Depeche Mode: A Band Named After a Fashion Magazine and a Keyboardist Who “Bummed Around”
Depeche Mode formed in Basildon, Essex, in 1980. Vince Clarke and Andy Fletcher had a band, Martin Gore joined, and the name came from a French fashion magazine, reportedly because it sounded cool.
Clarke recruited Dave Gahan after hearing him sing David Bowie’s “Heroes” at a jam session in a local Scout hut. In 1981, after the first album, Speak & Spell, Clarke left; Gore became the main songwriter and Alan Wilder joined.
In the 1989 documentary Depeche Mode: 101, Fletcher described his job like this: “Martin’s the songwriter, Alan’s the good musician, Dave’s the vocalist, and I bum around.” Years later he answered back, calling himself “the tall guy in the background, without whom this international corporation called Depeche Mode would never work,” and said he had run much of the management in the first half of the band’s career.
“Personal Jesus” came out in 1989. Gore wrote it after reading Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, which calls Elvis her “personal Jesus.”
In 2002 Johnny Cash recorded it for American IV: The Man Comes Around. He called it a very fine evangelical song, probably the most evangelical gospel song he ever recorded, and said he did not know whether its writer meant it that way. In 2020 Depeche Mode were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Depeche Mode has its own station in the Exclusive collection of Kalisha. Open the radio and press play.
— Kalisha 🎧
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