1994-04-04 Olympia, São Paulo, Brazil
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Notes
This was Daryl Bamonte's first show as a replacement for Andy Fletcher, who left the tour due to a nervous breakdown.
Mute Records had sent out a press release stating as follows:
New York, NY, April 5th 1994 - DEPECHE MODE keyboardist Andrew Fletcher will leave the band's world tour to attend to business matters relating to their upcoming North American tour. Daryl Bamonte's an associate and confidante of the band for nearly 14 years, will stand in for Fletcher for DEPECHE MODE's Latin American tour in April. [...]
Dave Gahan told MTV on 1994-05-20:
"[Andy] has been a little bit unwell and everything, and the tour, and his wife is also having a second baby, so he went to spend some time in New York. So Daryl Bamonte is with us, who has been a friend and associate for about 20 years and my friend for about 20 years."
Andy Fletcher explained the nervous breakdown in the March 1997 issue of Q Magazine:
"With the targets, the deadlines, the partying, the excess, I just lost it. I had an obsessive-compulsive disorder which made me displace this stress into worries about bodily symptoms. This sounds terrible, but I thought I had a brain tumour. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think, this headache wouldn't go away. I had tests. It wasn't a brain tumour, it was a breakdown. Back home, I went into hospital for four weeks. I've recovered since. I took up yoga, relaxation. I think I'm a much stronger person now. Hopefully, there won't be a repeat."
Daryl was first told of the news that he would replace Andy on 1994-03-19, and was given only two weeks to prepare. Here is Daryl Bamonte's entry for the famous Devotional Tour Diary, published in Bong magazine in 1994:
April 3rd, SAO PAULO: We just did our first run through as a 'band', which I thought went very well but in the "only perfection will do" world of these fascists, it obviously never. Just because I took too long fading the bass out on 'Stripped' – Martin's looking at me as if it’s all been a big mistake but fortunately Dave laughed and Alan remained quietly confident.
April 4th: SAO PAULO: This is just SO not funny. There’s loads of people screaming and they're all going to be looking at me, waiting for a mistake so they can laugh and cheer and point and hold up banners saying "Bamonte's a Wanker" in Portugese but I’ll understand it anyway… I wish I’d never agreed to this and I wish I could stand still.
BONG Magazine issue #21, published in July 1994, reported:
Olympia Stadium in Sao Paulo (Brazil) was the first venue where Daryl Bamonte was to perform with Depeche Mode as a stand in for Andy Fletcher. When he was about to leave the hotel for the show carrying a keyboard, one of the hotel guests, apparently very nice old lady, said: "I hope you're much better than the band we had down here last night." At first, no one knew what she was talking about but then they found out that she had mistaken Daryl for a member of the resident hotel band. They found it very amusing.
In March 2018, Depeche Mode were asked what they remembered from this trip, and Martin Gore replied, "I remember the endless sea of buildings seen from the plane when we were arriving," while Dave Gahan simply replied "Only good things."
Last gig on this tour to perform "Judas" and, allegedly, "Fly on the Windscreen" (two times only on this tour, next performance will occur only 15 years later, in 2009).
