1980-12-01 Bridge House, London, England, UK
Notes
This concert is another previously unknown one, found in Martin's scrapbook shown in the "Making The Universe" short film and in an NME advert. Thanks to Michael Rose for the discovery. Zeitgeist was the support act.
This is the second time Daniel Miller saw them live (the first time being 1980-11-12 Bridge House), and said on at least two occasions:
"I took a couple of people with me including NON – Boyd Rice – who was a big pop fan, and my first employee, Hildi Svengard. They both said: ‘Daniel, you’ve got to do this.’ I went back and said to the band: ‘Do you fancy doing a single?’ They basically said, “Okay.” I just said, “We’ll do a one-off single and see how it goes.”"
Daniel Miller and Daryl Bamonte explained this moment a bit better in 2011 (translated):
Daniel Miller: "At [this] concert at the Bridge House, I then met Stevo Pearce in the crowd. He was also interested in Depeche and wanted to bring them to his label Some Bizarre. I had already met Soft Cell before I saw the Depeche guys for the first time, and was still not sure if I wanted to work with them. Stevo said to me: "Okay, I'll take Soft Cell, you take Depeche." After the concert, I met the guys and proposed to them to record a single with them. We sealed the deal with a handshake. No contract, no attorneys, fifty-fifty. By the way, that's how we kept it until '89/'90: until then, no written contract between Mute and Depeche Mode existed."
Daryl Bamonte: "After Daniel had offered the boys a single-deal, we drove home, and no one said a word. Nothing. No screaming, no drinking. Andy and Martin simply went to work the next morning, as if nothing happened."
Vince Clarke remembers the competition between Stevo Pearce and Daniel Miller in Jonathan Miller's 'Stripped' biography:
"[...] Stevo came backstage and said, 'Look, we're doing the Some Bizzare tour, are you interested in doing it? And are you interested in signing to Some Bizzare?' Then Daniel [Miller] came back as well; we kind of knew him because of 'T.V.O.D.' [the B-side of 'Warm Leatherette']. It was a case of [going with] either. Stevo said, 'Look, if you sign with Some Bizzare, I can get you a support slot with Ultravox.' So it was a real heavy — duty decision, you know! But we decided, for some reason, that we'd go with Daniel. And then Daniel said, 'We'll just do a single.' We would have signed any deal, we just wanted to put a record out," said Vince. "The band unanimously conceded that Daniel Miller was the first one that we could trust; he said that if either party didn't like the other, we'd call it a day."
Daniel Miller, giving details on the proposal, in 2001:
"There was some kind of conversation, with me saying ‘you could be a pretty big pop band, what you’re doing is fantastic, it’s really new but it’s still pop. We’ve never had a pop hit. But I really believe in what you do. Let’s put out a single and see how it goes. I don’t want to tie you down to anything more than that because I don’t know what I can do.’ That was it really, it was as simple as that."
NME advertisement; credit to Michael Rose and Depeche Mode Classic Photos and Videos.
