Resolutions
Depeche Mode’s Devotional tour in 1993 is quoted as the most debauched in pop history. Martin Gore suffered a heart attack on stage in New Orleans and couldn’t make the encore; whilst on another leg, Dave Gahan officially died and was clinically revived in hospital. Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher, who had previously described touring as “so much fun”, was left so clinically depressed he quit music and entered the hospitality business. Roadies recall of “Smack Jack” being the drink du jour – a pint of JD sprinkled with heroin. Primal Scream, the support band led by Bobby Gillespie – themselves no strangers to a sesh – were anecdotally left so agog, they returned home and swore on oaths of sobriety.
I recall seeing Depeche Mode on TV for the first time vividly. The clip was from their 1988 show at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, the song was Behind The Wheel (no connection there). From the blinkered set in my 90s suburban bedroom I recall how tantalising and yet attainable it all seemed. A delicious world where I could see myself lost in the pulse of the crowd: dancing, dancing like Dave, even playing a simple three key melody on the Korg keyboard to ignite untold ecstasy. There’s a tender moment in the footage where Dave looks at Martin, knowing what they’ve created but just surfing the moment with his teenage mate. Dropping in on the big one for the first time. Nothing would ever be the same again.
“I’m taking a ride with my best friend”. In 1981 Depeche Mode were playing The Bridge House in Canning Town. Asked recently by Zane Lowe to elude on the draw of self-destruction in wake of hard-earned success, Dave Gahan simply replied: “that’s human nature”. The snakes & ladders that takes ‘four Essex lads in frilly shirts’ to the biggest band in the world and crashing back down into an abyss invokes a total disassembly of the self. Where once you were chasing wondrous moments with your friends, you have long since fractured into a series of avatars created by a far larger machine. The first fall of the artist is to realise their work, once released, no longer belongs to them but to everybody else. The second fall is to realise that you no longer belong to yourself. The joy of Depeche Mode is there has been a triumphant third act: the pieces have been put back together and chaos of the triumvirate between art, artist and audience is embraced.
We exist now in a world where access to expression, and an audience, has never been so expansive; nor has that interface ever been more delicate. The fast fashion (le dépêche mode) flits from DJ/producers, to cooks, to founders on the hustle – all pouring fractals of themselves into the endless stream, hoping that if their big one comes along they will be able to drop in, grit their teeth and cling to the rail. Are we left still chasing that transcendent moment, or – in approaching with more awareness of the aftermath – a certainty that “no, I really am cut for this..?” From I am Spartacus, to I am Fred. Again, again!
In my room 30 years ago none of this mattered. The certainty was only in pursuit of the moment. The TV didn’t show what was behind the curtain. The yellow SONY sports radio played through the night, cassette on record, to be rewound and sped through in the morning chasing further eclipses; a portal to secret worlds.
Perhaps these limitations in media were a good thing? Besides the sports radio on my bedside table sat a BRAUN travel alarm clock with a little torch on it. I saw these listed across several suggested Christmas gift mailers and nostalgically told loved ones that was all I wanted as a gift. I now have two. The resolution was (and is) to get the phone out of the bedroom, to rollback the doom scroll. Needing to know what time it is when you wake up in the pitch black remains fairly fundamental and was certainly the ultimate fallback for keeping a device by the bed. 2026. It’s tuning the signal to noise ratio. Maybe seeing less in order to experience more.
ps. Resolution no. 2: superstitions are out. “Magpies are only birds.”