DEPECHE MODE - THE SINGLES 1981 TO 2021 PART 14: IT'S CALLED A HEART

 

Shake The Disease showed the world that there was a new Depeche Mode sound, a darker, glorious one that would go define the band's next few albums. It was a fine way to round off the first stage of their career and the decision to release The Singles 81-85 made sense as it provided a nice conclusion to that first stage.

Shake The Disease wasn't the only new track on that album however. Following the conclusion of their 1985 festival dates, the band recorded a couple of new tracks this time with Daniel producing alone as Gareth Jones had heard the demo of It's Call...sorry...was busy. One of these new tracks would carry on Shake The Disease's work by honing the new Depeche Mode sound further and focussing primarily on death.

The other was perplexingly chosen as the next single. It features a double 12" with a controversial remix, a terrible video and is not actually that good. If that hasn't whetted your appetite, I don't know what will. This is It's Called A Heart.

THERE'S A LOT OT BE LEARNED - IT'S CALLED A HEART

The Single

The Depeche Mode Information Service Newsletter of August 1985 announced that a new single was to be released on 16th September. The same issue promised a surprise too, saying with grammatical unhappiness "Keep your eye open for some surprises a few weeks after it's release too!" We'll come to the surprises shortly.

Let's be frank at this point. It's Called A Heart is not Depeche Mode's worst single - that is Hole To Feed, it is NEVER anything else - but it's not far from it. It's a poor song, especially by comparison to the previous few singles, and it's hard to disagree with Alan when he says that the song was "a backwards step" and that it was "an ultra-poppy number that did nothing for (DM's) reputation."  On the Black Celebration re-issue DVD, Martin pointed out that the song was his "least favourite track that we've ever recorded" though that did predate Hole To Feed.

Having been released on 16th September, the song (BONG9) entered the UK charts on at number 21 on 28th September and the boys opened the 26th September edition of Top Of The Pops as you can see above. It's an odd performance in many respects including the fact that Martin is fully clothed. The set is replete with many of the, erm, tribal things that feature in the car crash of a video and Martin even plays some sort of vertical xylophone thing that doesn nothing at all to add anything to the performance. Where are the hammers and bits of metal? Why is Alan not 100% leather? Why has Fletch got a tiny gong? If you're going for a gong, surely you go for a big gong? 

This oddball performance did see the song climb the charts however and it soared to number 18 the next week before dropping to 36, 53 and then, having been in the charts only on loan, fell out of the top 75.

By the way - number 18. That's the same number Shake The Disease reached. Remarkable.

There are good things about It's Called A Heart of course. It's a jaunty enough pop number, but Depeche Mode hadn't done that sort of thing since A Broken Frame. It has some pleasing noises ( I love that "simo-yes" noise for example) in it and, as ever, an eminently hummable melody, but where's the inventive spark that Depeche Mode were adding to every song they released at that stage? It does feel like a backward step, especially after two ground-breaking albums in Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward.  The song was played at every date on the Black Celebration tour and the live version is far superior to the 7" version and much more in line with the really rather good Extended mix which we'll come onto. Check dmlive.wiki's Black Celebration tour page to hear some very good recordings of it.

The B-Side was of course Fly On The Windscreen. Again, let's not beat about the bush here - it's the superior song of the two. Alan claims he was outvoted when talk turned to which one of the two should form the A-side and it seems the label were reluctant to include a song that featured the word "death" so prominently. That argument is somewhat watered down when you consider the previous single actually had the word "Disease" in the title. 

This blog series is not about the B-Sides however (don't worry - that's bound to come at some point) so we'll leave Fly On The Windscreen there. It has been played live an impressive 221 times making it probably the band's most played B-Side though I know that most of you are currently frothing at the mouth screaming "It's from Black Celebration - look I have the tracklist tattooed on my thigh beside several pictures of someone who looks in no way at all like Dave."  I know that but this is a singles blog after all, it did first appear as a B-side and I make the rules. So there.

Finally, neither It's Called A Heart or Shake The Disease featured in the Black Celebration The 12" Singles boxset which makes no sense at all especially when they featured on the Black Celebration reissue and DVD. There's no place this point actually fits in this blog so it's going here. Not including them was a stupid decision.

The Video

 

Oh for f**ks sake.

Firstly, this video was filmed outside Reading, in England, The lyrics somehow inspired director Peter Care to imagine an Indonesian jungle scene and that's what we open on. A lake, some flames and a sense of quickly deepening dread. We're only four seconds in.

We eventually crawl to shore and then see all four members of Depeche Mode walking through a cornfield led by a singing Dave who Alan is doing his very best to hide behind. If the song had been called It's Called A Cob, and let's face it, it may as well have been, that would have worked. Alternatively, if they'd crawled through a field of artichokes (do they grown in fields? I have no idea), then fine. Corn though - nonsensical. I'm not even sure it grows that near water or in Indonesia. I'm actually surprised it grows in Reading. Anyway, I can't stall any longer - back to the video.

We see Alan banging away on a drum looking very serious in between shots of the walking Mode and it's at this point that some order is restored as we note that Martin is not wearing atop. A leather coat, a dress of some sort and a cowboy hat yes, but no top. Phew. Fletch starts banging a leather cymbal of some sort and Martin plays a lower down version of the Top of The Pops xylophone and you start wondering if this is all a badly directed dream. There's then a bit where Dave is singing and getting followed by the band holding up what I'm going to call lit up voodoo heads and at that exact point, I realise that I'm yearning for the serious art of the Leave In Silence video.

This tripe carries on until we see a small TV playing some odd tribal footage. That's a TV in the "jungle" by the way, a place not known for its electricity supplies. We also see the band mucking around in what is now daylight throwing something to each other. It's bloody ridiculous.

From here, assuming there is any hill left, it goes down it. More TV's, angry wooden voodoo people, presumably annoyed because they'd been told this was actually the A-side, Alan and Andy blowing into something in one of those "here's what we sampled" moments that is clearly a lie.

It mercifully ends but not before the baffling words "Filmed entirely on location in Japan" appear. What? Of course it wasn't. Perhaps I'm the only person that's ever made it to the end of the video and am therefore the first person ever to see that. Someone have a look please. Perhaps I'm now in a coma having watched that video and am imagining things.

This is a very bad video.

The Formats

7BONG9 was available in two different ways. Firstly there was a standard 7" as we see above. The Shake The Disease hairy man has returned and while he may have outrun the turtle chasing him on the rear sleeve of 12BONG8, he's now being eaten by a big pink swan thing. Life is hard.

The B-side art is just feathers. What is nice about this release is the labels. They are really cool.

Keen eyed viewers who observed the poster earlier in the article and Depeche Mode collector nerds (hello fellow nerds) already know the other 7" variation. For those who are still asking (1) why they are reading this and (2) what variation, here it is. Early versions came with a poster and that poster showed the cover photo from the forthcoming The Singles 81-85 showing Martin's left nipple in all its, erm, glory.

12BONG9 is a two track affair with both songs from the 7" version presented in Extended form. The Extended remix of It's Called A Heart is fantastic and very much a hidden gem. Do check it out. The cover art appears to show Mr Hairy either dancing or being attacked by a neon snake.

The Extended mix of Fly On The Windscreen is a really good remix as well. The jiving swan beast on the rear sleeve clearly agrees.

Do you remember the Depeche Mode Information Service newsletter telling you to keep your "eye open" for a surprise (what was the other eye doing?)? Well here it is - the band's first ever double 12", D12BONG9. They wouldn't repeat this trick again until the Fragile Tension/Hole To Feed doubler so, if there's a lot be learned from this, it's double 12" = shoddy single. The front cover shows the jiving swan from the rear of the 12" chasing our hairy friend and above the swan it says "Special Limited Edition Twin Set Costing No More Than Two Pounds & Ninety Nine Pence." That's 75p or so per record. Decent value. The first 12" is the same as the standard 12".

Side 1 of record two, or side 3 as the lovely labels call it, is Fly On The Windscreen (Death Mix). It's great. Side 4 is not great. It features It's Called A Heart (Slow Mix) that is simply a slowed down version of the song which sees it slowed to half speed and played in full. Why? What on earth inspired that? Bloody nonsense.

Picture courtesy of depmod.com

There is a wonderful 12" promo too with a hand stamped label. I've had to use a picture from depmod.com as I couldn't find my own.

The UK CD single from 1991 CDBONG9 takes the tracks from the 7", 12" and the Death Mix of Fly On The Windscreen aside and promises them they can appear on a CD if they forget the Slow Mix exists. They agree.

Let's leave the flaming lakes and voodoo heads of the UK and head to Germany. Firstly, we have the usual red vinyl 7"

It of course features the same tracks as 7BONG9.

The blue vinyl 12" is a splendid thing

Again, it features the same tracks as 12BONG9.

The German blue stripe CD single rather oddly takes the D12BONG 9 tracks and calls itself CDD12BONG9. One for fans of the Slow Mix.

Germany and France had their own vinyl versions of D12BONG9 but in today's "Why on earth do I own this"section, let's have a look at the Scandanavian release (above). It's a doubler as you can see although it issues no price orders on the front. What makes it fancy is this:

It's a gatefold. Yes, it's not only 7" purchasers who can keep their free eye on Martin's nipple - Scandanavian fans can too, this time in 12" form. The record that is, not the nipple. That would be very odd.

This version is available in numbered and unnumbered form. I have no idea why. I have even less idea why I have both versions.

The US 12" is a different affair from the UK one as it features two new remixes - the Emotion Remix and Emotion Dub of It's Called A Heart, both of which feature on the A-Side. They're pretty decent remixes but not quite as good as the Extended remix.

The "flip" side features the Deportation Mix of Flexible which is probably the same as the Pre-Deportation Mix from L12BONG8. I can't remember. It also features the 7" version of It's Called A Heart.

And with that, Phase 1 of Depeche Mode was very much over. A compilation album popped out and the band, rather tetchy with each other by this point anyway, headed off to Berlin to get even more annoyed with each other and record a landmark masterpiece genius godlike album that I refuse to ever be anything other than over excited about.

The first slice of wonder from that album was the band's next single and we'll look at that next.

Farewell Phase 1 of Depeche Mode. Pack away those voodoo heads, deflate the spacehoppers, say goodbye to the milkmen and let's never speak of the Slow Mix again. 

Instead, let's have a Black Celebration.

FLY ON THE WINDSCREEN - THE ONE THAT NEARLY GOT AWAY

Of all the songs on Black Celebration that weren't released as singles, Fly On The Windscreen has to be one of the most popular among Depeche Mode fans. We've already read Gareth Jones' views on the song and I certainly share them. A driving, dark, moody masterpiece, Fly On The Windscreen is a classic Depeche track. This is the story, at least the story as I see it, of this hugely important song.

To consider Fly On The Windscreen, we must first go back to 1985. Depeche decided to release a singles compilation, and so they set about recording new tracks for use as new singles for the project which ultimately ended up, of course, as The Singles 81-85. For the first new single released for that record the band got it 100% correct - the glorious classic Shake The Disease was released, backed with the very B-side like B-side Flexible. Shake The Disease is simply one of Martin's finest ever tracks and would have been entirely welcome on Black Celebration. The fact it only got to number 18 in the U.K. remains one of the great mysteries of all time. The second new single the band released was the entirely unwelcome anywhere near Black Celebration overly poppy and generally shoddy It's Called A Heart. If, as I presume you have done, you have seen the Black Celebration re-issue dvd, you'll have heard the band's general contempt for this song. For numbers fans, it also got to 18 in the U.K. charts, equalling Shake The Disease. There is no justice.

"But David," you say, "this month is apparently all about Black Celebration. Why are you telling us things we already know from your excellently written In Spirit I'll Be There - The Singles 81-85 and 1985 piece?"

You're right. Whilst you may still wish to read that article (http://almostpredictablealmost1.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/depeche-mode-singles-81-85.html), this is a Black Celebration thing. The reason I mention It's Called A Heart is its B-side, Fly On The Windscreen. It was a track the band preferred, but one that, again according to the Black Celebration  re-issue dvd was rejected as the A-side because the first word was "death." It wasn't rejected because it was a worse song that its A-side - nobody would have thought that in any event.

So what is it about Fly On The Windscreen that appeals so much? The first thing to consider is the context in which we first heard the song. It was easily the darkest Depeche track released to date. Ok, you could argue that there's a darkness in Blasphemous Rumours, but that's offset by what is essentially one of Martin's poppiest choruses. The songs on Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward have an edge to them certainly, but that speaks more to Depeche Mode's bold experiments with pop and their fusion of industrial elements, sampling and so on to that genre. Going further back, Satellite from A Broken Frame talks of being "(a) satellite of hate," but that was more just teenage stroppiness than anything else. Fly On The Windscreen is where Depeche Mode first found the power, and the darkness, that drove them to global success. The dark, death filled motif of the song is beautifully counterbalanced with the hope of the "Come here...kiss me" section however. Yes, we're all going to die eventually, as the flies on our car windscreens remind us daily, but let's be in love while we can, because that's the best thing you can do isn't it? There's a certain poetry in the fly based image too as we can all relate to that.

The B-side version isn't that much different to the Final version that appears on Black Celebration. It has fewer samples and sounds a bit rawer, but other than that it's pretty much the same. It towers over its A-side brother on the single, and I guess hearing it at the time must have been a sensation. The song is a world of joys, but one of its highlights must be Dave's "Come here...kiss me" backed with Martin's "Touch me" which is the first recorded evidence of Depeche having sex appeal. The proto-acid bassline is also a joy and the punchy, driving rhythm of the track a precursor to so many Depeche highlights. It's a truly wonderful track all told. The Extended Mix on the 12" single has a distinct appeal too. Its percussion heavy start is tremendous and, like all good extended mixes of the time, you get a sense of all the sounds that were used in its production and that's never a bad thing.

Until the Hole To Feed/Fragile Tension double 12", Depeche Mode's only previous double 12" release was the limited It's Called A Heart one. Their two worst singles and they both get the double 12" treatment - how's that fair? Anyway, the double 12" contains the Extended Mix of Fly On The Windscreen and another new Gareth Jones mix, the record company defying Death Mix. This one is filled with samples with phrases like "Death," "We overdid it a bit right there" (which sounds a lot like Gareth himself), "The Holy Ghost" (in a scary, shouty voice) and "The blood of nations" (at least I think it's nations) appearing throughout. It has an element of Yazoo's I Before E Except After C about it with all the samples and it's really quite enjoyable. It's certainly a billion times better than the Slow Mix of It's Called A Heart which is something you never want to hear. The whole mix focuses on death, highlighting the death based parts of the lyrics, albeit that morose sense is offset by the appearance of the "Come here...touch me" etc section.  It's a really interesting, experimental remix and one I'd recommend to you all. Note too that the "I don't care how you feel" sample from the album version pops up right at the very end too.

At that stage in the band's career, that would be the last we'd hear of a Depeche Mode B-side. I don't imagine, for example, that Flexible was ever on the list on songs for potential inclusion on Black Celebration. Fly On The Windscreen didn't just vanish there though. It was deemed to be an obvious choice for the album (see Gareth Jones interview) and it also appeared on the Stripped 12" as one of that 25 minute long record's five tracks. There it turns up as the Quiet Mix and it's a beauty. It's quiet because a lot of the track's muscle is stripped away, leaving only (by my count) 6 or 7 tracks plus the vocals. It still has a definite edge to it and it's somehow spookier when rendered down to the minimal take we see on this release. Excellent really.

But they weren't done with Fly On The Windscreen even then. What was apparently the last ever mix of it appeared on Black Celebration in its most famous and, to my ears, most wonderful guise - Fly On The Windscreen - Final. I've already covered this track, and Gareth Jones has said so much more about it than I ever could. All I'll say now is that it is one of the key Depeche Mode tracks and, if for some reason you haven't heard it, and let's be frank, if you're THIS far into an article about that song you probably have done so, but if you haven't heard it, go and sort that out right now.

So, by the time Black Celebration came out, we had five different versions of a song that was originally only deemed fit to be a B-side. Bear in mind that, at that point in Depeche Mode's career, only the likes of Everything Counts and Master & Servant had had 4 (or possibly 5 if you count the last track on Construction Time Again) versions each released over different formats and singles. Stellar B-sides like Ice Machine remained under represented (two appearances only) and certainly didn't appear on any albums. Fly On The Windscreen bucked the trend. The song was one of the standouts on the Black Celebration tour too where it was played 76 times. For me, there's a hesitancy in certain key tracks from the album on that tour, where their power doesn't quite transfer to the live arena, but Fly On The Windscreen doesn't fall into that trap. Powerful, intense, a few bits of metal being hit and Martin's REMARKABLE run of "Touch Meeeeeee"'s towards the end make it a must hear. And you can hear, and see, it now:



How cool is that? Bonus points for the electric fans beside the keyboards and Martin's stage wear.

After that though, Fly On The Windscreen disappeared for a few years. It first popped back up on the Devotional tour and it was revelatory. There are tales of tracks that were planned and rehearsed for that tour including Nothing and the-I-Can't-Believe-They-Didn't-Do-This Leave In Silence. There was clearly an eye on playing older classics that never quite took off (see Something To Do's one and only appearance) but Fly On The Windscreen was a near constant on the Devotional leg of the tour. Something To Do replaced it on the second night in Brussels (25 May 1993) so perhaps it was the intention to rotate the songs, but that never came to pass. Of the 98 gigs on the Devotional Tour, Fly On The Windscreen  featured all but 15 times, either because of a run of multiple gigs (the five L.A. Forum shows from 20th to 26th November saw Somebody replace it on the 23rd and 26th) or, as was common at the time, "other" problems. Interestingly, it was dropped for the Dublin show and all four of the U.K. shows that ended the tour, with Somebody again standing in. Its last appearance was in Sao Paulo, Brazil on the 4th of April 1994, where it appeared for the one and only time in the 1994 shows.

The thing is this though. The version of Fly On The Windscreen on the Devotional tour was a sex charged, throbbing love beast of a song, all slinky beats and gyrating Dave and, as can be seen from the Devotional video, it drove the fans crazy. Alan and Steve Lyon turned it from a dark, brooding track, to a lust filled perv of a track and it worked magically. I don't want to annoy Depeche Mode any more than my writing about them incessantly does already, so I'm not posting the Devotional version here. Instead, here's a bootleg from the Orlando gig on the tour where Dave invites some fans onstage. To see the full thing, watch Devotional, or to hear it that version in all its sexy glory, get either the limited edition 12", the limited edition cd single or the reissue cd of In Your Room all of which contain a live version from the show in Lievin, France on 29 July 1993.




Post Devotional, the song disappeared again until it was resurrected on the first couple of legs of the Touring The Universe, in support of the sleep inducing Sounds Of The Universe. In keeping with that album's lack of spark, the song lost most of its punch and felt a tad flat really. It was officially released on the tour's live DVD, so again, I'm not posting the official version. The version you're about to see is from Tel Aviv on 10 May 2009. There's no sexiness, there's no darkness - there's just Dave's singing/shouting ("toonaaaaaaaaiiighhhhhhttttaahhhh") and the HORRIFIC trumpet sound that somehow replaces the original. Some of the samples make it sound like a cover band playing a bad version. Oh and there's the never welcome live drums too. Sadness all around. That it didn't survive on the setlist to the end of the tour perhaps says something.




I don't want to end on such a negative note though. I don't think Depeche are beyond criticism of course, and the 2009 version of Fly On The Windscreen deserves criticism, but that version is just a footnote to what is an exceptional Depeche Mode track, and one that is key to the band becoming the band we all love today. Fly On The Windscreen showed that there was another side to Depeche Mode and, thankfully for us, they seemed to realise that it was a track worth sticking with. I would argue that Fly On The Windscreen is as important as any other track on Black Celebration and it is one that I think the vast majority of Depeche Mode fans hold very dear indeed.

Here's to you Fly On The Windscreen  - the one that nearly got away