2001-05-23 The Morning Show, Triple J, Sydney, Australia

Notes

Francis Leach interviewed Martin Gore over the phone for his Morning Show on Australian radio channel Triple J. According to Triple J's website via Archive.org, the interview was originally broadcast in two parts on May 23rd and 25th, 2001. The interview was uploaded, in interspersed segments, on Triple J's website for an hour long special in 2023. Those segments have been cut out and re-uploaded below, along with a transcript.

• Duration: 04:11 minutes

Audio

Transcript

Martin Gore: I think that we just came along at the right time. I think we were there with the first few alternative bands that started getting played a lot on alternative radio, which basically mushroomed. Alternative radio came out of the whole college radio scene, which was really tiny. Then suddenly, it just ballooned and suddenly there were kids all over America who were desperate for this alternative music because they were sick of listening to this horrible rock music, REO Speedwagon and Boston and Journey that they'd been listening to for years and years and years. So we were shocked when we went there in 1985, because we didn't expect to be selling out these huge places, and suddenly we were.

[...]

Francis Leach: What about the relationship between Depeche Mode and techno and house music? It seems that, suddenly also, you were name checked around that time as a real influence on those scenes.

Martin Gore: I think the nice thing now is that we seem to be cited as influences by people in really diverse areas of music. For quite a while now, we've had people in from Detroit and Chicago, and techno and house scene, saying that we were very influential to them. And I think that was mainly because of the way we made music, because we were early electronic pioneers.

Francis Leach: At home in Britain you've always had it tough with the British music press, and even on those singles compilations you took great delight in publishing both the good and bad reviews you got. Are you starting to see finally that you're being shown some respect? Is that satisfying?

Martin Gore: I think that, for a while now, we have been shown quite a lot of respect. So far the reviews we've seen for the new album have been generally very good. So it's a shame really because we don't get the old really funny ones like we used to get.

Francis Leach: Oh there's some beautiful ones on the inside of that first compilation.

Martin Gore: Yes. "Just can't get enough. I can, you will." That was it.

[...]

Francis Leach: With Dave's problems over the last 10 years how hard has it been not to walk away from it?

Martin Gore: I think there was only really one period where it got so bad that I felt that we weren't going to be capable of carrying on and that was during Ultra where Dave didn't seem physically capable of actually singing at that point. We went to New York, we tried to record a ton of vocals, we got one vocal done in six weeks and then he went back to California and we said "Why don't you try and sort yourself out, get a vocal coach." And then the following week, I hear on the radio that he's overdosed and died for two minutes. At that point I just thought, "He's obviously not taken it very seriously and I don't think he's going to be physically capable of finishing this record." That was the only really bad point.

[...]

Martin Gore: Because we grew up in public, I mean, we've got a lot of dodgy pictures, dodgy interviews, even some dodgy records, but that's just something we have to live with. We're not going to regret too much. Yeah, somehow we're still here. Had we not done some of those things, maybe we wouldn't be here.

Francis Leach: Are there particular periods that you'd like to have scrubbed from the memory or particular photo shoots or videos?

Martin Gore: The worst photo that we ever had taken, for me personally, was this one where I was wearing some kind of leather dress with a cowboy hat and pearls and thick black lipstick and black eyes. And I think the photographer took one look at us and thought, "My God, they look ridiculous. How can I make them look stupid?" So he said, "Do you mind standing with this picture of Einstein?"

Francis Leach: And of course you said, "Yes, I'd love to do that."

Martin Gore: We didn't think he could possibly be taking the piss at the time.

Francis Leach: But you did have fun, didn't you, playing with gender roles and with SNM imagery as well? Was that just play or was there a serious exploration of that stuff going on for you?

Martin Gore: I still don't know today why I really did that. It was fun at the time. I enjoyed doing it. It's tough now, I've got two children. They hate seeing pictures of me wearing skirts and dresses. And I've got no excuse, really. I don't know what I can tell them.