to stop this." It's sort of one of those cliches, one of those myths, that you have to be really messed up to do something cool artistically.

CNN: Did you believe that?

Gahan: Yeah, I did for awhile. Yeah. When it's not actually producing anything creative at all, you're in trouble.

CNN: So Andy, in the meantime, you've got two sober bandmates over here.

Gahan: It's good for me, as well. (Gahan and Gore laugh heartily).

Gore: He's cut down to 50 units a week now!

Fletcher: I've cut down but --

Gahan: He's under pressure.

Fletcher: These things are happening to make the atmosphere better. So it's got to be good.

Gahan: Martin's always worked very hard on his songs, and they've always been great.

Fletcher: He also worked very hard on his drinking. (Everyone laughs). You know, when it takes over, it's not funny anymore. But in the studio, when we made this record, Mart was the first there and the last to leave, and worked really, really hard, was really focused -- and that was a joy to be around. It felt great.

Gore: I used to put in, like, maybe three hours and then have to go home on the last hour.

CNN: Do you feel there's less tolerance for that type of excessive behavior in music these days?

Gore: I think being in a band is probably the only job when you're actively encouraged to be out of it most of the time. You know, people like seeing people in bands being messed up. And, you know, people are always buying you drinks. They want to see you like that.

CNN: So what do you tell them now?

Gore: I just -- I don't go out that much anymore. (Everyone laughs)

CNN: You stay and do yoga with Dave, right?

Gahan: Not yet. We haven't gotten to that phase yet. That's a bit scary -- to start doing yoga together.

CNN: Stranger things have happened after 30 years.

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The Exquisite Darkness of Depeche Mode

Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are back with the group’s 15th album. But after losing the bandmate Andy Fletcher last year, their return was anything but certain.

Dave Gahan, left, and Martin Gore. The group’s new album, “Memento Mori,” is death-obsessed even by Depeche Mode standards. Credit... OK McCausland for The New York Times

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By Alex Pappademas

• Published March 19, 2023 Updated March 23, 2023

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Martin Gore, who is now 50 percent of Depeche Mode, works in a studio on a low hill near Santa Barbara, hidden behind jungle-green foliage and fragrant flowering shrubs.

On a Tuesday morning in January, he sat at a console in the center of the control room, which was spacious and orderly and full of California winter sunshine — a clean, well-lighted place to make songs about power, desire, faith and a world spinning ever further off its axis.

Gore wore black clothes and spotless black boots. He looked like an Englishman who’s spent decades in California — vibrant tan, straight white teeth. He had the haircut you’d get if you asked a knowledgeable barber to give you “the Martin Gore”: high and tight, with several inches of unruly tuft up top.

Two summers ago Gore turned 60, and it “really slapped me in the face,” he said with a morbid chuckle. “I don’t particularly feel like I’m 60, but you have to accept the facts. It feels like you’ve got one toe in the grave, at least.”

On Friday Depeche Mode will release its 15th album, mostly recorded in this studio, by a pandemic-era skeleton crew: Gore, the vocalist Dave Gahan, the producer James Ford (Florence + the Machine, Arctic Monkeys) and an engineer/co-producer, Marta Salogni. As always, the sound is foreboding and sleek, sardonic yet soulful — music for lovers in black-leather-upholstered bullet-train compartments, racing toward ominous destinations.

The title is “Memento Mori,” and the dominant theme is mortality — which isn’t, in itself, a departure. “Death is everywhere,” Gore wrote years ago, in a song called “Fly on the Windscreen,” whose narrator goes on to beckon, “Come here, kiss me, now,” because you never know.

“Memento Mori,” though, is death-obsessed even by Depeche standards, with lyrics full of ghosts, angels and funeral flowers. Gore said that his own mortality had been on his mind, along with Covid-19, which was still cutting a swath through the world’s population as he wrote in 2020.

But Gore knows the album and its title are destined to be read through a different lens. In May 2022, Andy Fletcher, known as Fletch, died at 60, suddenly and quickly, of an aortic dissection. Fletcher was a founding member of Depeche Mode; he and Gore had been friends since grade school.

Nominally a keyboardist, Fletch’s true role in the band was nebulous, yet spiritually indispensable — somewhere between manager, quality-control supervisor and designated superfan.

“Without Andy, there would be no Depeche Mode,” the longtime radio broadcaster and Depeche fan Richard Blade said in a video interview. “He was not the one composing the music, but he was the one pulling them together.”

Gore saw Fletcher in person for the last time in 2019, at a wedding in England. He died just weeks before the band was scheduled to begin recording “Memento Mori,” the first collection of Depeche Mode songs he will never hear.

Gore and Gahan say they both questioned whether they could or should continue without him. But Depeche Mode has survived potentially band-extinguishing events before — beginning with the departure of Vince Clarke, a founding member who left the group in 1981 after the release of its debut album, “Speak & Spell,” on which he’d been the principal songwriter.

In the ’90s the band weathered the rise of grunge — which rendered synthesizers and drum machines temporarily taboo — as well as the departure of the keyboardist Alan Wilder and Gahan’s struggle with heroin addiction. (Technically, Gahan is the first member of Depeche Mode to die; in 1996, after an overdose, he said he flatlined for two minutes before paramedics revived him. He’s been clean and sober since.)

Derided early on by the British rock press, Depeche Mode made converts in America, particularly in Southern California, where the band’s champions included Blade, then an influential D.J. at KROQ-FM. Its breakthrough in the U.S. came with the platinum album “Some Great Reward” in 1984 and the single “People Are People,” an uncharacteristically strident anti-prejudice lament that became a pop-radio hit as well as a gay club anthem.

The gay community was only one of many disparate subcultures from which Depeche Mode built a fan base. On the West Coast, Blade said, the band made converts among “the white kids who would go surfing” but also connected with Latino listeners who heard a reflection of their own experience in Depeche Mode’s misfit anthems. “They might have been third-generation Americans, but a lot of people looked at them and said ‘No, you’re not one of us,’” Blade said.

Gore agreed that the band had become common ground for those who felt like they didn’t belong: “I think humanity is made up of a lot of outsiders, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve managed to do so well.”

By 1988, the group was big enough to pack the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, a show documented in the director D.A. Pennebaker’s film “Depeche Mode 101”; the triple-platinum album “Violator,” released two years later, yielded hit singles like “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence,” which pulsed like techno but brought guitars to the front of the mix for the first time.

That album was the band’s commercial peak in America; minus a 2005 singles collection, no new Depeche Mode album has been certified gold in the U.S. in 22 years. But as long as there are new teenagers, there will always be new Depeche Mode fans, primed to respond to lyrics like “It all seems so stupid it makes me want to give up/But why should I give up when it all seems so stupid?”

And the band’s fans, Gore points out, “don’t turn 30 and then decide, ‘Oh, I don’t like that anymore.’” If you have ever been between 15 and 17 years old, alienated, and a little bit in love with your own sadness, a part of you will never stop being that way; no one who goes through a Depeche Mode phase ever quite outgrows it.

This means the band remains a powerful draw; its latest worldwide arena tour begins on Thursday. Against all odds, Gore and Gahan’s group has become a legacy act, and an influence on musicians who’ve become veterans themselves.

As frontman of the venerable Sacramento alternative-metal band Deftones, Chino Moreno has covered Depeche Mode songs like “Sweetest Perfection” and “To Have and to Hold” ; his keyboard-driven side project Crosses openly channels his heroes’ stylish gloom. In a video interview, Moreno described his first Depeche Mode concert — a 1988 show at what was then the Cal Expo Amphitheater in Sacramento — as a life-changing moment.

“I was pretty claustrophobic growing up,” he said, “but I just fought my way through all those feelings, and made my way to the front barricade. And they came out, and I was just captivated by them. Dave in particular — just his stage presence. I can loosely credit me wanting to sing, and be in a group and make music, to that experience. It was larger than life for me.”

In the HBO series “The Last of Us,” people are still listening to Depeche Mode’s music after a fungal outbreak kills or zombifies much of the world’s population; survivors signal one another by blasting “Never Let Me Down.” Given their real-life endurance, the idea of Depeche Mode persisting even after the apocalypse, still helping people feel less alone, does not seem totally implausible.

But Gahan said that even before Fletcher’s sudden death, he wasn’t sure he’d ever make another Depeche Mode album.

In a video interview from New York, where he’s lived since the late ’90s, Gahan appeared onscreen against what appeared to be a red-velvet wall. It resembled the lining of a coffin, which prompted a question about the rumor that Gahan slept in one during Depeche Mode’s reportedly bacchanalian Devotional Tour in 1993. (Not true, Gahan said — although he did own a casket-shaped bed around that time, and once took a nap in an actual coffin a carpenter left backstage for him. But only once.)

In 2019, Gahan and his band Soulsavers recorded “Imposter,” a collection of 12 high-drama covers of songs made famous by artists including Nat King Cole and Cat Power, performed by Gahan in a manner evocative of both Tom Jones and Nick Cave. Shelved during the pandemic, the album finally dropped in November 2021. The following month, when Gahan played the songs at a few shows in Europe, it felt like the end of something; he spent that Christmas wondering if he’d continue making music at all.

During Covid, he said, he’d enjoyed being at home, surrounded by family and friends, finally spending time at a Montauk vacation house that he’d barely gotten to use. “I can walk along the beach in winter. You don’t see another soul,” he said. “I’m out there playing my guitar along to Stones records. I’m like, ‘I like my life right now. Why would I want to disrupt all this, to jump into a Depeche Mode record, which will take me out of that for the next three years?’”

The recording sessions for the previous Depeche Mode album, “Spirit,” had been contentious. Ever since Clarke’s exit, there’d been a clear division of labor in the band. Gore wrote virtually all the lyrics, and Gahan sang Gore’s words. But in the early 2000s, Gahan started making solo albums, and began bringing his own songs into Depeche Mode sessions as well.

As Gahan sees it, he’s always been the Depeche Mode member who’s pushed the band outside its comfort zone. After Nirvana broke out in the early ’90s, it was Gahan who showed up to record “Songs of Faith and Devotion” with hair down to his shoulders, advocating for a grittier sound. Without him, you might never have heard live drums or a gospel choir on a Depeche Mode track. “All those things were considered threats,” Gahan said.

But when Gahan pushed, it was traditionally Fletcher who pushed back. “He would always stand up for Martin,” Gahan said. “If there was a vote, I would lose.”

At the “Spirit” sessions in 2016, those creative tensions reached what Gahan called a “boiling point.”

“Martin wasn’t really keen on some of Dave’s songs,” the “Spirit” producer Ford said, “and Dave was pushing really hard for them to be on the record. It was very, very difficult.”

Ford said he was told by Depeche’s management that the project was in jeopardy. His solution was to banish everyone except Gahan and Gore from the studio — including Fletcher, their traditional buffer. “Fletch did not like this,” Gahan said. “I think in the end our manager Jonathan had to literally, physically get him out.”

Ford said the following day resembled a marriage-counseling session. Gahan recalled the confrontation “was really hard. After all those years — he said some stuff. I said some stuff.”

They cleared the air enough to finish “Spirit,” released in 2017. And Gahan said any reservations he had about making the next album disappeared the moment he heard Gore’s demo for the song “Ghosts Again.” “I was like, ‘I can’t wait to sing this song.’”

Then it was May, and suddenly Andy Fletcher was dead.

“I felt, immediately, very supportive of Martin,” Gahan said. “Like, ‘I’ve got to take care of him — this is really much harder on Martin than it is on me.’”

They decided to go ahead with “Memento Mori” — and according to both Gore and Gahan, Fletcher’s passing fostered an intimacy they’d never experienced in 40 years as bandmates.

“Every decision that has to be made has to be made by the two of us now,” Gore said. “So we kind of have to talk things out when we disagree. I don’t think I’ve ever had a FaceTime with Dave before. Now we FaceTime.”

Privately, Gahan said, Gore described their dynamic to him in more profound terms. “At one point — I always say too much, I’ll regret it later when I read this — he said to me, ‘It’s kind of like we’re long-lost brothers, isn’t it?’”

Salogni, an Italian producer and engineer who’s worked with Björk, Frank Ocean and the xx — and the rare woman in this very male orbit — said it was “wonderful” to witness Gore and Gahan’s flourishing friendship, and the creativity it engendered. “With Andy being a filter — after he passed, the filter unfortunately disappeared, and suddenly the curtain dropped and they were there to face each other,” she said. “Honesty comes to the forefront, and you just face what you perhaps haven’t faced before.”

The mood at the sessions, Ford said, “was very somber.” But there was also a lot of reminiscing — Fletcher stories told over long lunches. “It was honestly a really lovely, beautiful experience,” he said.

Depeche Mode, Gahan suggested, has always survived by evolving. “Sometimes we’ve changed naturally, and sometimes change has been forced upon us,” he said, “and I think that’s what’s happening now. We lost an integral part of Depeche Mode, who’s irreplaceable. Circumstances forced us to be different, to think of each other in a different way. We need each other in a different way.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis .

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As superb as always, in my opinion Dave Gahan has created an excellent album with Soulsavers. The Tour, to present this record, it has been almost perfect, maybe a bit short.

It would be nice to listen an unplugged DM tour, it would be take another dimension.

As part of DM or as part of Soulsavers, the good news are, that we have Dave Gahan for a long term.

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Concert intimiste juste génial !!!!

900 personnes

Tellement bien que le concert est passé à une vitesse incroyable

Et une ambiance survoltée sur les airs de DM

Soulsavers et les choristes étaient parfaits

Vivement leur retour

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The Truth About Depeche Mode Frontman Dave Gahan's Infamous Overdose

Dave Gahan , the illustrious singer of Depeche Mode , is without a doubt one of rock's great frontmen. His huge, soothing baritone voice has elevated great songs like "Personal Jesus," "Never Let Me Down Again," "Walking in My Shoes"   and "It's No Good"   to a completely new level. His wild, energetic stage presence has made sure that the magic has carried over to the band's live performances. His presence has anchored the band to their core Depeche Mode-ness, regardless of what strange new musical adventures they have embarked on, which may have played a part in why the group was still winning  Grammy Awards as recently as 2018. The man is a rock star, plain and simple. 

Unfortunately, being a rock star can often mean living like a rock star, and Gahan certainly took part in some of the darker undercurrents of fame. He has struggled with various serious illnesses, as well as addiction. In fact, his heroin problems in the 1990s were so severe that one particular overdose nearly killed him.

Dave Gahan's infamous overdose DID kill him ... for two minutes

It's not entirely accurate to say that an overdose nearly killed Dave Gahan. In 1996, he actually OD'd so bad that he died and was brought back to life . 

In 2013, Gahan discussed the infamous Los Angeles incident with  Bild  (via  NME ), and he made it extremely clear that he doesn't particularly recommend the experience. "The first thing I realized in the hospital was that I exited my body," is how the singer described the situation. "I was floating underneath the ceiling and could observe exactly what was happening underneath me: Paramedics were running around my body and tried to save me." But wait, it gets creepier:  "I believe it was my soul screaming which had already left my body and became a witness of what happened to my body. At that point I was clinically dead, my heart wasn't beating. These seconds seemed like hours to me. And suddenly, there was a complete, frightening darkness around me." Whoa.

Screaming souls and a sudden fade to black doesn't sound like a good time, and indeed, Gahan has noted that the experience made him realize that even famous rock stars aren't immortal. When he finally woke up, he was in handcuffs and cops were arresting him because he was in possession of heroin and cocaine. The experience led to a year-long stint at a detox clinic, which he had to successfully finish without incident, if he didn't want to endure a two-year prison sentence.   

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Nick Cave (solo) When: April 25 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

The legendary Nick Cave embarks on a solo tour of Australia (read: without the Bad Seeds) this April, playing two shows in Melbourne and five in Sydney. Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood will be on bass duties for these shows at Plenary Melbourne and State Theatre Sydney, which are all sold out.

The Dandy Warhols When: April 25 – May 1 Find tickets and more info

The Dandy Warhols will make their return to Australia in April 2024 armed with their new album ‘Rockmaker’. So far, they’ve scheduled dates in Brisbane , Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. If you missed them when they toured down under with Hoodoo Gurus in 2022, this is your chance. Find tickets here.

Elephant Gym When: April 26 – April 28 Find more info and tickets here

Elephant Gym isn’t the result of a random band name generator; “elephant” refers to the Taiwanese math rock band’s bass-led grooves, while “Gym” denotes the “agility” of their rhythm. The trio will perform their technical and idiosyncratic instrumentals at three shows on the Australian east coast for the first time this April, supporting sleepmakeswaves.

6LACK: Since I Have A Lover Tour When: April 26 – May 1 Find tickets and more info

R&B favourite 6LACK (pronounced ‘black’) will return to Australia in April to tour his new album, ‘Since I Have A Lover’. The four-date jaunt will take him to Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

Niall Horan: ‘The Show’ Live On Tour When: April 26 – May 4 Find tickets and more info

Niall Horan will take ‘The Show’ on the road down under in 2024. The ex- One Direction member’s world tour comes in support of his third solo album ‘The Show’ , out June 9. For the Australian leg, he’ll perform arena shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Groovin The Moo sideshows When: April 29 – May 11 Find tickets and more info

Sadly, Groovin The Moo is no longer going ahead this year – but many of the artists who would have played the touring festival will still be forging ahead with their own Australian headline shows. Singer-songwriter Claire Rosinkranz, Wu-Tang Clan legend GZA (performing a set dubbed ‘Liquid Swords Live’) and Stephen Sanchez will all perform headline shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

Toronto indie rockers The Beaches will also perform their own dates, playing shows in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in May. Find more information and tickets for all sideshows here .

Jessie Reyez When: April 30 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

Jessie Reyez will tour Australia for the first time in autumn, playing three shows along the east coast. The Canadian R&B singer will bring cuts from 2020 debut ‘Before Love Came to Kill Us’ and 2022 follow-up ‘Yessie’ to Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on April 30, before shows at the Forum in Melbourne and the Tivoli in Brisbane. Find tickets here .

Nothing But Thieves: Welcome To The DCC World Tour When: April 30 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

Nothing But Thieves cleaned up on a sold-out tour of Australia last year – and they’re back for more. The UK alt-rockers have announced the second Aussie leg of their Dead Club City World tour, which will kick off at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion on April 30, continue on to Brisbane and Melbourne, and wrap up at Hindley Street Music Hall in Adelaide on May 7.

Mahalia: In Real Life When: April 30 – May 8 Find tickets and more info

UK R&B artist Mahalia has booked a five-date tour of Australia, her biggest yet and her first time back down under since 2020. Audiences in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane should get ready for smooth tunes off her 2023 album ‘IRL’ .

• READ MORE: Mahalia on her emotional, empowering new record: “I didn’t think I would finish this album”

Jonas Brothers: Five Albums. One Night. Tour When: May 1 – 9 Find tickets and more info

Joe , Nick and Kevin Jonas – the Jonas Brothers – play Australia for the first time between May 1 and May 9 as part of their massive Five Albums. One Night. Tour. The tour will see the brothers perform hits from all five of their albums across one night, including fan favourites.

Tesseract When: May 2 – May 9 Find tickets and more info

UK prog metal outfit Tesseract are set to make the highly anticipated return to Australia in May 2024, marking their first shows Down Under since 2018. Between May 2 and May 9, the band will perform in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

With 2023 album ‘War of Being’ and songs from 2021’s ‘Portals’ not played in Australia yet, Tesseract are set to bring with them a fresh bounty of new music to Australia.

The Vaccines and Everything Everything Dates: May 4-11 Find tickets and more info here

UK indie rockers The Vaccines and Everything Everything are banding together for a co-headline tour of Australia, their first time back in the country since 2019 and 2018 respectively. Embrace the indie disco in May when they head to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and finally Sydney.

Sammy Virji When: May 10 – May 18 Find more info and tickets here

UK garage has been making a steady comeback, and DJ/producer Sammy Virji is one of its frontrunners. He’s set to come back to Australia for his biggest headline tour of the country yet. Virji will kick off his tour at Metro City in Perth on May 10, before heading through Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and finishing at The Roundhouse in Sydney May 18.

Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken Tour When: May 10 – May 17 Find tickets and more info here

Melissa Etheridge is bringing her trailblazing heartland rock to Australian shores for the first time in five years in May 2024. The ‘I’m Not Broken’ tour kicks off in Perth on May 10, before heading through Adelaide, Melbourne and finishing up in Sydney on May 17. Expect to hear a blend of the songwriter’s greatest hits as heard on her latest live album ‘Beautiful Day’.

Macklemore When: May 11 – May 20 Find tickets and more info

Fresh off the release of latest album ‘Ben’, Macklemore will embark on an Australian tour next May. The hip-hop artist will perform at Hordern Pavillion in Sydney on May 11-12, before taking to Melbourne’s John Cain Arena and Brisbane’s Riverstage on May 15 and May 17, respectively. Macklemore will perform at BASSINTHEGRASS in Darwin, and then conclude his Australian run at HBF Stadium in Perth on May 20. Find tickets here.

• READ MORE: Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – Macklemore

Sleater-Kinney When: May 17 – May 23 Find tickets and more info

In their first shows here since 2016, Sleater-Kinney are embarking on a theatre tour of Australia. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein will play four headline shows down under in support of their latest album, ‘Little Rope’ , in what the latter has called a “homecoming” of sorts.

• READ MORE: Sleater-Kinney talk new single ‘Untidy Creature’ and grief-driven new album: “This is not a somber record”

“For all intents and purposes, Sleater-Kinney got its start in Australia,” Brownstein said in a statement. “We recorded our first album and played our first ever shows there. Because of that, Australia feels like one of the band’s spiritual homes, and returning there always feels like a homecoming, a reunion.”

Jungle When: May 17 – May 22 Find more info

Jungle have unleashed more dancey goodness with their latest album, ‘Volcano’. Get ready to boogie in May when they tour Australia. The entire run, comprising the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney, Festival Hall in Melbourne, and Fortitude Music Hall in Brissy, is sold out.

Botch When: May 17 – 25 Find tickets and more info

Cult-favourite mathcore/hardcore/metal band Botch from Tacoma, Washington reunited last year more than two decades after their split – and now they’re embarking on their first-ever Aussie tour. The jaunt will include two dates in Melbourne and Sydney apiece as well as shows in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

Guitarist David Knudson has promised Botch will go all out: “We don’t want to half-ass it…we want to be fucking tight as we ever were, if not tighter. We don’t want to disappoint a fan that’s never seen us live. So you know, it’s all in or nothing.”

Peter Hook & The Light When: May 21 – 28 Find tickets and more info

Peter Hook , the legendary bassist and co-founder of Joy Division and New Order is set to return to Australia in May 2024, just two years after his last tour of the country in 2022. For the upcoming tour, Hook will perform the New Order and Joy Division substance compilations live, giving fans a chance to once again revel in both bands’ music.

The Snuts When: May 23 – May 26 Find tickets and more info

Scottish indie rockers The Snuts will return for their second Australian tour in as many years, following their debut run of headline shows in 2023. With third studio album ‘Millennials’ in tow, the band will kick off their 2024 tour with a show at Melbourne’s Northcote Theatre. They’ll play Sydney’s Metro Theatre on May 25, before a show at the Triffid in Brisbane the following evening. Find tickets here .

Tom Grennan When: May 29 – May 30 Find tickets and more info

Tom Grennan will duck over to Australia for a pair of headline shows this year, following a debut visit in 2022. The English singer-songwriter will play Sydney’s Metro Theatre and 170 Russell in Melbourne on May 29 and 30 respectively.

Since his last trip, Grennan has released his third studio album, ‘What Ifs & Maybes’. Find tickets here .

Sky Ferreira When: June 2 – June 4 Find more info and tickets here

It’s been 12 years since Sky Ferreira released her debut ‘Night Time, My Time’, and her mystique has only grown in the interim: Ferriera has explored the silver screen, modelling, and long teased the release of a second album ‘Masochism’ . She’ll play two rare headline shows at bespoke Melbourne and Sydney festivals RISING and Vivid LIVE this June – a decade after her last Australian performance.

Boney M featuring Maizie Williams: The Farewell Tour When: June 3 – July 6 Find tickets and more info

Legendary disco group Boney M and vocalist Maizie Williams will bid goodbye to Australia with an extensive national tour in June and July 2024. Don’t wait to get your tickets – 15 of the 20 shows are sold out. More info here.

Bar Italia When: June 4 – June 8 Find more info and tickets here

Buzzy London trio Bar Italia are proteges of Dean Blunt, and have emerged from relative anonymity in the last few years with two albums of sinister post-punk. They’ll tour Australia for the first time in June, playing at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney and Brisbane’s Black Bear Lodge before a matinee show in Melbourne as part of RISING festival.

Deerhoof: Miracle Level Tour When: June 12 – June 16 Find tickets and more info

Indie vets Deerhoof return to Australia this June for the Miracle Level Tour, in support of their 19th (!) album of the same name. They’ll play five cities in five days, kicking off in Melbourne and then heading to Sydney for Vivid before Brisbane, Adelaide and finally Perth.

LANY When: June 19 – June 28 Find tickets and more info

LANY – the pop duo of Paul Klein and Jake Goss – will return to Australia in mid-2024. After playing small, intimate shows down under in August 2023, they’ll go bigger in this national tour at venues including the Hordern Pavilion and Margaret Court Arena. See info on dates and tickets here.

Lizzy McAlpine: The Older Tour When: July 11 – July 18 Find tickets and more info

A year after breaking out with TikTok hit ‘Ceilings’, Lizzy McAlpine has released her major-label debut, the album ‘Older’. To celebrate, she’ll stage her debut headline shows in Australia with four stops across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Conan Gray When: July 11 – July 19 Find more info and tickets here

Conan Gray is the archetypal Gen Z popstar, honing his craft as a teenage YouTube vlogger before unleashing his multimodal talent as a singer. Gray will play songs from his upcoming third album ‘Found Heaven’ in some of the biggest rooms in the country this July, as well as a headline spot at Adelaide’s Spin Off Festival on July 19.

Girl In Red: Doing It Again: Asia/Oceania Tour When: July 11 – July 21 Find tickets and more info

She’s doing it again: Marie Ulven aka Girl In Red returns to Australia after selling out her headline tour here last year. The Norwegian alt-pop sensation will play Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane this go round. Pre-sale begins Friday April 26, while general on-sale kicks off Monday April 29.

• READ MORE: Girl In Red on her new album: “It’s ballsy, big dick energy”

Tenacious D When: July 13 – July 22 Find tickets and more info

It’s been more than a decade since Tenacious D toured Australia, but that all changes in July. Jack Black and Kyle Gass will play their first shows in the country since 2013, performing six arena dates.

The tour will kick off with two shows at the ICC Sydney Theatre on July 13, continuing on to Newcastle, Brisbane and Melbourne before wrapping up at Adelaide Entertament centre on July 22. Find tickets here .

FLETCHER When: July 16 – July 28 Find tickets and more info

After postponing her original tour, the rescheduled dates for FLETCHER ’s long-awaited Australian visit have been locked in for mid-2024. Audiences across the country will revel in FLETCHER’s latest album ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ towards the end of July, with venues including Perth’s Metro City (July 16), Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane (July 18), Festival Hall in Melbourne (July 23) and Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion (July 28). Find tickets here.

The Last Dinner Party When: July 20 – July 23 Find tickets and more info

Nothing else will matter when The Last Dinner Party touch down in Australia this July. See the buzzy baroque indie pop band – and NME Cover stars – in Brisbane (a co-headline with TV Girl), Melbourne and Sydney (both supported by Tia Gostelow).

• READ MORE: The Last Dinner Party: the newly-coronated monarchs of baroque-pop

IVE: 1ST WORLD TOUR ‘SHOW WHAT I HAVE’ When: July 25 – July 28 Find tickets and more info

As part of their broader debut world tour, IVE will bring their ‘Show What I Have’ set to Australian shores in July, kicking off the two-date run at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on July 25. The K-pop group will conclude the Australian leg of their tour in support of 2023 album ‘I’ve IVE’ with a show at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on July 28. Find tickets here.

• READ MORE: IVE – ‘I’VE MINE’ review: K-pop’s queen bees grow beyond the archetype

HEALTH: Rat Based Warfare Tour Down Under When: July 31 – August 4 Find more info and tickets here

The electronic body music of HEALTH flirts with metal, noise, and synth wave, but remains uniquely their own. The band are back in Australia after their 2023 Dark Mofo appearance for a full tour in support of their seventh album ‘Rat Wars’. They’ll play cosy rooms in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from late July this year.

Greta Van Fleet: Starcatcher World Tour When: August 21 – August 27 Find tickets and more info

Classic rock revivalists Greta Van Fleet return to Australia for the first time in five years this August, supporting their 2023 album ‘Starcatcher’. They’ll kick things off in Brisbane then head to Sydney and Melbourne.

aespa: SYNK: Parallel Line Tour When: August 31 – September 2 Find more info

K-pop girl group aespa will bring all the dra-ma-ma-ma down under for two stops of their SYNK: Parallel Line tour. The four-piece of Karina , Giselle , Winter and NingNing will perform at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on August 31 and head to Melbourne for the Rod Laver Arena two days later. A Telstra pre-sale begins May 7 while a TEG Live + Ticketek pre-sale begins two days later. General on-sale starts May 10.

• READ MORE: The 25 best K-pop songs of 2023

Iron Maiden: The Future Past Tour When: September 1 – September 13 Find tickets and more info

In what will be their first trip Down Under since 2017, Iron Maiden are poised to bring The Future Past tour to stadiums in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne next September.

The first three cities will host the metal legends between September 1 to September 10, while Melbourne and Sydney will each enjoy a two-night outing at Rod Laver Arena (September 6 and 7) and Qudos Bank Arena (September 12 and 13), respectively. Find tickets here.

J Balvin: Que Bueno Volver a Verte Tour When: September 4 – September 10 Find more info and tickets here

J Balvin’s career as the Prince of Reggaeton has dovetailed with an explosion in the popularity of Latin music worldwide. The juggernaut will bring his Que Bueno Volver a Verte Tour (It’s Good To See You Tour) to Australian arenas in September this year. Sofi Tukker will support him as he plays the biggest rooms in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

Laufey: Bewitched: The Goddess Tour When: September 7 – September 14 Find tickets and more info

Get ready to fall under Laufey’s spell this September. The young jazz-pop star’s first Aussie tour last year sold out in minutes, and the Bewitched: The Goddess Tour looks set to do the same, with pre-sales already fully exhausted. She’ll play two shows in Sydney and Melbourne apiece, and also perform in Brisbane – general on-sale begins Friday April 26.

• READ MORE: Laufey on winning her first Grammy: “There is no way to prepare. It was really amazing”

SiM: Playdead World Tour When: September 12 – September 15 Find tickets and more info here

Like a kind of Japanese Gorillaz , SiM are a content universe unto their own – spanning anime , video games and records. Australian audiences can experience their inimitable reggae-metal-punk at The Zoo in Brisbane September 12, Sydney’s Crowbar on September 14 or Max Watts in Melbourne on September 15.

Thirty Seconds To Mars: Seasons World Tour When: September 12 – September 17 Find tickets and more info

To announce Thirty Seconds To Mars ’ Seasons World Tour, Jared Leto pulled a massive stunt: scaling the Empire State Building . The tour comes in support of their album ‘It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day’ and will hit Australian shores in mid-September. It marks the band’s first headline tour in over five years, and will see them grace the stage at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena (September 12), Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney (September 14) and Brisbane’s Riverstage (September 17). Find tickets here.

Ne-Yo: Champagne & Roses Tour When: September 26 – October 3 Find tickets and more info

Come closer – Ne-Yo is coming back to Australia for the Champagne & Roses Tour with special guest Lloyd. Expect smooth throwback R&B in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney.

• READ MORE: Soundtrack Of My Life: Ne-Yo

The Reytons When: September 29 – October 5 Find more info and tickets here

Yorkshire four-piece The Reytons are revivalists of another revival – 2000s British indie. But this band is independent in the truer sense of the word, self-releasing their latest album ‘Ballad of a Bystander’. They will tour their raucous, ungenteel rock from late September to early October this year, packing rooms in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.

The Kid LAROI When: October 2024 Find tickets and more info

US-based homegrown rap phenom The Kid LAROI ‘s return to Australia was supposed to take place in February, but it was postponed in December , with the Gamilaroi star calling February “logistically impossible”. Instead, he’ll fill stadiums around the country in October with tracks from his freshly released debut album ‘The First Time’. With shows locked in for Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and the Gold Coast, these all-ages shows will be his biggest to date. Stay tuned for more info on specific dates for the rescheduled tour.

• READ MORE: The Kid LAROI live in Sydney: A hometown hero returns a certified legend

Passenger When: October 17 – October 23 Find tickets and more info

Passenger’s first Australian tour in six years also serves as a celebration of his 2012 album ‘All The Little Lights’, which received an anniversary edition last year. This jaunt will feature Josh Pyke as supporting act and, notably, two shows at the Sydney Opera House (one of which is already sold out).

• READ MORE: Soundtrack Of My Life: Passenger

Kim Wilde: The Greatest Hits Tour When: October 17 – October 26 Find more info and tickets here

If you look at the pop charts for any given week in the 1980s, chances are Kim Wilde was on it. The ‘Kids in America’ singer is still performing, on a break from her new life as a gardener, and will play a whirlwind Australian tour this October. Wilde will begin in Brisbane on October 17, before heading through Tweed Heads, Sydney, Wollongong, Perth, Adelaide and finishing in Melbourne October 26.

• READ MORE: Soundtrack of My Life: Kim Wilde

Buzzcocks When: October 24 – November 2 Find more info and tickets here

The Buzzcocks , progenitors of “love punk” and pop punk before it even existed, are still going strong almost 50 years after their formation. With Steve Diggle on vocals, replacing the late Pete Shelley, the band will return to Australia for seven shows in late October to early November. The Buzzcocks will begin on the Gold Coast on October 24, before travelling through Brisbane, Adelaide, Fremantle, Newcastle, Sydney and finishing in Melbourne on November 2.

PinkPantheress: Capable of Love Tour When: October 29 – November 5 Find tickets and more info here

PinkPantheress was once an anonymous beatmaker going viral on TikTok – she’s anything but anonymous now, as she comes to Australia for the first time promoting her debut album ‘Heaven’. Between opening for Coldplay , the 22-year-old Brit will headline shows at Melbourne’s Festival Hall (October 29) and Horden Pavilion in Sydney on November 5.

Coldplay: Music of the Spheres Tour When: October 30 – November 9 Find tickets and more info here

Coldplay will bring their ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour to Australia’s east coast at the end of a more than two-year stretch. The pop juggernauts have already sold 9 million tickets – the most for any tour in history – and are set to play eight stadium shows in Melbourne and Sydney after playing in Perth in 2023.

Expect to experience the galactic sprawl of the band’s recent rock operas, while still belting out the anthems that took them to the top.

Take That and Sophie Ellis-Bextor When: October 30 – November 10 Find tickets and more info

It’ll be murder on the dancefloor when this tour comes to town. Sophie Ellis-Bextor , enjoying a Saltburn -fueled resurgence, will accompany Take That on a six-show tour of Australia . Three dates of the tour, which marks Take That’s first live shows in the region since 2017, will take place at wineries as part of A Day on the Green, where Ricki-Lee Coulter will also appear.

• READ MORE: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on the return of ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ – and watching Saltburn with her mum

Hozier: Unreal Unearth Tour When: November 6 – November 18 Find more info and tickets here

Irish singer-songwriter Hozier will tour Down Under for the first time since 2019 this November, supporting his 2023 album ‘Unreal Unearth’ with a nation-wide arena sojourn. Hozier will kick off in Perth on November 6, before heading through Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. He will also play regional areas Torquay and the Hunter Valley as part of Summersalt festival.

• READ MORE: Hozier: “There has always been a space in my work for my own conscience”

Tate McRae: Think Later World Tour When: November 8 – November 17 Find tickets and more info

In what marks her biggest headline Australian shows to date, Tate McRae’s Think Later World Tour will head Down Under in November, encompassing five shows in Perth (November 8), Brisbane (November 10), Sydney (November 12), Adelaide (November 15) and Melbourne (November 17). The tour comes in support of McRae’s sophomore album ‘Think Later’, which features her massive single ‘Greedy’. Tickets are available here.

Pearl Jam: Dark Matter World Tour 2024 When: November 13 – November 23 Find tickets and more info

Pearl Jam have announced their new album ‘Dark Matter’, which they’ll support with a massive tour around the world . They’ll make a stop Down Under with Pixies in support, playing stadium shows in the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney. The grunge giants have added bonus gigs in Melbourne on November 18 and Sydney on November 23 in response to overwhelming demand. Find tickets here.

James Blunt: The Who We Used To Be Tour When: November 21 – November 28 Find tickets and more info here

Self-deprecating superstar James Blunt is returning to Australian stages for the first time in over six years in November 2024. The ‘You’re Beautiful’ singer will begin a five-date arena tour at Brisbane’s Riverstage on November 21, before heading through Sydney’s ICC Super Theatre (November 23), Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena (November 24), Adelaide’s Entertainment Centre Theatre (November 25) and Perth’s Red Hill Auditorium (November 28).

Wallows: Model Tour 2024 When: December 5 – December 14 Find more info and tickets here

US alt-rockers Wallows played some of their favourite shows ever on their previous tour of Australia – so they’ll undoubtedly be looking to top the experience when they return in December. They’ll kick things off in Perth, before heading to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and finally Brisbane.

• Depeche Mode

Aussie Depeche Mode fans are an incredibly patient bunch. The last time the British synth-pop titans toured the country was in 1994, meaning nearly three decades have passed since they last paid us a visit. But good things come to those who wait, and it seems there is a glimmer of hope for those hoping to catch the band Down Under.

• READ MORE: Depeche Mode: every single album ranked and rated

In March 2023, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan told an Italian blog that the band were eyeing “as-yet-unannounced dates in Asia and Australia” as part of a touring run that would lead into 2024. The band have toured the world in support of their latest album, ‘Memento Mori’ , and a trip to Australia to cap off the jaunt seems more likely than ever.

Additional reporting by Ellie Robinson, Tom Disalvo and Josh Martin

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‘Fletch was meant to outlive us all’: Depeche Mode on death, rebirth and defying the odds

Hit hard by the death of keyboardist Andy Fletcher, Dave Gahan questioned whether he wanted to continue – until Martin Gore’s new songs revived him. Making the most of their lives has never been more important, they say

A s Dave Gahan happily admits, there was a moment when he thought there would never be another Depeche Mode album. Actually, he says, there were two. The first came as a result of the pandemic, when he underwent a rock star equivalent of the Great Resignation , the phenomenon in which people stuck at home started reconsidering their priorities. He had tried to gig with his other band, Soulsavers, at the end of 2020, between the first and second lockdowns (“Wonderful shows, but the whole thing was a constant state of anxiety – are you fit to fly? What’s happening tomorrow?”), but spent most of the time at home in the US. It was the longest he had ever spent off the road.

“Not making a record; spending time with my family, friends, my fucking cat,” he says. “I thought: I want to stay here. I was quite happy listening to records, watching the Knicks lose at basketball, plugging in my guitar and playing along to someone else’s music, not really interested in making new music.” He smiles. “I was 18 when Depeche Mode started. I thought: it’s enough. I’ve had a good run. So when our manager called and said ‘It’s time’, I honestly said: ‘Jonathan, I don’t know if I want to do this any more.’”

Gahan was eventually persuaded back, energised by the new songs sent by his bandmate Martin Gore. Depeche Mode’s last album, 2017’s Spirit , was stridently political, which was perhaps just as well: a month before its release, American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer attempted to claim them as “the official band of the alt-right”. (“He’s a cunt,” offered Gahan, with winning bluntness, in response.) In contrast, these were songs that hit what the Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey once called the “horny, morbid sweet spot” central to Depeche Mode’s appeal: songs about sex, about addiction, about information overload and, especially, about death, the latter perhaps the inevitable result of writing during a global pandemic.

In fact, there were so many songs about death that Gore suggested they call the album Memento Mori. Gahan looked forward to working on them in the studio, “making the songs more colourful, elevating them, getting them to the point where Fletch would say” – he imitates bandmate Andy Fletcher’s gruff Essex accent – “‘Let’s leave this alone, we’ve got it, what are you guys doing, don’t over-fucking-complicate it!’ The enjoyable part of making an album.” He employed a trainer – “sports therapist, trains American footballers, doesn’t fuck about” – to get him in shape for another tour: “I’m 60, and I’m not going to half-arse it up there.”

Six weeks before the recording sessions for Depeche Mode’s 15th album, Fletcher died, suddenly, at his London home, of an aortic dissection. The reaction among fans was one of stunned disbelief. He was only 60, and moreover, Fletch was the band’s rock: the least affected by their global fame, the one who kept his head during the early 90s, when Gahan succumbed to a heroin addiction that nearly killed him, Gore was in the grip of alcoholism, and keyboard player and songwriter Alan Wilder quit. It was, says Gahan, a reaction mirrored within the band. “ What? ” he says, shaking his head. “Alan used to say it: ‘He’ll outlive us all the way we’re all going.’ Fletch was always the steady one.”

He was so stunned, Gahan says, that Fletcher’s death only fully hit him at the funeral, when he saw Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records: the man who signed Depeche Mode as teenagers and maintained his faith in them when their chief songwriter, Vince Clarke, left after their debut album; who, says Gore, “let us experiment and grow at our own pace” and who still contributes ideas to their albums. “He walked in with his wife, and Martin and I stood up and kind of fell into him, and he put his arms around us and all of us were just … I was sobbing. It was just the three of us. I can’t explain it, but that’s when I totally lost it. He pointed it out: when he met me and my band, I was a teenager, just about to turn 19. I thought about that. It’s been 40-odd years. My entire adult life.”

In the wake of Fletcher’s death, Gahan says that “for a minute” he was convinced once again that Depeche Mode was over. “But Martin and I had a conversation. I was just calling up to see how he was doing and he was like, ‘We’re moving on, right?’ I said, yeah. I didn’t miss a beat.”

For his part, Gore says he never really considered the band ending. “I did question for a second whether it was a good idea to carry on with the schedule we had,” he says, “because we were due to start in the studio six weeks after he died, and I wondered if we should put that back a little bit. But we decided it was probably best for us to focus on the album, on the music, something we know, something to take our minds off Andy’s death.”

Recording went remarkably smoothly: certainly smoother than some of the famously fractious sessions for previous albums. “I think that the one thing that’s come out of Andy’s dying that’s possibly, you know, positive,” Gore says, before his voice trails off and he reconsiders. “There’s nothing positive about it. But you know, the one good thing is that it’s brought me and Dave closer. We have to make decisions as the two of us, so we talk things out, we talk a lot more on the phone, even FaceTime sometimes. That’s something we just never did before.”

Certainly, meeting them separately, each in their own rooms in a luxurious London hotel, it’s hard not to be struck by their differences. Gahan is friendly and garrulous and very much a rock star, charismatic and blessed with his ability to look supremely cool while wearing clothes that would make anyone who wasn’t a rock star look ridiculous: leathers, purple-tinted sunglasses, tight trousers (slightly flared), his all-black ensemble rounded off with a pair of bright red snakeskin pointed boots.

Gore, meanwhile, looks exactly like Martin Gore: even at 61, the biker jacket and shock of curly blond hair, shaved at the sides, are immediately recognisable from the pages of 80s Smash Hits. He is friendly but businesslike and less expansive: as Gahan suggests, Gore is “not one to wear his feelings on his sleeve, he always wears his feelings in his songs”. Gore says he never considered changing the album title or dropping its songs about death following Fletcher’s passing. “For me, when Andy died it cemented the idea that we had to carry on with these songs and the title. The idea that we should all be making the most of our time on Earth and it’s very limited – it’s kind of an important message. And it’s even more important now Andy’s gone.”

Nevertheless, Gore concedes, it is a slightly odd situation: releasing an album full of intimations of mortality less than a year after a co-founder’s death. “I don’t want to sound too new age-y about this, but sometimes you wonder when you write songs, if there’s something out there in the ether that you tap into. Sometimes I’ll sit down and write something and it comes naturally and flows and I don’t really know where the words come from. When I look at it, I think: Oh, it’s about that.”

But then, as both Gore and Gahan point out, Depeche Mode have almost always been in an odd position. On YouTube, you can find a clip from a 1981 ITV documentary , shot just as their first big hit, New Life, breached the Top 20. They are filmed doing the kind of things that “futurist” bands did: playing monophonic synthesisers with one finger, eschewing old-fashioned entertainment for a Space Invaders-style arcade game, earnestly discussing the new romantic movement. On one level, it’s very of its time, but on another, what’s striking is how detached Depeche Mode seem from the scene they’re supposed to represent. The denizens of the Blitz club think they’re a bit non-U: they aren’t hip London scene-makers, but kids from the distinctly unfashionable environ of Basildon, and they aren’t terribly arty, at least by the standards of the time.

They enthusiastically discuss their love of disco and pop and their videos look very British and provincial – shot in tacky nightclubs and branches of Woolworths – rather than meaningful and serious and mitteleuropäisch. They subsequently became huge, but that was odd, too. Their peers became globally successful with big pop hits or by switching to a more traditional, guitar-based approach; Depeche Mode did it while sticking fast to electronics and getting weirder and more experimental (they are, perhaps, the only band in history ever to break the US shortly after launching a new musical direction heavily influenced by metal-banging Berlin experimentalists Einstürzende Neubauten).

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By the early 90s, when most of their peers’ careers had waned, Depeche Mode were selling millions of albums and exercising a staggering global reach: even Gore admits to being taken aback when the 2019 documentary Spirits in the Forest revealed the band had fans in Outer Mongolia. Thirty years after their biggest-selling album, 1990’s Violator, they could still call themselves the biggest cult band in the world without much fear of contradiction: as Gore points out, the tour they’re about to embark on “will probably be the biggest tour we’ve ever done, and the tour before that was the biggest we’d ever done. Every time we go out, we seem to play to more people.”

And yet, something of the outsider clings to them. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the end of 2020 (their acceptance speech, via Zoom, was the last time Gahan and Gore appeared in public with Fletcher), but even so, Gahan says he felt oddly out of place. “I’d heard a few years before, when we were first nominated, that someone on the panel had said something about us being dull ‘eyeliner-wearing weirdos’.” He laughs. “I loved that. Let’s just go down the line of eyeliner-wearing fucking weirdos: Prince, Mick Jagger, Dave Vanian from the Damned. I’m happy to join that club.”

He is, understandably, delighted with Memento Mori, an album that offers a perfect blend of ominous mood, electronic textures that range from intense to ethereal and a classic Depeche Mode way with a melancholy but nagging melody. He compares the single Ghosts Again to Enjoy the Silence, “one of those songs that to me are key anchors for Depeche”. It’s another song about the fleeting and fragile nature of life: “Everybody says goodbye … whisper we’ll be ghosts again.”

It is a subject that Gahan is uniquely placed to sing about, not because of Fletcher’s passing, but because he has technically died himself, in the days when he was, as he puts it, “following the rock-star thing in way that was beyond cliche”. His heart stopped beating for two minutes after he took an overdose of heroin and cocaine in 1996, an incident that ultimately led him to get clean. “There was complete blackness and this feeling I’ve never felt before of utter terror. No sound in the room, nothing, but the blackness felt close to you.

“I had the thing that people talk about, the out-of-body-experience, and then the next thing I know I’m sat up in the back of an ambulance being brought around. In that particular time the only real thought I had, which was terrifying, was that I don’t get to decide what happens. I thought I did. I was hellbent on the idea of ‘if I’m going out, I’m going out with a bang’, having what I thought was a good time, surrounded by other fucking sycophantic losers. It’s coming to all of us, but you don’t really know when.”

Which starts Gahan talking about Fletch again, about how weird it is doing things without him for the first time: interviews, TV appearances, photoshoots with long-term collaborator Anton Corbijn. He gestures towards the next-door balcony. “I keep expecting to hear him outside my room,” he says. “Or smell him lighting a cigarette. ‘Put that fucking thing out, Fletch! I’ve got to sing later!’”

People always asked what Fletch did in the band, he says, because Fletch always used to run his own contribution down, telling an interviewer in the 1989 documentary 101 that while the others dealt with the music, he “bummed around”.

“To me that was kind of offensive. His personality was huge. He was the voice of reason if we were going too far out with a song. We’ve been doing this a long time – me, Martin, Fletch. So this is a monumental change. Not a monumental musical change, he didn’t do masterful things on the records, but what Fletch represented within the band was identity.”

He says it is going to be odd without him on stage; Fletcher always looked so excited to be there: “Depeche Mode’s biggest supporter” performing with the band. “My job is to perform. It’s about creating something that’s larger than any existence you could possibly have had. Martin’s like the gunslinger by my side. And Fletch was the superfan.”

He pauses and grins at me, as if he’s recalling why he decided to come back to Depeche Mode despite his initial doubts. “He knew it’s the best job in the world. You know, you’ve won the lottery a thousand fucking times.”

• Depeche Mode
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• Electronic music

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National News | Billie Eilish, Cyndi Lauper, Dave Matthews and hundreds more ask Congress to fix concert ticket pricing

Hundreds of musicians including Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, the Pixies and Blue Oyster Cult petitioned Congress on Thursday to regulate concert ticket pricing.

“We are joining together to say that the current system is broken,” reads a letter signed by nearly 300 performers and sent to lawmakers. “Predatory resellers and secondary platforms engage in deceptive ticketing practices to inflate ticket prices and deprive fans of the chance to see their favorite artists at a fair price.”

The “ Fix the Tix ” request is specifically addressed to the leaders of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

The letter accuses unregulated companies that resell tickets of “siphoning money from the live entertainment ecosystem” by using bots and deceitful advertising practices to sell seats for 20 times their face value, even when shows aren’t sold out.

Ticket sales have hit record numbers since the end of the pandemic and subsequent resumption of touring.

Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour became the first ever billion-dollar concert series at the close of 2023. When the “Don’t Blame Me” singer visited MetLife Stadium last year, some seats sold for $16,000 . The average resale price for a ticket to Swift’s 2018 Reputation Stadium Tour was about $157, according to Pitchfork, while resold Eras Tour tickets reportedly averaged $3,800.

Though Swift wasn’t a Fix the Tix signee, she has expressed frustration with organizations like Ticketmaster .

Other artists onboard for Thursday’s initiative include Cowboy Junkies, They Might Be Giants, Fall Out Boy, Becky G, Sonic Youth, Green Day and Diplo.

“Predatory resellers do not invest in creating a great live experience or fostering the live music ecosystem,” the musicians told lawmakers. “They simply profit off of the hard work of artists, venues and the crew.”

The average face-value ticket price for a concert in 2023 was just under $80 , according to Pitchfork. That’s a nearly $10 hike from 2019 pre-pandemic pricing.

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• Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews, Lorde Among 250 Artists Addressing Ticket System Reform

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More than 250 recording artists have signed a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce in support of a bill advocating for ticket sale transparency and consumer protections against bots.

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“It is clear that all participants of the live event ecosystem, from artists, to venues, to fans, demand comprehensive ticketing reform and consumer protection against the predatory ticket resale practices that have deeply afflicted live entertainment in the United States,” said Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association. “The Fix the Tix Coalition is proud to deliver this critical call to action from artists whose fans experience the injustices of the resale market every show. And, we hope their message resonates with Congress, as officials elected to protect their constituents and as Americans who simply love music. The time for comprehensive ticketing reform is now.”

The full letter delivered to Chairwoman Cantwell and Ranking Member Cruz of the Senate Committee on Commerce is available  here . The letter was organized by the  Fix The Tix Coalition , a broad movement spearheaded by the National Independent Venue Association ( NIVA ) and Eventbrite. They join with more than 30 live event industry organizations and professionals to collectively advocate for better and fair ticketing practices.

The bill details:

Ticket Sales Transparency:

• Mandates full disclosure of ticket costs, including fees, at the initial selection stage.
• Requires clear breakdown of ticket costs and terms of purchase.
• Specifies seating details to prevent misrepresentation.
• Ensures sellers identify whether they are the original seller.

Consumer Protection:

• Strengthens enforcement of the BOTS Act against bot usage.
• Mandates proof of purchase to consumers within 24 hours.
• Requires full refunds for event cancellations.
• Initiates a GAO study for further marketplace analysis.
• Imposes civil penalties on illegal resellers.
• Establishes a dedicated complaint-reporting website for fans.
• Empowers the FTC and state attorneys general for enforcement.
• Prohibits speculative tickets.
• Prevents deceptive websites and fraudulent sellers.
• Mandates reporting of BOTS Act violations to the FTC by ticketing companies.
• Requires the FBI to share ticketing violation information.

More information on Fix the Tix may be found at   www.fixthetix.org .

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McCormick, other Republicans launch bus tour in Erie, as race shifts to general election

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick and GOP candidates for a state row office kicked off the general election in Erie County Wednesday morning as part of a six-city, two-day bus tour.

Treasurer Stacy Garritty and Auditor Tim DeFoor, both incumbents, joined Dave McCormick and others at a post-primary campaign event at Voodoo Brewing Co., 101 Boston Store Place, to tell supporters how critical the Nov. 5 election will be for the future of the state and country, and encourage them to get hesitant friends, family members and neighbors off the sidelines to vote — even if it means casting a mail-in ballot, which the party had widely shunned since the 2020 presidential election.

"If we don't take back America this go-around, I'm not sure what will be left four years from now," said state Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-49th Dist., who was among several Republicans to make statements to the audience ahead of McCormick.

Laughlin noted that his Senate seat is a top target of Democrats as they attempt to hold onto their slim majority in the state House and take control of the upper chamber. McCormick's bid to unseat three-term incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey Jr., he added, could allow the GOP to retake the U.S. Senate.

McCormick, who ran in 2022 for the seat formerly held by Republican Patrick Toomey, took aim at both Casey and the man who went on to win Toomey's seat, Sen. John Fetterman.

"We've got one who won't wear a suit," McCormick said, referring to Fetterman, "and another who is an empty suit."

The group of Republicans criticized President Joe Biden for his handling of the southern border and blamed him for post-pandemic inflation. They said Casey has been in lockstep with Biden on a "war on energy."

McCormick, who served in the U.S. Treasury Department during George W. Bush's presidency and is the former CEO of one of the world's largest hedge funds, easily secured his party's nomination Tuesday after coming up short in 2022 to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who went on to lose to Fetterman. Casey, seeking a fourth, six-year term, also sailed to an easy win.

"All of you are here for the same reason that we're running because you're worried," McCormick said. "You're worried that the country you love is slipping away. You're worried you're going to wake up sometime soon and not recognize the America that we see. We're in trouble."

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th Dist., said McCormick has "impeccable character" and compared him to former President Donald Trump, the party's presumptive nominee, saying neither McCormick nor Trump needed to leave lucrative careers but felt compelled to out of service to their country.

Garritty, the state treasurer who's seeking a second term, made no mention Wednesday of her opponent, Allegheny County small businesswoman Erin McClelland or state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro, the Erie Democrat who many had expected to win his party's nomination. McClelland scored an upset Tuesday in topping Bizzarro for the Democratic nomination. Bizzarro, who is also seeking re-election to his House seat, had the endorsement of the state party and a slew of labor unions and other political organizations in the treasurer's race.

"Democrats want to live in the past," Garrity said at one point. "Let's leave them in the past."

Both Erie County Republican Party Chairman Tom Eddy and state Sen. Scott Hutchinson were in attendance.

Republican Attorney General candidate Dave Sunday did not attend the Erie event Wednesday, but was expected to join the GOP slate in stops in Washington and Altoona in the afternoon. The bus tour continues Thursday in Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre and Media.

Matthew Rink can be reached at  [email protected]  or on X at  @ETNRink .