1982-05-xx M.A.C. Magazin, Berlin, Germany

Notes

Inspired by the English cassette magazine SFX (which incidentally had an interview with Dave Gahan, see here), Berlin-based cassette magazine M.A.C. released their first issue in May 1982, which contained an interview with Andy Fletcher. Blogspot user headattack has transferred this cassette as 192 kbps MP3 and uploaded it here, which is from where the file below was taken.

Tracklist

[47:23 - 52:12] Interview with Andy Fletcher (with music)

• Time: 04:50 (without music) out of 60:29

Audio

Transcript

Narrator: Und nun: tanz sich tot mit Depeche Mode. [Translation: And now: dance yourself to death with Depeche Mode.]

Interviewer: What impression do you have of the German audience in comparison to the English audience, the English fans?

Andy Fletcher: It's very good, very good, yeah, because they know the songs and, you know. The English audience is a bit younger. Over here it's a wider range of people, sort of about 12 till 25, sort of thing.

Interviewer: Well, I have a question: Vince Clarke left the group, I think he was the songwriter of your group and wrote the hits like New Life. What was the reason for his leaving?

Andy Fletcher: He didn't like what the band was becoming, he thought the band was becoming a kind of poppy teen band, and they don't care about what the music was or what the music was like, they just wanted to touch you and kiss you, and get your tie or mess with your hair or something. After a concert, they wouldn't come up and say, "Oh the concert, the music, was excellent, you really played well." We could have played a concert and have just made a noise and could have done that was well and they would have said we sounded perfectly.

Interviewer: But did you have any problems to replace him?

Andy Fletcher: No. We knew he was gonna leave before he said he was gonna leave. We hadn't had any songs planned, so when we left, we wasn't too bothered.

Interviewer: Critics also call you one of the members of the New Romantics, but I don't think you are.

Andy Fletcher: When we saw the posters, on all the German posters, there was a thing saying "New Romantics on tour", and it was very annoying, because in England we spent a year and a half trying to tell everyone that we weren't anything like New Romantic, there's no such thing like New Romantic or anything. We spent a year and a half trying to tell everyone, and then suddenly you come over to Germany and there's these big posters going around, "New Romantics on tour". And it's really embarrassing, because English bands, English people, will come over and they will see that on the the posters, and the posters will go on for a long time, and it will reflect back on us. It's really bad, no one ever told us or anything. It was also on tickets in Hamburg, it had "Kings of the New Romantic" on them.

Interviewer: Did you sell any records until now in America?

Andy Fletcher: We only sold about 20 to 25.000 albums. But they started to play the Human League albums in a 52 week row and Soft Cell is right behind them, so we're also climbing. The thing is, in American radio stations, the white stations, only play rock music and it's only the black stations that play music like Kraftwerk or stuff they think that sounds a bit darker or black. Because, the record company marketed Kraftwerk as a black group.

Interviewer: Huh?

Andy Fletcher: Yeah. So the black stations could play it, and they think we're black as well.

Narrator: Dieses Interview gab uns Andy Fletcher von Depeche Mode. [Translation: This interview was with Andy Fletcher from Depeche Mode.]