We felt like he was still there with us.” The singer feels that if Fletch were working on the album, he’d have joked, “Can we just stop talking about death?” “I missed that in the studio,” the singer says, “and I know Martin did, too. Gahan and Gore didn’t see each other face to face to work on the album until July. Johnny Marr Previews New Compilation Album With Single 'Somewhere' Fletch, who had a big, dry sense of humor, used to joke that while Gahan’s and Gore’s roles were well-defined - Gahan was obviously the singer while Gore wrote the majority of the songs - his job was to “bum around.” But the two musicians say he was much more important to Depeche Mode than he gave himself credit for. Now Gahan and Gore are feeling his loss in more profound ways. “It would’ve been unthinkable for him to think that his death would’ve caused the end of the band.” “He was always seen as the glue of the band,” he says. So it’s very tough.”īut Gore feels his bandmate would have wanted Depeche Mode to continue. “Andy was there with me from way before the band and I feel like he was the one in the trenches with me the whole way. “It’s obviously really hard to lose your closest friend,” Gore says. “With this, it was just one of those things where all of a sudden, Martin and I are sitting in a pew in a church together, and Fletch is not here anymore, just like that.” “You don’t always get to say goodbye,” Gahan says. I think when I was singing some of the vocals, I was reflecting on all kinds of things, but certainly Fletch came up in my mind quite a lot.”Įven now, the two musicians are still making sense of their bandmate’s absence. “All the songs were already written before Fletch passed, but when something happens, an event like this in your life, songs change: They take on different forms and have different meanings when you sing them. “This is the first time we’re doing something like this without Fletch,” Gahan says. So I like the idea of ‘memento mori’ in a more positive way, in a ‘Live each day and make the most of your time here.'” Unfortunately, Andy passed away when he was really looking forward to getting started with us. “But everything was planned and ready to go. “Obviously, everybody will think that all of the songs were quickly written after Andy died,” Gore continues. Did they second-guess the title after Fletch’s death? “I think it cemented it, if anything,” Gore says. On May 26, Andy “Fletch” Fletcher, who co-founded Depeche Mode and played synthesizers and bass in the group since 1980, died naturally of an aortic dissection. The album, which producers James Ford and Marta Salogni are finishing in London, is due out next spring while the Memento Mori tour will launch in North American arenas, beginning in Sacramento, on March 23.īefore they could get in the studio, though, the title took on far greater meaning for Gahan and Gore. It’s one of the few times the group settled on an album title while making a record and stuck with it all the way through. “I just thought, ‘What a great album title for the songs that had been written already,'” he says. “A lot of the songs are going into that place of reminding ourselves that our time is fleeting, and you got to make the best of it - in a positive way.” Gore says he first heard the Latin phrase from a friend. “The direct translation is, ‘Remember that you must die,'” Gahan says via phone from Berlin, a few days before the band’s Tuesday press conference announcing Memento Mori. They embraced this idea by calling the album Memento Mori. Those two themes kept popping up when frontman Dave Gahan and singer and multi-instrumentalist Martin Gore were writing lyrics for what would become their 15th album. During the peak of the pandemic, Depeche Mode‘s members found themselves simultaneously making sense of Covid’s widespread loss while trying to appreciate life in the moment.
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