2001-08-27 Press Conference, Radisson SAS Hotel, Tallinn, Estonia

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Notes

Dave Gahan gave a short press conference at his hotel in Tallinn before their concert in that city. depechemode.ee typed out a transcript of that press conference (see below). A fragment of this press conference has been circulating the web ever since, which is the last question.

• Duration: 02:55

Audio

Audio transcript

Dave: Hi, How are you all doing today? I think we'll wait for Martin... Just me? Oh, okay. Just got me today.

Question: How are you?

Dave: How am I? It’s a good question I’m good. We just finished the tour in America.

Question: How it was for you?

Dave: It was very good.

Question: How’s your feelings?

Dave: How’s my feelings? It was very successful. I mean we toured, we did 40 shows I think, it was something like that. In North America and Canada. Great reviews and stuff like that. It’s a good show. We have a good band together. It’s myself and Martin of course, and Fletch. Additionally to that we have Peter Gordeno playing keyboards again with us - most of the keyboard stuff. He played songs last tour as well. Christian Eigner playing drums again. We got Andrew Phillpott making a lot of stuff with samples and stuff off stage. Two girls Jordan Bailey and Georgia Lewis singing backing vocals. Counts quite a full sound. Martin is playing a great guitar. We’ve been a lot of time together on stage. And it’s really helped the performance comes out better. It’s been a lot of fun, which I hope we have in future on tour as well. For me being on stage is like when all come together, the rest of the day… to be honest, is waiting to do the show, sort of going to the place when you do it.

Question: I love you...

Dave: Oh, thank you very much.

Question: Are you gonna perform more of your old hits or songs from your new album?

Dave: Well, this tour is about Exciter. Depeche Mode is continuing story, it’s not about the past. On the last tour we were specifically touring with our Singles album. We were touring with an album that was compilation of hits (if you like) over the years. It was a lot of fun, but this tour, once again, is about the album Exciter. So, yes, we will be performing a number of songs from that album. I think 5 or 6 songs. And then we go back as far as Music For The Masses - we’ll play some songs from there, from Black Celebration and everything ahead of that, but we don’t want to go back any further that Music For The Masses. This show is about two hours, little longer that two hours I think.

Question: Are you gonna change the playlist tomorrow?

Dave: Are we gonna change the playlist? Oh, you don’t like it?

Question: Will it be different from American shows?

Dave: No, it’s the same show. Sometimes we change a couple of songs. Generally, once we’ve got into performance and it seems to work….. well, the songs change a little bit each night - that’s what I’m really enjoying about this tour. They’re always a little different depending on what Martin does with his guitar, depending on what Christian plays with the drums: sometimes he’s playing harder, sometimes he plays different rhythms. It makes me to do different things with my body and with my voice. Peter Gordeno has been playing on songs like Freelove, which will be performed from Exciter, he’s added some new melodies in there and stuff. You know, songs are developing. I feel more as we play more. To be honest, I feel this a lot about more when we make a record. I think songs get better as we perform them more. And I opened up more and I get more relaxed. When you’re in a studio you got a lot of time, time to experiment and also time to really…..spend too much time like fiddling around. And I think sometimes you lose some of the spontaneity in the studio that you only get live, when you only get one chance with that song, and I like that. I think sometimes it’s a lot more special than all the screwdriver work that you can do in the studio. Not saying that album isn’t good, the album is good, but I enjoy what we do live more than what we do in the studio. I find it more exciting. And it’s kinda like after you perform the song in the studio you get chance to relax live. Songs from our new album like When The Body Speaks when Martin plays guitar with me - in the studio we recorded that song when pretty much it was Martin playing a riff on guitar and me singing and Mark Bell was producing the album. We could feel the energy in the room was good, so we just recorded it quickly. And that became the really the basis of that song... and it’s pretty much like it’s live too. Changed as a little live - Martin comes right over next to me to play guitar, we’re together, it’s cool, I like that.

Question: Do you know how many fans you have in Estonia? A lot of them went to the last concert as well. Do you co-operate with any of them or with fanclubs in Baltic States? What country do you think has the biggest number of fans?

Dave: That’s very difficult to say really. We’re very fortunate to have a lot of fans everywhere, that seem to be very excited about what we do. It’s nice to make new fans. I think we’ve been making some new fans on this tour, especially in America, where most of the shows, to be honest, apart of Tallinn, is pretty much sold out :-). If to say where the fans are more aggressive - I guess in Germany, then again like France as well. Every country is slightly different depending on the size of the country. In America the album is selling very well - it’s already gold, it has 500 000 sales. We just about to released the second single. It’s still early to say really, the album is doing very well everywhere.

Question: Fad Gadget is supporting you on the European tour. You were kinda supporting them 20 years ago. How do you feel about it?

Dave: I think it’s great. To be honest I didn’t know that until a little while ago. He’s started doing some shows again and performing again, which is great. He’s been always a great performer. And definitely … when I was a teenager and tried to find some new music to listen to and come to clubs in London playing different kind of music I listened to David Bowie, Roxy Music, some German music like Kraftwerk. There were handful of 45s singles which you could buy - Fad Gadget, Normal. So, he became quite an influence in a style of music really. When we first started using synthesisers, stuff became more appealing to us because we couldn’t really play any other instruments that well :-). It was like you get some noises out of these instruments, we always found sound more interesting that the type of instruments that it comes from. Over the years we got better using our instruments. I hope I got better using my voice, Martin is definitely got better on guitar, more able to play. You learn in the studio to use the technology better.

Question: Rumours about your solo album are floating around. Any comments on that?

Dave: Yeah, I hope to start recording in January. I have dozen songs demo’d. I wrote the songs with a friend of mine in New York - guy called Knox Chandler. We wrote all these songs together over the last year, couple of songs before that. While waiting for Martin to write some songs I decided to aid some ideas myself, and someone suggested I work with Knox. We got together and we just click together real quick. I just wanted to demo a couple of songs with him and asked for his help. After a while we sat down together, we realised that we will write songs together. It was a lot of fun, we were really enjoying doing that. His main instrument is a cello and he also plays guitar. Most of the songs we programme using Pro Tools. It’s a much looser sound than Depeche Mode. At the moment anyway I haven’t decided whom I’m gonna work with yet, but there is a couple of musicians I want use. I’m hoping that it will come out at the end of next year.

Question: Some Depeche Mode have said that the last album Exciter is quite different from old ones...

Dave: I hope so.

Question: They say they almost don’t recognise it’s Depeche Mode. How would you comment on that?

Dave: I don’t know. I think that’s a good thing, you know. Sometimes I feel like we repeat ourselves all the times, to be honest. And I take it as a compliment, really, that we’re doing something different. Really wouldn’t wanna become a parody of ourselves. Just to be generating the same kind of music year after year, it’s not interesting to me at all. What’s interesting to me is working with different people. I think that could be the influence on that sound that different is Mark Bell, who produced the album. He was very instrumental building the sound of Exciter. Since Alan left the band (he was very musical)… Martin writes great songs, I’m trying to use my voice at the best of my ability to set an atmosphere on these songs. Then we need somebody who can musically direct us and takes the songs to a different place. So, Mark Bell was become that person with Exciter. If we work with him again, who knows what we would do. That’s a kind of a hole, that Alan is not there. I think when Alan was with us we would go to different directions. We reached some point, where we couldn’t go any further really. I think dangerous when you’re in a band for so long is that you start to have roles. You stick to that role and don’t want to go cross over that boundary with somebody else. If you’ve been creative in any way, you just express yourself and be heard. It’s just too hard sometimes doing that when you’re in the band. It’s something that we’ve created for ourselves. I think with Exciter Martin and I collaborate a little bit more. I definitely worked very hard with my voice. For my anyway I had to push myself a lot of harder creatively than I’ve ever had before. There is no point for me I believe in making another Depeche Mode record unless we try something new, working with new people.

Question: Thank you!

Dave: Thanks you all for coming down. Hope you enjoy the show.