1993-10-08 Lakefront Arena, New Orleans, LA, USA
Notes
One Caress from this concert was used on the official Songs Of Faith And Devotion Live release. There is currently no audience recording currently circulating from this date.
According to setlist.fm's page for this concert as well as Jonathan Miller's book Stripped (see quote below), Dave suffered from a heart attack near the end of the set and the concert was cut short.
Less than halfway through the North American leg, during the New Orleans Lakefront Arena show of October 8, Dave Gahan allegedly suffered a heart attack. "It was during the last song," the singer recalled. "I literally couldn't hear anything, so I went off. Something was going on - I couldn't breathe, and the other guys were like, 'We've gotta do an encore!' So Martin and Alan decided to go back and do a song, and the only song they could do off-the-cuff was 'Death's Door'."
Martin Gore explained in the commentary track on the DVD of '101' in 2003:
On the - I think it must have been the 'Songs of Faith and Devotion' tour, when Dave was pretty bad, and he had like a heart murmur just before we were due on for the encores in New Orleans. And the only thing that Alan and me had ready was this song that we had done, called 'Death's Door', that was really slow and [with] a piano. I remember we had to go back on, and that was our encore!"
Dave recalled in the March 1997 issue of 'Q' magazine:
"Remember New Orleans? At the end of the gig I couldn't go back for the encore, Mart had to do a song solo while all the paramedics rushed me off to hospital. I'd overdosed, I'd had a heart attack. Next day, we didn't think any more about it."
Andy Fletcher told Hot Press magazine in March 2017:
"There were certain gigs [that were lousy]. I remember one of the funniest was when Dave had a heart murmur on... not 'funny'... I don’t know why I’m using that word... queer... he had a heart murmur on stage in New Orleans and he was rushed off into an ambulance, and then we went straight to the aftershow, where we had various lesbian strippers and everything going on. So you could imagine what [the tour] was like."
Martin Gore told San Francisco Examiner in 2009:
"There were loads of moments [when I realised I had a drinking problem], but they never hit home. I mean, I had seizures one day on a boat in a Louisiana swamp, and fell forward, just by chance. And if I'd have fallen backward, I would've landed in a swamp full of alligators — no joke. But even that didn’t stop me."
The The was the support act.