1984

In January and February the band was mainly in Berlin. Martin wrote the songs for Some Great Reward there, some of them obviously about his relationship with his new girlfriend Christina. So Fletch was joking about the songs on the new album: "One's not just a love song. It's a real moon-in-June, lovey-dovey ... Martin's in love again, see?"
Martin: "The point is to see something that's important and to write about it honestly, even if it's only important to yourself. A love song can be completely throwaway or it can ring true, y'know. Some people tend to think that love songs shouldn't be treated seriously, that it's only if you're writing about social problems that a song becomes serious."[1]
It's almost the opposite of what he said the year before, talking about Construction Time Again, but of course, times change ...

Dave and girlfriend Jo moved to a house of their own in Basildon, and Dave filled his leisure time with nice hobbies like hinges: "Stupid hobby, really. You wait five hours to catch a fish, then you catch it, then you throw it back. I really don't know why I bother."[2]
Alan: "Berlin was an absolutely important phase in which some of us got a little more familiar with the world. It came to some changes there. I think at least with Dave. There wasn't any dramatic radical change at him but I noticed that he lost weight, that he got wirier and more aggressive in his appearance. Perhaps he felt a certain pressure in his private life with Jo."[3] The complete opposite was Martin: "We certainly saw Martin come out of his shell during this time. It seemed as though he had some catching up to do, having been a quiet and reserved teenager by all accounts. Frequenting clubs and bars became more routine and we all saw a very different side to Martin when he was let loose, so to speak - heavy drinking followed by apparel-removal being top of his list of favourite activities."[4]

Fletch: "We'd grown up in Essex, hardly one of us had ever been out of Essex or London for a long time, so going to all these new places was so interesting for us, especially Berlin in those days. Living and recording in Berlin did have a big impression because there were so many weird and interesting people there."[5]
The experiences mustn't have been too fulfilling for Fletch because he moved to his girlfriend Grainne and her mother in Basildon, instead of living in Berlin or in London. He often emphasised that he never wanted to leave Basildon.
Alan also seemed rather well-behaved, lived together with his girlfriend Jeri and her child in Kilburn, London. The child, Jason, was mentioned very seldom, mostly in doubtful sources. For a long time it wasn't quite clear whether it was only Jeri's son or also Alan's. Alan was quoted saying, "Jeri is not only the mother of my child, but also a great hairdresser." Something that of course one can understand as that he regarded the child as his without being his biological father. If I'm not mistaken Alan was at least ten, or even more, years younger than Jeri and the child was 12 years old in 1984 (just half as old as Alan). When I had the opportunity to ask Alan about it, he explained, "It is correct that she was a good deal older than me, and that I lived with her and her son, who wasn't mine. We had no children together."[7]

In addition, the single People Are People / In Your Memory was recorded at the beginning of the year. It was released on 12 March. There were three different versions of People Are People available, the single version, the Different Mix and the On-USound Mix (mixed by Adrian Sherwood). The single's B-side In Your Memory was written by Alan. There was also a second version available, the Slik Mix.
People Are People was the first track to benefit from a period of pre-programming to save studio time, so it was done in a rehearsal room in Dollis Hill, North London.
Alan: "We would have finished it sooner except that some of the work had to be redone after the infamous incident when a particular member of the band turned up, only to trip over the main power cable and pull the plug."[8] (Guess to whom he is referring ...)
Although the lyrics of People Are People were quite obvious they had to be explained to the media.
Martin: "Although it's a song about racism that's just one example of people not getting on. It's about all sorts of differences between people."
Alan: "You could interpret it as being anti-war as well."
This somehow reinforced the image of the "political band", and it was suggested they had become more serious now.
Martin: "I don't think so. When people say you're a serious band they think you don't have a good time anymore - you walk around all the time with your cheeks sucked in, things like that. But we don't. We're still exactly the same. It's just the things we're writing about and the way we want to come across in interviews that has changed."[9]
Didn't help really. Instead, the "red worker image" of Construction Time Again still adhered to them. At a performance on Belgian television it was brought up once again. They wanted the band to play with gigantic red flags in the background blown out by a wind machine. And as an extra, hammers and sickles should be swung by some men. But the band refused.

Dave: "People don't seem to see Martin's wit. A lot of journalists seem to see something ... see Martin's got a very weird sense of humour, and that of humour comes across in his lyrics. For instance, the lyric in People Are People: people get along so awfully. The word awfully is a funny word. You don't really say that in conversation: I get on with you so awfully ... There wasn't really anybody who picked up on that."[10]
They always tried to explain that there is a lot of humour in their music and that they used many phrases people from Basildon use, e.g.: The world we live in and life in general. They used those phrases to be seen as not really serious. But there are still a lot of people who see DM as "moody and dark". Mostly the opposite was the case, as you can see by the following example.
A couple of years later Alan was asked by a fan: "People ARE People. What excellent lyrics. I'm sure this is a song you are very proud of. What does it mean?"
Alan: "It means exactly this: people are people, no bears or wallabies. I think this says a lot."[11]

They weren't happy with the video for People Are People - one of the most often shown videos of theirs, however. Clive Richardson directed it, and it was released in two versions. The original video was made for the single version, but an alternate video was made using the Different Mix. The video featured footage of various war scenes and scenes from Moscow, mixed with footage of the band aboard HMS Belfast.
Martin: "When we first started we just did anything that came along, basically. If someone came along with a video script, the first one we saw, we'd jump at it. We therefore regret most videos of the early years."[12]
They weren't happy with the song itself anymore some years later as well.
Fletch: "Basically it's our least favourite song. It's Martin's least favourite song, I don't know if there was a story behind it" [I think with People Are People Martin might regard the story he told about Basildon - see the chapter "Martin Lee Gore" - when he and a friend were attacked by some people without any reasons, kicking and shouting at them] "it's just that he brought it to us one day, we liked it and went in the studio, recording it, and it was a big hit."[13]
It really was a big success, especially in Germany where it was a Number-One-hit. German TV even used the song for their coverage of the Olympic Summer Games in 1984. In the UK it reached No. 4. Even in the U.S. it was a success, where it reached No. 13 in the charts. The song has become an anthem for the gay community there, and is regularly played at gay establishments and gay pride festivals. Some people even think that DM changed American society with this song.
A compilation album with the title People Are People was released in North America on 2 July to capitalise on the successful radio play of the song.
Martin: "It was around that time that things started changing for us in America. On the tour for that album, we were totally shocked by the way fans were turning up in droves at the concerts. Suddenly, we were playing to 10,000 people. Although the concerts were selling really well, though, we still found it a struggle to actually sell records."[14]
However, People Are People was indeed a kind of breakthrough. Even today some people, who are not really familiar with the band, at least remember this song.
The success of that single surprised the band at the time, and years later they were still wondering about it:
Alan: "Not bad for a song whose rhyming hook - People are people so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully - is a candidate for 'worst lyric ever written'."[15]

In March DM played five gigs in Italy and Spain as a kind of last leg of the Construction Time Again-Tour.
In May they began to record Some Great Reward in the Hansa-Studios in Berlin, a time that everyone who was involved, described as "happy and creative".
Alan: "There was a dynamic atmosphere in the studio and we had a lot of fun in Germany because of having such a great success and being surrounded by so many fans."[16]
Dave: "I'm very pleased with the vocal sound on this one - it's a lot to do with having confidence and a lot to do with being comfortable with the engineer. Also, I took a couple of lessons with Tona De Brett, scales and things, and I didn't see much application to singing pop songs but I wanted to do more for the breathing control. Sometimes when I'm running across the stage and singing I get very out of breath. On this album we took more care on the vocals."[17]
Two years later he said: "A few years back I thought I ought to have proper singing lessons and went to Tona De Brett. All she did was try to make me sing like Barbra Streisand, which was not much use to me. I try to get a feeling when I sing. I might not get every note right, but I don't think that's important."[18]

Alan: "I suppose we have matured a bit, the songs are a bit more serious now."[19]
They were very into sample stuff now, created a lot of own sounds.
Martin: "For Master and Servant we've used quite a lot of toy instruments. Me and Andy went to Hamleys and bought nearly everything in the musical department - xylophones, toy pianos, toy saxophones.[20] One we used a lot was a Marina. It sounded pretty terrible as a toy but when we took it down a couple of octaves it sounded really good."
Alan: "People tend to think that if you're using toy instruments then they have to sound whacky but we put some to very good use because as soon as you sample them they take on a whole new quality and when you transpose them it puts them in a completely new context."[21]
Some of the sounds on Master and Servant - such as the whip effect - are based on Daniel Miller standing in the studio hissing and spitting ("we tried to sample a real whip but it was hopeless").[22]

They had a break during recording to have a gig with Elton John on 2 June in Ludwigshafen. But this wasn't the reason that they couldn't meet the deadline.
Alan: "We returned from Music Works [in London where we recorded] to Hansa to mix the album but ended up getting horribly behind schedule. As a result, myself, Dan and Gareth completed the album alone because the other 3 band members had all booked their summer holidays and didn't want to cancel them. I foresaw the fact that we were going to go over deadline and held off arranging one myself because I didn't want to miss out on the whole mixing process."
When reading lines like these you start to get an idea why things became so difficult later. The rest of the band felt fine about going on holiday, to leave Alan behind in the studio, knowing he and the other two would do a good job. Alan didn't mind at the time, but it was to get to a point at which he would notice an imbalance in the workload.

Released at the same time as Frankie Goes To Hollywood's massive hit Relax the aim was to emulate the same "fat, round bass sound" for Master and Servant.
Alan: "We went completely up our a*** and ended up with exactly the opposite, topping it all off at the end of a 7 day mix by leaving out a small detail - the snare drum. The cost of this crucial omission was realised when Gareth and Dan hot-footed it down to a local Berlin club one night, armed with a test pressing and fully expecting to blow the local's minds. By the law of sod, the track came on straight after the pounding bass of Relax. Not surprisingly, it cleared the dance floor, leaving both of them standing, red-faced in their raincoats, clutching their briefcases."[23]

On 20 August the single Master and Servant / (Set Me Free) Remotivate Me was released. The Slavery Whip Mix was the longest 12" DM song at the time. The Voxless version is an instrumental mix of the song. The single's B-side (Set Me Free) Remotivate Me featured a 12" Release Mix. Some versions included a song called Are People People? which uses samples from People Are People along with chanting.
The promo for Master and Servant was filmed in Berlin.
Alan: "Clive [Richardson] hired a French choreographer who put together the hilarious 'Eetsa lot, eetsa lot' dance routine. One of the most embarrassing video moment ever - and believe me, there were many."
Furthermore he described, "The cancellation of a day filming after 'fisticuffs' ensued between two band members. Brought about when one party berated the other for excessive drinking, the Depeche Mode camp was decidedly uncomfortable for an entire week thereafter until the status quo was eventually restored, a peace agreement reached and the happy couple reconciled over Hansa Studio's 'Space Invader' machine."
I'm not quite sure, but it's possible that he's referring to the same incident with this anecdote: "There was one particular video shoot where a fight between two band members did occur. Not that I'm mentioning any names of course except to say that when Dave tried to attract my attention to witness this amusing spectacle, I was preoccupied with something else and missed it."[24]

Martin: "With the video to Master and Servant we steered clear of the sexual side a bit. It's very easy to make a video like that ... Relax II. There's a bit of rolling around with chains and hanging up with chains ... but nothing too blatant."
Dave: "Obviously you have to think about it getting banned. It might mean hundreds or thousands of people not actually seeing the thing because of one thing in the video."
Alan: "We did think about the song as well. But we went ahead and released it."[25]
Dave: "You have to take risks ... you can't be safe all the time. We even had problems with Master and Servant when the BBC called for a copy of the lyrics to check them out, but only one guy thought they were obscene, and he was away on holiday when the final decision was taken! The girl who took the decision agreed with us that it's about love and life, which of course it is."[26]
Martin: "It's about domination and exploitation ... and using a sexual angle to get that point across. What the song's saying is that these two people are indulging in this and getting fulfilment from it because it reminds them of their lives outside the bedroom."[27]
Dave: "Yeah, but on the records it's sexual, isn't it?"
Alan: "No, it's not, it's not just about sex. Martin?"
Dave: "On the record it is, I think that's pretty obvious from the lyric."
Martin: "Alright then."[28]

The album Some Great Reward was released on 24 September.
The title refers to the line make me think that at the end of the day some great reward will coming my way from the song Lie To Me.
(By the way - Did you know that Brian Griffin used the building of the Round Oak steelworks in Brierley Hill as the backdrop for the cover of Some Great Reward? The factory was pulled down shortly after.)

Martin sang Somebody naked, according to his own statement and confirmed by Alan . a story that was brought up over and over again . at least it was at Alan's appearance in Hansa Studios, at one of his Selected events (with Recoil) in 2010. But the story was told differently every time. One time it was said that Martin and Alan hadn't been in the same room - Alan was at the piano in the Meistersaal and Martin in a room next door or in the cellar. Another time it was said that they had been in the same room, and Alan had the piano turned around because Martin got undressed.
Martin: "Somebody is pretty much a straightforward 'I love you' song if you like, certainly not an anti-love song."[29] But "a pleasant song to me is unfinished, it isn't telling the full story. Which is why I introduced the twist at the end of Somebody because the song was just too nice. You say I'm cynical about love in my songs and perhaps I am but I think that's an interesting angle. Otherwise you just become mundane like most chart music. Relationships do have their darker side and I like to write about it."[30]
Nevertheless, Somebody is chosen whenever it comes to a wedding between DM-fans. People seem not to be bothered by the twist at the end of the song, that almost spoils everything.

Martin wrote Something to Do as an expression of the boredom he felt for Basildon: "You can become what we call a total spam, which is like a real beer boy, out every night drinking, Cockney accent develops, all that. Or basically you start wearing women's clothing - it's all you can turn to."[31]
And he began to wear women's clothes! A topic the media were to deal with over the next two, three years - very intensively. It started when he bought a leather skirt, and wore it over leather trousers. This caused huge waves of enthusiasm in the media, who rushed at the skirt in the true sense of the word.
This attention increased when Martin intensified his outfit, and wore the skirt without trousers, then dresses, silk stockings, (by the way - every woman would turn pale with envy at the sight of his legs :D) and pearl necklaces.
The rest of the band took this - depending on temperament - in good humour, or with: "You've got to take that off!"[32] Apparently Martin took the latter literally when he made a name for himself as a "club stripper".
Most journalists and biographers tended to take the thing with the skirt much too seriously. I think it was exactly what Martin said about it - fun, and "discovering freedom", because he would never have been able to wear something like that in Basildon. He wasn't "strange" or "perverted" or "effeminate". It was simply the fun of "wearing strange dresses and being a bit different", and it was part of Martin's special sense of humour that - as some fans in the survey of depechemodebiographie.de said - some people simply didn't get. I'd put your pretty dress on (Something to Do) was a joke - and dressing up like this was a joke, too.

Speaking of jokes - sometimes they delivered the proof of not being serious and grown up at all.
Martin: "Fletch, apart from being in a quite successful band, has also got the smallest nipples in the world."
Dave: "They're like two freckles."
Fletch: "They've just never grown. But they're not that bad."
Martin: "They are, Fletch."
Dave: "You're a weird guy, Fletch."
Fletch: "I just haven't got very big what-do-you-call-its. The round bit... the dark bit around it."
Dave: "That IS your nipple, Andy."
Fletch: "No, it isn't."
Dave: "I'll talk to you later Fletch. Man talk. I'll give you a few books on the subject."[33]

Alan described how he styled his hair:
"Hot HAIR (about 1983/84)
You will need:

• 1 STUPID PRATT (preferably aged - about 22 should do it)
• 1 LARGE MIRROR (doctored to look as flattering as possible)
• 1 HEAD OF STRAGGLY, UNKEMPT HAIR (do NOT wash thoroughly)
• FULL HOLD HAIR GEL (2 tubes)
• 1 COMB
• HOVIS BREAD (1 loaf)
• ELNETTE TURBO-NUTTER-BASTARD STRENGTH HAIRSPRAY (3 cans)
• 1 BLINKERED ATTITUDE
• 1 POOFY EIGHTIES POP BAND
• GAGGLE OF TEENAGE GIRLS
• 1 PACKET CONDOMS

Take stupid pratt and stand for half an hour in front of the large mirror. Start by coating straggly hair thoroughly with both tubes of full hold hair gel, being careful to ensure sideburns are not missed. Using comb, scoop upwards to resemble loaf of bread and immediately cover LIBERALLY with hair spray (remembering to save some for the garnish). DO NOT MOVE UNTIL SET.
Next, ignore the fact that everyone's saying "Look at that stupid pratt who looks like he's got a loaf of bread on his head" and place firmly in an equally badly dressed and follically-disastrous 80's pop band. Finally, add one more spray of Elnette and serve immediately to gaggle of teenage girls who'll tell him he looks great ..."[34]

No fun for the band in those days, but in review the stories teenage-magazines wrote were quite funny.
The British journalist Don Watson and DM entered a hotel and spotted a reporter team of a German teen-magazine with cameras.
Fletch: "It's no good refusing to talk to them. They'll just go ahead and make it up anyway. The last time we refused an interview with them, they made up a story about Dave having to be carried off-stage at the end of every performance, taken to a separate dressing room and kept supplied with constant fluids. The time before that they said we hated everyone under 20, which made us very popular with their readership."
As they made their way through the swing doors, Dave made a theatrical fall on the hotel courtyard. "Help! I need a cup of coffee," he wailed as the rest of the band crowded around him.
"Oh God!" Alan shamed, "This happens all the time."[35]

The first story to which Fletch alluded was actually rather revealing. It was dramatically reported how Dave had been carried into the dressing room. Unfortunately it was said that helpers made sure that nobody could enter the room, not even band members. However, two lines further on, it was reported that Dave was still lying on the bench. If nobody was allowed to enter the room, how did the reporters know about this then?
A Belgian teenage-magazine jumped on this bandwagon, too, and quoted Dave with: "I never did any sports when I was young. When Depeche Mode started to become a little more popular, I collapsed immediately after the first few gigs. Now I can handle it, lucky for me. Whenever I have a day off, you can find me in the gymnasium. There I train myself to exhaustion. Shadowbox-ing, weightlifting ..."[36]
I can't tell you if he really said this. There are some more professional sources saying that he would go to the gym before starting a tour. But they are referring to later tours.
The reaction to the second story - that they hated everyone under 20 - actually turned out dramatically. Quite a number of fans were indignated by the "arrogance" of the band, and wrote angry letters to the magazine.
There were a lot of faults in the stories that were published in these teen-magazines, all kinds of things got mixed up continuously, or wild assertions were made. According to these, Martin and Vince had been schoolmates [it was Fletch and Martin] and the sole founders of DM. A whole album, Construction Time Again, was demoted to a song, and Alan lost his songwriting credits to Martin, because Two Minute Warning was ascribed to him. "He thinks the end of the world has come."
Stripped was so misinterpreted, that German teenagers thought for a long time DM wanted all girls they met to undress in front of them. (Which some certainly did ...). Shake the Disease was connected with AIDS. And Dave stole cars because his family had nothing to eat. And he removed several tattoos with extremely painful etching chemicals. [He only had one removed - with a laser].[37]

The next tour kicked off on 27 September. It consisted of four legs. The first leg, comprising 19 gigs in Great Britain, ended on 4 November.
Dave: "The fewer gigs you do on a tour the more you enjoy yourself. I love the audience contact, it gives me a big kick that you can't get in the studio or on TV - I always feel a great deal of power when I can make 6,000 people do what I want. We're about to embark on a huge tour, though - more dates than we wanted to do really, ending towards Christmas and taking in Germany, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. There are a few days off, but the gigs are mostly back to back - when we get a day off it's always a Sunday in Hanley. Have you ever been in Hanley on a Sunday? You look at a couple of antique shops, you wander about thinking 'what the hell can I do?', you go back to the hotel and watch a couple of videos. It's awful. After this lot most of us will be wanting a holiday. The last German tour finished right before Christmas and by that time it had got very difficult to do something different every night. My mind used to drift sometimes and I'd forget the words. I like moving about the stage now - at one time I used to keep still and just clutch the mike stand - but now I go to different parts of the audience and play up to them."[38]
Alan: "It's pretty much the same every night, so it can get a bit boring. The worst thing is finding something to fill in three hours in a hotel bedroom in the afternoon. I take photographs to relieve the boredom. I can't write songs or anything, neither can Martin. There's something about touring that stops you doing that."[39]
Just a while later this boredom would lead to massive partying during the tours, but already at that time they weren't exactly "well-behaved boys" any more. There are some personal reports from people who met them at parties in West-Berlin and London, saying that they drank quite a lot.

In between, on 29 October, the single Blasphemous Rumours / Somebody was released. It was the first double A-side single in DM's history. The music videos for both songs were directed by Clive Richardson. There weren't any different versions of Blasphemous Rumours, but there were a remix and a live version of Somebody available. Some releases also included live versions of Two Minute Warning, Ice Machine, Everything Counts and Told You So. They had been recorded at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool, England, on 29 September 1984.
Just like Master and Servant, they had some problems with Blasphemous Rumours. The BBC refused to play it, and other people also reacted negatively to this song.
"If we can say God so loved the world that He sent His only son, if He did that He cannot have a sick sense of humour,"[40] a priest from Basildon said in a local newspaper as a comment on Blasphemous Rumours.
The band tried to explain the song, but it was difficult.
Alan: "Religion is a more sensitive subject than sex. You've got to be careful with it. In that song it's handled tastefully. Talking about something dealing with religion that's offensive, I've watched American religious TV programs. If anything is sick, they're sick. Anything we sing about is tame compared to those shows. Americans who complain about us should be complaining about those shows."[41]
Dave: "Blasphemous Rumours is really not an anti-religious song. Of course it's a personal statement on Martin's part but at the same time it's a statement of how everybody must feel at one time or another. It's just that - some of the things we noticed, like there'd always be a prayer list for certain people and the one at the top always died. Things like that."
Martin: "People get too much preaching - even around the town in Basildon, you know? People cling to religion through fear of death. It's not a bad thing to be religious, in fact I think I'd be happier if I did believe."
Fletch: "I turned away from religion because I found I was leading a really boring life. I wanted to live life to the full but I was trapped, and I thought 'if I die tomorrow that'll be it' ... it's a shame that Christianity is perverted and hyped so much, because it does have something to offer."[42]

The second leg of the tour took place from 15 November to 18 December, comprising 16 concerts in Europe.
But of course, Blasphemous Rumours also was performed on some TV shows. While the metal-like sound had been produced with a hammer on a concrete floor, the band decided to play a bicycle wheel and a breeze block combination for TV performances.
Alan: "But the only real recollections [about TV performances] are that we always took the opportunity to get very drunk backstage - particularly the year when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were also on the show."[42]
There had even been a drinking competition that was won by DM - probably something that must be seen as "consolation for the boredom" (one of Martin's favourite topics by the way) at those TV performances.

---

References:
[1] The Basildon Bond, Melody Maker, 10 March 1984. Words: Micky Senate
[2] Are These Men Really Miserable? Smash Hits, 15-28 March 1984. Words: Johnny Black / Peter Martin
[3] www.recoil.co.uk
[4] Just Can't Get Enough, Uncut, May 2001. Words: Stephen Dalton
[5] The Story Of Depeche Mode, BBC Radio London Live94.9, 7 May 2001, Producer: Tony Wood
[6] Depeche Mode prive (part one: Alan Wilder), unkown author, media and date
[7] Depechemodebiographie.de
[8] www.recoil.co.uk
[9] Clunk Clunk Every Trip, Record Mirror, 10 March 1984. Words: Jim Reid
[10] Aces High, Zig Zag, August 1985. Words: William Shaw
[11] www.recoil.co.uk
[12] Clunk Clunk Every Trip, Record Mirror, 10 March 1984. Words: Jim Reid
[13] Depeche Mode: The Interview, Talking Music SPEEK013, 1988
[14] Violator, Alligator, NME, 7 July 1990. Words: Jeff Giles
[15] www.recoil.co.uk
[16] www.recoil.co.uk
[17] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[18] Basildon Bond, Blitz, April 1986. Words: Bruce Dessau
[19] Are These Men Really Miserable? Smash Hits, 15-28 March 1984. Words: Johnny Black / Peter Martin
[20] Construction Time Again, Smash Hits, 16 August 1984. Words: Tim de Lisle
[21] Sampling Mode, International Musician And Recording World, November 1984. Words: Adrian Deevoy
[22] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[23] www.recoil.co.uk
[24] www.recoil.co.uk
[25] Master of the Game, Record Mirror, 29 September 1984. Words: Eleanor Levy
[26] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[27] Master of the Game, Record Mirror, 29 September 1984. Words: Eleanor Levy
[28] Everything Counts (in Large Amounts), Number One, 19 October 1985. Words: Paul Bursche
[29] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[30] Sin Machine, NME, 17 February 1990. Words: Stuart Maconie
[31] Coming up Smiling, The Face, February 1985. Words: Sheryl Garratt
[32] Violator, Alligator, NME, 7 July 1990. Words: Jeff Giles
[33] Master of the Game, Record Mirror, 29 September 1984. Words: Eleanor Levy
[34] www.recoil.co.uk
[35] Deconstruction Time Again, NME, 22 December 1984. Words: Don Watson
[36] Depeche Mode begs for a vacation, Joepie, 1984, author unknown
[37] Several Bravo-articles
[38] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[39] Strange but True, Smash Hits, 22 November - 5 December 1984. Words: Neil Tennant
[40] Source can't be found anymore
[41] Depeche Mode gains fans despite its critics, Times Staff Writer, 29 March 1985. Words: Dennis Hunt.
[42] Blasphemy Rewarded, Melody Maker, 22 September 1984. Words: Mark Jenkins
[43] www.recoil.co.uk

Biography: 1985

To the top

• BIOGRAPHY - Preface

• Vince Clarke
• Andrew Fletcher
• Martin Lee Gore
• David Gahan
• Alan Wilder
• Foundation

• 1981
• 1982
• 1983
• 1984
• 1985
• 1986
• 1987
• 1988
• 1989

• 1990
• 1991
• 1992
• 1993
• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998/99

• 2000
• 2001/02
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009

• 2010/11
• 2012
• 2013/14
• 2015/16/17

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