211. Depeche Mode
Twickenham Stadium
17 June 2023
Some bands mellow with age. Some fade quietly into heritage-act limbo. And then there’s Depeche Mode, who, forty-odd years on from Basildon bedrooms, still stalk the stage like gothic panthers on a leather-clad mission from some unnamed ancient deity.
This was my third time seeing them with my oldest friend, a long-standing partner-in-gig and co-conspirator in all things synth. As we stood under the sodium glare of Twickenham Stadium, the home of English rugby now temporarily transformed into a cathedral of black denim and pulse-quickening electronica, we both said it again, the line we’ve uttered every single time: Dave Gahan is one of the greatest frontmen in rock. He really is.
From the moment he strutted on stage, all hips, sinew, and sequins, Gahan owned Twickenham. He doesn’t walk, he glides, part demonic snake charmer, part Vegas showman, part messiah of the minor key. The man has charisma that could power the National Grid. But let’s rewind a moment.
This gig, part of the Memento Mori tour, came weighted with emotion. It’s their first since the passing of Andy Fletcher, the band’s genial diplomat and founding anchor. You could feel that absence. But you could also feel how they’d transmuted it into something powerful, there was a genuine sense of fondness and loss that we all felt.
The stadium was rammed: black-clad pilgrims of every generation, all basking in that unmistakable Depeche cocktail. The sun had barely dipped behind the stands when the opening chords of “My Cosmos Is Mine” rippled out: slow, brooding, monolithic.
Martin Gore, as ever, was the yin to Gahan’s unholy yang, the quiet alchemist behind the chaos, coaxing beauty out of machines while dressed like a man who’d wandered out of a Berlin cabaret. His occasional forays on lead vocals (“A Question of Lust,” still heartbreak in slow motion) reminded everyone that behind the industrial thump beats a deeply human pulse.
But it was Gahan who turned the night into a sermon. His voice aged like whisky and sin, rolled through “Walking in My Shoes”, “Policy of Truth”, and “In Your Room” with a sense of renewed purpose. He twirled the mic stand, shimmied down the catwalk, and at one point fell to his knees as if in communion with the gods of synth. The man doesn’t so much perform as exorcise.
Then came the juggernauts. “Everything Counts”, “Enjoy the Silence”, “Never Let Me Down Again”, each one detonating across the stadium like sonic gospel. Arms waved, shoulders swayed, entire blocks of people moved as one giant black sea.
By the time “Personal Jesus” hit, all tremor and swagger, Gahan had the crowd eating from his leather-gloved hand. He prowled the stage like a man half his age, pausing only to grin that lupine grin as if to say, you still believe, don’t you? And yes, we do.
It’s easy to forget how improbable Depeche Mode’s story is. They started out as synthpop pin-ups with songs about dancing, and somehow evolved into the most soulful, gothic, and gloriously weird stadium act Britain ever produced. They are proof that darkness can sell, and that there’s poetry in machine noise if you know how to listen.
When the final notes faded and the lights came up, my friend turned to me, grinning. “Still the best frontman in rock,” he said. Yep, sounds about right.