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[00:00] Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about machines, about eyeliner and ecstasy, synthesizers and subversion. This is a story about how one of the softest looking bands in pop music became one of the hardest to kill, and about how their front man went from a teen dream pinup to a clinically dead junkie on the bathroom floor of a West Hollywood hotel. This is a story about addiction, about stigma, about the line between pleasure and pain, and about death and resurrection. And this is a story about Depeche Mode, a band that made great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a pre-set loop from my Melotron called Gothic Goatee MK II. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to The Crossroads by Bone Thugs and Harmony. And why would I play you that specific slice of Reaper on the Mountaintop cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 28th, 1996. And that was the day that Dave Gahan, lead singer for Depeche Mode, overdosed, flatlined, and spent two minutes on the other side before dramatically coming back to life. On this episode, since, sex, stigmas, speedballs, salvation and Depeche Mode, I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. A geesh is a kind of piercing that one gets in one's perineum. You may know the perineum by its more colloquial name, the taint. You know, taint his dick, taint his ass. A geesh is not to be confused with a Prince Albert, which is a ring or a barbell that is pierced into the head of the penis, but now I'm getting off track. The geesh piercing procedure, as you can probably imagine, is quite painful. You must get on all fours with the one doing the piercing sitting directly behind you. And when the needle goes into that tender piece of flesh, or dude at least, it feels like someone has just kicked you in the balls with a pair of steel-toed boots. Geesh piercings hurt like hell. And then, according to those who get them, like Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan, the pain eventually turns to pleasure. Just like the pain and pleasure that lurked in the subtext of great Depeche Mode songs like Master and Servant. Also, quite like the pain Dave experienced when he was written off as some teen magazine electro-pop flavor of the week only to experience pleasure when he proved himself more dangerous, more subversive, and more rock and roll than anyone could have imagined. But Dave Gahan wasn't feeling pain or pleasure at the moment in his perineum or anywhere else for that matter, because Dave Gahan was dead. Years of abuse, of an unshakable addiction to shooting junk, to doing cocaine, had all led to this inevitable end. The Depeche Mode frontman's tattooed body, blue and cold, lay flat and motionless on a hospital bed. It was shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning, on May 28, 1996. The staff at Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles were ready to call it. I think we lost him, one of the doctors said. Another doctor was wiping the sweat from his brow. Dave Gahan, only 34 years old, had no pulse and no signs of life. Earlier that evening, Dave Gahan was headed toward the point of no return. He settled his bar tab at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, and made his way back to his room. On his arm was a beautiful woman that he just met, following closely behind like a dark shadow was his dealer. Inside his room, Dave told the woman to hang tight. He stepped into the bathroom and that dark shadow followed. Out of a small bag with a zipper came the goods. The only thing Dave really wanted tonight, even more than the beautiful woman who was on the other side of the bathroom door currently reapplying her makeup. The dealer prepped a speedball. This right here, this is called red rum. Do some of this and you'll be shining like Danny fucking Torrance. Dave took the syringe and stuck it into his flesh. The needle broke the skin. Dave rammed down the plunger, and the junk rocketed into his bloodstream and he was sent soaring toward the very specific sense of euphoria that he'd felt the very first time that he shot heroin and had yet to reach again. This time though, he was getting closer. He just had to hang on a little longer. He could see it, taste it, the high. He teased him, and then he was out. All 100 pounds, give or take, of Dave Gahan's junky body came crashing down onto the bathroom tile. The dealer had seen this kind of thing before. Even with smack heavyweights, he gave Dave's face a slap. Nothing. Come on, Dave, he said, giving a few more whacks with the back of his hand and still nothing. He shook Dave's lifeless body. Fuck. Dave wasn't here, man. The dealer grabbed Dave by the lapels and burst out of the bathroom, dragging the body across the floor. The girl in the bedroom took one look at Dave's sweaty body in the track marks and his hands starting to lose color. She freaked. She nearly knocked the phone off the bedside table when she grabbed the receiver. Her hand shook uncomfortably as she began to dial 911. The dealer saw this and dropped Dave's body. It was on the girl instantly. He slapped the receiver out of her hand and hung it up. What the fuck did she think she was doing? 911? The fucking police? No way! The girl fought back. She pushed. She shoved. She kicked and screamed. The dealer got annoyed and bounced. Problem is hers now. The girl dialed 911 once more. Fifteen minutes later, paramedics were strapping Dave Gahan's lifeless body onto a gurney and loading him into an ambulance bound for Cedar Sinai, one and a half miles away. They weren't surprised at who they were looking at. Dave was famous in these parts all right and not just for his music. At the hospital, a team of doctors worked to bring him back to life and they performed chest compressions and readied the defibrillator. And that's when Dave Gahan's heart stopped. He flatlined. Here was a guy who once wore his toughness on his sleeve and his music, a guy who went from pain to pleasure time and again, pushing past being pigeonholed creatively and pushing through a debilitating addiction and through a piercing in his taint, a guy who is now, by any and all measures, dead. Six years earlier, on March 20th, 1990, the streets of Los Angeles were overrun with Depeche Mode fans. 17,000 people, to be exact, stretching out from 15 city blocks down La Cienega Boulevard. It was merely a fraction of the nearly 70,000 who had shown up at the Rose Bowl in nearby Pasadena two years prior. But that was the final show of the band's first true American tour, and this was a record release signing for Violator, the Depeche Mode 7th Studio Album. And in this case, it's not like a niche audience was showing up for a niche band. It wasn't just girls in leather jackets and cut-off shirts anymore, or guys with craft work by way of Jean Vincent fashion sense. It was sportos, motorheads, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies and dickheads. Every sub-click of late 80s era American teenager was in attendance. Grown-up America, Square America, Crosby, Stills, and whoever the fuck America. Those people didn't know who or what the Peche Mode was. They didn't know what to make of the UK band's recent single, Personal Jesus, the one with the twangy spaghetti western guitar motif, the swaggering beat, the sweaty sounding breathing, and the call to action to reach out and touch face. The song that freaked my mother out when she caught me watching it on MTV one afternoon for reasons that I still can't understand. Square America didn't know how Personal Jesus was actually connected to the past, to their music, to rock and roll history, or how the band's primary songwriter, Martin Gore, conceived of it after reading Priscilla Presley's memoir, Elvis and Me. Square America, the young and restless America, Macho Fucko America could hardly fathom how in 1990, this was a new kind of Beatlemania, and that tonight, the human gridlock swallowing up the entire street in LA, was about to turn into a riot. It was 9 p.m. The latest single from Violator, Enjoy the Silence, would cross over and hit number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in just a month's time. Right now, that song was thundering from speakers outside the warehouse, the music store, that was hosting tonight's meet and greet. A limo rolled down La Cienega. Girls screamed at it while the dudes used their bodies to try to stop it. And when it finally did come to a halt, the limo was directly in front of the warehouse. The back door opened and out stepped Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Depeche Mode's two keyboarders, Alan Wilder and Andrew Fletcher, aka Fletch, who were hustled inside by the security detective. Just a glance at the quartet, and suddenly it was Bedlam on the block. Thousands of kids surged from the street toward the store, their bodies pressed up against the giant glass windows. Some climbed trees or TV news vans to get a better look. Thousands more took to the Beverly Center Mall across the street, racing to the top floors of the structure to lean over the balconies for a bird's-eye view. As security guards struggled to maintain order, a phalanx of LAPD and full riot gears steadily closed in, marching in tight unison down La Cienega. 100 cops strong called in to protect and serve in moments of extreme danger. Right now, on March 20th, 1990, the day they released their album Violator, Depeche Mode were the most dangerous thing gone. But back in 1981, when they'd released their debut album, Depeche Mode were anything but dangerous. They weren't even a band. They were a joke. Let me explain. If you came of age in the 1980s and you were into alternative music or college rock or whatever we were calling it then, you knew about this band called KMFDM. Even if you didn't listen to them, KMFDM were a German industrial metal band, and their name was an acronym for, you're going to have to forgive my pronunciation here, Kind Meierheit für die Mitelehne, which translates to no pity for the majority. But nobody, and I mean nobody knew what KMFDM actually stood for. We all thought it meant kill motherfucking Depeche Mode. Why? Because Depeche Mode were an affront to real bands using real instruments. Where were the guitars? Where were the drums? It was all synthesizers, it was all machines, it was soulless, dead inside music. The pop equivalent of five construction workers standing around a hole while one guy did all the digging. As a UK magazine Melody Maker noted in their review of the band's jaunty 1981 debut single, just can't get enough. I can. You will. At least, that was the thinking anyway. In reality, Depeche Mode thought of themselves as the opposite. They were punks from Basildon, a town just outside London. The synthesizer was like Johnny Ramone's Maserat guitar, or Paul Simonin's smashed P-bass. It was DIY, it was rough and tumble, and it was novel. With a few synthesizers, you could be in a proper band, but eliminate the age-old hassle of busting your sorry ass, lugging equipment and all that other shit around night after night. But although they modeled themselves as a poppier version of experimental noise bands like Einstein and Newbauden and Australia's SBK, the latter, which ate raw sheep brains on stage during a show, Depeche Mode was misunderstood by the pop cognizante as disposable synthetic garbage. At least Duran Duran played instruments. Again, this was the thinking anyway. That was before the group's original co-founder and lead songwriter, Vince Clark, abruptly left around the time their first album, Speak and Spell, was released in the fall of 1981. It was before Fletch and Alan Wilder began to find new ways to make their machine sound more human. It was before Martin Gore stepped up to fill that songwriting void and began to deliver songs that were darker, more provocative, and more subversive. Songs like People Are People, Blasphemous Rumors, Black Celebration, and the aforementioned Master and Servant. Songs about S&M, songs about God's supposed sick sense of humor, songs about death with a killer beat to boot. It was before Music for the Masses, Depeche Mode's sixth album in as many years. It was released in 1987. The title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but wound up becoming the band's biggest record to date. Ditto for the US tour that followed. That once maligned synth pop sound was now selling out 95 percent of the seats at the enormous Rose Bowl, an epic final show which veteran rock and roll documentary filmmaker DA. Pennebaker turned into the most excellent concert film, 101. All of it leading to this, Violator, a smash upon its release, already outselling chart mainstays Madonna and Prince. It also helped that it was the first Depeche Mode record to prominently feature Martin Gore's guitar, which helped bridge the gap between the mainstream and the goth electro-pop world from which they emerged. But Violator was more than another record. Violator was vindication. From inside his safe spot in the warehouse, seated at a long table with a black Sharpie in his hand, a parade of fans streaming by with records and posters to sign, Dave Gahan was all smiles. He watched in awe as 17,000 people shut down traffic in one of the busiest spots in LA, all for his band. And then, awe turned to fear as the giant panes of glass began to buckle from all the bodies pressing up against them. Muffled screams could be heard outside as the riot police moved in on the crowd, and the red lights of ambulances rolling in to take injured fans to the hospital. Now Depeche Mode's manager was frantically trying to get their attention. Boys, we need to go, now! It was 10 p.m. and the event was scheduled to go until midnight, but LAPD was shutting the whole thing down. Square America wanted their streets back. Dave, Martin, Allen and Fletch whisked into their stretch job waiting outside. The crowd was equal parts confused and angry, so bottles, bricks, anything people could get their hands on were now flying through the air. They were the LAPD's problem now, and the LAPD dealt with that problem swiftly and efficiently. It cost the city of Los Angeles $18,000 to pay for the 100-plus riot police, and when the dust settled, the city went looking for someone to foot the bill, whether that was the warehouse or KROQ, the local alternative radio station that promoted the event. Depeche Mode were long gone by the time warehouse ponied up the cash. Not that the band was concerned about price tax, not at this moment. They were riding high on that vindication feeling, and as their limo faded away into that March evening, so did the stigma that had followed them since the beginning. Something else was about to take its place. Crossover success, fame, and Dave Gahan's transformation from a synth-pop joke to an honest-to-God rock star. A transformation that would kill them. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. The World Violation Tour was massive. 88 shows on four continents over the course of six months. Sold out stadiums from New York to Texas to California. Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, U2's Bono, just a few of the pop culture luminaries on the guest list backstage. This was 1990, the same year that Madonna rocked the pointy cone bra on her blonde ambition tour, and also the year the Rolling Stones steel wheels tour. The Stones had once been the avatars of Dangerous, but now they were just going through the corporate machinations. The Stones didn't shock or offend anymore, not in 1990. Depeche Mode, on the other hand, as popular as they were becoming, still gone under the skin. Walking down some suburban street in America, Eddie Cochran hair, fingernails painted black, leather jackets over bare chests, Martin Gore in a dress, the androgynous Rockabilly Goth vibe of it all, elicited more than one homophobic slur from passing pickup trucks. In fact, Alan Wilder said in a Rolling Stone interview from this very time that he'd been called that slur at least 20 times so far that day alone. And Alan was one of the more conservatively dressed in the group. Depeche Mode did what Rock and Roll does. Real Rock and Roll. They were provocative. They challenged the accepted norms. They pissed people off. Then they did it Jamacano style in the process. Just a handful of synthesizers and samplers. Martin Gore's Gretsch white falcon guitar and Dave Gahan's rock star stance. Powered by pure adrenaline and also by the ecstasy they took each night after the show. Dave in particular went deep into what he understood was the rock star's duty. You didn't cut your hair short, wear a crop top pastel t-shirt and flap your arms like some old horn dog rooster as Mick Jagger was now doing at 47 years old. By the way, Mick Jagger shouldn't even be alive at 47 years old. Where were the real ones Dave Gahan wanted to know? The ones that burned out and didn't fade away. The ones who died before they got old, the Jimmy's, the Janice's, the Jimbo's. They were long gone and the void they left behind was huge. So when the World Violation Tour ends, your sole purpose is to fill that void. You leave your wife and child in London because London is over. LA is where it's at. That's where rock stars are not only dead, but undead roaming the wet streets of Hollywood Boulevard at night like vampires. So you moved to LA only without your wife and child, but with your new girlfriend who used to be your publicist. And you let your hair go long. You grow a goatee. You get wings tattooed on your back. An old Celtic symbol meant to ward off evil. If evil notices, it doesn't care. You think some ink on your back is going to hold the forces of fucking darkness at bay? Who are you kidding? You don't even care either. Long nights of popping E turn into endless days of shooting junk. You fix in dressing rooms and bathrooms and your favorite place of all, the Blue Room, a small room in your house where you can shoot up alone. You lose weight and back on the road with Depeche Mode for the biggest tour of your life, you can feel yourself getting weaker. You require daily cortisol shots just to get your ass on stage. At a show in Indianapolis, you jump into the audience cracking two ribs and suffering internal hemorrhaging in the process. You have a drug-induced heart attack while performing in New Orleans. Back home, you wake up on your dealer's long, strung out, half naked, your wallet gone, your silver watch gone, your jewelry gone. You waste time in rehab only to return home and find more things missing. The whole place has been cleaned out. Your Harleys, your TV, your stereo, your recording equipment, all of it scattered throughout pawn shops in the greater LA area. And then, Kurt Cobain, of all people. I mean, the guy didn't even want to be a rock star, but he did it, man. He went ahead and beat you at your own fucking game, beat you to the punch, which makes you a loser. So unrock and roll, but you're not one to be beaten. You're just as dark and dangerous and mysterious and depressed as Kurt. You can prove it. Just like Depeche Mode proved to the world that they were tougher than anyone ever dreamed with Violator. So you dim the lights, you shoot up, chase some volume with a bottle of wine, call your mom on the phone and then slash your wrists with a razor blade. Dave Gahan woke up screaming. His head was swimming and Jesus Christ, his wrists were burning. Paramedics were on either side of him, violently stitching up his bloody two inch lacerations with no anesthetic, not even a fucking stick to bite down on. The indignity of it all, the straitjacket and the padded room that followed, the revelation that under local law in Los Angeles, technically he committed a crime by trying to end his life. But why did he do it? That's what everyone wanted to know, of course. Why? Let them all ask. It wasn't his job to explain. It was his job to play the role of the Rock God. And Rock Gods didn't explain, and they sure as shit didn't accept any help. That was the paradox of the thing. Rockstars did not get help because getting help was admitting weakness, and weakness was defeat. Rockstars pushed the envelope till the sharp edges dug in between their fingers and sliced them open. Rockstars bled. A few days later, Dave checked out of the hospital, his own wounds no longer bleeding, but now wrapped in gauze. And as soon as he did so, he was a known quantity to three very specific segments of the population. To music fans, he was the tattooed long hair and the leather vest, virtually unrecognizable from the babyface kid who sang that peppy confection just can't get enough all those years ago. To tabloid junkies, he was a beautiful fuck up, a self-fulfilling prophecy that made you feel better about your own shitty life while reading the paper in the morning. And to the degenerate underworld of drug dealers, dopers and thieves, the people he hung with, the most outside of the band. Now that his addiction had isolated him from friends and family, Dave Gahan was a liability. His little stunt with the razor blade put a bullseye on his back. Everyone was watching him. Cops, press, no drug pusher was stupid enough to navigate to the nice part of town, to the famous rock star's cush pad, only to get clocked by paparazzi or worse. So Dave was forced to start making the trek to them if he wanted to score. With the 38s stuffed out his pants, wondering what was around the next dark corner or who he'd find inside the crack den that night. Attics in varying states of zombification, skin and bones, the only dress code, and the smell of piss and puke there to guide you like a ship deported on the shores of hell. In this darkness, however, a beacon of light shone in the distance. Martin Gore sent word that he was readying a new batch of songs for the next Depeche Mode album. And the band convened at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, far away from Dave's cocoon of hard drugs. But Dave couldn't stop California Dreaming about the next LA High. From the jump, things seemed off, because someone was missing. The city of the Scottish Highlands came into view. Up ahead on the lush green horizon, military jets were flying low, tornadoes specifically, RAF, Royal Air Force. They came in fast, their engines burning hot. And as they streaked past the car, the sound was deafening, especially since Alan had the top down. Alan's girlfriend shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat, and Alan stayed the course and tried to enjoy their leisurely drive. But before too long, the sound of jet engines were creeping up on them again. And this time, from behind. And they were getting louder now, closer. Alan's girlfriend turned around to look and scream. One jet appeared to be out of control, wobbling as it got near. And they came up on another curve. And once again, Alan downshifted and focused on what he was doing. And the Mercedes steady and strong. The jet noise was louder now. So loud, it was shaking the car. And that's when Alan looked up. The jet was directly overhead, not more than 50 feet in the air. The heat, the noise, the sheer size of it. Alan panicked. He turned the wheel hard and veered off the road, slamming on the brakes. The plane immediately dropped and crashed into the hillside, exploding on contact. A thick plume of smoke shot up into the air. And the smell of fuel and fire was everywhere. Alan and his girlfriend were so close to the crash site that particles and debris were now raining down on their heads. Worst of all, Alan could see the bodies, the dead airmen, their mangled and twisted flesh. After the shock wore off, Alan understood that he'd narrowly escaped death. Truly, if the angle on that jet had been adjusted just slightly, Alan told himself that he'd never fly again, which was going to be difficult, because he was a member of the world-class band Depeche Mode and traveling by plane was kind of a huge part of the gig. Alan had always been the new guy in the band, even more than a decade in. He joined in 1982, after the departure of original member Vince Clark. He was a session guy, extremely talented on synths and keyboards, but he quickly learned that there were many cooks in Depeche Mode's sonic kitchen. And unlike a traditional rock band with wholly unique roles, bass, drums, guitar, et cetera, Alan, Martin and Fletch were all working with the same electronic instruments. As such, creative tension became a big part of the process. One good thing about the sessions for songs of faith and devotion, the follow up to Violator, was that they mixed things up. Martin was playing his guitar more, and Andy got behind the drum kit on I Feel You, a woozy, totally sexy track that took the bluesy Personal Jesus template and turned it into electronic psychedelia. But Dave's addiction kept getting in the way, as was Martin's toxic combination of alcohol and stress, which had made him susceptible to grand mal seizures. Add to that the strange choice not to all live together as a band while recording the album, and Alan was irritated more days than not. The frustration, the plain thing, whatever you want to blame it on, Alan was out. Back in New York City in May of 1996, Depeche Mode, now a trio, struggled to get their new record together. It's not that things were impossible without Alan. Dave was cagey. His drug use had done a number not just on his body, but on his voice. They brought in a vocal coach to help, and it just felt like work. It was no longer dangerous, no longer the kind of shit that made life livable. The danger of Depeche Mode or the danger that used to be Depeche Mode, it was no competition for the danger of an LA Speedball. And so, like Alan before him, Dave Gahan got up and left, caught the next plane, headed west, checked into the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, fixed in his hotel suite's bathroom, collapsed on his hotel suite's bathroom floor, and about 20 minutes later, while trying to be revived by doctors at Cedar Sinai, died. As soon as his heart stopped, Dave Gahan found himself floating above his own unresponsive body. At first, he thought, well, damn, he'd actually done it. Finally found his way back to that feeling of pure euphoria that he'd been chasing for years. But wherever he was now, in the air, in the ether, no longer earthly matter, pure consciousness or subconsciousness, this place was far from euphoric. He was surrounded by total blackness. He was in the grip of fear, of death and decay, a void of pain and suffering that was trying to erase him entirely. It terrified him. He tried to focus on his body below, but the image was starting to fade. The blackness was winning. Hey! He yelled. I'm up here. And no one could hear him. The doctors just kept working, doing everything in their power to bring Dave back. Two minutes passed. Two minutes in which Dave Gahan was clinically dead. Two minutes of floating on the ceiling in a black abyss, staring down at himself. And then, as the doctors kept working, and as Dave fought against whatever forces were trying to keep him in their grip, he found himself pulled as if trapped in a tractor beam in a sci-fi movie, suddenly headed earthbound, and violently thrust through his skin and back inside his own body. Dave Gahan could hear the steady beat of his heart on the monitor. He opened his eyes. His hand was cuffed to a hospital bed, and a cop was reading him his rights. He was overwhelmed with gratitude to be out of the darkness and in the light. He was the answer to the question he'd asked all those years ago. Where were the real rock stars? Well, there was one right here. Back from the dead, chained to a cheap hospital bed, charged, booked, and then shipped to a cramped cell in county, and finally given the clarity to see that he had an opportunity to do something different, to clean up, to start again, to creatively challenge himself in Depeche Mode, and to do so for the next three decades and counting. Gone was the Stigma of the Rock Star, and Dave Gahan knew something about stigmas. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. All right, thanks for checking out this episode of Disgraceland on Depeche Mode. You know, one thing we didn't talk about at all in this story is Johnny Cash's incredible cover of Depeche Mode's personal Jesus. Just an unlikely cover, you wouldn't expect Johnny Cash to cover Depeche Mode. And that's the question of the week. Which unlikely cover song is your favorite? It can be any artist covering any other artist, just has to be something kind of out of left field that you would not expect, like Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode. Hit me up 617-906-6638 with your answers to this week's question of the week. You can leave me a voicemail, send me a text, DM me at DisgracelandPod on the socials, DisgracelandPod at gmail.com. Go ahead and leave a review for the show if you want to help us grow. I'll see you guys in the next episode. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at DisgracelandPod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rock-a-Rolla. He's a bad, bad man.