We’ve got to almost destroy what we’ve done to create something new. I’ve been saying we’ve got to push harder. “From Violator onwards, I’ve not been comfortable.
Yet another sought distraction from his increasing sense of estrangement from the band that, since early 1980, had become his life. Another part was making up for a youth marked by abandonment: the death of a stepfather at the age of 9, and the brief return then inexplicable exit of his birth father when he was 11. Today, clean for nine years, Gahan will admit that part of him sought entrance to the mythic rock valhalla that membership of a geeky synth combo from Basildon appeared to deny him. It’s the dictionary definition of insanity.” A drug addict’s life is repeating the same thing every day and expecting a different result. “Classic drug addict stuff – actually believing that the adrenaline that ran through me when I was heading off to cop, that feeling of purpose, actually meant something. “I swore to myself every morning… er, afternoon, when I came to, that I would stop,” he told me two years ago. He was once discovered by his mother and eldest son on the floor of his Santa Monica apartment, with his arms bleeding, scrabbling through bin bags in search of his works. He OD’d regularly, and clinically died on having shot a speedball at LA’s rock hostel, the Sunset Marquis. Between 19 he shot smack diligently, in partnership with then-wife Theresa Conway – previously shacked up with notorious Guns N’ Roses drug mule Steven Adler. The anecdotes are uglier than in any of the rock’n’roll biographies Gahan likes to devour. I called it the Purple Palace, because so many people turned blue there.” In 2005, as Gahan relives his life as an addict, he describes the decadence, deceit and black hole of self-hate: “I lived in this place on Nichols Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. But it was the first Corbijn had heard of the Depeche Mode singer’s violent narcotic descent. And could I do something about it?”Ĭorbijn’s relationship with Depeche Mode went back to 1986, when he directed the promo clip for A Question Of Time, a single off their fifth album, Black Celebration. “He said he’d just met Dave Gahan in a bar in L.A. The content of the conversation was immediately startling. In 1996, Anton Corbijn, rock photographer to the stars, received a phone call from one of his clients. Now if they could just learn to talk to each other.
For 25 years, Depeche Mode have dragged soul-scouring pop out of synthesizers, battling the ogres of smack and Basildon to emerge vindicated.
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