DEPECHE MODE - THE SINGLES 1981 TO 2021 PART 9: LOVE IN ITSELF

 

Construction Time Again is a glorious album and I will fight you in the pub car park of your choosing if you say otherwise. I will say however, that it is an album that lacks in obvious singles, Everything Counts aside. The songs have a harsher feel to them and each one has a rough edge or two that makes it an unlikely chart smash.

The only exception to that is Love In Itself. It's a song that has all the light industrial feel of the rest of the album but is somehow weaker; if the songs on the album were football players, you'd pick Love In Itself to go in goals. It's a lovely song and certainly not without many charms but it's not the most memorable single the band have produced. That said, it has wonderfully named remixes, superb artwork, world class labels and yet another superb limited edition 12".

I'm convinced. I love it. Here is the story of this underrated goalkeeper...sorry...single, BONG4, Love In Itself.

ALL THE WORDS THAT WERE SAID - LOVE IN ITSELF

The Single

Love In Itself was released on 19th September 1983, a few weeks after Construction Time Again. The band remixed it for release, calling the 7" version Love In Itself 2 with admirable numerical logic. The remix is a slight perkier version of the album track really and equally enjoyable.  As an aside, do take the chance to listen to Martin's demo of the track on the ever majestic DM Live Wiki - click in itself

Love In Itself initially crawled into the charts at number 35 on 1st October, climbing its way to number 26 the following week. The next week it only gained two places, but thankfully our intrepid heroes had a plan. Let's get all tanned somehow, make Alan tuck his polo shirt into his chinos whie playing drums, give Martin a ...checks notes...guitar (??)) and let's go on the 20th October Top Of The Pops.

Note that Martin has stolen Alan's Everything Counts xylophone. I'm also convinced that young Martin has had a beer or two here. Anyway, fashion horrors aside (that jacket Dave?) this appearance did the trick and sent the song ROCKETING UP THE CHARTS to...ah....number 21. It went to 22, 35 and then 62 and then vanished. 

The reviews were ok. It got Single Of The Week in Smash Hits for example. British national treasure Lenny Henry was the guest reviewer that week and he seemed to like it:

The bees' knees indeed. As you can see, Lenny said what all Depeche fans of that era said -  a guitar? A REAL PIANO? Don't worry, Depeche Mode weren't going all S****** B*****.  Geoff Barton in Souds was probably being complimentary when he said that "(N)othing short of driving a rusty meathook through Dave Gahan's malformed cranium" would prevent it being a hit.  Number 1 magazine said "Unfortunately, the record as a whole, though 100% less weedy than 'Everything Counts', is just so cluttered. Someone seems to be throwing cutlery around in the chorus break, Sweep makes an appearance on the last verse. And is that a train on the fade-out?" 

Yes it was a train, So what?

Unlike Everything Counts, Love In Itself has not proved to be a live favourite of the band's, It's a single the band seem to have forgotten as it's only been played live 47 times, last being heard live on 10th March 1984 at University in Madrid. Farewell, Love In Itself. We barely knew you.

The B-side was an absolute joy. Presumably Alan Wilder's parts for The Great Outdoors! and Work Hard were the good parts as the band trusted him with a B-Side of his own. Fools is a wonderful track and that is that. It's never been played live and that's probably right, but, as B-sides go, it's superb. Nice work Alan.

The Video

As ever, the stellar detective work of the epic Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group springs to life here, telling us this rather odd video was filmed in Dan-Yr-Ogof and Cathedral Caves in South Wales in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Quite why the song screamed CAVE VIDEO, no-one knows but the video is worth watching if only for the band's tans, Fletch's slicked back hair and Martin's "I don't care if it is a cave, I AM wearing bondage gear and THAT's THAT."

There's a pylon, caves too tall for the band (except Martin) to walk under, the Basildon Boyzone element pretending to play trumpets for the trumpet sound line (you're singing it right now), lots of Dave singing, Martin playing an actual guitar (BURN HIM. AND THE GUITAR), fire, more pretend trumpets and so on. Nothing much happens really. It's not bad, it's not good, it's just a video.

The video you'd put in goals if it and the other videos were being picked for a football team. Apart from Hole To Feed. You'd just ignore that.

The Formats

The 7" single came in the cover above. It shows the Construction Time Again man and he's clearly used his big hammer to build two scaffolding towers but, that odd imagery aside (he was already up the mountain surely?), it's superb, The label is great too, copying the album label design beautifully. Every inch of this was thought through and it's brilliant.

The rear side and B-side label are equally lovely.

12BONG4 is something every Depeche fan must own. Firstly, the cover (above) is just magical, taking the 7" cover and adding information about the tracks down the right hand side. How could anyone want any more? The one track on the A-Side is worth the price of admission alone. It's a 12" remix and it's called Love In Itself 3. That remix title is so good, the actual remix itself is barely relevant. Happily. Love In Itself 3 is yet another textbook early Depeche Mode 12" remix. I love it

The B-side features two tracks. Fools (Bigger) isn't actually a larger version of the track but a remixed, longer one and it's great. Love In Itself 4, which was originally named as Cocktail on early masters, is a lounge style version of the song, showing that Depeche Mode could actually play guitar and piano. "Are you not going to click now then?" Yes Martin, yes we are. 

There was another L12 too. L12BONG4 was the third and final instalment of the series that gave us the first recorded glimpse of the live Depeche Mode. Again, it came in a faux leather style, numbered sleeve with more gold piping than was necessary. The A-Side gave us Love In Itself 2.

The B-side added four more songs from the gig at Hammersmith Odeon on 25th October 1982 - Just Can't Get Enough, A Photograph Of You, Shout! and Photographic. I presume that swapping A Photograph Of You for The Sun And The Rainfall was too much to ask for eh? Still, add this to the previous two L12s and you have a stunning record of early Depeche Mode. Three perfect 12" singles. The 1991 CD single reissue put Love In Itself 2, 3 and 4 together with both versions of Fools:

Away from the UK, let's first go to Germany. There was of course a red vinyl 7" with an A-Side (above)...

...and a B-side. The coloured vinyl 12" is a glorious slab of industrial grey vinyl:

That's magnificent. The B-side is too:

The tracklisting is the same as the UK 12". The tracklisting on the blue stripe Intercord CD however adds Love Itself 2 albeit it puzzlingly calls it Love In Itself 2 (Original 7" version).

There is also a bewilderingly rare German cassette single version of the 12". "Don't you have this David you amateur?" you ask. Well, no, no I don't. There is onve available on Discogs as I type which you may want to buy. It "only" costs £980. Seriously, what the hell is going on? Were there only 2 of these made or something? Are they gold plated? Madness.

There was of course a German L12 too. Firstly, there was a standard, boring black vinyl version:

Still a lovely thing of course. It featured the same tracks as the UK L12

Intercord didn't fail us and they produced this stunning coloured vinyl version:

The B-side is equally appealing:

As with the previous two singles, there is also a CD version:

That adds Love In Itself 3 to the L12 tracks albeit it calls it Love In Itself 3 (Original 12" Mix) which is needlessly confusing

As it did with its versions of the two previous L12s, France added an extra track, namley Love In Itself 3 (Original 12" Mix) to the A-Side and left the B-side as it was.

There is also a 4 track CD single and a 6 track numbered version of the L12:

There are a couple of different CD versions of that too and any number of other releases from other countries including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden. 

It may not have been their biggest chart success, nor may it be their most beloved single, but Love In Itself is a fine release. Great remixes, great artwork and another great L12. 

The band didn't stand still and soon headed to Hansa again, this time to record an album rather than just mix it. That would lead to the band releasing their biggest UK single to date, having success in Germany and reaching number 1 in Germany. 

We'll see, erm, why that should be next time.

DEPECHE MODE - THE SINGLES 1981 TO 2021 PART 8: EVERYTHING COUNTS

 

On 11th July 1983, Depeche Mode changed. The new, beefier sound evident on Leave In Silence and Get The Balance Right proved to be a hint as to where the band's future lay but it was with this release that Depeche Mode became the band we know and love today.

This was a new Depeche Mode. A Depeche Mode who had added Gareth Jones to their team, a Depeche Mode who had grown up and a Depeche Mode who had discovered Berlin, metal bashing and the joys of sampling.

This is Everything Counts.

NO TURNING BACK - EVERYTHING COUNTS

The Single

Everything Counts was the first fruit of the band's work at John Foxx's studio The Garden with Daniel Miller and Tonmeister Gareth Jones, The Depeche Mode Information Service announced the single's release in its June 1983 newsletter:

As you can see it didn't have a name at that point. You wonder if the band had recorded it with a chorus going "The grabbing hands/Grab all they can/........../In large amounts" before stumbling on the missing, crucial words. Everything Mounts just wouldn't have been the same would it?

BONG3 bounced into the world and restored Depeche Mode to the Top 10 and rightly so. It's very difficult to say anything new about this song really. It is simply a classic Depeche Mode song where Martin's innate pop genius mixes perfectly with his desire for sonic experimentation. Add to that a superb production team and Alan's studio skills and you have a Depeche Mode song that has easily stood the test of time. As with the rest of its parent album Construction Time Again there were very few, if any, other bands in the pop mainstream being this experimental at the time. While no-one would say Depeche Mode had gone full Einsturzende Neubauten, they had taken a bold, experimental step and deserve much credit for that. Turning that experimentation into a Top 10 pop hit was a stunning achievement.

The song received generally positive reviews. Deborah Steels in Smash Hits said that the single was "a nugget," adding "While most synthesiser bands are beginning to sound tedious, DM manage to retain a freshness and subtlety that makes them so continually appeaing."  Mark Cooper in No.1 Magazine liked it too, calling it "compelling" and the band's "strongest melody in a long while." Gary Bushell on the other hand, a man whose opinions should always be instantly disregarded, said in Sounds "whether the members of Depeche Mode are actually dead or alive is a question that has baffled the medical profession for years." How thrillingly controversial.

.

Everything Counts started its chart life at number 41 before leaping to 26 and then number 16. Along with the band's new sound, the public were introduced to Dave's blonde hair, Alan's xylophone, Fletch's shawm and reintroduced to Martin's nipples. These things helped boost the song, taking it to number 10 and then a See You equalling number 6. From there, it went to 7, 14, 22, 28, 46 and finally 71 before the grabbing hands lost grip and it fell from the charts forever.

Oddly, the song has never been played live by the ban...wait....checks notes...ah. The song has in fact been played live 750 times by Depeche Mode, starting on the 7th of September 1983 at The Regal in Hitchin, England and last seeing an outing in its glorious Global Spirit Tour form at the Waldbuhne on that boiling hot night on 25 July 2018. You all know its various live versions by now from the shiver inducing Rose Bowl one to the powerful Devotional one and to the oddly unsatisfying World Violation version. It is a highlight whenever it's played and seeing it in the rain at the Olympic Stadium in London in June 2017 was one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. God bless this track.

The B-side is an intriguing noise called Work Hard. Clearly over brimming with Construction Time Again enthusiasm, the band sampled every single piece of metal in London and Alan and Martin used that to once again co-wrote a B-side that very much overplayed the construction imagery. It's worth noting as well that the verse "Nothing comes easy/it never will/Nothing comes easy/But a broken will" is simply dreadful. It's a decent enough track for a B-side and it has never been played live.

It never will.

The Video

The band are on record as saying that this was the first video they were ever happy with and, bearing in mind the horrors of the previous videos, this Clive Richardson directed video can certainly said to be something that you can watch without cringing too much. That is very much a win in context of the early Depeche video days. 

We start with various Berlin shots before Fletch and Alan appear, shawm and xylophone in hand respectively in a "look these are actually REAL instruments" move that fools no-one before Dave arrives superimposed over Berlin street shots doing a quite dreadful dance. This carries on until the chorus before the Basildon Boyzone, Martin, Alan and Andy, pop up in height order singing along with Dave dancing in again frantically grooving past a Berlin branch of the Hofbrauhaus.

We get more Berlin shots accompanied by Dave's increasingly wayward moves before something odd happens for the second chorus. All of a sudden, the Basildon Boyzone are facing us, again in height order, but this time doing what could only be described as a dance routine. They somehow manage to move up and down while staying entirely still apart from Martin who moves his arms in a rhythmic yet obviously entirely unnatural to him way. It's quite something. Fletch and Alan are dressed like two accountants on a day off too while Martin is naturally in a black vest and black trousers, desperate to leave the video shoot to delve into Berlin's nightlife.

We then get ladders, a more animated Basildon Boyzone dance "routine", a bit more red hot xylophone and shawm action, Martin and his melodica and some unusual non Depeche Mode dancing. It's all a bit random now really. The whole band appear together for the first time, first at the beach then under the famous The Hand statue in Berlin the back at Wannsee again amidst footage of people enjoying the beach.

By this point, as you'd expect, Martin has his top off.

It ends then, leaving you happy that a watchable video has indeed been created. Thank you Clive.

The Formats

The artwork for this single is magnificent. The 7" (BONG3) cover (above) hints at what was to come with Construction Time Again with a sketch heavily hinting at the forthcoming album sleeve. Note too the hand logo as you'll see that again and not only on the 7" label.

The back of the 7" lists the tracks and the label features the hand again. I really quite like the handwriting font they use. No idea why.

Here is the UK 12" 12BONG3. The cover is a sort of remixed version of the 7" cover and the hand appears again on both the sleeve and the label. The A-Side features Everything Counts (In Larger Amounts) which is (a) a staggeringly good remix that you should all love and (b) a staggeringly good remix title that you should also love. I don't mean to get all nostalgic, but these early Depeche Mode 12" remixes were outstanding. No DJ's getting involved to cheapen a song by removing it entirely other than the title sung endlessly over bland, generic beats. This was a band once again experimenting and setting the agenda when it came to 12" remixes. Sigh. 

The rear of the 12" is another remix as it were of the 7" cover and, in music news, there is one track on the B-side and it's the East End Remix of Work Hard which is a remix of the song on the 7".

The August 1983 Depeche Mode Information Service newsletter promised a "Special Limited Edition" of Everything Counts and that's what we got on 1st August with this wonderful release. As with its Get The Balance Right counterpart, L12BONG3 was initially released in a numbered edition with a fancy leather style textured sleeve and gold writing. As you can see, the hand reappeared on the cover and the lovely label. The A-Side features the "Original 7 Inch Mix" of Everything Counts.

The B-side (above) features four more tracks from the Hammersmith Odeon show on 25th October 1982 - New Life, Boys Say Go!, Nothing To Fear and The Meaning Of Love. Including an instrumental track live was a bold move, and including it on a 12" bolder, but it's really nice.

The UK CD single reissue in 1991 brought together the tracks from the 7" and 12". And now, let's go to Germany.

Once again, we have a lovely red vinyl 7" 

The coloured vinyl doesn't stop there with this marvellous clear vinyl version of 12BONG3

Clear vinyl is hard to photograph so let's have another go, this time with the B-side:

In digital news, the blue stripe CD featured the 12" tracks and the single version of Everything Counts:

The grabbing hands of collectors in Germany were filled with a numbered Intercord version of the L12, firstly on black vinyl which has both a front sleeve

and a back one:

There is also another coloured vinyl version, again on clear vinyl:

I'm not convinced that clear is a colour technically:

Finally in German news, we have a CD version of the L12 which features the original 7" mix and a curious beast called the Original 12" Mix. Before you run to Discogs however, please  note that this is of course the In Larger Amounts version.

There are many other releases from all over the world and I don't have the time or collection to allow me to look at them all. One nice release is the French L12" version:

 

Unlike it's UK and German counterparts, it has two tracks on the A-side - the 7" and 12" mixes of Everything Counts.

The B-side features the same four live tracks as the other releases. 

There are three different versions of the French CD of the L12". The one above comes in a numbered sleeve and features the same 6 tracks as the French L12. There is also a standard French CD featuring the same three tracs as the German blue stripe CD:

Finally, this US 12" promo is a majestic thing. Look at it and fall in love with it:

As ever, do check depmod.com to find out just how many versions of this single you still need to buy to complete your collection.

Everything Counts is simply a classic Depeche Mode song and the second track of theirs after Just Can't Get Enough to gain acclaim outwith the band's fanbase. At this point, people who may previously ignored Depeche Mode or dismissed them as lightweight started listening and Depeche Mode started to look like a serious proposition.

Goodbye overt pop, hello to a new, darker future, This is where things started getting very interesting indeed.

DEPECHE MODE - THE SINGLES 1981 TO 2021 PART 7: GET THE BALANCE RIGHT!

 

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.