1993-04-23 Rock Over London, syndicated, USA

Notes

Rock Over London was a London-based syndicated radio show distributed by Radio Ventures for the USA market. Host Paul Sexton broadcast an segment dedicated to the release of 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion', using parts of the EPK hosted by Paul Gambaccini which can be listened to in full here.

• Duration: 8:53 minutes

Audio

Transcript

Martin: At the moment I think everybody expects us to come out with a techno album, like a hard dance album, but I think there's so much of that music around at the moment and the song's really getting lost, so I don't think I consciously sat down and tried to react against that. But I think it's just something that you do because you listen to the radio, you go to clubs, and you're just like immersed in this same sort of music everywhere you go, that you go home, and for me I think that when I sit down and write a song it just comes out differently because I want to hear something different.

Martin: I think we have to get things right after – I can't remember what it is now – ten albums or so. It just takes longer until everybody's happy with the end result. Your standards go up, and also you've tried so many things that to be experimental and to do things that are different for us just takes longer.

Alan: There's been big changes in each individual member of the group, which I couldn't sum up in a few sentences. But particularly over the last few years I think, since we've got to our thirties, and you can see within everybody that certain aspects of their lives have become much more important to them. What with having had a significant break away from each other before we started making this record, when we came back together you could really see the changes within everybody.

Dave: Really during the making of that record and touring with it, a lot of things changed in my life. I found myself breaking down a lot of things that were no longer giving me anything at all apart from heartache and grief, to be quite honest. So I tried to change everything, and I fell in love, and flew away to another country and got married and everything, and started a new life, really.

Martin: Yep, [Condemnation] is one of the tracks that we used other people on, backing singers, gospel singers; but it is actually sung in a very gospel quartet style, old gospel quartet style. And we basically worked out the parts and sang them, we didn't sample vocals off, we just sang the parts like a quartet. So it was very interesting to do that, and I think Dave's given his best vocal performance ever on that track.

Alan: We managed to find a good environment, we did that particular vocal in Madrid, and the house where we set the studio up had a very echoey tiled room down in the garage, and he sang down there, and he enjoyed singing in that space – just the way the room set off the sound of his voice, was pleasing to him and therefore he sang well.

Dave: To me, that song is definitely the best vocal that I've ever… the best lyrics, I think, and melody that I've ever been given to sing, That's the song that I wish I could have written. It was one of the first songs that we done out in Madrid, I just felt everything that I was saying was making sense, and it was kind of breaking down and crushing or opening up new things for me, breaking down old things, and it was kind of like getting to the end of it, and when I heard it back I just thought, you know, it sounds great! And Flood, and everybody in the studio was like… I could tell, there was a feeling when I walked back into the control room everybody was like, “That was really good.” And that's the first song I would have liked everybody to hear first, because I just think we captured something really really special.

Martin: There were people that I was really influenced by when I was growing up; I think I really used to like Gary Glitter, yeah I think that was my inspiration when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen when you're probably at your most influential. And when I got a little bit older, I got into people like, I really like Jonathan Richman, things like that. Probably a bit strange really, it's not what people expect me to like.

Alan: I'm sure there are just as many people now that are interested in making music as there were when I was growing up. The reason I got involved really was because it was in the family – I was encouraged by my family to learn the piano, which I did, as a young lad, and that just evolved into interest in popular music as opposed to classical music, which presumably they expected me to be interested in or to follow my brother through – my two brothers are both pianists, and I was sort of expected to follow suit. But for some reason I got interested in blues music and rock'n'roll.

Alan: I think most successful groups have a unique blend, if you like, that chemistry thing. And I'm sure we do have that, but we also have had the type of problems that you talk about, it's just that you don't hear about it, I'm sure. You always have internal wrangles; you always have internal problems. There isn't a group that exists that hasn't had that, and we're no different in that respect, but we tend to keep that kind of thing fairly private because it's not for anyone else's ears really. But generally speaking we've managed, as you say, to delegate it and allocate our roles in quite a new way, a way that works, and most of the time we're happy like that.

Martin: I think… obviously we have our disagreements, and after thirteen years you know everybody's personality so well, and when there are disagreements you can predict how they're going to go. But I think we get on as well as we can after thirteen years, which is… That makes it sound bad, but we actually get on well.

Dave: To be honest I find it a little bit sad that I haven't become much closer to the other people that I work with, and have worked with for a lot of years. I'd like to have changed some of the things that we done, in that... you know, our relationship: to me it's really important, what we have, the whole atmosphere that Depeche Mode creates when they're in a room together, as much as, sometimes, I hate it, I love it so much as well. And each person I love, as well.

Lineage

Original 'Rock Over London show 93-17' in-house CD bought from eBay by DMLiveWiki in July 2025.