For what seems like the last ten years, the online Depeche fanbase has been going crackers. Murals have been under 24 hour Black Swarm surveillance, posters have been given scrutiny usually reserved only for documents of historical import, lyrics have been imagined, tracklistings dreamt up and, frankly, many people have lost their minds all because the band's social media channels have had a countdown running, leading to 5pm UK time today.
5PM duly arrived and.....
....the band took to Instagram to announce that the new single, Ghosts Again, will be available on 9th February at 5pm UK time.
So that was that. It is of course great news that Depeche Mode are back and we are all looking forward to seeing them live again and hearing what Memento Mori has to offer, but this was a bit of an anti- climax really.
Much has been written in the last week by people who suggest they know what they're talking about and today's announcement has shown that they really knew nothing at all. The fact is that there is now only 6 days until we hear new Depeche Mode music and that is no bad thing.
At least we know something now then. Bring on the new single.
With Violator, Depeche Mode had completed electronic music. They had taken it from their local pubs to American stadia and, frankly, there was nowhere else to go.
The band had always adapted and moved on so, after a year off that included pictures of Dave with what everyone presumed was a holiday beard in BONG magazine, Depeche Mode's return was keenly awaited to say the least.
That wasn't a holiday beard though. This was a new bearded, inked up Dave. There was a drumkit. There was also a very loud guitar. This was not Violator.
This was the dawning of something new altogether
YOUR SUN IT SHINES - I FEEL YOU
The Single
I Feel You, BONG21, was released on 15th February 1993. This was the first new Depeche Mode material that had been released since I became a fan, so to say I was excited was an understatement. I taped the first play of the song from Simon Mayo's Radio 1 show and then played and rewound, played and rewound, played and rewound until I alienated everyone who knew me. I was in first year at University at the time and was in the very early stages of being in a band. We tried out some REM and Teenage Fanclub covers before I insisted we try I Feel You, despite not knowing the words. We broke up very shortly after that but a tape of one session does exist. It will remain buried in a lead casket until 1000 years after my death.
Anyway, I enthusiastically welcomed I Feel You. What about everyone else?
In Smash Hits, the single was reviewed by Tony Mortimer of the "tough" boy band East 17. The author of classics such as House Of Love and Deep had no time for I Feel You but then, as anyone familiar with his band's output will agree, his opinion on what is a good tune is not that important.
To make up for things, Smash Hits printed the lyrics in a slightly odd way and displayed the new, hairier Depeche Mode.
Over at Melody Maker, Jim Arundel came up with this:
"Almost as deadly as they'd love to be, I Feel You is an exercise in scaling the charts the hard way. They positively pulp a backing track while the newly grunged-up Dave Gahan has his nuts tattooed live in the studio. Synths fart, squelch and whine, amps howl, The London Symphony Dentists pop in for a few bars and the chorus goes either 'this is the dawning of Allah' or 'this is the dawning of Alan' - presumably a reference to 'new boy' Wilder bow being allowed to stay out as long as he likes without being accompanied by an adult."
Other than the suggested chorus line (A 1983 to 1993 compilation called This Is The Dawning Of Alan featuring all his songs and co-writes would be fun), that's a lot of gibberish.
Would NME look upon the song in a more favourable way? Not really, no:
"I Feel You starts off with a might elongated guitar screech before Mr Body Art starts turning the wheels of insipidness. Far more old-style white trousers and crew cuts than his new hard-rock image would indicate; powerful enough, yet desperately forgettable. Depeche Modules everywhere will be dribbling in anticipation."
On the positive side, Depeche Modules is surely something the band can use. If you are reading chaps, I want 20% of whatever reissue project takes that name. As for the review...well, there's not much to say.
Obviously, the band had no intention of appearing on Top Of The Pops. The video featured, and we'll come to that, but there was no in-studio appearance. That didn't stop the song hitting the Top 10 however and it actually entered the charts at number 8. Surely it was time for the band's first number 1? Well, no, because it went down to 9 the next week, then 22, 39, 50, 56 and finally off to oblivion at number 75
Promotion wise there was in fact only one in-studio appearance on earth not just for this song but for the entire Songs Of Faith And Devotion campaign. Let's have a look at the band's performance on Spanish TV show Viendonos on 3rd April 1993:
Here is the new Depeche Mode in action. What the devil is all this? Firstly, and crucially, it must be noted that the band had not only packed away their synthpop selves but they had also packed away the leatherometer. There is no reading here at all, save for a few percentage points for Dave's trousers. Even Alan, the man who redefined leather, is wearing normal clothes. A shocking turn of events.
Dave is resplendent in the top half of the suit he wears in the video and his long hair billows as he mimes his way through 80% of the words. Martin is almost bent double, so I presume his guitar was just a bit too heavy for him. Fletch prods and pulls at his keyboard and Alan bangs away on a drumkit.
I Feel You is a bloody brilliant song and a heroically bold choice to come back with. It really was a shock at the time but a good one and the song still stands out now. It's been a mainstay of the band's live set since it was released, appearing 701 times. The Devotional version is the best version as far as I'm concerned. As more drums and more screaming/roaring by Dave come in on later versions, it dilutes the song's power.
The B-Sidewas a bit of a cheat as they rather lazily used a track from Songs Of Faith And Devotion. One Caress is of course a majestic, dark, beauty of a song but you must have had a couple more tracks lying about surely lads? You'd had a couple of years for goodness' sake. Having since released Slow on Delta Machine, a song that you can easily imagine in the SOFAD era, I wonder why it wasn't considered then. I'm rambling, One Caress is a perfect Martin song which was actually conisdered by the band to be no more than B-Side material until sense prevailed. It's been played live 74 times.
The Video
This was the moment everyone realised that someone had changed dramatically. Previously clean cut, they had become entirely different and exuded a sense of menace previously unseen. It was shocking, especially for those of us who had grown up in the UK. Like me, many of you will have watched BBC1 comedy Three Up, Two Down and the sight of Lysette Anthony in this video was far removed of the memory of her as Angie Tyler in that programme.
Ah, you thought I meant Dave.
Anyway, laboured jokes aside, we open on a black and white shot of a rocking chair as the mad intro noise screams away and...hang on...it's the actor from Three Up, Two Down. Has Anton made a video in tribute to the show? Is Michael Elphick on the way? She shuts the door and wanders towards the camera and....
....is that Dave?
It is. He's grown his hair and a beard and he appears to have employed the services of a blind tailor as that suit and waistcoat combo is a shocker. What on earth has happened to Dave? He jiggles away and then we see Martin. He's got a guitar and a shiny, incredibly cheap looking but inevitably expensive top on. This is strange. It pans to the whole band and the most shocking thing isn't Alan on the full drum kit or Fletch doing what Fletch does best, it's Martin, He's wearing a pair of baggy grey tracksuit bottoms. Did he know they were filming that day? Come on Martin - make an effort man
Suddenly we are in the desert, or more accurately, Red Rock Canyon Park in Nevada. Dave screams away and we see Martin, hunched against the desert breeze, wandering off with his guitar have been told to go and get some more appropriate trousers on. The first chorus arrives (the dawning of Allah?) and we see Lysette waiting for someone in her cabin. Why do most on Anton's videos feature cabins?
The band action returns and we get our first close up of the band's new drummer, Alan. This was the exact point where Depeche Mode, and more specifically Alan, put the leatherwear away and started wearing clothes normal people wear. No more big hair, no more oversized chains around the neck; a new Depeche Mode era had begun. It is of course a fact that Alan only left the band because he insisted they return to their leather and bashing bits of concrete ways. The press release announcing his departure whilst untrue was worded that way as leaving Depeche Mode because you weren't allowed to wear leather trousers sounded too silly.
We then get some desert action, more Lysette prowling around her cabin and then we're once again in the desert, this time for some five a side football. Dave was initially put in goals, but he's not having that so he removes his goalkeeper's gloves and...erm..goalkeeper's sunglasses and forces Martin to take a shot as keeper. He rather petulantly agrees but only on the strict condition that he can take his guitar with him. That doesn't work so it's Dave's turn again and he's miserable about it. The gloves go back on but he makes such a fuss that he causes the net to burst. Depeche Mode do not make a good football team.
Perhaps a magic trick might cheer everyone up? After more band action, on the "where angels sing" line, Dave magically makes a church appear. It's impressive stuff but the band just keep going. The vidoe does too and as we play out, Dave turns up in Lysette's hut and starts undressing, confident that Michael Elphick wasn't going to suddenly burst through the door, We end on a shot of a topless Dave, his new tattoos on full display as he an Lysette get down to rehearsals for the Three Up, Two Down Depeche Mode special that aired in the UK at Christmas in 1993.
We've moved on a lot from See You.
The Formats
This was the last Depeche Mode track to appear on 7" in the UK for quite some time. The cover art for the single formats features four blob like creatures. These are in fact the band members and the blob like things were turned into huge metal doll things that hung behind the Devotional stage. Martin's doll (bottom left) is easy to identify due to its hair. To allow you to work out who is who though, Anton helpfully painted their birthdays on each one. Top left is Alan, top right Dave and Fletch is below him.
The rear of the single shows Dave posing in Hamburg. The labels are hugely enjoyable and as we've already seen, the two tracks here are I Feel You and One Caress.
The same two tracks appear on the UK cassette single CBONG21 where we get an extra band picture thrown in for good measure.
A promo 12", P12BONG21 was released but there was no promo CD. It features the album versions of I Feel You and One Caress and two remixes of I Feel You - Throb Mix and Babylon Mix.
Initial pressings of 12BONG21 came in a matt card sleeve (above) with later pressings in a glossy sleeve. The tracklisting of the 12" is the same as the P12BONG21
Both I Feel You remixes are great although I think I am a bit too biased given the effect this song had on me at the time. In 1993, we were still in the era of outsiders remixing Depeche tracks and making them sound good so we should be happy about that.
CDBONG21 features the same four tracks as 12BONG21. I was waiting outside HMV in Aberdeen when it opened on the day this was released. No-one else was.
Dave features on the back.
The single came in a digipack so, in addition to the band picture we saw on the CBONG21, we slso get a dM and a purple blob.
L12BONG21 is a lovely thing. It comes in a gatefold sleeve with a "deluxe" inner sleeve.
Fletch and Dave are the cover stars. The A-Side features two remixes by ambient pioneering synth goblin Brian Eno - Life's Too Short Mix and Swamp Mix. They sound just as you would imagine. I'm a bit of an Eno fan so they do the job for me.
The B-side features two more reasonable remixes of I Feel You - Afghan Surgey Mix and Helmet At The Helm Mix. Martin and Alan appear on the back. Later pressings of this 12" don't feature the band's birthdays.
Inside the gatefold we find the band band having a great laugh and Dave and Alan hanging around in Hamburg like a pair of dirty old men.
LCDBONG21 is another digipack and features the same four tracks as L12BONG21
The cover stars remain in the same order as on the 12"
The same pictures as on the L12 sleeve pop up too.
The 2004 reissue CD features the 8 tracks spread across the 1993 formats.
I don't have too many copies of I Feel You so this section is a bit shorter than normal. I obviously have more copies than anyone could reasonably need of the single but you are all the same as me, so you get it. As ever, refer to depmod.com for all your release info. The picture above shows the German 7" single.
That's the back and B-Side of the same thing.
The one track US promo CD is a nice thing.
The US 12" looks the same as 12BONG21 but features a whopping seven tracks. Three remixes of I Feel You (Babylon Mix, Helmet At The Helm Mix, Afghan Surgery Mix) accompany One Caress on the A-side.
Brian Eno's mixes and the Throb Mix pop up on the B-side.
We end in Japan, The CD single has the same four tracks as CDBONG21 but it also has nice OBI strip and a poster.
It's more of a leaflet than a poster really.
There we are then. Depeche Mode were back. They looked and sounded very different and, as the year went on, we'd discover that almost everything about them had changed. What a single though.
Next time, we'll talk B-sides, odd looking people and try to immediately gloss over the words grungy and gonads.
On 31st January 1983, Depeche Mode released a new single. That single, Get The Balance Right!, was landmark in many ways. Firstly, it was the first release with Alan Wilder as an official member of the band. The band's then fanclub, the Depeche Mode Information Service, announced Alan's arrival in the October 1982 newsletter:
Picture courtesy of DM Live Wiki
Secondly, it marked Alan's first songwriting credit with the band with the B-Side The Great Outdoors! a song he track he co-wrote with Martin. Thirdly, the band released their first ever Limited Edition and fourthly, finally and less relevantly, Get The Balance Right! contains the line that this blog was named after. The logo I use is what you might call influenced by the sleeve design too.
Let us then, almost entirely predictably, take a look at Get The Balance Right! As I will inevitably forget to add the exclamation mark on every occasion I type the song's name, from this point, let's forget about the exclamation mark.
ALMOST PREDICTABLE...ALMOST - GET THE BALANCE RIGHT
The Single
Get The Balance Right was recorded in Blackwing Studios in 1982. Alan recalls that the band deliberately produced a "dance 12" " that was "very much geared towards the clubs." The dancefloor smash envisaged is obviously more apparent on the towering beast that is the Combination Mix, more of which in a bit. The 7" version of the song is certainly danceable enough if that is a phrase, and it's propelled along on a glorious, thudding bassline. If Leave In Silence hinted at a new direction for Depeche Mode, then Get The Balance Right confirmed that shift. The song is not without its poppy side of course, but its harder sound and general sense of dark urgency clearly stand it apart from the first couple of singles from A Broken Frame. Martin's lyrics are more inward looking than his previous efforts, sounding a bit like a man struggling to grasp fame and the demands it has on him. He was obviously busy as his diary was full until "Next Thursday." It's a fascinating song really and its release as a one off single makes sense as it wouldn't have fitted on A Broken Frame and isn't quite in keeping with Construction Time Again. The fact it was recorded after A Broken Frame would of course have stopped it from fitting on the album too.
Oddly of course, Get The Balance Right features on the Construction Time Again 12" Boxset and on the reissue CD/DVD from a few years ago. Shake The Disease and It's Called A Heart feature on the Black Celebration reissue CD/DVD but sadly, and wrongly, didn't appear in the Black Celebration 12" boxset. Sorry for the non-sequitur, but that point is always worth making. I'll be making it again in a few blogs time.
The single was released on 31st January 1983 and entered the charts at number 32 on 12 February. The band's appearance on Top Of The Pops on 10th February helped push the single up to 22 on the 19th of February
Poor Alan - already relegated to drums. The single remained at 22 for a further week before climbing to its chart high of 13 on 5th March. From there it went to 15, 26, 40 before finally taking a joyride to its house in the countryside via a final stop at number 62.
The reviews of the song were the usual mix of the positive and insulting. Smash Hits loved it, saying it was "fascinating enough structurally to keep it around (the charts)longer than most. " Sounds liked it too, saying it was "the sort of thing they do better than anyone else." Time Out however were not big fans of the song, reviewer John Gill saying "I have often wondered why God bothered with Depeche Mode." A man with too much time on his hands clearly.
The band haven't played the song live that much, perhaps reflecting its status as an in-between albums single. It has been played live a total of 62 times, first being heard on 23 December 1982 at the Brixton Ace on the A Broken Frame tour. It appeared 48 times on the Construction Time Again tour, last being played on 2nd June 1984 in Ludwigshafen.
As I mentioned above, the B-side is a Martin and Alan co-written instrumental called The Great Outdoors! Another exclamation mark. The song was written in the studio and "all done very quickly" according to Alan and that is evident when you hear the song. It starts off well enough, in a similar early electronic experimentalism way to Oberkorn (It's A Small Town) but it goes a bit odd 1 minute 38 seconds in when it becomes the soundtrack to a dodgy cartoon in which a gnome is having a series of jaunty dreams. Or something. Anyway, that carries on for 3 minutes or so before more dark electronic swooshes return us to something a bit more like it. The song has never been played live. I know - surprising right?
The Video
Once again, we have a video that doesn't match the marvellousness of the song. We start off with the band dressed as scientists, watching small child play with a crane before Alan wanders in and starts miming the song. The child rightly tries to hide in his bed screaming "For f**cks sake, can SOMEONE tell the Director that this is Alan Wilder and NOT Dave Gahan. Dave is the f**king singer, not f**king Alan. Alan is the new boy. He plays f**king keyboards. SOMEONE CALL MY AGENT."
Alan tells the story slightly differently saying that the Director Kevin Hewitt thought he was actually the singer and the band were too shy to tell him he was wrong. They very much got the balance between shyness and being stroppy wrong there. Ho ho.
Fletch appears as a scientist again and then Martin pops up with a bowler hat and waistcoat. The lack of any sense is added to by Dave appearing as a magician. He twiddles his hankies (NOT a euphemism) before the scene changes and we see all four DM lads attempting to coax us into a fairground. All very odd. Quite rightly, the child stays where he is and instead the Depeche boys, now in suits, play space invaders while four milkmen stand behind each of them waiting to play on the machines.
I can't believe I wrote that sentence.
Curiously, the milkmen push Depeche out of the way and steal money that seems to have come from the machines. They didn't work like that of course, but we are all in Keith Hewitt's world now. Scientist DM return, counting the money the milkmen are giving them before we suddenly see Alan on a fairground ride with the ever present milkmen hanging around. By this point, even Keith Hewitt must have been confused.
We then have fortune tellers, more fairground rides, more milkmen and more gibberish. It's all rubbish but at least it's not....come on everyone... Hole To Feed.
The Formats
As was usual for the time, we had a 7" release in the UK (BONG2). As you can see above, it features 27 men holding hammers. 26 point one way and the last faces the other way. He's red too.
The rear is quite clever (above). Everything is back to front including, slightly curiously, the B-side name.
The UK 12" (12BONG2 - above) is a great thing as it features the Combination Mix of Get The Balance Right. You all know this mix by now - it's 7 minutes 57 seconds of booming dancefloor friendly Depeche Mode and it is a striking example of why they were pioneers in the world of remixing. What a remix. Incredibly, DJ's like Derrick May were apparently influenced by it with the clubs in Detroit taking to the track. I don't imagine that's what Alan had in mind when he said they were creating a dancefloor track.
There are two tracks on the B-side. As well as The Great Outdoors! we also have the first ever officially released Depeche Mode live track. Keeping with the every song must have an exclamation mark feel, a a rather lovely live version of Tora! Tora! Tora! recorded at Hammersmith Odeon on 25th October 1982 appears.
That one live track was a taster for what appeared on the band's first ever limited edition release which came out in late February and was announced in the March 1983 edition of the Depeche Mode Information Service newsletter. This is where multi formats began and this is where many collectors started their life long obsession. This release (L12BONG) is a beauty and a worthy holder of the band's first L12 title. The initial releases were numbered and came in a textured sleeve like the one above with gold foil on the sleeve giving it a very fancy look indeed. The labels are beautiful too. On the A-Side, we have the single version of Get The Balance Right.
The B-side (above) features four live tracks from the Hammersmith Odeon show - My Secret Garden (with a snippet of the Oberkorn intro), See You, Satellite and Tora! Tora! Tora!. They are great live versions that give a great snapshot of Depeche Mode at that point. The live versions have a few interesting variations on the studio versions and the screaming crowd is something to behold. Overall it is a really nice release and a great start to the onslaught of limited editions that we'd see from now on.
As with all the pre 1991 singles, a CD single (CDBONG2) arrived in the UK in 1991.
There are three German coloured vinyl releases to collect here alongside the normal, dead boring black vinyl. Firstly, the red vinyl 7" with the A-Side above
The B-Side and back of the sleeve can be seen above.
The standard UK 12" was available on gorgeous red vinyl in Germany. It had the added bonus of being a Super Sound Single. No, I've no idea either.
The B-Side was also Super Sound which is nice.
The coloured vinyl version of the limited edition 12" is a stunning thing. Just look at that. Every single thing about it is glorious and it cannot be criticised in any way ever by anyone.
The B-side is equally majestic. As you may have gathered, it's one of my favourite coloured vinyl releases. For those who think that the musical content is the interesting thing here, the tracklist is the same as the UK limited edition 12".
The Intercord blue stripe CD features the 7" tracks, Tora! Tora! Tora! live and the Combination Mix. There is another CD too.
When I first got into Depeche Mode, as my Violator obsession grew, I started buying anything with Depeche Mode on it. This was one of the first CDs I got and I was obsessed with it. I played it over and over and could and in fact still can say "Good evening everybody" at the same time Dave does when he walks on stage as My Secret Garden starts. As well as the 7" version of Get The Balance Right and the four live tracks, it also features the Combination Mix albeit named as Original 12" Mix.
There is also a German cassette single. Meanwhile in France...
The 12" cover was redesigned with all three tracks featuring on the front including the track length of the Combination Mix but, curiously, not the other two tracks.
The reverse of the sleeve lists all three tracks but not the Combination Mix track length.
The French limited edition 12" features 6 tracks. The A-side (above) features the 7" mix and Original 12" Mix (a.k.a Combination Mix).
The B-side features the four live tracks. As you can perhaps see, there is a picture of a cassette in the top right corner. This release also appeared on cassette in France, a hard to find release missing from my collection.
Oddly there isn't a French CD single of the 12". Instead there are a few variations of the German live tracks CD. The one above is the numbered version featuring the same 6 tracks as the French limited edition 12". There are two other variations too.
In other countries, the blue limited edition 12" appeared in Australia and Spain. Canada had a 12" which I have for some reason (we all know the reason):
It's a four track "speically priced maxi single" (see side of sleeve above) that is identical to the US 12" bar one key aspect:
As you can see above there is a small maple leaf in the top right of the rear sleeve.
With Get The Balance Right performing well enough in the charts, Depeche Mode regained some momentum. They would soon be back at work, this time adding Gareth Jones to their team and we'd soon see the benefits of that.
Metal bashing, sampling, Martin starting to be all Martin and Berlin were all on the way. With their next single, Depeche Mode would not only once again conquer the UK Top Ten but they would also turn into a very different band indeed, one that was ready to start taking the world by storm over the net few years.
Depeche Mode conquering the world? No-one could say that was predictable.
