2 interviste a Martin
Inviato: gio dic 01, 2005 8:57 am
se non le avete già viste, 2 belle interviste.
http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=10&id=7564
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/pop/c ... e-channels
A La Mode
Interview with Martin Gore
11.02.05
By Lawrence Ferber
Depeche Mode have put a spring in their step lately, yet the perennial gay favorites still manage to keep it real…ly dark. Playing The Angel (Sire/Reprise), released October 18th, increases the BPMs compared to their last studio album, 2001’s Exciter, yet continues to lyrically scratch at wounds of the soul and skin on songs like “A Pain That I’m Used To,” “The Darkest Star,” and “Damaged People.”
“I think there are definite reference points to older Depeche Mode records,” says primary songwriter Martin Gore. “But I think it’s quite different from the last two in that it’s a little bit more up-tempo.” The band – Gore, main vocalist David Gahan, and keyboardist Andy Fletcher – are currently on a North American tour that features a futuristic stage and multimedia visuals (compliments longtime collaborator Anton Corbijn) and a mix of songs from Playing the Angel and their extensive back catalog.
Since the band’s members last convened, they each embarked on solo projects. Gore released his second collection of cover tunes, Counterfeit2. Gahan made his songwriting debut with solo disc Paper Monsters. And Fletcher launched a record label, Toast Hawaii, and international DJ career.
Judging from Playing The Angel’s strong, assured (albeit so emotionally vulnerable!) content and sumptuous, innovative electronic melodies (a startling siren-like aural barrage, created by an analog synth filtered through effects, opens the disc), the trio has reassembled with a vengeance. To discuss the album, whether life reflects dark, and super-gay wardrobe, I spoke with Gore by telephone.
This album’s got some groove to it. Were you in a dancing mood this time around?
“[Laughs] I think all that sort of stuff comes out subconsciously. I’ve been DJing a bit over the last couple of years and listening to a lot more dance music. I started DJing at a friend’s bar and Fletcher has also been DJing extensively, traveling all over the world.”
What do you like to spin? Any faves?
“Quite hard techno, minimal house. Not sure what you call it – too many genres, too many names these days. I like James T. Cotton...”
So many of the songs you’ve written have been doomy or gloomy in nature. Do you sabotage your own life to get in that mindset?
“No. When people meet me I think they’re surprised to find out I’m not always angst-ridden. But I think anything that I write comes from the soul. I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth. I don’t write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.”
Does a crappy life make a good album?
“It’s difficult to say. I think that I’m always more influenced and inspired by the darker side of things. I don’t write too many happy songs.”
If you hear that a friend’s got breakup or relationship troubles or problems, do you pry for dirt, like ‘really, tell me more?’ so you can funnel that into your songs?
“Well, I don’t need to because I’ve got relationship problems. I’m going through a divorce.”
Do you feel this divorce affecting you as an artist?
“I think it definitely has affected the album, yeah.”
You better not let her take possession of those unreleased Depeche Mode tapes in the settlement, Martin!
“That’s the best way you’d hear them – if she got hold of them.”
Oh – then I hope you have a crappy lawyer. A couple of numbers, "Introspective" being one, have a creepy Japanese horror movie vibe, like alternative soundtracks for The Ring or Ju-On. I see Japanese dead people!
“You’re the first person to say that! It’s a nice atmospheric piece of music that leads really nicely into ‘Damaged People.’ Generally our music over the years has been very cinematic. It’s surprising we never really got into film soundtracks, but I think it’s probably a lot of work and I’ve heard stories of people doing soundtracks and they think they’ve finished a masterpiece and then ten seconds gets used over dialogue and you can’t even hear it! I suppose that put me off!”
Did working on those recent solo projects affect everyone or change the band’s dynamic?
“Yeah. I think it gave Dave a lot more confidence. He was writing songs for the first time. Now he feels he should be writing for the band. That’s a natural process really – he’s been in the band for twenty-five years and now he’s writing. It’s not like nobody else ever wrote for the band. [Former members] Vince [Clarke] wrote the first album and Alan [Wilder] used to write. I think Dave feels like a more fulfilled member now. And I think [doing Counterfeit2] helped me. I didn’t write songs for a very long time. I wrote the last song for 'Exciter' in 2000. Then I didn’t start again until 2004, so I think I came back to it with a lot more enthusiasm.”
What has been Depeche Mode’s most underrated song in your opinion?
“There’s one I particularly like that got lost because it was just an extra track on [the "Only When I Lose Myself"] single, called ‘Surrender.’”
And most overrated song?
“’People are People.’ It still gets played to death on 80’s stations and it was our first big break in America. It’s not exactly my favorite song that we’ve recorded. Another one of my favorites that wasn’t so overlooked was ‘Home'. I think at the time I was drinking way too much, and it was about accepting that fact.”
Speaking of drinking, does Dave’s messy early 90’s drug period still come up?
“Unfortunately, it comes up all the time. We did a big magazine piece in England. The [writer] was really nice, we gave him access to us for three days; we spent a long time talking about the new album and everything. Then he asked Dave about the whole drug thing and what happens? The article comes out and it’s virtually a diatribe on the whole druggy era. David has not touched any alcohol in… it must be probably like eight or nine years now.”
Let’s move on to the gay thing, then. Which of you has or had the gayest hairstyle?
“It’s a close call. (laughs) I suppose I’ve got to take it for the outfits. There was a leather miniskirt. And I think there was one worse than that, actually, where I wore some kind of leather maxi dress. I don’t know why! Temporary insanity. But we saw some pictures recently where Dave looked particularly gay as well with the crop top T-shirt.”
Did boys wonder if you were gay in school?
“Not as far as I know.”
The Rolling Stones are older than Methuselah, and still rocking on the road. Can you see Depeche Mode doing the same, twenty years from now?
“I have no idea. I didn’t expect us to be around after twenty-five years. When you start a band I don’t believe you’re thinking long-term. So I would like to think we wouldn’t be up there doing it in twenty years time - but I wouldn’t rule it out.”
www.gaywired.com/article....10&id=7564
l'altra :
Still fresh after all these years
Depeche Mode stays relevant with a critically acclaimed new album and an arena tour.
By Steve Hochman, Special to The Times
Martin Gore, the musical architect and primary songwriter of pioneering English electro-pop group Depeche Mode, recounts a surprise that happened to band mate Andy Fletcher last year.
"Andy has been deejaying in clubs a lot, as have I, and he was playing upstairs at a club in Europe somewhere with about 400 people," Gore says. "And after, he went downstairs — and there was a Depeche Mode convention going on with 5,000 people!"
The surprise was not that there was a convention attracting that many people, just that there was one in the same building with Fletcher and he didn't know about it. Depeche Mode's popularity is as strong as ever, especially in Europe, where such gatherings happen on pretty much a monthly basis in one city or another. And in the U.S. the group still has a large, devoted following as well, manifest in a current arena tour, which includes three sold-out Southland shows next week.
That may be surprising to those who think of Depeche Mode as an '80s relic, a band whose navigations of the existential void spoke to a specific generation going through personal turmoil particular to the Reagan-Thatcher era. In Southern California, the group held particular sway in those years as a core act on influential KROQ-FM (106.7).
Gore is gratified to see fans now ranging into their 50s still embracing the music — as well as a new generation of teens that has discovered the band.
"Obviously there are a lot of memories for people around our age who got into the music when they were youngsters," says Gore, 44. "Some of the people seem to be even older than me, and that's getting on now."
But it's not all nostalgia. In the shows, Depeche Mode is proudly spotlighting more than half the songs from its new "Playing the Angel" album, a collection that ranks with its '80s best.
There, perhaps, is the biggest surprise. A quarter of a century into its existence, a point when most pop artists seem to have settled into comfortable mediocrity, Depeche Mode has made an album that stands with the group's best, expanding its emotional and sonic range well beyond the expected dark musings while remaining true to the aesthetics that made it an iconic presence in the first place.
A four-star review in England's Mojo magazine lauds the "brilliant journeys into a world of the fragile and the dysfunctional," while All Music Guide raves, "It is not the kind of album a 25-year-old band is supposed to make."
Don't expect Gore to take any credit, though. Don't even expect him to take a compliment.
Ask him how he managed to keep his creativity at a high level, and he talks about the strong relationship with the band's label — Depeche Mode has been the flagship act for English independent company Mute Records throughout each other's existence. (Warner Bros. Records distributes the band in the U.S.).
"We've been able to move at our own pace," he says.
Press the issue, and he talks about others' contributions, particularly those of producer Ben Hillier, who worked with the band for the first time after having squired Blur and Doves albums, among others.
Ask him again, and he turns the spotlight on singer Dave Gahan, who after gaining songwriting experience with a 2003 solo album made more contributions to this album than he has to any of the group's previous 10.
"Dave wrote three of the songs," Gore says. "I think he feels a far more fulfilled member of the band now, which helps the atmosphere."Only reluctantly does Gore acknowledge his own role.
"The songs come into it," he finally relents, with a deflecting laugh. "I don't mean that in a braggy sense. But you need to write good songs. I think my songs have been universal in a way. People seem to be able to write them into their own lives. That's part of the attraction."
There are a few specifics that played into the focus of the new album. "I've been in the middle of a divorce, which obviously has affected the album in some ways," says Gore, who has lived in Santa Barbara for the last five years. "There are songs, like the single, 'Precious,' that are references to that."
But he cautions fans against reading too much into lyrics. Much has been made over the last decade about supposed tension within the band, especially between Gore and Gahan, whose troubles with a near-fatal drug overdose, subsequent legal consequences and successful recovery treatment were well chronicled.
"Obviously there have been struggles," he says. "But there's never been a time where it got so bad we wanted to call it a day."
But a key factor, he says, is the relationship with the audience.
"We've never had to deal with failure, really," he says. "The moment your record sales start to decline and you start playing to arenas half full, everyone gets disheartened and it leads to the inevitable breakup. We've been lucky."
Will he take at least some credit for that?
Pressed one last time, he simply says, "It's a team effort."
http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=10&id=7564
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/pop/c ... e-channels
A La Mode
Interview with Martin Gore
11.02.05
By Lawrence Ferber
Depeche Mode have put a spring in their step lately, yet the perennial gay favorites still manage to keep it real…ly dark. Playing The Angel (Sire/Reprise), released October 18th, increases the BPMs compared to their last studio album, 2001’s Exciter, yet continues to lyrically scratch at wounds of the soul and skin on songs like “A Pain That I’m Used To,” “The Darkest Star,” and “Damaged People.”
“I think there are definite reference points to older Depeche Mode records,” says primary songwriter Martin Gore. “But I think it’s quite different from the last two in that it’s a little bit more up-tempo.” The band – Gore, main vocalist David Gahan, and keyboardist Andy Fletcher – are currently on a North American tour that features a futuristic stage and multimedia visuals (compliments longtime collaborator Anton Corbijn) and a mix of songs from Playing the Angel and their extensive back catalog.
Since the band’s members last convened, they each embarked on solo projects. Gore released his second collection of cover tunes, Counterfeit2. Gahan made his songwriting debut with solo disc Paper Monsters. And Fletcher launched a record label, Toast Hawaii, and international DJ career.
Judging from Playing The Angel’s strong, assured (albeit so emotionally vulnerable!) content and sumptuous, innovative electronic melodies (a startling siren-like aural barrage, created by an analog synth filtered through effects, opens the disc), the trio has reassembled with a vengeance. To discuss the album, whether life reflects dark, and super-gay wardrobe, I spoke with Gore by telephone.
This album’s got some groove to it. Were you in a dancing mood this time around?
“[Laughs] I think all that sort of stuff comes out subconsciously. I’ve been DJing a bit over the last couple of years and listening to a lot more dance music. I started DJing at a friend’s bar and Fletcher has also been DJing extensively, traveling all over the world.”
What do you like to spin? Any faves?
“Quite hard techno, minimal house. Not sure what you call it – too many genres, too many names these days. I like James T. Cotton...”
So many of the songs you’ve written have been doomy or gloomy in nature. Do you sabotage your own life to get in that mindset?
“No. When people meet me I think they’re surprised to find out I’m not always angst-ridden. But I think anything that I write comes from the soul. I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth. I don’t write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.”
Does a crappy life make a good album?
“It’s difficult to say. I think that I’m always more influenced and inspired by the darker side of things. I don’t write too many happy songs.”
If you hear that a friend’s got breakup or relationship troubles or problems, do you pry for dirt, like ‘really, tell me more?’ so you can funnel that into your songs?
“Well, I don’t need to because I’ve got relationship problems. I’m going through a divorce.”
Do you feel this divorce affecting you as an artist?
“I think it definitely has affected the album, yeah.”
You better not let her take possession of those unreleased Depeche Mode tapes in the settlement, Martin!
“That’s the best way you’d hear them – if she got hold of them.”
Oh – then I hope you have a crappy lawyer. A couple of numbers, "Introspective" being one, have a creepy Japanese horror movie vibe, like alternative soundtracks for The Ring or Ju-On. I see Japanese dead people!
“You’re the first person to say that! It’s a nice atmospheric piece of music that leads really nicely into ‘Damaged People.’ Generally our music over the years has been very cinematic. It’s surprising we never really got into film soundtracks, but I think it’s probably a lot of work and I’ve heard stories of people doing soundtracks and they think they’ve finished a masterpiece and then ten seconds gets used over dialogue and you can’t even hear it! I suppose that put me off!”
Did working on those recent solo projects affect everyone or change the band’s dynamic?
“Yeah. I think it gave Dave a lot more confidence. He was writing songs for the first time. Now he feels he should be writing for the band. That’s a natural process really – he’s been in the band for twenty-five years and now he’s writing. It’s not like nobody else ever wrote for the band. [Former members] Vince [Clarke] wrote the first album and Alan [Wilder] used to write. I think Dave feels like a more fulfilled member now. And I think [doing Counterfeit2] helped me. I didn’t write songs for a very long time. I wrote the last song for 'Exciter' in 2000. Then I didn’t start again until 2004, so I think I came back to it with a lot more enthusiasm.”
What has been Depeche Mode’s most underrated song in your opinion?
“There’s one I particularly like that got lost because it was just an extra track on [the "Only When I Lose Myself"] single, called ‘Surrender.’”
And most overrated song?
“’People are People.’ It still gets played to death on 80’s stations and it was our first big break in America. It’s not exactly my favorite song that we’ve recorded. Another one of my favorites that wasn’t so overlooked was ‘Home'. I think at the time I was drinking way too much, and it was about accepting that fact.”
Speaking of drinking, does Dave’s messy early 90’s drug period still come up?
“Unfortunately, it comes up all the time. We did a big magazine piece in England. The [writer] was really nice, we gave him access to us for three days; we spent a long time talking about the new album and everything. Then he asked Dave about the whole drug thing and what happens? The article comes out and it’s virtually a diatribe on the whole druggy era. David has not touched any alcohol in… it must be probably like eight or nine years now.”
Let’s move on to the gay thing, then. Which of you has or had the gayest hairstyle?
“It’s a close call. (laughs) I suppose I’ve got to take it for the outfits. There was a leather miniskirt. And I think there was one worse than that, actually, where I wore some kind of leather maxi dress. I don’t know why! Temporary insanity. But we saw some pictures recently where Dave looked particularly gay as well with the crop top T-shirt.”
Did boys wonder if you were gay in school?
“Not as far as I know.”
The Rolling Stones are older than Methuselah, and still rocking on the road. Can you see Depeche Mode doing the same, twenty years from now?
“I have no idea. I didn’t expect us to be around after twenty-five years. When you start a band I don’t believe you’re thinking long-term. So I would like to think we wouldn’t be up there doing it in twenty years time - but I wouldn’t rule it out.”
www.gaywired.com/article....10&id=7564
l'altra :
Still fresh after all these years
Depeche Mode stays relevant with a critically acclaimed new album and an arena tour.
By Steve Hochman, Special to The Times
Martin Gore, the musical architect and primary songwriter of pioneering English electro-pop group Depeche Mode, recounts a surprise that happened to band mate Andy Fletcher last year.
"Andy has been deejaying in clubs a lot, as have I, and he was playing upstairs at a club in Europe somewhere with about 400 people," Gore says. "And after, he went downstairs — and there was a Depeche Mode convention going on with 5,000 people!"
The surprise was not that there was a convention attracting that many people, just that there was one in the same building with Fletcher and he didn't know about it. Depeche Mode's popularity is as strong as ever, especially in Europe, where such gatherings happen on pretty much a monthly basis in one city or another. And in the U.S. the group still has a large, devoted following as well, manifest in a current arena tour, which includes three sold-out Southland shows next week.
That may be surprising to those who think of Depeche Mode as an '80s relic, a band whose navigations of the existential void spoke to a specific generation going through personal turmoil particular to the Reagan-Thatcher era. In Southern California, the group held particular sway in those years as a core act on influential KROQ-FM (106.7).
Gore is gratified to see fans now ranging into their 50s still embracing the music — as well as a new generation of teens that has discovered the band.
"Obviously there are a lot of memories for people around our age who got into the music when they were youngsters," says Gore, 44. "Some of the people seem to be even older than me, and that's getting on now."
But it's not all nostalgia. In the shows, Depeche Mode is proudly spotlighting more than half the songs from its new "Playing the Angel" album, a collection that ranks with its '80s best.
There, perhaps, is the biggest surprise. A quarter of a century into its existence, a point when most pop artists seem to have settled into comfortable mediocrity, Depeche Mode has made an album that stands with the group's best, expanding its emotional and sonic range well beyond the expected dark musings while remaining true to the aesthetics that made it an iconic presence in the first place.
A four-star review in England's Mojo magazine lauds the "brilliant journeys into a world of the fragile and the dysfunctional," while All Music Guide raves, "It is not the kind of album a 25-year-old band is supposed to make."
Don't expect Gore to take any credit, though. Don't even expect him to take a compliment.
Ask him how he managed to keep his creativity at a high level, and he talks about the strong relationship with the band's label — Depeche Mode has been the flagship act for English independent company Mute Records throughout each other's existence. (Warner Bros. Records distributes the band in the U.S.).
"We've been able to move at our own pace," he says.
Press the issue, and he talks about others' contributions, particularly those of producer Ben Hillier, who worked with the band for the first time after having squired Blur and Doves albums, among others.
Ask him again, and he turns the spotlight on singer Dave Gahan, who after gaining songwriting experience with a 2003 solo album made more contributions to this album than he has to any of the group's previous 10.
"Dave wrote three of the songs," Gore says. "I think he feels a far more fulfilled member of the band now, which helps the atmosphere."Only reluctantly does Gore acknowledge his own role.
"The songs come into it," he finally relents, with a deflecting laugh. "I don't mean that in a braggy sense. But you need to write good songs. I think my songs have been universal in a way. People seem to be able to write them into their own lives. That's part of the attraction."
There are a few specifics that played into the focus of the new album. "I've been in the middle of a divorce, which obviously has affected the album in some ways," says Gore, who has lived in Santa Barbara for the last five years. "There are songs, like the single, 'Precious,' that are references to that."
But he cautions fans against reading too much into lyrics. Much has been made over the last decade about supposed tension within the band, especially between Gore and Gahan, whose troubles with a near-fatal drug overdose, subsequent legal consequences and successful recovery treatment were well chronicled.
"Obviously there have been struggles," he says. "But there's never been a time where it got so bad we wanted to call it a day."
But a key factor, he says, is the relationship with the audience.
"We've never had to deal with failure, really," he says. "The moment your record sales start to decline and you start playing to arenas half full, everyone gets disheartened and it leads to the inevitable breakup. We've been lucky."
Will he take at least some credit for that?
Pressed one last time, he simply says, "It's a team effort."
!
Fatti assumere! 