Yazoo was Vince's sound ultimately. At the time Vince and I got together he had only recorded one album with Depeche and Depeche were to go on to greater things.
As part of Depeche Mode, I don't think it's right for me to be using my own songs for a solo project. I'm not a very prolific songwriter, so I keep those for Depeche Mode.
There are definite reference points to older Depeche Mode records.
I have the utmost respect for synthesizers - Soft Cell, early Depeche Mode. But that's become a cliche for the '80s.
Making a record with 'Depeche Mode' is not a simple process. It's quite complicated and long. We have the luxury of time. I'm not sure that's such a good thing when you're being creative.
There are Depeche Mode parties around the world where people listen to our music all night long. The more remixes we can give them, the more interesting those nights have got to be.
I don't know if I was a poseur - I really did love metal, always - but I gave a lot of other things a chance. I wanted to meet, um, girls, so I would check out 'Depeche Mode.'
A band like Depeche Mode would go out and record them hitting a trash can with a steel rod or something and recording it. And that would be one of their sounds of the drums. I love the creativeness of that kind of really raw sampling.
Depeche Mode have never got over their teenage awkwardness with each other. We're still like that. Mates but not mates. That awkwardness is there, only now we have families and kids.
I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and someone who went on to join The Cure. That was all in one class of 30 kids.
Just as the blurring between childhood and adulthood has produced the kidult, so the stretching of middle into old age has fostered another peculiar chimera: septuagenarians with apoptosis sporting the depeche mode.
I wanted to be a rock star. I dreamed of it, and that's all I dreamed of. To be more accurate, I wanted to be a pop star. This was in the late '80s. And mostly, I wanted to be the fifth member of Depeche Mode or Duran Duran.
Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don't have to be accomplished to be a musician. If you've got ideas, you can do this.
In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cur...
I really believe that the more distractions and fixes I remove from my life, the better I'll feel about myself. The biggest of those is Depeche Mode. It's the one marriage that survived, but I'm not sure it works - for me, anyway. Jumping on a plane ...
