Martin lives in Santa Barbara, and Dave is based in New York. “We’d normally take five sessions, but we did this one over two in Santa Barbara, one in New York. How many sessions does an album normally take? He’s really good with sounds and he works really fast. He’s in Simian as well, you know, so he has the electronic angle. “I mean, we liked all his stuff, it’s the sounds of his records. “James is amazing with sounds,” says Fletch, admiringly. Ford has also helmed albums for Foals, Arctic Monkeys and Florence + The Machine. The follow-up to 2013’s platinum-selling Delta Machine, which debuted at No 1 in twelve countries, Spirit marks the band’s first collaboration with producer James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco. My wife is Irish so, as you might imagine, she’s the opposite.” Was that someone else making a joke of me?” “Nah,” Fletch pulls a disbelieving face and shakes his head. I remember one of the funniest was when Dave had a heart murmur on… not ‘funny’… I don’t know why I’m using that word… queer… he had a heart murmur on stage in New Orleans and he was rushed off into an ambulance, and then we went straight to the aftershow, where we had various strippers and everything going on. “Well, I suppose we must have!” he laughs, slapping his knee. So did you play many lousy shows around the time? It was the aftershow that was the most important thing.” In the old days, we never cared about the gig.
I mean, every concert we do, we give 99.999 percent. I mean, it sounds boring when you say ‘We’re very professional’. Were the rest of you on hard drugs, too? “Nah, Martin was more drink, but he still had… you have to think about it as a big smash, you know? No… it was a long time ago and we’re now in a fortunate position.
Heavily addicted to cocaine and heroin, Dave was injecting multiple speedballs on a daily basis. It was like a snowball building up pace, and it just smashed.” He smacks his fist into his palm. Us drinking… then you known just… the aftershows. “Well, it was kinda like a snowball,” observes Fletch. Why did things came to a head on that particular tour? The band had been partying hard for years. I remember Primal Scream supported us and they were shocked at Dave’s behaviour. The Songs of Faith and Devotion Tour was 187 gigs and, unfortunately, I had to pull out of the last leg. “I had a massive nervous breakdown on that tour. It was around this time that an exasperated Alan Wilder quit the band for good.įletch winces slightly when Hot Press asks about that messy period of Depeche Mode’s history, but doesn’t shy away from talking about it. Gahan might have been the most OTT member in the hedonism stakes, but Fletch and Gore have also had their own problems. Back in the early 1990s, during their tour to support 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion album, things got badly out of hand… to the point that frontman Gahan actually died of a drugs overdose in the back of an ambulance in Los Angeles (needless to say, the paramedics revived him from that particular flatline). But some of it they presumably didn’t enjoy. Infamously, Depeche Mode have enjoyed some serious decadence in their time. While Fletch mightn’t look like a rock star, he and his two bandmates certainly have the right credentials. We’re meeting on this balmy London afternoon to discuss their 14th studio release, Spirit, but we’ll get around to that shortly. Since first forming in their native Basildon in 1981, synth warriors Depeche Mode – currently a trio with Dave Gahan and Martin Gore – have sold well over 100 million studio albums in their lengthy career. However innocuous he looks, though, the reality is that Fletch is a founding member of one of the world’s biggest rock bands. Nothing about him even remotely whispers ‘rock star’. We might be meeting in a luxury suite in Brown’s Hotel, an exclusive five-star establishment deep in the heart of Mayfair, but the 55-year-old keyboardist/bassist looks as though he’d be far more at home supping pints of lager in a quiet corner of a child-friendly Essex pub.
It’s a great situation.”Ĭasually dressed in a black sweatshirt, blue jeans and trainers, the bespectacled, sandy-haired and charmingly laid back Fletcher – better known to millions of DM fans as ‘Fletch’ – probably isn’t exaggerating their capacity for anonymity. People know the name Depeche Mode, but the average person on the street doesn’t know what a member of Depeche Mode looks like. We very seldom get recognised by people, but when they do they’re always very nice. “We’re not celebrities,” declares Andrew Fletcher of Depeche Mode, speaking in a strong Sarf London accent.