Violation

The period between 1986 and 1994 is largely considered as "the golden age" of Depeche Mode, the era of their creative and commercial peak. Even the band members seem to agree with that, given that their tour setlists heavily rely on material from those years ever since. They released 4 studio albums during that time, and 3 of those came out in mid-March, so last week was filled with opportunities to look back: Black Celebration turned 29 on Tuesday, Songs Of Faith And Devotion became 22 years old on Sunday, but a quarter of a century mark seemed more interesting, so most of the attention concentrated on Violator's anniversary on Thursday.



Even if we ignore those numbers, the 1990 LP is their best known work, containing the 2 songs most people might know from them (Personal Jesus, Enjoy The Silence), it is their best selling album to this very day, and it's often featured on best albums of the year/decade/all time lists. It's no wonder that even the likes of Billboard and Rolling Stone felt the need to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Violator. I'm going to take a closer look at the music (exaclty as I already did with the first 2 albums) sometime in the future, now I'm focusing more on how the album arrived and how it was received at the time.

By the mid 80's, Depeche Mode were having top 10 singles and albums and filling arenas all over Europe, and with the 1987 album Music For The Masses, and the subsequent tour, the US finally caught up: the album went gold (following Some Great Reward), and broke into the top 40 on the Billboard chart, the singles all charted in the top 100, and mainstream radio started to join the ever-supportive college radio staions in playing their records, while the tour culminated in a massive stadium show (recorded for the live album and movie 101) with more than 60,000 tickets sold. Commercial success wasn't the only noticable thing, the band's influence on any artists making electronic music, the whole club scene and countless imitators was also undeniable.

When the band entered the studio in 1989, they chose the song Personal Jesus as the first single to be recorded for an early (August 1989) release, giving something new to their growing fanbase while they were recording the rest of the album. They couldn't have predicted the outcome: the single went gold in the US and became the best selling 12" in the history of Warner Bros. Records. The next single, Enjoy The Silence (released in February 1990, six weeks before the album) got a similarly ecstatic reception, breaking the top 10 of the Billboard singles chart and going gold in the US, and returning into the top 10 on the UK singles chart for the first time since 1984. When the band attempted to hold a signing session at a record store in Los Angeles to launch the album, about 20,000 people lined up, and the police had to shut down the whole thing very shortly because they could no longer handle the crowd.

If we look at all this, and also note how quickly the tickets for the upcoming tour were selling (more than 40,000 sold in a few hours for the Giants Stadium show, 2 nights completely sold out at the Dodgers Stadium in L.A., 3 nights at the Bercy in Paris for example), it's quite clear that Depeche Mode were one of the biggest acts in the world at the time, their album - with 2 massive hits in advance - was going to be a highly anticipated record, the least you can expect from a high profile rock magazine is a proper review. They don't have to like it - after all, music is not measurable, any opinion is subjective, and however good the songs are, they're not going to be everyone's cup of tea -, but at least they should give it a certain ammount of attention. And then you find this thing in the Rolling Stone. You can read about disco music (which is not exactly Depeche Mode's genre), quoting some lyrics from Madonna, then a whole paragraph about New Order (who weren't even active at the time) and the current side projects of their members (citing a few song titles), another paragraph about Martin Fry (mentioning a song title and quoting some lyrics), and finally another complete paragraph about The Beloved (with song titles), a UK band who were just starting out. Among all this, if you look very closely, you may find a paragraph dedicated to Depeche Mode as well. The only song title mentioned from them is Just Can't Get Enough, which was released only 8 and a half years earlier on their first album (remember, it's a review of the 7th one), and was written by a guy who left the band shortly afterwards, then there's a very relevant observation that they no longer write songs like that. We can also learn that they've been "suffocating in Doorsy depression" ever since, and we don't know why they're "so sad". As a result, the band are awarded 2 and a half stars out of 5 for their effort. I can't help but wonder if the reviewer was ever in the same room as a copy of the album, let alone listened to it, because there's no indication whatsoever. Obviously the poor guy had no way of knowing that this album would end up on the "100 Best Albums Of The 90's" and "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" lists compiled by the very magazine he was writing for. As for the songs, how could've he known that they were going to be covered by the likes of The Cure, Johnny Cash, Nina Hagen, Sammy Hagar, Marilyn Manson, Coldplay, Kim Wilde, Tori Amos, Susan Boyle (and god knows how long this list could go on), and influence hundreds of acts in all genres imaginable, and end up on lists like this? Maybe noticing the tell tale signs (some of which are mentioned above) would have helped.

Let's turn our attention to the UK then, if we're lucky, they might show the band the appreciation they deserve: it's February 1991, and after a decade of uphill battle, groundbreaking and influential work which achieved incredible success without the backing of a major record company or support from the media, they are nominated for 2 Brit Awards! The one for Best British Video goes to someone else, but the one for Best British Single (the only category decided by public vote) is theirs for Enjoy The Silence! Hurray! Apparently conquering the whole world wasn't enough to get nominated for Best Britsh Album or Group, but at least the latter one is given to The Cure. I would be the last person in the world to say they didn't deserve it, it was long overdue, and let's face it, with a brilliant album, an incredible world tour (their first one to include dates on the other side of the still existing Iron Curtain, and also a gig at Dodgers Stadium), and top 5 singles on both sides of the Atlantic (Lullaby went to #5 in the UK, and Lovesong peaked at #2 in the States), they clearly had a remarkable year... in 1989, after which they weren't even nominated for Best British Group (that award went to the Fine Young Cannibals, remember them?), but at least they got an award for the video of Lullaby. So what about them in 1990? Let's see, they had a slight change of line up (a guitarist and long-time Cure crew member, Perry Bamonte, who was a former classmate of Martin Gore and brother of long-time DM crew member Daryl Bamonte, replaced Roger O'Donnell... on keyboards), they released the final single from previous year's album (with no new B-side, just live recordings and remixes), put out an 8-track live album (only available by purchasing their earlier albums, and 6 of the songs already released on singles), did a tour of 11 open-air dates during the summer, released a grand total of 2 brand new tracks (Never Enough, a guitar-heavy rock track backed with Harold And Joe, an almost completely electronic one) on a single, followed by a remix album (half of which contained remixes already released on singles). Not bad, but not particularly impressive either. Well, at least they made Roger Daltrey happy, as he expressed his joy (while handing out an award to a band who've just released a remix album) that he doesn't have to give it to a sampler or a drum machine, proving that he (and probably most of his g-g-generation) failed to understand that those are just instruments, it's how you use them that counts, and illustrating how all those recording industry people, journalists and musicians couldn't notice that Depeche Mode were making history right in front of them.