One Song - Depeche Mode, Part 1: "People Are People"

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Question – how much do Diallo and LUXXURY love Depeche Mode? Answer – so much that they couldn’t pack it all into one episode. So get ready for a thorough two-part deep dive on these pioneers who defined the sound of electronic music! In Part One, the guys discuss Depeche Mode’s early years and their dynamic approach to using synthesizers and drum machines to make their music. Plus, they break down how “People Are People” was made – the song that took them from the underground scene to breaking into the U.S. market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, One Song Nation. Just a quick note before we begin, we're splitting our Depeche Mode episode into two parts. That's right, T'allel. We've got so much to say about this incredible band. We need a little more time to break down two Depeche Mode songs. Time for all the fun facts, sense, samples, stems, all that good stuff. So welcome to part one where we're going to cover the early years in the genesis of the band, starting with the song People Are People.

And next week in part two, we'll cover their later years and break down one of their biggest hits. Now get ready to enjoy our Depeche Mode episode. Luxury Today's song is by a monumental English band that we absolutely love. This hit reached the top five in several countries in 1984, number four in the UK and Switzerland, number two in Ireland and Poland, and number one in West Germany. West Germany, remember that place? Yes, I remember it. But it was also the first time they got attention outside of Europe.

That's right. Over the course of their five-decade career, this group became international superstars. They've been pioneers defining the sound of electronic music with their dynamic approach to using synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers. But before all that happened, it was this song that took them from the underground scene to breaking into the U.S. market. It's one song, and that song is People Are People by Depeche Mode.

I'm actor, writer-director, and sometimes DJ, D'Alla Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ songwriter, and music hall of just luxury, also known as the guy who talks about interpolation on the internet. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. And also, please subscribe. Okay, we're so excited to do this.

episode. We talked about it pretty much from the beginning of us doing this podcast. We've admired Depeche Mode for years, but luxury, I'm interested in what was going on in your life when you first heard people are people. And what does this band mean to you? Depeche Mode were like the coolest band in seventh grade. Everything about them was cool. I'll never forget the time I was at a party at Kirsten Stromberg's birthday party. And you're eventually going to give a shout out to everybody you ever went to school. I mean, look, seventh grade was a very crucial year for me for many reasons. And that was the same party where I was. I remember Louisa Smith was going on a long diatribe about the importance of Depeche Mode.

And I never heard him. She played him at this party. And I was like, you know, just imagine this scenario. A bunch of 13-year-olds tooling around in the 80s. Was it this song? It was People Are People. It was some great reward was the album that this is from. And I was smitten.

Not just because of the music, but also because how cool I knew they were and how important I knew it was. Yeah. I love that. What about you, D'all? How did you come to learn about find and adore? because I know you do, Depeche Mode. Man, strange love.

Yeah. You know, like, listen, I heard, just can't get enough. I heard people are people. But it was strange love. But I remember I always did my homework at my desk. I had my little alarm clock radio. You know, like, back of the days when, like, your radio was just, it was also your alarm clock a lot of times.

Was it LED or LCD? It had the little flipping numbers. No, it was LED. Plastic numbers. But I remember, I think it was like whatever. Atlanta radio station. It was before 99x. It was before they went alternative. But it was the station I listened to. It had all like, you know, pet shop boys and that sort of era. And they played strange love. And I remember thinking like, I love that song. And then I don't think I bought

music for the masses, but that was the point of which I was like, I love this band. I love their sound. I knew very little about them. Yeah. As people who listen to the show know, I was at an all-black school. So I didn't have any goths to sort of ask, you know, like, what about the whole? But this group. But I loved it. I just loved it. And I followed their career ever since. And I'm going to just put this out there at the beginning of the episode. You know, we don't talk about it a lot, but there is a little bit of a, when did you discover this band going on with these two episodes? Because in 1984, when this song came out, I probably wouldn't have been able to sort of get into Depeche, but by the time that I'm listening to Strange Love, and we're going to talk about

the violator album later in this two-part episode, I was fully of the age to really dive into this group, and I stayed with them through songs of faith and devotion. We're going to talk a little bit about the Exciter album, and we're going to talk about this band because they are, as you said, just to this day, one of the coolest bands that has ever been able. We're going to talk about so much stuff. One thing I would do want to address an elephant in the room,

you know, the word goth, when it comes to Depeche Mode. As soon as I say goth, you were going to. I just want to, like, address the idea that there isn't a single band that one would listen to that would, we would characterize as listeners as goth, who themselves would call themselves god. It's just one of those genre names that nobody wants to own. But to be fair, I would say that Susie and the Banshe's Bauhaus, the Sisters of Mercy, these are bands that are kind of core goth.

And then like one level outside of it, I would say, synth pop industrially, Depeche Mode is there. But importantly, anyone who is a goth, loves Depeche Mode. They may not themselves be goth, but Goths love Depeche Mode. In preparing this episode, by the way, I said Goff because I'm talking as 1987. Right, and it was sort of more of a generic term

for people wearing black. It was the term for like the white kids who dressed in all black. Right, right, right. And who probably did listen to all these bands. And honestly, the band dresses like that in this period. But yes, I feel like nowadays, like we know that there's a huge, there's a wide difference between

Susie and the Banshe's Mode and the Cure. I think those divisions are far more important in quotes in like major quotes that I'm air quotes. Now, at the time, no one, it wasn't really as big of a deal. Here's what's cool. I know so many black people who love Depeche Mode. Like, I always say that the instruments and the machines use, let's say, to create hip hop and to create pop and to create industrial.

They're all the same thing. That's right. That's right. So when I hear those mechanized drums and I hear those, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. You know, like, it might as well be like an old junior. Yeah, like it's all the same instruments being used. And you're absolutely right. You're hitting the nail on the head.

We're going to get into that when we talk about the sound and the stems a little later on, but the connections are real there. We're even going to talk about the black person in Depeche Mode. We are indeed, because there is one. There's some fun facts on the way. First things first, we got to talk about how prolific Depeche Mode is. They've sold over 100 million records worldwide. They've had 54 charting singles.

All of their studio albums. have reached the UK top 10. And along with U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Depeche Mode has charted at least once on Billboard's alternative airplay chart in every single decade since its debut in 1988. I did not realize that about the red hot chili peppers being in the same can. That's another episode.

That is another episode. May or may not be another episode. Like we mentioned, Depeche Mode has defined the sound of electronic music. And listen, some people, we just talked about this, some folks call them synth pop. I'm calling post-punk. Are they party goth? Party goth?

I have never heard that expression. I think I made that up. Okay. Party god. I love it. That's my favorite genre. Well, listen, if you go back and you watch 101, which is like an amazing documentary, there are so many scenes of like people literally throwing down hard on the dance floor.

No, 101 just rebuild. Don't know. That's the documentary that came out in 88 or 89 based on their 1988 Rose Bowl live show that Depeche Mo did. But what's interesting about the movie, it's directed by D.A. Pennebaker. Yeah. is that it is also kind of an early MTV, like, reality show.

Yes. But they've got these eight concert winners. Right. They follow them to the show. So this film goes back and forth between watching these eight teenagers in 1988 and the band. I love how VHS-E. Yeah.

Like, it literally starts with, start the tape. It's like, doop. And you see that old VHS thing pop up. Listen, not only are we learning new things, we're actually putting new things out in the universe. Party goth might be a thing, cybergoth, already a thing. Before we go any further into talking about people

Let's talk about the band's origins. For starters, Depeche Mode wasn't even the first name that the band shows. Luxury, walk us through the early days of Depeche Mode. Very, very brief overview of the origins of this band leading up to this song. So it starts in Basilden, which is about 30 miles to the east of London.

And Vince Clark and Andy Fletcher are a couple guys in high school, and they start a band, they're big cure fans, they start a band called No Romance in China. What a great name. great name. I mean, it's so new romantic. It's so of the time. Totally. Totally. Like literally, it's got romance. And China, like, there's a band called Japan, which is probably one of their favorites, one of my favorites. But when I hear no romance in China, I'm like, these guys, in addition to their stated love for sparks in OMD in the Human League, they also like Japan. Anyway, that's

for another day. What I will say is that at the time, it was just the two of them. And at the time, Andy Fletcher, who will talk a little bit more amount, he's a little bit known as the mysterious fourth member sometimes. But at the time, he was the bass player in this earliest incarnation. Vince Clark was the singer and the main songwriter. And at a certain point, they meet Martin Gore, another young, I think they're all in their late teens at this point. And they merge forces, because Martin's in another band called the French look. The French look. They've already got the French thing out of the one, too. They already know who they are. They become composition of sound. So this is Vince, Andy, and Martin. Now, I've heard the story, or maybe I heard

Martin tell it that the only reason they wanted to work with it was because they heard he was a guy who had a synthesizer. Is that true? At the time, that stuff's really important. Yes. No, I think, listen. Access to equipment. They were like, that guy's got a synthesizer? Right. Who is this Martin Gore? Right. And at a certain point, they realized because they're all Human League fans. And this is the moment where, like, all these early synth pop bands are starting to exist. And I think they might even see the Human League live. But if not, it's certainly on TV where they become aware that you can be a band but not have a drummer. Because they have this issue of having to like rehearse, but they don't have a rehearsal space. So they're like, wait a second, we can just get like a drum machine and we can rehearse with headphones in our

living room. So the earliest incarnation of this band, part of the reason why they're not using live drums is because they think it's cool because the Human League do it. And also just they need to not have a drummer. I didn't realize that. So Depeche Mode has never had a drummer. Depeche Mode in the traditional sense. Right. Later on and in our next episode, we'll get into there later years a little bit more. Wilder who hasn't joined the band yet. It's a little foreshadowing. He does play some live drums on songs of faith and devotion, and

he plays them live, and to this day, there actually is a live drummer. Of course, of course. Yeah, but it is interesting because, you know, we're drummers and I feel like most of the music that I've ever loved, one of the reasons it's been so hard for me to get into the singer-songwriters is because there ain't no percussion. I like percussive music.

Yeah. Whether it's freaking Luther Campbell and two live crew, or it's Depeche mode, like, never... Or rhythmically centered. music, right? Yes, yes. Like, the drums on Never Let Me Down are so prominent. So it's weird to think of this group as starting out without a guy sitting down at the base and the same. Because that was a new thing you could do because that template had already performed. And Human League even were bold enough.

They went on TV in early footage. And they had like this real to real teak tape deck. They weren't trying to hide that they had no drummer. They were really up front. And like, this is a new avant-garde thing to do. You get the sense that in this Thatcher era, Brit, that everybody was really excited about the new music machines. And by the way, love humanly, whether it's don't you want me or human?

Like, what a great group. I think at the end of the day, like, this also reminds me, we're talking genre early. None of these genre names exist. There's punk, and this is maybe post-punk, new romantic. There's kind of these ideas floating around. I think post-punk, I'm thinking gang of four. But I guess, you know, even like those early U-2 things, like clearly punk had like just completely change the landscape of how you look and how you sound on a record.

But now the idea is you can start incorporating these other styles of music, like dance music. Like, this is dance music. That was one of my favorite scenes in 101 was when they're listening to a bunch of different music on the bus. And like at one point, like this really early dance track comes up.

And you're just like, oh, I get it. Yeah. They were like listening to a little bit of everything and sort of putting it all into the, putting it all into the mix. That's right. And sort of nothing,

punk has sort of an orthodoxy to it. And in the post-punk years, it's like, you know what, it doesn't have to just be the three chords and guitars and the speed. We can try all these other, we can be dancing. Things can be punk without, without being the, I was going to say the sex pistols, but we know that that's a whole other can of worms. We're not going there. But talking more about the bands coming together. So at a certain point, they decide they need a singer. So they audition for singers.

This gentleman named Dave Gann enters the picture. Apparently. For everybody listening who might be mispronouncing the name, pronounce his name. Oh, God, now you put me on the spot. I do believe there's a little bit of a bounce in Ghan. So it's not just Ghan, but it's not Gahan. It's somewhere in between. Which is what I've probably been saying most of my life.

Well, look, forgive me, Mr. Dave, if I'm saying it wrong. But what I've come to understand it to be is GAN. He starts to sound like a Star Wars character. Because the more I say, the less confident I am that is right. But I'm certain that people listening to this episode will correct me in the comments on YouTube. Dave is going to come find us. He's going to be like, that's not my name. So Dave, who from here for the rest of this episode and the next one will be known as Dave.

So Dave, quote unquote, looked better than we did and had more contacts. And he's saying well. Yes. So I like that he's saying, well, is the third thing that comes up. He had good contacts. That's what Andy Fletcher said. And he comes up with the name because he's, I believe, decorating windows or something in, so he's got like a fashion background of sorts.

And there's a magazine, a French magazine called Depeche Mode. So he brings that into the band and says, I think this would be a good name. Boom, that's the name, Depeche Mode. And Depeche Mode in French means... Well, let's see. Depeche literally means hurry up. So it's said that Depeche Mode means like fast fashion.

But I think the magazine, what it really means in the format that it came from is like the news, the fashion news. Yeah, I always heard it meant the new fashion. That's what I always heard. Again, like the words, if you break them down literally, Depeche means hurry up. Depeche, Depeche,

Peschevue means hurry up, hurry up. By the way, there was nothing more fun than watching old news reports about the band and hearing every type of pronunciation. You heard, you heard, dead Pesh mode. I remember that one. There was one that was like, De Pash mode. I think they were still maybe figuring it out, because I've seen early flyers where they have some of the accents.

It would be DeiPash and whatever. And at a certain point, they're just like, you know what, let's just not. The news reporters are always, like, about 20 years older than the music fans. So, like, there's always, like, a little bit of, like, you know, disdain on their tongue when they're like, this new band called Depeche Mode, mark me down as somebody who's not going to be at that concert. It's important you mention that too because there was a lot of rockism at the time. Like all the journalists.

What is rockism? Rockism is just what it sounds like. It's this bias towards guitars and live instrumentation. I thought someone who couldn't pronounce racism. And along with it, there's like a whiteness component and there's a mailness component because there's kind of a stereotype. Who are these like, who are these British guys? coming, which, by the way, most of those reporters

were like huge Beatle fans, so you think they would see it as a new wave, but they wanted nothing to do with this group. They are coming out of, especially with British music, this sort of, in the 60s, the Stones and the Beatles and the kinks and the Who and Zeppelin, and that carries on through the 70s, and

when Depeche Mode come out and it's synthesizers, and also we've got soft cell over there and the human league, there's a little bit of a, like, feminization of the sound and the look, and also, they're young and pretty looking. They're dealing with, they're dealing with Wham, they're dealing with Culture Club. So these journalists, many male

journalists from enemy and sounds and melody maker have a strong bias against the people. And when you watch or read some of the interviews you're talking about and Depeche Moe talk about it all through the 80s and their interviews, how much disdain they feel coming from the music press. They are always like, we're hated in

England, they never give us any good press. And I think in part comes from this this raucous journalist's bias. So gradually, the four of them, it's Dave, it's Martin, it's Vince, it's Gradually, they all get synths, they start playing around London, and they put out their first demo. And here is one of the songs from that first demo. This is a song called Photographic, which eventually makes it to the Speak and Spell record.

It's by Vince Clark, and it goes a little something like this. What is that? 135 BPM? That's really fast, isn't it? That's really fast. I love that BPM. Can I just admit that? Like, if I was at that concert, I'd already be like, you got me.

It's like crazy 80s dancing tempo where it's like they dance really fast in the 80s. Think about Molly Ringwald in the Breakfast Club. It's like, everything is so fast. I wonder why everything in the 80s was fast. I wonder if there was a drug perhaps on the scene that made everything go a little faster. No reason. There wasn't any reason. That's a great demo.

That's a great demo. That's a song, Photographic. It's by Vince Clark. Again, a re-recorded version eventually gets on their first record. Speak and Speak and Spell. But, like, it's interesting listening to it because it's very like experimental sounding. I hear a lot of suicide in there, right?

I hear suicide. Like, Shiree. Like Shiree. Yeah, we've talked about that band. We'll talk about it many times because it's such an important band. So this demo tape, they shop it around. Back in those days, you had to go in person to, like, shop your demo tape around. You'd show up at the record label.

They get turned down by everybody. Yeah. They go to mute records. Yeah, I'm going to ask you. How did they lay their first record? They shop it to Daniel Miller, who's the founder of mute records, and we'll talk about him in a little bit. And he rejects them too.

But later he goes to see them play live, and that's when things turned. That's when he realizes that there's something special about these guys in no small part because they've packed the place with all these young people that are dancing. One thing, one of the comments he makes seeing them live, is that they're supporting Thad Gadget in London. And all the fans were dancing and not looking at the band. So he's like, there's something going on, something special with these guys. So they do a handship.

That's interesting. They weren't looking at the band, so he thought they have a good sound. The fact that people were just engaged dancing and were just, they were into the music. The music was really special, right? So for putting up music on a record label at the time, like, that's what matters is the sound. You don't even have to see the band to dance. I've never talked about this really on the podcast. before, but I did briefly work as an A&R assistant at Hollywood Records in the early 2000s.

Okay. And I'm happy to say that, like, you know, well, no group, so to speak, that I helped my bosses discover ever really blew up. But I do remember, like, occasionally getting a demo, you would hear a good demo, you'd go see them, you'd be like, oh, they don't, their look is all wrong. Like, these guys are all, like, tightened up. But then you go see other groups when you light their demo. You'd be like, they made it, and then there would be a bidding more.

I say all that just to say that. a good demo. I miss those days. I'm getting slightly triggered and I used that word very lightly because there was a time when I was a band guy sending out demos and the stress involved that I personally had with like which songs should go first because you're thinking

oh, they're only going to listen to five seconds so like if I put maybe they like the second song I should reverse them and then there's actually like especially at the time like getting CDs made and then getting addresses and putting them in envelopes and then should you put a little prize in the envelope or they just going to like throw it like my brain went crazy trying to

It should go crazy because every A&R guy and every A&R assistant has had at that time a stack of CDs by their desk. Most of them not getting listened to. They just throw them directly out. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes. But like, yeah, some of the good ones, some of the good people at those labels made sure to listen to everything. Because every CD on any particular one, you know, you could maybe discover the next big group. Going back to Daniel Miller, Daniel Miller is the founder of mute records.

But you also may know him because he was The Normal. There's a band called The Normal. but it's really just him. Famously, this song that he put out in 1977 called Warm Leatherette. Leatherette. So Daniel Miller, huge craftwork fan. He actually owns Ralph and Florian's custom vocoder. He's collecting synths.

He's really into this, again, at the time, avant-garde music. This isn't like a normal thing to have synthesizers be at the center and the core of pop music and be on the charts. There's a lot of, there's craftwork, there's OMD, a lot of, it's more underground, though. And it's more of the kind of cool kids in the know. going to ask you, who inspired Depeche Mode? I feel like there's definitely an OMD influence there. Am I wrong? No, I agree. I think Human League, OMD, definitely craftwork. There's a lot of craftwork in across the catalog. In fact, there isn't an album that goes by where I'm not like, oh, that's from radioactivity. Oh, that's from the model. If anything, it seems like, and we're going to talk more about this as we

talk about these albums, it seems like what they did was they took the sound of some of these groups. Yeah. But they sort of, in their own weird way, like, I know that Depechevon has this reputation for being, sort of, like, singing very coldly, if that's the term. Teutonically. But, exactly. But the fact that they are even loaning their real voices to these tracks in ways that, like, craftwork just, you know, craftwork is so enveloped by the whole, like, we're machines, we're robots sort of thing. I agree. I think a big thing that Depechmo did was they added a little humanity.

Dave, as a singer. They added some humanity. added some humanity, added some vocalizing, and lyrically, too, because they're not just singing about robots or radioactivity. So there's real storytelling. It's not so much the sounds of craftwork, but the idea of sound. One big thing we're about to get into in a really fun way on this episode and talking about Depeche Mode across both episodes is how much they do crafting sound

and coming up with new sounds that have never been used before is a big part of who they are and what they do. Absolutely. And craftwork, getting back to that point, to your question, I think a big part of what they bring from them, besides the idea of sound, is simple melodies. Simple melodies.

What you'll find across the catalog, but especially in this song, is a lot of simple melody. So hook, hook, hook. When we get in the stems, I'll point that out to you along the way. So Depeche Mode is set by 1980, and their first album is Speak and Spell,

which drops in 1981. How does working with Daniel Miller, how does that affect the output? How does that affect their sound? So Daniel Miller, if you haven't noticed already, he's, I guess, the unsung, we always have unsung heroes. He is probably the unsung hero of this era

and of this episode, but also of this band, because they did a handshake deal with mute records, a one-man record label. Those never go south. Well, they've never left the label, and they are still working with Daniel Miller

to this day, which is incredible to think that 40 plus years have gone on. They're still working with the same... It must have been a good deal because if they were getting, like, raked over the coals, they would not have stayed with mute. They obviously have...

Must have been a decent deal. They have a decent deal. Well, from what I understand in the earliest days, at least it was quote-unquote 50-50. Maybe that's been renegotiated. But the idea is, look, we pull our resources together. And in this case, Daniel Miller is helping produce them. The label gets 50 and the band. 50-50 label and band. To be clear, that's on the recording, the masters. Nothing to do with the publishing. So one thing that Daniel Miller did was he introduced

them to sequencers. Because prior to that, with everything Vince Clark had been doing, all of their synths were monosynth. So you can only play one note at a time. And it's all being played by finger. So all of those early demos, at least, by the time. By the time, we get to the first album, they're starting to bring in some new capabilities. So sequencing was new. They had an ARP-2,600 sequencer, and there's only two cents on that first record. It's one of them. And their first single is Just Can't Get Enough, which is, to this day, in film and TV, one of the biggest songs of all-time. Every wedding, Ba-Mitsva party that you want to get everybody going. You play this. You play this.

It's their first single. It's a massive hit, and this record comes out. It does pretty well with this single, and Vince Clark quits. At the time, this was devastating and terrifying for these guys. At the time, Vince has since explained that he was a bit of a control freak. He liked doing everything himself. He was like, I don't need all these other guys. I have these ideas that I want to implement. Why am I bothering with these three other jackasses? So he starts this pattern, which he's done twice now, of finding just a singer. In this case, he went with Allison Moyette to formias. Another incredible Incredible. Sounds like it could have been a Depeche Mode song.

It could have been, well, certainly, it sort of was. Yeah, it came out of that kitchen. Half the DNA of earliest Depeche Mode is certainly in that record. And by the way, don't go great song. Yeah, it's great album, great album cover. You know, like that's just like... Upstairs at Eric's. Yes, upstairs and Eric.

But that's not the last time he does. He goes on to do it again with Erasure, where he brings in Andy Bell and it's another singer, and he does all the other stuff. So he finds his niche being the guy doing all the. music and finding an incredible singer. He's almost like, uh, what is that, Zellig, who just pops up everywhere. It just pops up everywhere and all these great two two person entities. Yeah, and excellence follows. So there are a trio and it's time to make a new record. Yeah. A broken frame. A broken frame comes out in 1982 and Martin Gore takes over the songwriting. He buys a new synth to inspire himself. It's a PPG, which is an early, it's a wave table synth, which kind of lays the groundwork for the sampling we're

going to get into later. But as Daniel Miller describes it, it was almost like a blank sheet of paper. And what's very interesting about their two different writing styles, as I mentioned, Clark was kind of a quote unquote control freak, as he put himself. He did all the recording parts himself. He enjoyed that. But Martin doesn't like writing songs that way. Martin likes to write the song and focus on the songiness of the song, and he's much less interested in how it's recorded. Where does he start? Does he start with a melody and then try and put it into the machine, or is he like just listening to the machine does? Like, what is this process? I'm glad you're slowing me down a little bit here because this band is right on the edge of how songwriting begins to change. And we're going to

see some of that in this song. It used to be that you would write a song completely separate from the recording of that song. And the production process was, first of all, expensive, hard to access. You needed money. You needed to be signed. You needed to have a place to put the music when you were done with it. So a label deal. And you might write songs in your bedroom with your guitar on a piece of paper and a tape recorder or maybe on the piano with a legal pad and write the lyrics down. the separation of the songwriting process and the recording process, I've actually kind of forgotten about it because now it doesn't really exist. When you're writing something, you're kind of also recording it at the same time.

But back then, Martin would have his little tape machine and he would have some inexpensive synths and his guitar, and he would just come up with parts. He would come up with melody and lyrics and chord changes and where does each bit go. Was he writing the lyrics too? He's writing the lyrics, he's writing the melodies, he's singing the whole thing. But what it comes down to is there's a complete separation of what the song is and how the recording sounds. Martin is not interested in getting in the studio at this time and spending hours selecting drum sounds and going for like, well, should we try this synth patch? Should we try it on guitar?

Should we try it on bass? Enter Alan Wilder, who is interested in these things. Just to finish that quote from Daniel Miller, because it expresses exactly what you're asking about. we're talking about is Vince had a specific idea for what his songs should sound like, but Martin did not. It was more like, here are the words, here's the melody, let's figure it out. So it's really interesting to kind of remember an era when those things were completely separate. Songwriting was different from recording that song. And it goes to this day where you have the Grammy, which famously no one ever knows, why is it Song of the Year and Record of the Year?

For that exact reason. The Song of the Year is about the song as a self-contained, if you played it on acoustic guitar with no production, does it stand on its own? Song of the year is the composition. The record of the year is the recording of the year. The bells, the whistles, the everything combined, exactly. So his first single is actually a bigger hit, and it's this song. It's called C.U. That song was a bigger hit than just can't get enough.

At the time. So this is encouraging in this moment, because this is his first effort to, like, replace Vince Clark, who had this big hit. I think it's easy to say now that C.U. is not the bigger hit between that and just can get enough. No, no, no. It has since been eclipsed. Yes, to be clear. And what matters in that moment was the confidence that it gave him. Yes. He also does a song, which by the way, I noticed, this is a song called Leave in Silence,

which I only noticed years later in listening back. It's like, I think the song is about Vince Clark leaving. Here's a little snippet of it. And the lyric, what can I say? I don't want to play anymore. What can I say? I'm headed for the door. I can't stand this emotional violence, leave in silence. It sounds like he's describing what Vince did. He's just like, I'm out here. Yeah. It's also interesting that silence pops up because that's going to be a part of another big song for them. It sure is. I'm a writer. I care about words. The names of their songs, the names of their albums. They're significant. In themselves, they are poetry. A broken frame, like, there's so much in that. Why is the frame broken? I just, I care too much.

Please continue. It's art. It is art. It is art that like gets you, like, it carbonates you. You feel something inside. just like letting it roll off the lips. But please continue. So at this point, we need a fourth band member, and Alan Wilder answers an added melody maker. Keyboard player needed for established band. No time wasters, it says. Which I love.

And it says they're looking for someone under 21. Alan Wilder is 22, so he lies and says he's under 21. But he gets the gig. He goes on tour with them. And what he brings to the band is he does have a lot of production experience. He's been in several bands before. And what clearly seems to happen in this moment when Alan joins the band, we finally have this sort of perfect songwriting chain where Martin Gore is focusing on the lyrics, the melody, for Dave Gann to sing. Remember, he's the singer, but he's not writing. Coming up with any of the melodies that he sings, and separately from all that, further separately from that, is the production is really being helmed by this fourth band member, Alan Wilder, along with Daniel Miller and the engineers they work with. So it's so interesting to think about this chain, the songwriting chain, from Martin to Dave to

Alan, it's like the separation of duties, but it works, and it works really well. And it works for about a dozen years, I should say. In 1995, Walder has had enough, and he ends up leaving. Right. Quote, increasing dissatisfaction with the internal relations and working practices of the group. So it works for a while, and then it doesn't work anymore. And we'll get into some of the external factors, if you will, that sort of lead to that. There's a lot more going on within the band, not just the songwriting. Second album does pretty well. The third album, construction time again. has one of my favorite songs, Everything Counts.

To me, this song is a confessional, going back to the songwriting process, because if you listen to the lyrics, the grabbing hands, grab all they can. And by the way, Martin is singing that. It's not Dave singing that line. So Martin sings,

the grabbing hands, grab all they can, all for themselves. After all, it's a competitive world. Everything counts in large amounts. Clearly, he's talking about, you know, business deals and bad, maybe offers coming from record labels,

but maybe he's also talking about himself a little bit. because his publishing company is called grabbing hands publishing for his music. I think that he has a lot of self-awareness about how unusual this is, because he is 100% the published writer of nearly the entire Depeche Mode catalog. There's only nine songs in their entire body of work

that aren't Martin Gore exclusive publishing royalty money, which is a huge imbalance over time. They're doing fine. Don't cry any tears for how much money Dave has, but there is more money that comes when you are the sole publisher. So it's very interesting. I mean, I think it's deserved.

talk a lot about unfair splits, but I will say Martin Gore, I think the man's a genius, and I think I'll just take this opportunity to say right now, Martin Gore, we found out years later, is have black, his father was stationed in Britain, he was an American GI, and as a Black Depeche Mode fan,

I do take some pride in it. That's awesome. Yeah, he didn't find out until much later in life. He ends up meeting him briefly, and it sounds like it didn't go so well. It was a bit of a discouraging experience, but you know, I think Dave also had a similar experience with his father. He grew up thinking his stepfather was his father as well. Oh, no, it's one of those.

Interestingly, it's one of those, right. He only found out later that, and then the, it's like, it's like, biological father came back to be in his life briefly, but also was not there very long, what I understand. Yeah. It's like Jack Nicholson finding out that his aunt was actually his mom and his mom was his aunt, which, considering he was in China town, where it's like, she's my sister, she's my daughter. Like, how ironic that this guy has something far less gross, but something like then is in his life. Before we go any further, we do have to answer the question that everyone has, every Depeche Mode, fan who's not a deep fan, I think. How much is enough? That's one of the main question. Maybe the second most asked questions is what did Andy Fletcher do?

We did mention early on that he was the bass player and that first incarnation with Vince Clark, but over time, as he himself says in 101, in the documentary that we talked about earlier, he literally says, my job is to keep everyone together. Martin's the songwriter, Alan's the good musician, Dave's the vocalist, and I bum around. Every group. I swear has that personality type. Like I always said, like, what did Jerobi do in a Tribe Called Quest? Yeah. Like, even in Outcast, like, we always think of them as a perfect duo,

but there was Mr. DJ in those early Outcast albums, and Big Rube was on every album. Like, there are always those guys who are there. I feel like, in a way, that's just to remind them of where they came from. Totally. So the egos. It's the early friendship, and maybe to kind of be a peacemaker when there's moments in the studio. We're not quite at that part in the story of Depeche Mode yet,

but I do find it interesting that we are a duo. And at some point, Depechemo becomes Dave and Martin and the unique personality push and pull of that duo. What you're saying is really hitting me, because I think if there's one fun thing that's been discovered as we make the show, I think I went into this show thinking, oh, we would talk about this, talk about that.

So many episodes, it's a surprise to me how it comes up. The collaborative nature and the duo nature, how important that is to the story, but also how that important that is to us. It's almost never a perfect trio either. always seems to come down a little bit to a duo and like a third or fourth day. It has to be impossible. It's impossible to be perfectly splitting things 50-50.

And the nature of a good successful operation, of a group, a duo, whatever, is that you recognize that. And you realize that sometimes, okay, someone's going to get a little more songwriting. Someone's going to spend a little more time in the studio. Someone's going to be the front man that everyone wants on the front cover of their magazine. But as a whole, we make this music together. We are this group together. And I think one thing that I really loved, I saw Martin Gore on the show. on Zane Lowe recently, say after Fletcher,

he passed away, Andy Fletcher passed away a couple years ago during COVID. What he said about him was that Andy was the band's biggest fan. He enjoyed being in Depeche Mode more than the rest of us did. It's like the guy in the Happy Mondays who would just dance on stage. He was just glad to be there. This leads us finally to Depechevon's fourth studio album, the album with the song we're discussing today. And the album, Some Great Reward, Another Great Title.

This is what helps them break into. to the US, which is what every British group at some point really wants to do. We'll get into that really, really soon. You're absolutely right. And as Dave himself says, it's the first song that, quote, made a dent on popular radio, propelled us into a new cosmos at that time, made us number one in a lot of countries. And then it let us go off and make the music that we wanted to make. So this is the one they cross over in the U.S.

It's funny, though, because it's sort of a classic thing, like we see with Radiohead, so many bands. It's their first big hit in America, as Martin says. and there's a quote from Martin Gore, I really don't appreciate the song anymore nowadays, but without it, we may not have been around as a band anymore. It's almost like me, myself, and I, by Dayless All. They don't do, they don't like doing that song in concert anymore.

Maybe that's the rule and not the exception. Like, it's the big hit that makes you break and then you're not into it anymore. Song 2 by Blur was done ironically, and then it was their biggest hit in the U.S. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, and Fletch said it's our biggest hit we don't play anymore.

So it gets to Pesh mode, it breaks them in America, it breaks them through the world. It becomes this next chapter moment for them, but they're sick of it. It's such an interesting... But I'm not sick of it, you're not sick of it. Well, we've got to talk. As a person who did know who Depeche Mode was, because I was listening to my little pop station, I thought the lyrics were cheesy.

It felt like the messaging was not for me. It almost felt like all lives matter. It's like, people are people. But I realized even at my young age... That is totally a context thing. When did you hear the message? song. Yeah, I mean, like when I heard the song, I like the beat. I love the beat, but I did think I thought the message was a little cheesy, but the message wasn't for me. It was very direct.

It's very earnest. I think it was directed, like, you know, quite honestly, like some of their potentially racist fans in Europe. I can just tell you, in 1984, hearing this and hearing the message so clear, like, even though I don't know that I felt necessarily oppressed, I was a straight, white kid in seventh grade in Marin County. For me, though, something appealed to. what felt oppressed because I wasn't super happy. My childhood wasn't unhappy, but like, you know, I had my usual stresses about whatever, friends and girls not liking me. But for whatever reason, people are people, so why should it be? You and I get along so awfully. I think I was just feeling, like, you tap into that as a listener. You tap into someone in your life who you're not getting along

with. You're tapping into some situation in your life where you feel judged. And no matter who you are, whatever context, it spoke to me. You know, I, that's interesting to say that, because, I always heard it in sort of like a racial context. Of course. I think that's absolutely correct. But it can actually be applied to, you know, like if you're like, honestly, going back to earlier, if you're like the goth kid who's getting picked on in school, it could be about like, hey, yes or yes, exactly.

If you're any sort of group where you feel like you're the other, minority or the other. It could totally work. I grew up in Atlanta. It's the home of Martin Luther King Jr. From the time I could speak, the idea that we were all to be judged by the content of our character was sort of. of baked into me. Yeah.

So to me, this felt like, yeah. You know, it's almost like if someone did a song called like, puppies are cool. You know, like, no kidding. Okay, people are people. But, again, I wasn't probably the person who needed to hear that message, and some people probably did. So after the break, we'll dive into how people are people was made and how it paved

the way for Depeche Mode to create some of their later chart-topping hits. Stay with us. Welcome back to one song. Luxury, walk us through it. Tell us how did some great reward get made. So we're going to talk about this fourth record, which is called Some Great Reward. People Our People was the first song that was recorded. It started in London, but then they moved to Berlin.

And that feels important to me because there's a lot of Germanness that I feel is happening in this song. Of course, in this band. We talked about the craftwork already. Teutonic. Very Teutonic. But Berlin at this point, it should be remembered. It's post-war. It's not kind of like if you go to Berlin now.

It's a very different world. It feels like Williamsburg in some places. If you go to Mita, it feels like certain parts of Manhattan. but at the time it was still very post-war, very industrial, and that's really important because some of the sound of this band, not just the vibe, but also literally the sound comes from that. Because in early 1983,

Martin goes to see a band called Einstein the Neubarten. I'm glad we have you here to pronounce the names of the ABBA musicians. I know how to pronounce this band name because when I was in high school, I used to make their little logo on that every single school book I had, that would be my little marker. My name and then Einstein's Ender's End. Noibaten logo because it was so cool. But if you don't know who Einstein de Noibaten Ard, I've said the name three times,

you certainly know who they are now. This is a band from East Germany. The name means destroying new buildings. And it is literally the sound of the band is they go to these industrial spaces and they have this incredibly interesting. And it's difficult to explain. So I'm just going to play you a snippet. This is from Einstein's 1983 song Armenia. So this is something that Martin might have seen live, which changed his life. By the way, that's what my mom thinks punk sounds like. That's so funny. I was so surprised the first time I heard the sex pistols

because I heard about them before I ever heard them. And I assumed the same thing, too. I thought it would be like abrasive and noisy. Just noise. Not like, you know, a 60s girl group band, Bath for the Ramones, basically. So what if the video for this is like a mind-blowing thing of itself. Picture, if you will,

three or maybe four shirtless German guys banging on metal in a giant, open industrial post-war, like, you know, exploded warehouse. A guy can dream, yeah. And that's Blixabargal later of the Bad Seeds, Nick Cave for the Bad Seeds. That's him playing guitar and screaming and shrieking. It's experimental, it's noise. And Martin comes out of this experience hearing sound. And he hears this idea of like, what if we took those sounds and some of these ideas of percussion? They're banging on pipes. There's not, maybe not a beat to speak of, but like, what if we made a beat? What if we made a rhythm? What if we used these sounds in a pop

context? So this kind of changes his headspace. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, they end up working with for this record, Gareth Jones, as an engineer who had also been working with Einstein the Neubaten. So it should be said that Depeche Mode had already been experimenting on their third record construction time again. They'd been experimenting with this idea of sampling and using samplers. But this type of sound to be putting in the sampler was a new thing. So that factors into how this song gets made. And as we get into the stems, I'll go a little deeper. One more thing I'll say about the process of making this record, because Gareth Jones, the engineer and co-producer, along with Daniel Miller, talks about, as mentioned earlier, Martin's songwriting process being

so unique at this time. Martin writes a song, he says, and, quote, he considers it tedious to be endlessly playing around with synthesizers and making different versions. In his mind, the demo is the guiding light, and he wants other people to try different things. All this to say that the making of this record after the songs are written is really Daniel Miller, Alan Wilder, and Gareth Jones, the three of them, they're in the studio all the time while Martin and Dave go and Andy go off to the pub and have a drink. They're there till like six in the morning in this record. I love doing this sort of anthropological dive into the music because I've always said that like craftwork made John Cage listenable. You know, like they did a more listenable

version of what he was doing and then groups like Depeche Mo did an even more pop version of what craftwork was doing. They were listening to and loving the avant-garde. Really weird avant-garde experimental stuff. One person takes it a little bit more to the mainstream and the next person takes it a little bit more. And by the way, hip-hop like when they sample things like Beach House, but then they put that, you know, that infectious beat underneath the sample. Like it's all the same process of taking something that's, you know, atmospheric and then just, you know, slowly working it towards the mainstream. In many ways, that's what the history of pop music really is.

It's folding in and the expression, the band Pop will eat itself, right? That's what this idea comes from. It's ingesting its sources and sort of obscuring them. It's always taking things from the fringe, whether it's fringe because it's atmospheric or avant-garde or it's from some marginalized group. It's always a matter of just taking it from like this small place and just trying to figure out what's the through line and make it more pop. And this is called cultural appropriation.

It's actually just called appropriation. By the way, it can also just be art. It's all things art. It's all things art. And one thing I love about Depechevost, is when I listen to them, it makes me want to write songs. Because you're just like, oh, this sounds fun. They're sampling. They're doing stuff.

I interrupted you. Let's talk about the album. Well, that's a perfect intro into what I was about to talk about, which is a little quick backstory about samplers and sampling. As we alluded to earlier in this episode, sampling exists. It's in hip-hop. Prior to that, we have, quote, unquote, sampling in Jamaican music. At the time, it's a little different.

You're taking the entire. recorded instrumental and putting a new vocal on top, or maybe you're playing around with instruments coming and going. That's recorded materials being reused is already an idea in the world. But this is kind of a new capability because samplers have just come on the market. They're very expensive. The very first samplers. There's the ferrelight is about $25,000. The Sinclaviour is even more expensive. It's $200,000. So most artists don't have access to this. Labels do. But guess what? Guess who has a label? Daniel Miller. Who happens to be. the producer and the founder of Mute.

Shout out to Mute. Shout out to Mute and kind of the fifth member of the band in many ways. So he has a Sinclaviour, which is this $200,000 device. It's large, it's hot, it heats up the place, it melts down in the summer. But they have this new capability where, and it should be said, that the earliest uses of Sinclaviors and samplers was actually not intended to reuse recordings. They were just looking for new sounds. Remember in the 70s, there's guitars, there's pianos.

There's roads and whirlies. Your sonic palette for rock and roll especially, sure, you can do clever things with pedals and such, but there's a limited sort of vocabulary of colors that you can use. With synthesizers coming into the picture, but they're still expensive and they're still limited. Now with samplers, you can take any sound and pitch it up and down the keyboard,

and suddenly you have a whole new, never-existing for sound. They go crazy with this. We would literally, quote-unquote, we would literally sample anything and everything that was around. A lot of our percussion at that time came from the kitchen, They'd go in and they'd find like, you know, spoons and knives, and they would record it. They would just try all kinds of stuff. I found this footage of Martin throwing a rock and recording the rock, and I'll play that for you,

and then it ends up being in one of their songs. Here it is. Anyway, the idea is to roll the pebble on this piece of metal along here, this window frame, thus causing, thus making this sort of sound. The idea is to take that sequence and to make an interesting rhythm out of it. That sound was used in blasphemous rumors from the same record, and here it is. See if you can hear it. As Gareth Jones says, you could sample almost any sound and turn it into a rhythm or a melody.

And you can even use the intrinsic rhythm within a sound. So what I just played for you with that kind of rock, you can loop that and that becomes a new rhythm. This was all completely new. This is a new capability. And again, it was maybe being used by like, avant-garde musicians. I'm sure they're annoyed about it and I've said five times. I'm very proud of myself. But this is

a new idea to bring it into pop music. So because they have access to the Sinclaviour, because Martin happens to see industrial sounds being made by this band that blows his mind in Berlin at the time, they decide to incorporate this into not just this album but into People or People. And speaking of People or People,

ladies and gentlemen, we have the STEM. So luxury, let's begin with the drums. Okay, well, let's play some of these big industrial beats in a pop context. We like it percussive. Now, of course, that's how the song starts. We all know that part. But what's going on there is

Alan has programmed this beat on his drumulator, when an emu, it's a sampler, a drum machine-focused sampler, but he replaces the parts so he gets a kick drum, he gets a snare, and then he moves at all this enclavear. But what they're doing is they're merging sounds, they're layering them. And again, that's a new capability. Suddenly, you can have an action. actual kick drum from an acoustic kick drum recorded, but you could add some metal sound on top of that

so that every time you hear that kick drum, there's a little bit of metal, there's a little bit of edge to it. So this is a new capability that they have and they're using it with the Sinclavia. And to your point about it sounding industrial, like it sounds like it could be a just a rhythmic machine, you know, pressing, you know, BMW somewhere in West Germany. Absolutely, yeah. So that's the beat that you hear through the beginning of the song. And then in the chorus, you hear this. I'll give you some context.

Kind of a... And by the way, just leave that playing. Leave that play it. So as you can hear, there's like a little bit of a tambourine that's sort of the only high hat-like or high percussion. Everything else is a sort of kick and snare. Can you play that again?

Yeah. I miss you much. Baby, I really miss you much. I feel like when it goes back to what I was saying earlier, all these songs are made on the same machines and almost to the exact same pattern. So it makes sense that, you know, a person like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,

they're going to like these Depeche Mode songs. I'm going to like them because what they're doing at this time is not that different what's happening in R&B at that time. That's a funk beat. That's not a rock and roll beat. Absolutely. That is definitely. It's just interesting that when it comes out

and it's packaged with, you know, the white guys dressed how I'm dressed right now with the white shirts and the leather jackets. You know, it's sold to one market, and then if Janet Jackson's singing over that same beat, it's packaged to another market. Absolutely right. But, I mean, to today's credit,

to 20, 24 and 25's credit, I feel like there's less of that now. I feel like we all sort of can all appreciate, you know, when a song is made by Tyler the Creator versus when it's made by, you know, justice. Well, the boundaries. are so blurred, like, it used to be that there might be some distinctive genre markers that would indicate, like, who made this, what did they look like, who's it intended to be, you know, who would listen to it on what radio station. Now, so much music, it almost like most of these instrumentals, you could have Tyler on it, or you could have Sabrina Carpenter on it. You know, it could almost be, that could exist. I love it. I actually, I appreciate the less balkanization of our musical diet. Let's, you, I agree. Let's get back into the drums. So going back to Gareth Jones for a second, and this being produced in Hances Studios in Berlin,

one big part of the sound of this record, because those are some big-ass drums, the way they got the sound of those big-ass drums. It's a combination of this enclaveur, but also a production method where they would literally pipe the sounds of the recording into a room and then record that room. So in a giant room, you get that echo.

You get the room sound. That makes so much sense. The drums in Depechevon songs are so epic. They're so epic, and I think that's one of the reasons why they always pulled me in. Like, lyrically, these are big songs, melody-wise, there are big ideas taking place.

And then underneath it all is like this layer of drums that are so hard-hitting. So ambient. And it's not even all the drums in one room. They would have just the kick drum in one room, the snare drum in another room, and the tom's in another room. So very innovative method.

This is the Tom's room. Can you get out, please? We need to do the tombs in this room. Okay, so next up we have this iconic sound, and I will break it down for you because kind of similar to our poison episode where we had the iconic sounds, then we separated them.

So you could hear that there was an 808 underneath it. snare, right? Here's the orchestra hit that we all know and love. Help me understand. That's this bit. I'll put the vocals in so you can hear the context. I always thought that sound was the orchestra hit on, I feel like I got a Casio keyboard. It had a thing called orchestra hit. And it was like, chah, chah, there was that sound. There is a famous orchestra hit that's on the Farolite, which is known as Orcist, or Orc 5, Ork 2. There's lots of videos on the internet. This is not that, but it might be coming from the same idea.

I'm sure they heard it somewhere else in a hip-hop song possibly. But this orchestra hit actually comes from this. That's a recording of Carmina Barana by Carl Orff. And it's a 1982 recording. And it's sampled and it's pitched up using this enclaveur. But then it's also layered. Because when you hear it in the mix, it sounds like this. So you're also getting this bass.

in there. Wow. And you're getting this in there. Piano. So together, help me understand. Help me understand. Now you understand. Help me understand. You helped us understand. I've helped you understand. The three layers of that orchestra hit sample. That's great. Yeah. I always wondered where that sound came from. Let's talk about the bass. Let's talk about that bass. I love this bass. And here is the intro. It's almost like throaty. It's got like, it sounds like somebody Throwing low. It shows up in every episode. It sounds like somebody saying the notes, do, do, do, and it very well might be.

I haven't read anything specifically. I was going to ask who's playing that bass. Is that Wilder? I believe Alan Wilder. The three of them, the core team, it's the three of them are sort of doing, the production team, I should say. It's probably not necessarily Martin or Dave or Andy,

but Alan and Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones, the engineer. The three of them are kind of making the song turn into a recorded song. So everything here is a little bit all of them doing this together. But I do know that that bass is a combination of probably a Minimog or an ARP-2600, which Daniel Miller definitely had. But they also combine that with the sound of an acoustic guitar being plucked with a coin. So I'll play it again.

And listen if you can hear the layering of synth bass and then just a little bit of like the attack of a coin on some strings. I wonder if it's that I wonder if it's that dawn that might be it I'm not certain but that is the high end that would make sense

and then we have this other bass line in the verse I like that little boon jam octave here it goes again oh no it was different that time yeah they're performing it

I guess this is in sequence live yeah they're actually playing that on the keyboard that's crazy yeah and just for some context here it is with the vocals we'll be disturbed People are people so why should it be?

Love it. I love it too. All right. So here's another section. These are absolutely boogie rhythms. Like this is boogie funk. Yeah, absolutely, man. This is 1984.

They would have been hearing. It reminds me of a junior. Evelyn Champaign King. Right. You know, they're using the same instruments and they're technically all the same generation. So there's a. And those are huge radio hits.

Like the Evelyn Champine King's step is on the radio. We're hearing that stuff. They're hearing the synth funk. And they're bringing the synth funk to an abandoned industrial warehouse in Berlin. I know. I love the fact that they're bringing in like these, they're throwing rocks and recording it. They're using coins. Like everything's really hard.

Yeah. You know, everything feels like their videos where everything felt like it was in black and white. And it was like a rusty factory and like some weeds growing up around it. And they're like walking, looking sad and pensive. The aesthetics of the band, like the visuals, especially in part two of, of this episode. We'll be talking even more about that when another unsung hero joins the mix. But, like, even in the earliest days, there was something very unified about what it sounded

like, what it looked like, what the lyrics were about, the Berlinness of it all. It all made perfect sense together. It makes perfect sense. And then there's one more part at the very end that I count on the stands world. And it just sort of becomes this, like, kind of Motown beat with the snare on every hit. And all the funk kind of gets drained away. And it just becomes, well, very Teutonic. It sounds very military almost.

And that's this part here. And in the drums, it's like the last minute or so of the song. After all the funk and rhythmic stuff in the first couple of minutes, we just end with a minute, I guess you'd call it a coda or an outro, I'm not really sure, where it's just this new vocal section too. I can't understand. That's been borrowed from earlier, but now we have a whole new context for it. I love it. For those wondering, we've used the phrase Teutonic a lot on this episode.

That is relating to Germany or Germanic people. This is true. And there is a sound that is sort of associated with Germany, which is, you know, sort of marchy. Direct. Yeah. I can say it. Oh, no. Yeah.

Say it. This group has been called synth pop. And so we need to hear some sense, my man. And by the way, the sense are doing more. than just playing notes, they're also playing samples, as you said. That's right. The Sinclaviour and the synthesizer, the line between one to the other. They're creating

sounds with pure synths, but the Sinclaviour also has synth sounds in it, and it also has the sounds they're making up. I'll play you some more cool ones in a second, but first, here's some of those sweet, sweet melodies. In fact, where the synths end and the Sinclaviour begins is unclear. That all sounds programmed to me.

I think they programmed nearly everything. It may have started life as an acoustic guitar being sampled. It may have started life as a synth part in the in the 2600. But from what I understand, from what Alan Wilder says, almost everything ended up being programmed and sequenced in the sinclair. Here's the first melody. Oh, that did not go the way I thought it's going to go. And I know this song. There's a lot happening in the second half. There's a lot happening. There's a lot of melody and they overlap sometimes. But it's also linear. You get one melody to the next. If you were to count, it's kind of like the metallic episode where I was counting, like riffs there are, like six or seven. If you were to count all the like, melodic or hooky events across this song. There might be seven or eight different melodic ideas or hook ideas.

By the way, that was like a guy who's like, I'm going to go half in. I'm going all the way in. Like, he got the second half. I was like, whoa, what's happening? Where's this guy coming? All right, then there's also the piano sound that happens in the chorus.

And in that same moment, there's an ostinado. And then after playing them separately, I'll play them together. When I have to play this, this is the little harper. Glissondo, which is also coming out of the sampler. I'll play that same thing, then I'll bring in the piano. I kind of lost. I like those low pianos, though.

I lost the, like, one. I have to, like, bring the drums in. The little ostinado, da-da-da-da-da-d-d-d-da-d-d-d-d-d-d. Because the chords are changing, but that's just staying the same, so it's an ostinato. Here's the bass and drums. You can hear the context of all of that craziness. And that's where the O-O-O comes in, and we got to talk about the O-O-O-O-ho hook.

Let's talk about this. Okay, so here is one of another hook. Oh, my God, there's so many hooks. Again, there's probably 10 different hooks. It's one of those songs that every fourth bar, there's like a new cool thing that you're excited. Oh, oh, oh. Right?

So was that one of them saying, oh, and then sort of recording that and then playing it through the synth? That is absolutely what's happening. Yeah. That's Martin Gore. What happened was they sampled Martin going, oh, oh, oh. With his throat, apparently.

I couldn't quite figure out with that story. They said going unk-un-unke with his throat the way the story goes. I don't know if that means he was going, oh, oh, like hitting it. That's weird. I'm not really sure what it was, but then they added the bell. They added sort of a bell sound and a timpany to deepen it so that in the mix, it sounds like this. Yeah. And then they pitched it down just a tone, just a single tone, two semi-tones.

And as Martin says, I felt a little bit of a burke doing that. I've never heard the word burke before in my life. A burke? B-E-R-K, I don't know. You know, we talk about how the British have these funny words that didn't quite make the jump over the ocean, but Martin felt like a burke. You know, this is dance music.

This is dance music, and what's interesting is I went looking to see if Depeche Mode had ever played the Hacienda Club. Okay. Because to me, like, to me, Hacienda, yes, which factors into Blue Monday. And to me, that's always like the place that they play dance music for the Brits. for the Mancunians granted, but for British people.

And I couldn't find one sighting of Depeche Mode ever play in the Hacienda Club. You can find so many, but their music sounds like it would have been very Hacienda friendly. Maybe they blew up too big and they never felt like they needed to make the trip up to Manchester. But it's weird that you don't have any that I could find. I couldn't find any Depeche Mode at the Hacienda Club stories. I feel like the Hacienda was more of a dance club, like first and foremost. Maybe that's why. But isn't this dance?

I mean, to me, this music would have, it feels like dance music. Right, right. But I also think at the time that if you're... And they were doing so many remixes. So it seems like at some point, uh, during the Hacienda's lifespan, which I think starts in 82, and they close in 97, that part I know. It seems like they would have had a Depeche mode appearance or it would have been a part of the, the music, the legacy. But it might have just been too big.

I mean, at this point, they're probably wanting to play in live videos. Yeah. Yeah, they're playing the tens of thousands if not more. after this song, definitely, that's for sure. So here's another verse melody. I'll play it for you isolated, then I'll add the context. Yet another series of hooks. This is, there's too many hooks in this song.

Too many hooks. I love that little bend right there. By the way, if you just had... It sounds sarcastic. I always think bends are sarcastic. Dede, de, de, de, ding. Depends, but I know exactly what you mean. By the way, if you just took that little section of the song

and put in a movie, that's definitely the part where, like, it's like an 80s montage. like the character's getting his stuff together. He's like, doing his homework now and training for the big game. Let me give you a little context for that. Here it is with the Astonados. So much going on, right? And bring in the bass.

Until that bass change, it sounds like it could be any other song from the 1980s. Like that base change makes a big difference there. Right. That gives you the harmony. You kind of know where you are harmonically. I'm consumed with images of real genius right now. I've never seen that movie. You've never seen real genius.

I've always wanted to. It was always at the VHS store. We just never got it. We were working on a weapon. Is that a quote from a movie I haven't seen? Lost on me. That's Val Kilmer, right? It's Val Kilmer, and I think one of his greatest roles and one of the best movies in the 80s. So there's one more really fun sound, and this is another example of how they would just sample anything and see what happened. So again, according to Gareth Jones, what you're about to hear is a combination of this airline stewardess safety speech recorded on a walk So it's very lo-fi. It's very rough. And it is buried underneath a choir sound.

But it is in here. It's in there? It is in here. And I will play it for you right now. I mean... Wait, there's a person talking about it? There is a very deeply buried in the loop. I personally, when I was, like, making notes for this,

I had to call this part the brain-happy part, because this part makes my brain happy. There's just something about it that's so satisfying. And the important thing about that, too, is that at the time I was mentioning before that there's this evolution happening between songwriting and then production. This is a moment where people realized, wait, what they tried to do was recreate the sound of this lo-fi demo that Martin had recorded.

They couldn't do it. And they had this aha insight, like, wait a second, we don't have to like redo the demo anymore. We can just use this sound in our sampler. This is a real big epiphany for this moment, that you can just take any sound, including this thing that you think you need to recreate and reuse it thanks to the sampler. Now we've got to talk about our singer. Because that is the human part of Depeche Mode that we love so much.

This is Dave singing on this, correct? Dave sings and Martin sings too, but at different times. And I will play them going back and forth in just a moment. Starting with the chorus, here is Dave. People are people so why should it be? You and I should get a lump so awfully. People are people so why should it be? You guys should get a lump so awfully

I'm pretty sure that's Martin with a harmony And is that Martin doing the lows on the people are people Because there's obviously Or is that Dave just doubling up I'm pretty sure that's Dave doing the octave But I think it's Martin doing the kind of answer harmony B. Oh yeah, I was going to say

Not knowing necessarily what Martin's voice sounds like Admittedly like is he the higher voice? Yeah Well here's Martin's voice isolated because he does the setup to the chorus at the end of the pre, and it sounds like this. I can't understand what makes a man hate another man. Help me understand.

People are people. It's actually really cool. I know that he didn't know that he was half black at the time, but it's really cool to hear him sing that part, which is, I don't understand what makes a man hate another man. Yeah. So that's, that's fun. That's the little post-chorus bit.

I like that. And then they do it again. That's their, both of their voices harmonizing. I hear. Or is that Dave just doubled up? Let's listen again. I definitely hear Martin, and I think I hear Dave too, but let's listen again. The second time around it has a little effect on it.

Martin has definitely more of kind of an emotional kind of vulnerability to his voice. Dave is very like deep, baritone and strong. But Martin's a little bit more kind of a tenor. He's a little bit more. So I hear Martin for sure, and I think Dave's also in there. Yeah. That's really cool. It's cool that they have the different vocal qualities.

And that's why in the band, Martin sings one or two songs every album and little pieces of some other songs as well. It's sort of the vulnerable things as a contrast to the strong Dave songs. I'm telling you, Strong Dave's. It's funny to me because there's a whole type of singer in this period. Ian Curtis enjoyed a vision. Dave in Depeche Mode. They don't sing with a lot of emotion, but like they sort of sing to you in this strong way.

You know, like, I'm a confident 19 year old. I'm 19. I know everything that I need to know. But that's a type of singer. Interpol had that his first couple of albums. Paul Banks, yeah. Yeah, that's a type. I'm realizing now that's total type.

Yeah, I agree. There's one more thing. It's the harmony at the very end in that Teutonic section I was mentioning before. Shout out to the Tudanis. What makes a man? Why should it be? Help me understand. People understand.

I love it. I love it. And they're sort of bringing into the earlier ideas all together. We talked about it on the weekend episode. I was going to say the same thing. When you introduce all these elements and then you get to the end, it's like Hamilton, honestly. Like, it's such a staple. Your ear can handle what sounds like in the cough.

You can't start with that. No, you can't start there. But when you're getting to the end of the act in a musical or you're, you're, You're getting to the end of a song. You can bring in all the elements. Sounds cliche to say, but I freaking love it. I freaking love it, too. Well, listen, some great reward.

The album that this song is on deserves its praise. It's certified platinum. And people are people peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. They crossed the pond. They crossed the pond. They did it. They got to my ears. They got to Louisa Smith.

And then from Louisa Smith at Kirsten-Stromberg's birthday party, they got to my ears. I love that. Here's an interesting fact. Remember how I mentioned in the intro that it hit number one in West Germany? Yeah. Check this out. It was the first time a Depechevo song topped any nations like singles chart. And it was also used as the theme to West Germany's TV coverage of the 84 Olympics.

So there you go. So interesting. The German connection is so interesting to me. And Martin moves there eventually for a while. There's something about Germany and Berlin and this band that just goes so well together. They kind of fit. Yeah, they kind of fit. As we wrap up this episode, what can we say about people or people in terms of what it did for

Depeche mode. It broke Depeche mode in America and it set the stage for the next phase of their career, which was when they went global and when they went next level megastar everywhere. But we'll get into that little bit later, won't me? That's right. Absolutely. We're going to put a pin in this conversation until the next episode.

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