With the benefit of hindsight, I probably could have pushed some of the early stuff further.Īlthough it maybe let you express yourself more, did it ever bother you that Martin didn’t really care about the production? Looking back at your work with DM, do you wish you could have made any of the songs more dark and atmospheric? Which ones would you like to have done differently? They were written by Martin and then recorded in the usual way.
Instrumental tracks such as ‘Agent Orange’, ‘Kaleid’ and ‘Nothing To Fear’ etc – Was this pure Martin Gore work or did other members contribute to them? Nor did we ever try to add lyrics to them. None of the instrumentals ever had lyrics to my knowledge. How did you decide to put or remove lyrics and release an instrumental track? I think some of the instrumentals could have had lyrics. If this makes me boring then fine….I’d rather be boring but have a really good record. This doesn’t mean that I never take a break during a session but as a rule, I like to keep work time and play time separate so I can give my absolute best to whatever project I’m involved in. I can’t just roll into the studio at 5 o’clock in the afternoon with a raging hangover and expect to be able to work effectively. Anyone can go into a studio for a couple of hours a day, take loads of drugs, twiddle a few knobs, whack it all on a CD and call it a finished album but invariably the end result sounds like what it is – lazy and ill-judged. The simple fact is that most people just do not understand or appreciate that ‘producing’ a record properly requires an enormous amount of energy and concentration. The audacity of some people makes my blood boil! What about you, any thoughts on this?Īs I’ve also said before, some of the comments that were made during the promotion for DM’s last album were disappointing although not unsurprising and I can understand a bit of why they might have been said. In relation to this, I remember reading some comments from Fletch and Martin (around the time of ‘Ultra’) that were along the lines of “Alan is really boring….during recording periods, he never came out with us and spent too much time in the studio…” etc. I was happy to do the work because it was enjoyable and something I was good at. I’ve said before that I don’t think the credits on Mode albums really reflected the truth about who produced them but to be honest, at the time I just couldn’t be bothered about getting into big discussions on the whole subject. Was it really the general consensus of the band that production credits should read ‘Depeche Mode’ and what about the live shows, you did all the programming, so why were you never mentioned? Having just read your excellent ‘Singles 86 – 98’ editorials, you confirmed something about DM that has bothered me for a long time – namely the extraordinary amount of time you spent in the studio over the years (particularly when the other band members ‘couldn’t be bothered’ or were away on holiday) and why you never or rarely seemed to get the proper credit for all this work. I much prefer to concentrate on the music. I have never understood why DM albums after ‘Some Great Reward’ didn’t contain any of your songs?Īs I have said in the history section of the A-Files, I think I felt obliged, as the ‘musical one’, to contribute my own songs to some of the early DM albums rather than because it came to me naturally. I don’t think the production credits really show a fair reflection of who did what but Martin wrote the songs so it’s quite right that he should receive the songwriting credits. It is probably fair to say that from ‘Violator’ onwards, the final results bore less resemblance to the original demos.ĭid you ever feel like you should have shared credits with Martin due to your considerable musical input? Enjoy The Silence), sometimes they were pretty similar (i.e. Sometimes the songs drastically changed from the demo (i.e. Did Martin’s songs change radically from their demo versions to completion?
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