Depending on your thoughts about Depeche Mode and Simple Minds, it may surprise you to hear that while the former sold out their first planned concert at the Palau Sant Jordi with the result that another date was added on, the latter will be headlining, for one night, at the significantly smaller Razzmatazz. Musical destiny is a fickle creature. But regardless of where they now find themselves performing, it’s no small feat for any group to keep going for three decades and such effort is a salutory lesson for the reality-show winners and industry-made bands of today who are more interested in short-term fame than long-term achievements. If they bothered, they could learn much from both these bands about making (and keeping) one’s place in the music history books.
First, Depeche Mode. Who’d have thought that four mild-mannered Essex boys who wore the least make-up of all their early Eighties’ peers and made sweet and catchy electronic songs about love would, 20 years on, be such a force in cynicism, tattoos, and notorious drugs habits? While Duran Duran rack up one decent plasticky pseudo-meaningful album a decade, and Spandau decide it’s time to bury their “you owe me money, mate” differences, David Gahan and co. have been quietly toiling away, popping out thoughtful, magnificent album after thoughtful, not-so-magnificent album, making a total of 21 since Speak and Spell first hit the shops in 1981.
Their enduring success has various explanations. Firstly, unlike some of the other bands in eyeliner, Depeche Mode found an audience in men as well as women. And flatlining from a speedball OD in Los Angeles, as Gahan did in the mid-Nineties, is always guaranteed to make you that little bit cooler in some quarters. Plus they’ve long spoken out against capitalism, making some spooky predictions about the mess we now find ourselves in. If Reagan and Thatcher had taken note of Depeche’s forecasts, we’d all probably be much happier. And Depeche might have gone on to write happier tunes. Instead, not surprisingly, all the anti-capitalist angst caused a kind of collective depression in their output. But that’s not been a bad thing in terms of their careers, with the production of many more meatier tunes than the sappy efforts of their peers, young and old, who are clearly just in it for the money and groupies.
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