1981-04-28 Sweeneys, Basildon, England, UK
Notes
According to Jonathan Miller in his DM biography, Seymour Stein, cofounder of Sire Records, has attended this concert. Stein said in the documentary for the Speak and Spell remaster DVD in 2006 (with Martin Gore commenting):
"I called my office, I said, "Look, if I get on the Concorde - I just have a hunch about this - if I get on the Concorde and come over, can you guys pick me up and take me to Basildon?" And I said, "You know where it is, it's right off the A1", which of course it wasn't. But they knew where it was, fortunately, at least I had the town right, and I saw them. At that point, there were similar bands around, but I don't know how you could watch them for an hour without falling asleep. Depeche Mode were the first of those bands that were so fucking great live that it was just amazing."
Martin: "We were really shocked that someone from New York would bother to come all the way to Basildon to see us."
Andy Fletcher said in the March 1993 issue of American 'Raygun' Magazine:
"Seymour Stein supported us from the very beginning. He was actually there before Stevo (Some Bizarre) and Daniel. He came to see us in some small club in Basildon. Here was this big U.S. record company president that signed the Talking Heads and the Pretenders coming to this small club that held about 150 people. We didn't even have a dressing room. We had to meet him on the stairway. He signed us from that first single.[1] He's quite an incredible character. Warner Bros has been really good for us [in America]."
Vince Clarke remembers in Jonathan Miller's biography:
"When Daniel was sorting out different deals for us in Europe, Mute wanted to get an American deal, so Seymour flew over to a gig in Basildon. He said, 'By the way I like that song 'The Price Of Love' that you do - it's REALLY good!"
DJ Ian Ritchie was the support act.
References
- ↑ In a large interview done by German Welt newspaper and Musikexpress magazine in 2011, Daniel Miller said that when the album came out, "[Stein] liked what he saw, thought "Speak & Spell" was great and so we were negotiating about the conditions under which he would release the album in America. Nevertheless I got into a complete panic about the possibility that Seymour might have heard about Vince's departure. Thankfully Vince agreed to not make his departure public until the album was out on the market and the tour was finished."
