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Depeche Mode in Zurich - 14-15 February 2014
Lift up the receiver / I’ll make you a believer (Personal Jesus)
It’s 3 p.m. on a mild Saturday afternoon and my best friend and I are queuing at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, where Depeche Mode will be playing their second show in as many days. In front of us is a group of Russians, next to us three German girls. Behind us, we hear people speaking Polish, English and French. It’s a United Nations of Devotees – those hardcore Depeche Mode fans who travel from city to city, country to country and concert to concert, pilgrims all, devoutly following the band’s tour itinerary.
For the average concert-goer, seeing a band once is usually enough. For Depeche Mode fans, seeing the band once is just the starting point. Why? Why would we plan our holidays around a tour schedule and invest a big chunk of our hard-earned money in concert tickets, only to experience the same show over and over again?
Because it is never the same experience. Because the music is addictive. Because the feeling of community is joyous. And because once you get sucked into Depeche Mode’s orbit of anthemic electro madness, there's no way out.
Just like a rainbow / You know you set me free (I Just Can’t Get Enough)
More than three decades ago, Depeche Mode started out as a lightweight synth-pop band, only to gradually become reigning electro-rock overlords who easily fill stadiums the world over. In the 1980s, they released an album a year and toured relentlessly – an almost non-stop schedule that was rewarded by fan loyalty on an unprecedented scale.
Worldwide fame struck for good when the band released Violator in 1990, its single, Personal Jesus, at the time becoming the best-selling 12-inch in the history of Warner Bros. Records. The tours that followed set the band on a path to clichéd rock excess and self-destruction in the 1990s, coming to a halt only towards the end of the decade when singer Dave Gahan – and later, songwriter Martin Gore – both cleaned up their act. The first decade of the new millennium saw the release of two further albums, with mixed results. The unremitting touring schedule continued.
I was your father, your son and your Holy Ghost and priest (Alone)
It’s 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and we’re eighth in line outside the Hallenstadion in Zurich. One of the Russians has been dispatched to get food and comes back bearing bags of hamburgers for his friends. We are lying on the ground munching on Müesli bars, wrapped up in blankets, trying to keep warm. Just another typical day in the life of a Depeche Mode fan.
The Germans next to us set up little loudspeakers and blast out the band’s 13th studio album Delta Machine, which was released in March 2013. It is a blues-tinged, bass-driven barnstormer, chock-full of electronic flourishes.
The album opens with Welcome To My World’s salvo of bass and rhythm, and continues through Angel’s haywire offsync drum beat, Heaven’s slow-burning balladry, Secret To The End’s technoid gymnastics and Gahan’s inimitable baritone on the heartfelt Broken. Sitting amid these is My Little Universe, an experimental gem of a track, minimalist and genuinely, wonderfully odd. The insistent Soft Touch/Raw Nerve rings in the flawless second half of the album: Should Be Higher showcases Gahan’s newly acquired falsetto, while Alone has a dark cinematic sweep worthy of Depeche Mode’s most histrionic moments. Soothe My Soul is a Personal Jesus-esque piece of pop that goes down an absolute treat, and closer Goodbye takes us deep into the swamp of the delta blues.
It’s an album that demands repeated listens for its layered textures to be revealed; an old-school album with modern-day soundscapes that takes time to grow on you. It sounds, as ever, like Depeche Mode, but updated for the new decade.
When the walls come tumbling in / Though we may deserve it / It will be worth it (Halo)
It’s 5 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and we speculate on where we will end up, once inside the venue. The run to the front of the stage is going to be cutthroat. Everyone wants to bag a precious spot at the barrier. Will we make it? Will we stumble and fall during the mad dash through the Hallenstadion?
Depeche Mode kicked off their Delta Machine Tour in Nice in May 2013, with 106 concerts in 33 countries ahead of them. After last summer’s stops in Bern and Locarno, the Zurich shows mark the third and fourth times they’ve come to Switzerland on this tour.
On Friday, their first night in Zurich, I’m in the seating section, and it takes a while for the phlegmatic Swiss audience to get going. Floorfiller Policy of Truth and the propulsive Behind The Wheel do the trick and everyone ends up dancing in the aisles. Enjoy The Silence and Personal Jesus – an exquisite double whammy of their most famous songs – both sparkle in beefed-up live versions. Hilariously, there is a massive loudspeaker failure towards the end of Enjoy The Silence – never has a song title been more apt and never have I seen an audience carry on clapping and cheering as valiantly as during those two minutes of curious quietness. When the sound roars back to life, it is back with a vengeance and carries us through the heartwarming But Not Tonight (sung by Martin Gore), a hushed Goldfrapp remix of Halo, the silly but catchy I Just Can’t Get Enough, the headbanging rock of I Feel You and the classic finale of Never Let Me Down Again. It is a special moment indeed when thousands of people wave their arms in the air to the beat of this song. From above, it looks like a field of wheat swaying in the wind, and it lasts for endless epic minutes.
The party continues in the foyer of the Hallenstadion, an unlovely location turned into an enchanting never-never land by hundreds of fans singing along to Depeche Mode songs. Security has to kick us all out under protest.
Never want to come down / Never want to put our feet back down on the ground (Never Let Me Down Again)
It’s 6 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and the doors of the venue are open. We make it through and start running.
While the Friday concert was glorious, on Saturday it is as if a switch is flipped. The atmosphere is electric with anticipation as fans from all over the world have flown in for the show. In the half hour before the concert begins, the loudspeakers blast out a set of electronic tracks that are deliberately selected to ratchet up the excitement to levels of near-hysteria.
When the band finally walks onto the stage, the screams are deafening. "Leave your tranquilisers at home / You don’t need them anymore...You want to lose control", sings Gahan on opener Welcome To My World, and we don’t need to be asked twice. If there is ever a time to drop the facade of being an adult and to revert to a child-like state of joy, of forgetting reality and finding our truest and maddest selves, it is now. Music is a form of love that can reach the very depths of our souls. It is a pure state of being where nothing else matters but the moment.
And for the next two hours, Gahan proves that he is one of music’s greatest frontmen: he pirouettes and prowls around the stage, he flirts with members of the audience, he celebrates his rock star status – all with a self-aware twinkle in his eye. He uses the catwalk as his personal pulpit, reaching out to an audience that adores him.
Martin Gore is Gahan’s quieter counterpart who comes out of his shell when he sings solo acoustic versions of Judas and Shake The Disease with impassioned zeal. Meanwhile, Depeche Mode’s third member, Andrew Fletcher, stands solidly behind his keyboards, pressing the odd note here and there. Detractors wonder what Fletcher actually does on stage, but I swear I can occasionally make a connection between a button he presses and a sound I hear. It’s part of fan lore that Fletcher isn’t the most musically talented of fellows – which doesn’t stop the crowd around us from chanting "Andy Fletcher!" over and over again until he looks our way and waves. Musically, the heavy lifting comes from multi-instrumentalist Peter Gordeno and powerhouse drummer Christian Eigner, both of whom have been touring with Depeche Mode for over a decade and a half. These five middle-aged men of electronic rock seem to have reached an all-time high in their careers on this tour – vocally they’re at the top of their game, and they look like they’re having the time of their lives on stage.
On this second night in Zurich, the concert goes into overdrive by third song Walking In My Shoes, the audience singing back every word of the lyrics. A stark version of the classic Black Celebration makes grown men weep, the new Should Be Higher meshes seamlessly with the older tracks, and a remixed version of 2005’s A Pain That I’m Used To knocks our socks off. Then comes the peerless flow of A Question of Time, Enjoy The Silence and Personal Jesus. No matter how many times I hear these songs, they never ever get old. Never Let Me Down Again closes the show as always, and the sea of arms swaying back and forth is an emotional farewell. For now.
It’s 6:04 p.m. on Saturday afternoon and we’re running through the Hallenstadion. Will we make it to the front of stage? Yes. We make it to the front, where musical bliss is just about to start.
Goodbye pain / Goodbye again (Goodbye)
- Anna Wirz