Gahan’s growth as a songwriter was represented on Depeche Mode’s 2005 album Playing The Angel, the group’s first album to feature Gahan originals his three compositions included the single “Suffer Well.” A two million worldwide seller that vaulted to Number #1 in eighteen countries, the album was accompanied by a 2005-2006 international tour reaching 2.5 million people across 30 countries.
Sold-out tours of the US and Europe followed, and were captured on the electrifying 2004 DVD release Live Monsters. The record, of course, went on to tremendous international acclaim and success, with Q magazine citing it as one of the top 50 albums of the year. Even Mute founder Daniel Miller, Depeche Mode’s longtime mentor, was a skeptic. He left his life in England behind, planted himself in Los Angeles, and went on a tear that nearly cost him his band and, as stated earlier, even his life.Īs the road to redemption often does, it lead Gahan to a sharply increased self-awareness, and from this emerged the songwriter in him that had always been left neglected for a hundred and ten other concerns and obligations.īut as he prepares to release Hourglass, it’s important to point out that probably very few gave him much credit in advance of Paper Monsters. Depeche Mode’s ascent continued mostly unabated throughout the 90’s, and stardom began to get the better of their already iconic singer. However, what was to follow that unimaginable night in Southern California has by now become the stuff of legend. They would go on to sell more than 50 million albums and more than 10 million fans would witness their sensational, legendary live performances. They would never again be a cult band they had become international superstars, ironically fulfilling the promise of their somewhat sarcastically titled sixth album, Music For The Masses. He carried it all out with equal skill and zeal, as the band’s popularity skyrocketed throughout the 80’s, culminating in a spectacular sold out show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 1988, which saw this once odd little band of new wave futurists suddenly playing to 60,000 screaming Americans. Gore, of course, took primary creative control of Depeche Mode after Vince Clarke’s swift 1981 departure, with Andy Fletcher and later Alan Wilder assisting in the sonic architecture-thus leaving Gahan to cultivate his role as singer, front man and, increasingly, towering sex symbol. From Townsend and Daltrey to Barat and Doherty, there have always been those renowned, volatile musical pairings that have produced as much controversy as they have great music. That’s where Martin exposes himself and it takes a lot of courage to do that.”Īh, Dave and Martin. But I know where he’s coming from through the songs that he’s written. Gahan reveals, “It’s something I’ve learned over the years from Martin, who’s not the most forthcoming of people when it comes to having a relationship with him. Curiously, he credits the influence of longtime band mate and chief songwriter Martin Gore, with whom he shares a sometimes edgy partnership, with helping him find the fortitude to lay himself so lyrically bare. Gone are the mocking self-recriminations and gentle self-reflections of his solo debut, Paper Monsters, replaced by an astonishingly stark and honest search for meaning amidst all the chaos that is life on this Earth. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that he should have come to this point, to be making a record that strips off a few layers of rock & roll mythology and exposes the vulnerable, fallible flesh and blood person beneath it all. He survived, of course, and, given a second chance at life, he determinedly set about the business of making the rest of his time matter–in a way that he hadn’t in a very, very long time. In the midst of a tragic and understandably well-publicized pre-Millennial run of decadence and self-destruction, Gahan’s heart literally stopped beating-the result of an overdose in a Los Angeles hotel room. The revered Depeche Mode front man, of course, nearly ran out of time himself. And it is exactly that which makes the title of DAVE GAHAN’s second solo album, Hourglass (Mute/Virgin Records), all the more poignant. There are few professions that force one to so constantly face down the march of time as that of the gloriously precarious job of rock stardom. “They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” - Andy Warhol
#DEPECHE MODE SONGS WRITTEN BY DAVE GAHAN FULL#
Here’s the full press release/biog for “Hourglass”, including Dave’s own comments for each of the ten songs! It’s a good read!
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