"What does Depeche Mode mean to you?" "Depeche Mode means to me everything." "I mean, that's the way of my life." "I listen to Depeche Mode every day." "I'm not sure what it means to me," "I only know that when I'm worried or stressed or something, they..." "So relaxing to me, you know." "They bring, like, joy, or..." "Just you go to somewhere else, another place when you listen to them." "It's my religion." "It's my religion." "It's everything." " And where are you from?" " France." " Okay, so you traveled." " Yes." "Have you traveled to other gigs on this tour?" "Sure." " Shall I enumerate all of those?" " How many roughly?" " Fifteen." "This year." " Okay." "Nice, London." "I went to Düsseldorf, as well." "Milan, Rome, Bilbao, Glasgow." "It's my ninth show on this tour." "And, not last." "For me, it means, it's the soundtrack of my life." "It's falling first time in love." "First girlfriend, first kiss." "Then my first girlfriend leave me..." "Left me." "So, I feel heart pain..." "Because you play too much Depeche Mode?" "Yeah, maybe." "No, I'm very happy to see them in Deutschland." "Because I know that here, people love Depeche Mode." "And since a long time, I wanted to feel the Deutsch atmosphere with Depeche Mode." "That's why I come to Berlin to see this." "Yeah!" "Well, thank you very much!" "Thank you!" "Good evening, Berlin!" "You know, we decided Berlin for this because it was one of the first places we went to, I think, that really affected us." "You know, before the Wall came down, we were going there and recording." "We recorded a few albums there, more or less." "Martin spent some time living there." "So, when we were recording we would spend months and months there at a time." "It was probably the time, I think, where we grew up." "First came here, we had had a couple of albums out." "We actually hadn't done any recording abroad." "So, it was the first time we'd ever recorded abroad." "And it was a great experience, and it was really different." "And, wild..." "Meeting interesting people every day." "Russian guards on the Wall, you know." "I think with us thinking..." "They could hear it, things like that." "And musically, how important was it for you to find yourselves in the '80s in Berlin." "I think I always downplayed the influence of Berlin on..." "The music." "Because I always used to say I lived here in '85-'86." "But, when I think about it," "I actually wrote Black Celebration in Berlin." "So, it..." "And that came out in '86." "So, it must have been more like '84-'85." "And I think that that probably did have a big influence on that album, the songs on that album." "Which I think was a big turning point for us." "Through Berlin, we were able to take the music onto another level." "You know..." "As part of the..." "Turn it around from a pop band to more of a rock band." " It was quite different then, Berlin." " That's right, '87." "Yeah, and it was very similar to New York, in some ways." "A whole bunch of people coming from all different places and somehow making the city work." "You know, a lot of art, a lot of music." " Yeah." " And I think it's still like that, you know." "I think it is, because I meet quite a few Americans in Berlin," " who say it feels like New York in the '70s." " Right." "Just a little bit cheaper." "Come on, let's hear it!" "What's up?" "Thank you very much." "Thank you." "It was a strange place to live." "You know, it was an interesting place to live, it was..." "You know, there were a lot of artists here." "You know, there are a lot of memories." "Our engineer, he had a link with Berlin and Hansa Studios, and he suggested it." "And it was fantastic, you know, it was in the mix room." "And speakers outside." "When we recorded there, it was complete wasteland." "And, yeah, it's completely changed." "But, of course, that area, you know, in the '30s would have been the center of Berlin." "The building is still there and the restaurant as well." "That's the famous restaurant where I used to order Toast Hawaii, every day." "And I remember coming when we came to" "East Berlin when the Wall was still up and it was..." "It was one of the real memories of being with Depeche Mode and being over on that side and doing the show." "It definitely was special." "I've never quite understood, you know, why..." "You know, sort of East Germany or the old Eastern Bloc countries in general..." "It is true that we were probably about the only band that went there and actually toured." "We took a few gambles in our career." "One of the gambles is that we did tour Eastern Europe." "We didn't make money, we lost money." "But we knew we had fans there, so..." "You know, we felt it was important to go and play." "Thank you!" "Are there any favorites, every night, that you really enjoy playing?" "I love Black Celebration." "We haven't played it for a long time." "If you're talking about Berlin and the German fans, I think it says it all." "So, that's probably my most favorite track." "Thank you!" "Does it matter for you when you sing on stage if you wrote the songs or Martin wrote the songs?" "In terms of lyrics, how you feel about..." "It's more difficult singing my own songs." " Yeah?" " Yeah." "Because I'm more self-conscious about it." "I start to think about, are they gonna, you know..." "Is the audience gonna react as well to the songs that I wrote?" "You know, you start comparing." "They say, you know..." ""Compare and despair. " It's true, you know?" "But not so much on this tour." "But in the past I have." "Look, it's just some of the songs I sing..." "Walking In My Shoes, for instance, it never gets old to me." "Songs that I've written, they get old to me and I think that's because you wrote it." "I mean, I think, you know too much about it." "I like what happens to songs live when they become something different to what you first had an idea about." "They become something..." "And that usually happens when..." "'Cause there's an audience involved." "Should Be Higher, for me, I really enjoyed performing on this tour." "It was always a little different." "It had a much better groove to me live than what it did on record." "Kind of like, it became chunkier and sort of a bit dirtier." "Kind of like I wanted it to be on the album, but I don't think we achieved that." "Come on!" "Let's hear it!" "All right!" "Berlin!" "Thank you!" "In Germany, I guess it's der Baron over there." "I think you're right, something like that." "It comes from there, yes." " It comes from there, the Red Baron." " The Red Baron." "Because you speak German, of course." "I do speak German, exactly, yes." "My parents came from here." "My mother from Munich, actually, and my father from Vienna." " Okay." " First generation American, I am." "The reason I do understand a lot of German is when my parents didn't want us to understand them, they would speak in German." "To talk about us." "And eventually, you start to get it, right?" "Yeah." "On the footage of 101, all in the film 101, there's footage of you with the money, and I can't remember exactly what the phrase was." "I somehow think of it now in terms of, when you tour, the decision to tour, how much is it about the numbers and how much is it about wanting to tour?" "How..." "Is there a happy medium?" "Or would they tour regardless?" "I think that there is..." "I mean, look, I think that it evolved." "So, I think as the band's..." "You know, let's historically look back as the band..." "When the band started and one would go out and do shows." "And they just continued and that's what one did." "I think obviously, with it..." "Has come financial remuneration to a greater and greater extent." "And as we all know, I think these days the relationship of what makes..." "How one makes money as a band has become inverse and flipped on itself." "Well, it used to be recorded music, and more so now towards the touring." "So, while I think that money is obviously very important and is a big part of it," "I do not think for a minute that if the band didn't enjoy touring, and didn't enjoy performing and weren't so good at it..." "And didn't enjoy interacting with the fans and traveling the world and going around," "I don't think that the money would trump the desire to go tour." "And I really do mean that, I think..." "It would be naïve or silly to say..." "I mean, it'd be, you know..." "To say, "Hey, the money doesn't matter. " Of course it does." "It's a great way to earn a living." " Yeah." " For the band, for sure." "Yeah, that's right!" "That's right!" "Yeah, sing along!" "Yeah, that's right!" "What I quite like about this part of the set is it's very unstructured." "'Cause a lot of Martin's writing, you can strip a song straight back to piano, and it works really well." "Often we'll go and do a song live that we've only just literally rehearsed once in the dressing room" "20 minutes before we go on." "When it's just me and him, we can just respond to what the other one's doing, and pretty much do what we want." "Thank you." "Please give it up for Mr. Martin L. Gore and Mr. Peter Gordeno." " Depeche Mode." " Depeche Mode?" "Does it mean anything to you?" " I don't know." "Sorry." " I don't know." "Okay." "Yeah!" "You know, when I do watch myself and when I am performing," "I enjoy becoming that guy up there." "You know?" "It's a lot of fun for me to present this guy..." " A persona." " A persona." "To act out a part." "You know, there's a lot of acting going on up there." "And it's fun, and you know..." "This guy here that's sitting in front of you right now, there's none of that guy in there, you know." "Maybe a little bit, sometimes." "Thank you." "Come on!" "Thank you very much." "I think there's a guitar for every song, kind of thing." "You have a different one." " I think..." " It's a great collection." "For me that's like almost part of the show, because they're, you know, things of beauty." "You know, there's a..." "They just all have a character." " Yeah." " And of course, they all have" " a different sound as well." " Yeah." "So when we're in rehearsals, we do try out what we think is good for a song and sometimes we'll think, "Well, that doesn't sound very good. "" "So we'll try something else out." "But you are a bit of a collector, aren't you?" "I mean, also with the old synthesizers and stuff." "Yeah, an addict, I think, is the word." "I do have an addiction with anything to do with music." "And I've said to friends of mine," ""If I ever start collecting anything that's not to do with music," ""just shoot me. "" "Thank you!" "Sing it!" "Yeah!" "Sing it!" "Go!" "Sing it!" "Berlin, I want to see those hands!" "I've done all of the stages since '93, so that's 20 years, actually." "Should have a drink, so..." "But funny enough, I feel that the first stages, Songs of Faith and Devotion, overly ambitious, of course, and I had no idea about practicality of anything." "But it was quite a stage." " But it looked..." " I think that had we been sober, we would have never gone along with it." "But it's interesting where we end up now." "It's the most simple stage, I think." "A lot of people talk of..." "The fans talk about that as being the best stage set." "But it was a difficult one." "Yeah, and I think it was quite costly for touring." "I mean, I think this is the best for me." "And the simplicity of it is so incredible." "It's basically designed for the band to perform." "If the band doesn't perform, it's going to look bad." "If the band performs, it looks great." "Whether it be the tour of "Songs of Faith and Devotion", or this tour, or "Exciter", or any of the tours really, it was always the visuals that played a big part of complementing what the band is," "you know, the music the band is performing, it really has been." "And I think it's developed into part of the whole grain of the fans and what they see and what's coming, and it's..." "You know, as I always say, you know we discussed at the beginning," ""Let's do something that's compelling in terms of what's there. "" "We never want to just do..." "I don't think a lot of flashes and a lot of different things is what we need." "It doesn't go with the band's music." "But I haven't seen anything visually yet." "You know, it's just a screen, of course." "Yeah, well, I'm hoping that what you've got is a tiny little piece of my face, and Martin's, and then the rest of it, of course, is all your film." "'Cause that's why we're here, after all, aren't we?" "Action!" "Yeah, that's right!" "Come on, let me see those hands!" "Let it flow!" "Ladies and gentlemen." "Boys and girls." "Mr. Martin." "Hey!" "Thank you." "Come on!" "All right, all right." "Come on, let's hear it!" "Berlin, sing!" "Thank you very much." "Good night, thank you!" "I can't remember exactly the story, when you lived here you wanted to go to the East and you were stopped." "I had a girlfriend from Berlin at the time." "And we decided to go over and visit her relatives on the East." "Because, you know, as people know, when the Wall went up, you know, families got separated, so she had a lot of relatives over on the East." "So we went and bought a load of, you know, fruit and vegetables, and we took the U-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse, and there you had separate lines, one for Berliners, one for West Germans, and one for foreigners." "So she went straight through, and as I got close to the front of the line, an East German guard came up to me and said," ""Pass, bitte. "" "Asked for my passport." "So I gave it to him, and he told me to wait there." "And then he came back about 20 minutes later, and he just said to me," ""Zürich nach Westberlin. "" "And I said, "Warum?"" ""Why?"" " Yeah." " And he got his gun, and he went..." ""Zürich nach Westberlin. "" "And so, I just had to go and get back down to the tube station, and I was thinking, "Well, I don't know what I'm gonna do now, you know." ""I've lost my girlfriend!" "She's gone. "" "He probably didn't like Depeche Mode very much." "It was a personal thing." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Well, there's always some surprises with songs on tour that you have a go at, that maybe you revisit," "change some of the arrangement and ideas" "that, you know, make the song work live compared to how it worked on a record." "I think one of the big changes on this one was for the song Halo, which we used elements of a remix that was done by Goldfrapp." "Which was great, and we incorporated elements of that." "So it's very sparse, and it was very broken down." "But it had a real mood about it." "I don't think there was any night when..." "Challenging for me vocally, as well." "Because it was so different and sparse." "And I enjoyed that." "Yeah, that's right!" "Thank you." "I really do feel the band has reached an iconic status." "Do you know?" "And it's now really..." "I mean, it's always big and always well-perceived, and I think everybody, you know, you always get the respect of other artists who love the band and respect the band, and talk so highly about them," "and mention the influences." "And obviously the band," " you know, it's been huge." " Yeah." "But I do think it's reached this iconic level now." "On this project." "I think we've got the set to a place now that we like." "That it feels very, it's concise, it's got a good pace." "And I think that's important." "You know, especially if you're on stage for a couple of hours." "It can..." "It mustn't feel like it's too long." "And the pacing of it, it starts nice and moody, and just takes you on a nice journey." "Which I think is always the intention, but I think we've really got it right this time." "The moments between you and Martin are amazing." "Because that's the core of what's happening on stage, visually." "I mean, you and Martin." "It's that connection." "Yeah, well, I think on this tour, that, for me, was one of the funnest things about it." "I really felt a connection with Martin on stage." "And I felt like we worked really well together." "And you know, you can't just suddenly..." "That doesn't just suddenly, that kind of chemistry doesn't just suddenly..." "It's rare if you have that from the beginning, I think." "But there always has been a chemistry between Martin and myself." "But this tour, I became, like, very much aware of it." "How much..." "How good it was, to be honest, how fun it was." "And I think because we both became pretty relaxed with it and really drew on our strengths, that translated." "And I think the confidence that was there," "I think people that were coming to the shows, the fans that were watching the shows, felt at ease as well." "Right at the top, everything from performance, success, crowd reaction." "It really is incredible, you know." "And I think out of all the shows we've done," "I don't think there's even slightly one duff show, you know?" "It's been, you know, we..." "It sounds crazy, but in the old days, the most important thing was the after-show, not the show." "But now, the show is the most important thing." "For me, the gig is always about," "like, how far I can take what I contribute to what a Depeche Mode performance is." "Like, where do I go with this now?" "And quite often, I don't get to really understand that until we've done quite a few gigs and I understand what's happening with the audience in relation to the band." "And it was quite different on this tour." "There was much more of a, sort of, celebratory feeling." "So I realized that I had to just become really part of it." "I didn't feel the need to lead it anywhere." "Just let if evolve more." "In the past, I've often felt like I've had to lead something in a certain direction." "And on this tour, I really felt some of the best shows were the ones where" "I just allowed myself to kind of be dictated to by the audience more." "You know, when things are calmer, when things are more moody, or..." "And, you know, there's an arc to the performance." "I mean, that's something that we definitely work on, and you know, I want to build it to that as well, at the same time." "But I just felt it was different," "I really enjoyed these performances more than I ever have with the band." "And Martin really was enjoying himself." "And I think the band performed together better than we ever have." "I mean, I know that's kind of cliché to say, but you know, you get to know each other, you know when to duck and dive." "You know when somebody else, it's their moment, or, you know." "And you have to be aware of that when you're performing." "There was something about this tour that it felt like we'd kind of..." "It's happened before, years ago." "But, like, completed something." "Come on, let's see those hands!" "Come on!" "Come on!" "Let's hear you sing!" "Come on!" "Sing it!" "Come on, let's hear it!" "Everybody!" "All right." "Come on, everybody!" "Let's hear it!" "One more!" "One more!" "One more!" "One more." "We thank you very much." "Thank you." "No, it's good for you." "It definitely is." "You know, when I stop playing drums for a week or something," "I get uncomfortable." "It's concentration, you do something physically, it's a workout, too, but it's about coordinating your body." "You start playing something, then you get into a zone." "So I would say it's meditation, too." "I change my..." "I change stuff every night." "So there is a few things I play the same." "But then other fills, I just, I still don't have a clue what I'm playing." "So if you ask me, "What did you play in Enjoy the Silence last night?" I don't know." "I couldn't tell you." "So you have a structure and you feel free within..." "And then I'm off." "And then I'm back." "It's always like that." "And it's much better because it keeps it interesting." " Yeah, yeah, yeah." " You don't get bored." "Sing it!" "Yeah!" "Sing it!" "Sing it!" "Come on, let's go." "Come on, let's go!" "Shred that guitar." "Who's there?" "Thank you." "Do it!" "Thank you very much." "Thank you." "We'll see you next time, thank you!" "You want one more song?" "Just one more?" "Hold on, boys." "No beers for you yet." "Come on, then." "One more!" "All right." "Just for you, Berlin." "Thank you so much." "You have always been there for us." "And we thank you very much from the bottoms of our hearts." "Thank you." "Come out." "Come over here." "No rest for the wicked." "Thank you very much." "We'll see you next time." "Thanks a lot!" "Good night!"