60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Enjoy the Silence”—Depeche Mode

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Rob looks back at his college radio DJ days while diving into Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Craig Jenkins Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Abou Kamara Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Follow the show now on Spotify. And do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. There are 10 to 15 random ass mid-90s alternative rock songs with drawn-out endings that still trigger in me to this day a great deal of. personal anxiety. Drawn out endings to alternative rock songs from the mid-90s that are random ass. That sentence doesn't work as well in reverse, but I mean every word. When I say random ass, I mean it. This is the Chicago alternative rock band, Catherine, not Catherine Weill from, you know,

England, but just Catherine from Chicago. This song is called Four-leaf Clover from their 1996 album, Hot Saki and Bedtime Stories. We got then Smashing Pumpkin's bassist Darcy Retsky on backing vocals here because she was married to Catherine drummer Carrie Brown. At the time, this is all the context for this song that we require today. All you really need to know is that this song is slowly fading out. The last 60 seconds is just, I've made, I've made up my over and over. And this fade out, which I will remember for the rest of my life. is triggering in me right now a great deal of personal anxiety. Because when this song finally ends, I have to talk on the air at my college radio station. Fall of 1996. I'm a tremulous freshman at Ohio University. Not that one, the other one. And for my only extracurricular activity

of any consequence, I sign up to DJ at ACRN. 99.3 FM. Athens only alternative. Not that Athens, not the other Athens either, the other Athens in Ohio. I am trembling in the glorified closet that constitutes the ACRN Air Studio, 1996 ass mixing board, 1996 ass CD players. We got weird eight track type cart machines to play the ad. We got a giant overstuffed Florida ceiling CD shelf taking up the whole back. wall looming behind me as I tremble. My chattering teeth are way too close to the microphone. I got my cheap headphones on and I am waiting for this goddamn song to end. I've made, I've made up my, but also I am terrified for the moment when this goddamn song finally ends because then I have to do

my rap in college DJ parlance. I have to go in New Rock, ACRN, Athens only alternative. And then tell you the songs I just played and the songs I'm about to play. Maybe throw out a few jokes, a little banter, perhaps, talk about the weather. Show some personality. Have fun with it. I'm not having fun. Could anybody hear me? No. ACRN in 1996 was broadcast by something called cable radio, a very technical term that means literally nobody was listening and you couldn't either. Nonetheless, for the first several months of my college radio DJ career. Holding down the coveted 4.30 a.m. to 7 a.m. slot, I am terrified. Every time I have to talk and I internalize. I grow to fear every song that's playing as I stand there

waiting to talk and I grow to especially fear of the drawn-out endings to these songs. Yo, I remember vividly the very first time I ever spoke on the air at my college radio station. my first shift, my first rap, my first fade out. The first song playing as I sat there with my headphones and my microphone and my chattering teeth waiting for the song to end. The song was called Infidels Parentheses When Your Hips Came Loose by a band called Mind Science of the Mind. And I think you know I'm not making that up because that is the most fucking laborious

song title and band name imaginable. Y'all remember the self-titled 1996 debut from Mind Science of the Mind featuring members of Shutter to Think the Dam Builders and Helium. I need you to picture me at 18 listening to this song end and trying to cite myself up to say

New Rock, ACRN, Athens only alternative. And my voice squeaked when I said it. I reverted back to puberty. I was like, New Rock, Casey. My roommate, Gene was actually listening back in my dorm room, and Gene made fun of me for weeks. My voice squeaked as I informed my devoted listeners that the song was called Infidels parentheses When Your Hips Came Loose, Laborious. ACRN back then, we had a giant binder of songs you could play,

broken down by heavy rotation, medium rotation, and light rotation, right? and infidels by Mind Science of the Mind was light rotation, I'm pretty sure. But whoever typed it in, mistyped the song title. It was listed as infields, not infidels. And I was like, is this a baseball song? So it's quite possible that I also misidentified the first song I ever played on college radio. I sucked at college radio for months. Arguably I sucked the whole time.

But at first, I inarguably sucked. This trembling as the song fades out. situation went on for months. There's Rob the DJ, all quaking with fear as every song ends. Novakene for the soul by the Eels, for example. At some point here, I better start talking. New Rock, A.C.R.N. Athens only alternative. Whoever you are by Gaggy Ta. I love this song.

I still love this song. In an extremely 1996 scheme to promote this song, Gaggy Ta had a phone number you could call or the answering machine or whatever would just play this song on a loop and I used to call that number the bare naked ladies played a show that Ohio University my freshman year

and Gaggy Ta opened and I had a fantastic time but I did not enjoy the last 10 seconds of whoever you are because at some point I better start talking do you want to hear me I have old tapes of me I kind of wish I didn't. I really wish I didn't, actually,

because honestly, I'd forgotten what my original college radio DJ name was, and it is mortifying. And this is probably going to go down as the single most embarrassing moment of this whole show for me, but let's do it real quick before I change my mind. I always forget about this part of the song. It's like a lounge act or something. I don't know. It's kind of interesting, I suppose.

from their new disc, Adam and Eve. This is Catherine Wea with Delicious, right here on ACR and Athens Only Alternative. Before that, a whole mess of tunes, I don't know, a coolishaker, filter, REM, et cetera, et cetera. It was a nice little block, if I do say so myself. My name is Shaft. Shaft. What? Hey!

Listen, it was ironic. All right? It was self-aware. I was attempting to be self-aware. I was 18. Wow. Wow. An 18-year-old white kid playing Kula Shaker on the radio and calling himself shaft.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Eventually the station managers came to me and were like, you got to stop calling yourself Shaft. That is fucking ridiculous. And I was like, but it's ironic. And they were like, yeah. I'm doing pretty well otherwise here, though, right? Other than stumbling over the word alternative and apparently playing filter and REM back-to-back, I'd say I'm kicking ass, DJ-wise.

My name is Shaft, wishing you a happy reading day. Good luck on all your finals. If anyone here is taking Japanese 111. The number is 593-227-6. Help me. If I knew how to say I'm screwed in Japanese, I would. but for now I'll just say this is Luscious Jackson and I'll see you all later

Listen to how relatable I am Man just wrapping my ass off Japanese Catherine Wheel Luscious Jackson I'm a man of the people I'm a college radio DJ And one undeniable highlight

Of the shaft era Of my college radio career Is when I discover this band called Failure When I say I discover failure, I mean this song, Sergeant Politeness is listed in my little DJ binder, medium rotation probably, so I play it. And this is for sure one of the 10 to 15 songs where I trembled during the outro the first couple times. And then one day I'm like, actually, this song

kicks ass. And then I start playing other failure songs that kick even more ass. New Rock, ACRN, Athens only alternative. My name's Shaft for some reason. And that was stuck on you by failure. Failure from Los Angeles, toured with Tool a little bit in early days. Their third album from 1996 is called Fantastic Planet. Space rock, heavy distortion, lots of guitar pedals. Also, a few drug references. I didn't get right away. Maybe don't ask Shaft what he thought the song called Dirty Blue Bloons was about,

a birthday party maybe. And there are days when Fantastic Planet is still my absolute favorite album from the 1990s. and today is one of those days. You better believe I played air guitar and also air drums, sometimes simultaneously while playing the nurse who loved me on the air at ACRN. And you better also believe that one time I played air guitar and or air drums so hard while DJing that I knocked the station headphones off my head and broke them, which was nearly as embarrassing as my DJ name,

At various points in the professional career, I was still allowed to embark on after all of this occurred. My job is involved mastering the dark art of music discovery, figuring out how to get people into new music, this mystical and elusive word, discovery. And I'm here to tell you that in the mid-90s, music discovery often worked like this. You hear and or play a song on the radio. It scares you at first, for personal reasons. But then you get to liking the song, then you get to loving the song. Then, if you're a college radio DJ, you play other songs from that album and love those too. Then you go buy that album for yourself at the campus record store for $20.

Then you play that record in your dorm room 500 times, and it becomes a permanent part of your identity. And then one day you discover, to your unending delight that your new favorite band also did, an absurdly dope cover of a Depeche Mode song. This is not one of those elitist knucklehead deals where a cool underground guitar band transforms and therefore validates a big dance pop radio hit. This song was always fantastic. This song was always cool. I knew that even back when I didn't know shit about shit otherwise. Let's just say that failure's cover of this song was a shocking and delightful convergence of my many interests.

You got to picture me. at 19 or 20 or so, a bit worldlier and more sophisticated than good old 18 year old shaft, but I have not yet endured 500,000 movie trailers. Soundtrack by vastly inferior, intense melodramatic slowed

down, distorted guitar rock covers of dance pop songs and whatnot. And so therefore, this shit is extra, extra, blowing my mind. You got to picture me hearing this next stupendous rad part for the very first time. You got to picture me playing air guitar and air drum simultaneously

this morning when I listened to this for the 50,000th time. I almost drove my many van off the road listening to that yesterday. I don't mind telling you I am not embarrassed. I am virtually unembarrassable at this point. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 86th episode of 60th. songs that explain the 90s. And this week, we are talking about Enjoy the Silence. By Depeche Mode. Yes, the Depeche Mode original, the superior version, to be

clear, that failure cover kicks 12 different kinds of ass, but I don't think those dudes will mind if I say that ain't nobody in that band can sing like Dave Gahn. Words can especially only do harm when I say them, or attempt to pronounce them,

names as well. That's Depeche Mode frontman Dave G-A-H-A-N, spelled G-A-H-A-N, for my next trick. I will attempt to pronounce Dave's name correctly, but not in like a humiliatingly ostentatious I went to college in Ohio-type manner. Do you get me? This will be fine. That's enjoy the silence. From Depeche Mode's seventh studio album, Violator, released in March 1990. Enjoy the silence is the band's only top 10 song in America on the Billboard Hot 100. Violator is only the band's first of what will turn out to be many top 10 albums in America. Seven full-length studio records already by 1990. We better get to work.

Depeche Mode formed in the town of Baselden in the county of Essex in the east of England in 1980. Original lineup, Vince Clark, Andy Fletcher, Martin Gore, and Dave Gahn. concept, what if punk rock, but with synthesizers. I'm paraphrasing. I'm exaggerating. That's mildly obnoxious. But at the very least, Depeche Mode in 1980 are confrontational in spirit. In instrumentation, they play synthesizers. Often they play synthesizers exclusively. This is weird for 1980. Dave Gahn, talking to Rolling Stone in 1990, says, I think without knowing it, we started doing something completely different. We had taken these instruments. because they were convenient. You could pick up a synthesizer, put it under your arm, and go to a gig. You plug directly into the PA. You didn't need to go through an amp, so you didn't need to have a van. We used to go to gigs on trains. He also says, at this time, everybody was using electronics in a very morbid, gloomy way. Suddenly, here was this pop band that was using this stuff. These young kids who had everybody dancing, instead of standing around in

gray raincoats about to commit suicide end quote all right time to hit him with just can't get enough depish mode's first album speak and spell came out in 1981 with most songs written by vince clark who ain't going to be in the band for very much longer and as a consequence of this record by far will be depech mode's uh poppiest or at least pepiest this is a niche cultural reference but if you're like me you'll never hear this song, just can't get enough again without thinking of a guy named Carl Pilkington. Starting back in the late 90s, future TV kingpin and polarizing comedian Ricky Jervais used to have a radio show and then a podcast and then a TV show in which he and his buddy Stephen Merchant just sat around terrorizing their producer, a very colorfully dour, civilian gentleman named

Carl Pilkington. And then in 2010, they did a reality show called An Idiot Abroad, where they made Carl travel around the world being dower and oblivious. And there's a famous scene where Carl is roaming the Mayan ruins at Chechnica in Mexico. And he's got headphones on listening to a guided tour, but he gets bored. So he puts on just can't get enough instead and dances around. It's one of the silliest and most beautiful sequences ever shown on television. It's funny, isn't it? Even though it's like a bad-viby area.

With a better human league, it's happier, in it? Depeche Mode, not Human League, Carl. He corrects himself. You can understand his confusion, though, because after this record, Vince Clark leaves Depeche Mode. Vince goes on to form the excellent synth-pop duo's Yazoo and Erasure. There are two great Yazoo records and like 19 great erasure records. But in his absence, Depeche Mode will now get steadily gothier.

The band's second album, A Broken Frame, comes out in 1980. two with Martin Gore now as the primary songwriter, and already these dudes sound like they've already gotten way more than enough. For their third album, 1983's Construction Time Again, Depeche Mode had another super talented multi-instrumentalist, Alan Wilder, and the lineup of Alan, Martin, Andy, and Dave won't do her for quite a while. Andy Fletcher will later summarize the band dynamic by saying, Martin's the songwriter, Alan's the good musician, Dave's the vocalist and I bum around, end quote.

He's being polite. Meanwhile, shit, we're not even halfway to 1990 yet. We've got to change our approach. But this record construction time again does have Everything Counts, which for my money remains one of the stickiest Depeche Mode songs. Everything counts as a hook as sticky,

as sharp as just can't get enough, but now there's a bracing cynicism or realism to the lyrics, to the sentiment. Yeah, this is taking too long. New approach. So this failure cover of Enjoy the Silence that I adore profoundly, it appeared on a full-length Depeche Mode tribute album called For the Masses, released in 1998. As a child of the 80s and a surly teenager of the 90s, I never thought super hard about Depeche Mode growing up, and yet by the time I turned 18, I knew like 15 Depeche Mode songs by heart, right? Simply thanks to MTV and pop radio

and then alt rock radio. One tended to unconsciously breathe in this band the same way you breathe in oxygen or anxiety. So this tribute album, which as far as I can tell was not well loved, it is now super out of print, alas. This record was quite the revelation for me in that it revealed how many different kinds of 90s bands

owed a huge debt to Depeche Mode, some of the biggest 90s bands, in fact. Yeah, so here we got our friends, The Smashing Pumpkins. doing Never Let Me Down Again from Depeche Mode's sixth album, Music for the Masses out in 1987, the glum grandeur of Never Let Me Down again, the soaring arena rock grouchiness, very instructive. The original Depeche Mode version of Never Let Me Down Again is currently the most shazamed song in America, as it plays over the end credits to the pilot episode of the ultra-glum 2020 zombie apocalypse video game turned eight. HBO series, The Last of Us. I watched that show, by the way, despite my public and quite embarrassing aversion to horror movies and shows and video games, because I am getting tougher.

I want somebody to share, share the rest of my life. Here we've got our friends of Veruca Salt of Sither and Volcano Girls and personal favorite Shutterbug fame doing somebody. A quite effectively unnerving ballad from Depeche Mode's fourth album, Some Great Reward out in 1984. The barbed loveliness of somebody. The poisoned sweetness. The serene gothiness of it. Very instructive. Martin Gore on lead vocals for this one. Martin's the sort of dude whose love songs include the words perverted. detest and make you sick.

Varuka Salt nailed his vibe, I have to say. I don't want to be time to anyone's dream. Trying to steer clear. Dig the cello. Seriously, check out the Varuca Salt song Shutterbug sometime. Play it for someone you detest. I bet you Martin Gore, for example, would be super into it. That's a hilarious way to end that song.

Who else we got on this tribute record? We don't have nine-inch nails, alas. The sinister synth-pop vibe that Depeche Mode cultivates throughout the 80s, this will, of course, have a massive effect on electronic music, a massive effect on the darker corners of dance music, a massive effect on industrial music going forward, even if they're sometimes used as foils as enemies, as too popular and poppy cheeseball types.

The German industrial band, KMFDM, the scariest band I could think of as a teenager and the funniest band I can think of now, there's the quite famous rumor that KMFDM stands for, Kill Mother fucking Depeche Mode. Spin interviewed Dave Gahn in 2007 and asked him if he thought that's what KMFDM stood for, and he said, All I know is that I think it's true. But Trent Resner of Nine-H-Nails,

the coolest band slash guy I could think of as a teenager. Trent was a great deal, more complimentary. In 2017, on Facebook at the behest of Tony Hawk, I'm almost positive, I got that right. Trent wrote a quick tribute to Depeche Mode that read as follows, quote, It was the summer of 86. I dropped out of college and was living in Cleveland, trying to find my way in the local music scene. I knew where I wanted to go with my life, but I didn't know how to get there. A group of friends and I drove down to Blossom Music Center Amphitheater to see the Black Celebration Tour.

Depeche Mode's album Black Celebration came out in 86. Blossom is a cool venue, but the parking situation sucks ass. That's me saying that, not Trent. But Trent would totally agree with me. Anyway, Trent continues. DM was one of our favorite bands, and the Black Celebration record took my love for them to a new level. I've thought about that night a lot over the years. It was a perfect summer night, and I was in exactly the right place I was supposed to be.

The music, the energy, the audience, the connection. it was spiritual and truly magic. I left that show grateful, humbled, energized, focused in an awe of how powerful and transformative music can be. And I started writing what would eventually become Pretty Hate Machine. End quote. Pretty Hate Machine, of course, being the first 9-inch Nails record, which came out in 1989 and helped define 90s rock music, dance music, and industrial music. As we know it.

All right, so Lightning Round. We don't get 9-inch Nails. on this Depeche Mode tribute record, but would you settle for the great stoner metal band Monster Magnet covering the song Black Celebration? Of course you would. Morbid revelry. Very instructive.

How about God lives underwater? So Depeche Mode inspired 9-inch nails, and in turn 9-inch nails inspired a legion of second-wave 90s industrial bands of somewhat ill-critical repute, right? You're stabbing westwards, your gravity killses, your filters, of course, but God lives underwater, too, who are way better than you might remember,

and who grace us here with a cover of Depeche Mode's fly on the windscreen, despite not even being English. A song that starts with the line, Death is everywhere that you could hypothetically dance to, very instructive. How about the fucking deftones? You wouldn't call Depeche Mode metal

in any tangible sense, and yet the deaf tones beg to differ, and like you argue with these. guys. A song with the lines and somewhere there's someone who cares with a heart of gold to have and to hold that you could listen to while bench pressing 400 pounds. Very instructive. One more. All right. I'm through fucking around. All right. We got this Depeche Mode song called Stripped from the Black Celebration record. Ominous and lascivious. S&M overtones. Very instructive. Here's what the Depeche Mode version sounds like. So this tribute

record came out in 1998. I want you to close your eyes and imagine the raddest and also funniest mid to late 90s metal band that could have possibly covered this song. Concentrate. You got it? You think you got it? You ready? All right. Come with me into the trees. We lay on the grass and led our as pass. Yes. Oh, this shit rules. Yes, indeed. The super German flamethrower touting, David Lynch affiliated. I really wish I could roll my arms, but what are you going to do? Cultural phenomenon known as Romstein. Depeche Mode fandom is a big tent throughout the 1990s is my point. Even KMFDM, oh quite a bit to DM is my point. Depeche Mode are also one of these deals where it's, a little challenging now to convey how revolutionary these guys were in the late 80s. So their sixth album, Music for the Masses, comes out in 1987. That's the record would never let me down again and to have and to hold and strange love.

And that album title is supposed to be kind of a joke, right? This is pretty gloomy and thorny and S&M adjacent as pop music goes. Dave Gahn talking to Entertainment Weekly in 2017, he says, With music for the masses, we were being pretty arrogant. We weren't actually making music for the masses, but suddenly we were playing to sold out arenas in Texas in weird places that we thought we'd never sell records. It was like a cult following.

D.A. Pennebaker, who'd made our concert film, described it as almost like a Grateful Dead experience. People that were as rabid about Depeche Mode as fans of the Dead were about the Dead. We spoke to people that felt a little different. the ones who with way too much eyeliner, the ones in schools that were bullied or had to run home, we were the odd ones and we embraced that, because that's kind of who we were as well growing up. End quote. That's D.A. Pennebaker, the legendary documentarian for Bob Dylan, etc., who co-directed the 1989 film Depeche Mode 101,

which climaxes with Depeche Mode, capping off a triumphant U.S. tour with a show on June 18th, 1988 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, attended by fucking 60,000 plus people. The band grossed $1.3 million at that show, according to the band's accountant on camera during that movie. Speaking of grabbing hands, grabbing all they can, Depeche Mode 101 probably needs more love on greatest music documentaries of all time lists. There's a fan-driven aspect. We hang around with a tour bus full of Depeche Mode fans. for quite a while, there's a reality TV precursor aspect, very prescient, very instructive. But most striking is just the site of Depeche Mode on stage. Dave Gahn, he looks and acts and sings as though you'd asked one of those AI generators to invent

synth pop Elvis. Like he just tell the AI do Elvis, but give him a synthesizer. And the AI goes, whoop, Dave Gahn, great profile, great sideburns, great spin moves, little pirouettes. he radiates grandiosity. He radiates melancholy. He radiates just a little bit of silliness. You can draw a line between him and Freddie Mercury, or at least type out a line of binary code. So you take that guy, Dave Gond, and you set him down on stage in front of three sensual dork-looking gentlemen, all standing behind these huge elaborate keyboard rigs. No drummer. An offstage reel-to-reel tape machine handles all the drums. Precious few, if any, gets cars. This is rock and roll now. This is arena rock. This is stadium rock. This is Rolls Bowl-filling rock. This is the future. Depeche Mode played a crucial role in preparing us for the 90s. By us, I mean anybody in the 90s who listened to the radio for more than five minutes.

As that tribute record alone makes clear, a great many 90s bands and artists with quite varied personal temperaments would flourish thanks to 80s Depeche Mode. And 90s Depeche Mode, and 90s Depeche Mode, would flourish as well, or at the very least, Depeche Mode's best album comes out in 1990. Martin Gore, the band's primary songwriter and idea guy, as always, telling the enemy about this album in 1990, he says, we called it violator as a joke. We wanted to come up with the most extreme, ridiculously heavy metal title that we could. I'll be surprised if people will get the joke. End quote. He also says that nobody got the joke of the album title, Music of the Masses, either. Depeche Mode had a very niche sense of humor. Violator is indeed a really weird title for this record. A friend of mine in college, we're sitting

around bullshitting one day and he's talking about his lady friend and he leans over to me conspiratorly and he says, you know, Violator is a really great makeout album. And I'm like, I will pay you to stop talking to me. cure covered world in my eyes on that Depeche Mode tribute album. The Cure. The Cure album Dishore Disintegration is to 1989 with the Depeche Mode album Violator is to 1990, meaning they're both world historically awesome. Violator is unbelievable, dude. The great critic Ned Raggett, writing about violator for allmusic.com. His first line is, in a word, stunning. And his last line is, goth without ever being stupidly hammy, synth without sounding like the clinical stereotype of

synth music, rock without ever sounding like a rock band, Depeche here reach astounding heights indeed, end quote. That about sums it up. If you have ever in your life gotten what the great internet comic Aikwood once described as emotions hair, if you've ever gotten a haircut, that an impartial observer could reasonably describe as emotional, then violator is absolutely your shit. Violator is emotion's hair personified. I keep thinking about something Trent Rezner said once, talking about the first 9-inch nails record.

He said, Pretty Hate Machine was about juxtaposing human imperfections against very rigid, sterile, cold arrangements. You can't just have icy vocals over icy music. If the music is very precise, make a vocal tape that's less perfect. So you've got this meshing of man versus machine, end quote. That's a Depeche Mode idea. Trends music is icier, to put it mildly. Trends vocals are gnarlier and more imperfect, to put it mildly.

But the through line is there. The main difference, really, between 9-inch nails and Depeche Mode is that whole human imperfections business. Because Dave Gahn's vocals are kind of, objectively perfect. That's a rad line. That's a rad Martin Gore line. That's a rad Dave gone delivery of a Martin Gore line. I'm not saying this is an Elton John Bernie Taupin situation as famous pop stars and

famous pop star songwriters go, but it's not that, if you get me. Depeche Mode are the best case scenario rock band wise if the writer of words and the singer of those words are two different people. Pretty spectacular union here between the writer of words and the singer of those words. Martin Gore, talking to NME in 1990, talked quite a bit about how Depeche Mode never quite get enough respect, and they in fact endure flagrant disrespect from the doubters and snobs and KMFDMs of the world. Martin says, perhaps we should have described ourselves as a rock group. Maybe if we'd done that, people might have taken us a little bit more seriously. But we aren't. We're a pop group and proud of it. The only songs I can write are pop songs,

no matter how dark and pervy some people might find them. End quote. Late on Violator, we get a song called Blue Dress, in which Dave asks a lady to put one on. Martin Gore says, I simply can't write your conventional pop fair. A pleasant song to me is unfinished. It isn't telling the full story, which is why I introduced the twist at the end of somebody because the song was just too nice. He means that if things like this make you sick in a case like this, I'll get away with it, line. That's still a great last line for a love song.

Martin goes on, you say I'm cynical about love in my songs, and perhaps I am, but I think that's an interesting angle. Otherwise, you just become mundane like most chart music. Relationships do have their darker side, and I like to write about. about it. Also, I suppose my songs do seem to advocate immorality, but if you listen, there's always a sense of guilt. Then there's blue dress. That's the Purvy song, the idea of watching a girl dress and realizing that this is what makes the world turn. End quote. Dig the guitar chords here. Dude, some really excellent guitar chords, in my opinion.

Martin hastens to add that blue dress, while pervy, is, quote, a very positive song. It's saying that love and sex and pleasure are positive things. And I don't mind you bringing up existentialism because I am influenced by that. I'm probably as influenced by Camus, Kafka, and Brecht as I am by pop songs. End quote, put it this way. Martin Gore maybe could have written The Stranger, but Albert Camus definitely couldn't have. written personal Jesus.

And we're back to Elvis again because personal Jesus was inspired by Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, in which he called Elvis her personal Jesus. For more insight into that connection, let's turn now to one of Elvis's old friends. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who's there. It is truly wild that Johnny Cash covered personal Jesus, given his personal relationship with Jesus and his general aversion to obscenity and blasphemy and whatnot later in life, this cover does not appear on that Depeche Mo tribute album. Johnny Cash's personal Jesus doesn't turn up until 2002. On the same record where he covers Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, actually, and declines to sing the line, I wear my crown of shit,

and also steals Hurt from Trent Resner. Johnny Cash's Hurt is the greatest video of all time. Don't overthink it. That's not an incendiary position. Of course, here's a slightly more incendiary position. His version is great, but Johnny Cash does not steal personal Jesus from Depeche Mode, and I still vastly prefer the original, if only because I really like this part. I just really like that part. No reason. No explanation. I can't explain everything. If you ever need to introduce exactly four of something in a really overdramatic way, like a reboot, of the Mighty Morphan Power Rangers or like the four entrees available on the dinner menu this evening, use that part of Depeche Mode's personal Jesus. I actually wrote out me demonstrating how that would work,

and I tried it just now, and it's the stupidest series of sounds that have ever come out of my mouth, and so I deleted it. That almost never happens. I am not in the habit of discarding terrible ideas on this show, once I've had them. As anyone who's ever listened to this show before can attest that part of personal Jesus is in like a three or four or five-way tie for my favorite 10-second fragment of sound on Violator, along with this part of policy of truth. It's the whaling guitar bleeding into the mix there for me. Violator is a sublime collection of 10-second fragments of sound. Guitars bleeding into synthesizers, pervy, human warmth colliding with a bracing mechanical chill. etc. Don't let me get all rock criticy about this. There is also a cover of Policy of Truth

on the Depeche Mode Tribute album. Here, guess who this is? Dish Walla. My goodness, the counting blue cars, fellas, getting all surly. They came here to tell us all their thoughts on God and kick ass, and they're about out of thoughts on God. That's a super tough baseline, fellas, but yeah, that's not one of the better Depeche Mode cover songs, I have to say, politely, semi-politely, never again is what I swore just now. It is quite surprising to me. 86 songs into this enterprise that MTV, that a song's music video, doesn't come up more often on this show. Music videos come up quite a bit on this show, of course, but given the hours upon hours of MTV, I ingested daily between 1985. and 1996. Roughly, it's a wonder

that I ever managed to talk about literally anything else. I am a child of MTV. It would upset my parents if I said I was raised by MTV, but I don't think they're listening to this show anymore,

so I was raised by MTV. So yeah, you play this for me in any context, and I got some associations. My association is Dave Gahn in a lush red kingly robe and a crown carrying one of those portable chairs that I use now to watch my sons play soccer,

and trudging around impossibly lush and totally isolated locations in Scotland, Portugal, and the Swiss Alps. The budgets for major music videos used to be bonkers, dude. The Enjoy the Silence video was directed by photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbyn, noted rock star mythmaker. Immediately I think of the Joshua tree, right? Anton Corbin's stark and beautiful cover portrait of U2 for U2's 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, shot in the Mojave Desert because major album cover budgets used to be bonkers, dude.

The Joshua Tree cover for me is one of those sublimely overdramatic moments where you two truly become you two, where they become serious and profound and isolated all-time rock and roll superstars with very important things to say and think. that's the myth-making part. That's what Anton Corbyn does. And that's what Anton Corbyn did here for the Enjoy the Silence video. If you want to get glib, if you want to get glibr, you can draw a straight line from U-2's the Joshua tree to Depechmode's Violator to U-2's Octung Baby, right? Violator comes out in March 1990, and U-2's Octung Baby is coming in November 1991.

And that's where you two further embrace electronics and urban lasciviousness in a purvier darkness. Akhtung Baby is the Joshua Tree plus violator. How's that for glib? It's not just that Depeche Mode became Rose Bowl-sized stadium rockers in this era in the late 80s and early 90s. It's that the expanded the very idea, the definition of stadium rock, the palette, the instrumentation. Enjoy the silence is a little. an all-time rock and roll anthem if you embrace, if you define the term rock and roll as broadly and as wondrously as Depeche Mode defined it. And I would do that. I would embrace the Depeche Mode

definition of rock and roll if I were you, if you want the full grandiose effect here. I don't mean this ugly, but most of the silence, break the silence. I don't mean this ugly, but Martin Gore's lyrics historically often have a quite appealing but quite distinct clunkiness to them. The holiday was fun packed, the contract still intact. People are people, so why should it be? You and I should get along so awfully. Let me hear you make decisions without your television, etc. That last one actually sounds a lot less clunky when the dude from Romstein sings it.

Sorry, all of those are great Depeche Mode songs with Grim. great lyrics, really, but the clunkiness is somehow a crucial part of the equation. The clunky lyrics are the imperfect human element, sung perfectly by Dave Gahn, amid all the perfect machinery, maybe. But something clicks for me lyrically on Enjoy the Silence, a song about how lyrics don't matter, a song explicitly about how words are meaningless and forgettable. The rhyme scheme is very basic here, but we are packing a great deal of grand, eloquent myth-making into not very many, very simple words. Dave Gond didn't like the enjoy the silence video at first.

Too much trudging and snow for his taste, I guess. Violator was co-produced by Depeche Mode's own Alan Wilder and Flood, the super producer Flood, who's worked with nine-inch nails, U-2, and shitloads of other rock star, big shots. And likewise, Martin Gore did not like it. at first when he first showed the band a beatless ballad-esque early version of Enjoy the Silence, and Alan Wilder and Flood convinced him to speed it up and put a dance beat behind it. As Alan once told the Depeche Mode official fan club magazine, bong, that's what the magazine was called

bong. I couldn't even speculate as to why. Quote, I was really averse to it at first, because I thought, the song is called Enjoy the Silence, and it's supposed to be about serenity. and Serenity doesn't go with the disco beat. So I was sulking for about two days. But after he, that's Alan, sped it up, I got used to it and added the guitar part, which adds to the whole atmosphere. We could really hear that it had a crossover potential. I have to say that I was sulking for two days for no reason.

End quote, which is such a perfectly Depeche mode thing to do. Sulk for no reason about something beautiful, right? Can I tell you that the guitar line is my favorite part of Enjoy the Silence? Still, the physical texture of the guitar, the little sound you can hear. Seriously, how much salking for no reason has transpired globally in the last 32 years thanks to enjoy the silence? How much entirely justified sulking has transpired thanks to this song?

That's a true legacy. That's an all-time rock and roll superstar type legacy. Depeche Mode is somewhat of a rough go of it as the 90s progress. Dave Gahn will struggle with a heroin addiction. Alan Wilder will leave the band after the arduous and somewhat pompous tour to support the band's next album, 1993's Songs of Faith and Devotion, which I received as a 15-year-old in a Columbia House transaction, and I love that record a whole lot. But I can listen to that one now and still love it,

but also observe that Depeche Mode is struggling to keep up with grunge. and metal and so forth at this point, and at many points in the future. Depeche Mode getting all surly. I love songs of faith and devotion, actually. Let's keep our derision for that record to a minimum. Alan Wilder leaves the band for good in 1995, and Depeche Mode rumble on with six more decent enough albums,

and another one due in 2023. This one will last their first album without Andy Fletcher, who died in May 2022, of an aortic dissection. He was 60 years old. And though he never sought to hog the spotlight, Depeche Mode will not be the same without Andy bumming around.

It's worth mentioning that Jeff Terzo from God Lives Underwater, that band was instrumental in putting that Depeche Mode tribute album together. And Jeff says that Andy Fletcher thought that failure's version of Enjoy the Silence was superior to the original version. That's quite an incendiary opinion,

but it is coming from one of the dudes in Depeche mode. So failure re-recorded their cover in 2020. It basically sounds the same, which is to say it still kicks rich amounts of ass. That's for Andy Fletcher. I figured he'd appreciate that it's the failure version, and he'd also appreciate that there aren't any words. Our guest today, we're thrilled to welcome Craig Jenkins,

music critic at Vulture in New York Magazine, and the only Pulitzer Prize finalist we've ever had on this show. To my knowledge, anyway, Craig, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Of course. So as we speak, never let me down again,

has gotten a huge streaming boost because it shows up at the end of the pilot of that new HBO show, The Last of Us. I'm not saying this is a Kate Bush Stranger Things situation, but is there the potential for a Depeche Mode Renaissance

here in 2023? Are we due? I would argue that, I mean, there's definitely going to be a groundswell of interest in the van. feel like it's a little bit underway already. Like, I just feel like I hear that sound

places. You know, the band's going on tour, and there's an album coming out, so we'll see what happens. Where do you hear them? Where is Depeche Mode's influence for you these days? Particularly in that weekend Don FM album, to the extent that like

in the press playback where he was present in the call, I got a chance to ask him a question, and I was like, do you like Depeche Mode? That was the only thing that I asked him, and he said, yes. And I was like, that made sense. You know, the gasoline song kind of has that energy. And he's kind of doing the day voice. That's right. You had one question to ask the weekend and you ask the right question. That's why you're a professional. Are you excited about a 20-23,

you know, Depeche Mode album, you know, obviously this will be there first without Andy Fletcher. You know, are you excited or is it more just sort of a nervousness about, you know, their legacy and all that kind of thing? I'm amped for the excuse to be talking about. them this year and maybe to see them this year and hopefully i don't know you know maybe it's good i don't know i feel kind of i'm on the fence about the latter day stuff uh i haven't been in the catalog in a minute the you know the modern catalog in a minute i've been all over the 80 stuff you go back to that still you know the pre-violator stuff because it was what like six records you know between 1988 and 1990 like a whole discography you know just in the 80s why do you still go back to that i mean

Stripped is a banger. Everything counts a banger. There's like there's, there's, there's hits. There's weird like blocky sort of early, you know, synth pop stuff. They're doing tricky things and really interesting stuff and I like it. Also, I think that a music for the masses, every bit as good as Violator possibly. I think that Black Celebration is up there. I think that I think there's great records in those first couple that, you know, don't necessarily get the attention that, you know, Violator always does. You know, I've wanted to have you on this.

forever, but finally I reached out because I saw you tweet, like thinking about violator every day as one does. I think you said with a link to blue dress. Like, what is it about violator? You know, a 32-year-old record about at this point that still makes it resonate for you. We're in another era where people are taken with fascist aesthetics and like brutalist architecture, gender expression, sexual repression, you know, dressed up as religion, drugs, synth pop. And like, that's the stuff that kind of animated peaked Depeche Mode. I was watching this Italian performance with the band. And, you know, when the host is kind of schmoozing with the guys afterward,

he immediately asked Martin Gore, are you a boy or a girl? It's the first thing that he says. It's just like kind of, you know, now we're doing that again with artists and their expression and what's, yeah, I don't know. I just feel like the million points of interest that align this year are some of the same ones from 8990. And some of the music is even kind of getting back into that. pocket in fashion i was watching depeche mode 101 you know the the rose bull show right and martin gore's

up there you know shirtless and sort of s and m gear you know he's he's the most rock star looking member of the band i guess was the way that i i thought about it but he definitely stood out well i've been thinking a lot about you two this week and sort of the Anton corbin connection got me started you know the enjoy the silence video but like i'm hung up on the sequence from the Joshua tree in 1987 to Violator in 1990 to Akhtung Baby in 1991. Am I wrong to see that almost as an equation? Like 80s U2 plus Depeche Mode equals 90s U2 almost? There's something that hits in the water everywhere.

And like right around 89 and just those that kind of dance music explosion like house kind of adjacent stuff starts getting everywhere. I like to think it's the tech. And I feel like particularly the story of 80s pop. music as the story of, you know, rapid advances in drum machines, synthesizers, samplers, competitive pricings from, you know, companies that were trying to get home users to buy that stuff, which, I mean, I feel like it worked if I remember having a Yamaha or two as a kid. But so, like, stuff came together and came apart so quickly. You have been looking into how hit records were made, and you often have discovered that,

you know, someone had just gotten home with some machine and just messed with the presets out of the box. Came up with this crazy sequence. Enjoy the silence. uses the emulator too, which is the synth that Ferris Bueller made fart sounds on. There's literally, there's a preset noise in there.

Uh-huh. I didn't know that I didn't make that explicit connection. That's that I'm really glad that I know that, that I can connect to Farris Bueller as directly as possible. I wanted that keyboard so bad just for the fart noise. Like I would have paid, you know, if I had it $2,000 just for a keyboard that can make a fart noise. That's all I wanted.

I don't know if that would have covered it, because I don't think they made that. money. Okay, $5,000, $10,000. I don't know. You know, $2,000 is 80s money is crazy money. There we go. Yeah, inflation, right. Yes. I can't help myself from separating band discographies by decade, right? I think of 80s R.m. and I think of 90s R.E.m. And obviously, violator is like three months into 1990. Does it make sense to ask, like, does it sound more like an 80s record, like the culmination of Depeche Mode in the 80s?

Or is it the turning point, you know, the harsh right turn, not the harsh right turn, the huge, you know, rock star making right turn that like everyone seems to think it was right there in 1990. It sounds like the 90s starting to happen. You know, like they're starting to stumble onto those like kind of blues rack ideas that a lot of the electronic bands get taken with. You know how primal scream gets from Screamadilica to like the blues rock stuff that they start doing. and then you get songs of faith and devotion with, you know, yeah, it sounds like it's a, it's a turning point album, definitely. There's, because 101 is at the end of an era kind of a thing and they've just been touring crazy and they wanted to get a film document out of it about it and just like reset. And yeah, I don't know. It sounds like they feel like stuff is over on that record.

Just like the vibe is like there's a death hanging in the air, which is like not irrational, consider. during Dave's 90s. Absolutely. Do you remember when you first heard Violator, how you sort of first reacted to it, even if it was just, you know, the hits on the radio? The hits are always there. I don't know.

I probably found out about it, you know, scanning the classics as one does, reading lists and things. I don't remember what the first reaction was, but I do remember mostly knowing Dave from the scary drug stuff throughout the 90s, which was, there was a lot of it. But yeah,

I don't know. It just clicked with me. It sounded like really close to a lot of stuff that I really liked about hip hop. There's some stuff that's really adjacent to freestyle music and stuff that's like next to R&B and kind of tapping on the door of hip hop. And I like that about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Trent Resner has been very honest about the influence Depeche Mode had on him at the very beginning, you know, from pretty hate machine forward. Am I wrong to think that overall there are very few 80s bands with more influence on the 90s than Depeche Mode? If I sat and really thought it out, I could probably figure out some names, but that's definitely a palable one. Just in terms of iconography, in terms of the way they approached the image, the sounds they were messing with, all that stuff. Is it enjoy the silence in arguably the definitive Depeche Mode song? Like, is there a case to be made for anything else, or is this their signature, you know, if you had to pick one? Today, I feel like Blue Dress is the best song on the album, so there's that. I've been listening to the hits less, you know, over time. It's stuff that I've heard a million times.

I'm not like, you know, I'm not listening to Personal Jesus every month. I think I skipped it the last couple of times that I ran through the album. Yeah. It did what it did when it needed to. There needed to be some muddying of the waters in the post like a prayer universe. There we go. It is sort of like a prayer-esque in that way. That's, yeah, that's right.

But Blue Dress is the one for you. I dig it too, but that's just to have that be your favorite of the standout in the record. It's the slow jams now, particularly waiting for the night to come. I'm listening to the weird slow ones, the dark ones. Oh, I love that one. I've always loved that one. That's right. That's pretty weird and slow and dark.

That's a great one. I'm really fascinated by the Martin Gore-Davegan relationship, like the songwriter and the rock star singer. Like, what's your sense of the Depeche Mode dynamic? Like, it feels unique and unknowing. to me in a way I can't really articulate. Yeah, it feels like one guy is writing about the other guy's life, like very poignantly. You know, I can't know what, uh, what strangeness Martin Gore is getting into

behind the scenes, but it definitely feels like he's watching his friend go through some wild stuff and like channeling that into the songs that he has him sing. That's like a really weird sort of relationship. Yeah. But I mean, it works. Yeah. You mentioned songs of faith and devotion. And by that time, you know, Dave's really.

struggling, but that was my first Depeche Mode record. Like, it's a teenager, and I really loved it. Like, do you go back to that one at all, or is it sort of tied up with, you know, the darker period for the band, for Dave, at least? I'm interested in getting back into it now that I've really been putting a lot of time and the stuff that came before it and, you know, getting into the whole journey. And, I mean, as a music critic, I'm going to have to do all that over the next two months because there's an album coming out and I want to write about it.

I do think that in a sneaky way, enjoy the silence. is one of the best videos of its era. Like, it fits the tone of the song almost better than any other video I can think of. Just watching Dave in a crown walking around the desert alone. Like, does that video hold up for you? I might just love it because it's not,

like, green screened or CGIed or whatever. Like, I appreciate that he's actually there, if nothing else. I think it's one of the great music videos, but, you know, I'm a fan of the banned wandering around a mysterious location subset of video. You know, like breaking the girl with chewing peppers.

YouTube mysterious ways tight beat like really into that stuff also you know Corbyn directed heart shaped box by Nirvana and the Rollins Baylor video which was if you were a 90s teenager like foundational stuff for you if you're into the rock into the rock who says that alternative rock quote unquote into that you say that's you can say I really don't I just I walk out with seriously though I don't talk like that I don't do that important clarification okay Okay. Okay. After Songs of Faith and Devotion, I think that was the last record before Alan Wilder left, you know, and Dave was struggling quite a bit. Like, what do you make of Depeche Mode from the mid-90s forward? Like, Ultra from 97, I think, like that held up better for me than I imagine it would. Like, do people underestimate the last 20-plus years of their career, like the modern era, I guess, as you put it? I mean, I'll cop to it myself. I had to need to get into those records more. And I often always. see him in like the used record story and I wouldn't pick them up and I kind of regret not having done that a long time ago. Right. Yeah. You could get those for three to five bucks a piece for a very

long time. Probably still, but like, the thrill of the thrill of like walking in and finding something that you hadn't really intended on getting those is not there with me anymore. I'm seeking it out because I know it exists. That's different. Yeah. So you think this will be a big year for them overall. You know, like the, you know, the new record, as you say, is sort of an excuse to go through the back catalog again, you know, and even setting aside the Last of Us or whatever, like, this is a band that's always ripe to be rediscovered, right? And people go into those 80s records for the first time, people going to violate or like, this is just a great band to do a deep dive into, like, whenever you get around to it. Yeah, there's zillions of

different pockets. There's so many different influences. And, you know, like I said, you can just track developments in technology through the music and you can watch the videos and lurk what they're playing on and when when that came out and who else used it. I've really been getting into sort of the what everyone is playing and where it came from aspect of all that this time around and having a lot of fun with that. Yeah, because the most striking thing to me about that, you know, the Rose Bowl show is just, you know, it's Dave up there and then just three dudes behind giant synthesizers, right?

Like just giant banks of electronics. And like they show you. I think Alan Wilder shows you a little bit like how he does what he does. what he does. Like there's something still though mysterious about it, right? Like just the gear that they used. That's really entrancing to me. Yeah. I mean, turning on a synthesizer and figuring out how to get it to do anything is a really cool. B, also daunting enough that not everybody does it. Right, right. You have to have a lot of faith in yourself, I guess. Also, money to buy any of it.

even now yeah you're not going to find these things on ebay you know cheap the vast majority of i'm going to look up emulator prices though there we go let me let me know if you find anything this has been great kra thank you so much for talking thanks for having me on thanks to our guests this week craig jenkins thanks as always to our producers jonathan kerma and justin sales thanks to abu kumara for additional production support a special thanks to noah kalina who sent me the mind science of the mind record after I asked for it on Twitter. That was a very embarrassing thing that I did. That's a very nice thing that Noah did in response. And thanks, as always, to you for listening. And now, without further ado, why don't you go listen

to enjoy the silence by Depeche Mode? We'll see you next week.