17. Depeche Mode - See You (Mute)

Four weeks at number one from 20th February 1982

Following Vince Clarke’s departure from Depeche Mode, a hard, callous cynicism set in among most quarters of the music press. Announcements that Martin Gore would pick up the songwriting duties were not received with the confidence Daniel Miller and the group had hoped for, and in some cases resulted in total derision.

Music journalists are often quick to judge the commercial prospects of any group in the heat of the moment, and frankly, nobody could have blamed them for their negative tack in this instance. The only evidence either they or the general public had that Martin Gore could write songs lay in a somewhat middling instrumental on “Speak And Spell”, childishly entitled “Big Muff”, plus the middling vocal track "Tora! Tora! Tora!". It showed he could pen a passable melody, but if these were the only Gore compositions heard in public, you can hardly blame them for speculating what on earth the rest of them must have sounded like. Did another synth instro entitled “Enormous Dildo” exist elsewhere which was of a lesser quality? Did he have an entire concept album of instrumentals with crude sexual titles hidden away somewhere, and were Depeche Mode to become some kind of Kraftwerk influenced version of the Anti Nowhere League? 

“See You” was therefore something of a pleasant surprise and a puzzle from the offset. It had apparently been penned while Gore was still at secondary school, a sweet but melancholic ballad written before he had even experienced a romantic relationship. He has since referred to this single somewhat critically, remarking that it was an example of him writing outside his personal experience, whereas his later songs about love were all at least partially biographical. He gives the impression of being slightly ashamed that this single therefore emotionally manipulates the listener into believing its lyrics are the truth.

Where you sit on this topic depends on your feelings on pop music, and whether effective songwriting has to be “The Truth” (a very purist hippy/ punk idea of what the form has to be) or can just as easily be the lie that tells the truth. Do we expect every artist to have direct personal experience of the things they reflect? It seems limiting, unrealistic and a bit unreasonable to do so.

The focus of this single is seemingly first love, which had been a Tinpan Alley songwriting staple and a subject numerous other artists turned to. “First Love Never Dies”, tackled by The Walker Brothers and The Cascades among others, is one of the most direct and obvious examples - “And if you're thinking of me/ And you find that you still love me/ There's no use to go on living lies”, the song demands towards the end, perhaps more in hope than expectation.

Then there are many other examples – “Macarthur Park” is probably the most overwrought and ambitious, but the angle shifts and alters in tracks like “Disco 2000” by Pulp (more of a document of a pie-eyed puppy crush than love, admittedly) and the almost flippant, joky “Emily Kane” by Art Brut. Romantic nostalgia easily captures the imagination of listeners precisely because your first serious relationship or (worse) unrequited desire can prove to be the most powerful, confusing and potentially havoc-wreaking event you’ll experience. The statistics around first affairs are unforgiving, and they usually strike when we’re too emotionally immature to deal with them. No wonder songwriters can’t let go of the idea – there’s either a good commercial racket in penning a tune about the subject, or else an enormous emotional purging for the author, and sometimes both.

In the case of “See You”, it’s possible to hear the “deception” if you listen to it after any of the above songs I've mentioned. Whereas they are rich in the kind of close observational detail typical of intense life experiences, picking up on background details like old men playing checkers in the park or woodchip on the walls, “See You” is suspiciously broad. “I remember the days when we walked through the woods/ we’d sit on a bench for awhile”, states Gore vaguely. “I treasured the way we used to laugh and play”. So far, this could just as easily be a song about a dearly departed pet dog, so routine and flimsy are the outlines.

These initial missteps don’t end up mattering, though. A narrative of sorts begins to emerge which is only too believable. “I swear I won’t touch you,” he tells his imaginary ex towards the end, and “We’ll stay friendly like sister and brother/ though I think I still love you”. It’s not exactly poetry, but there is a tension tugging away at the song here which feels only too real. He’s making promises about his emotions he can’t keep, contradicting himself, and even throwing in trite philosophy into the song with the line “I think that you’ll find/ people are basically the same”; it’s certainly true that people need to be loved, but how they are loved, and by whom, are deeply complicated areas, and despite Gore’s teenage naivete here, as a listener you’re left with the impression that the singer (Dave Gahan) knows this. It’s not delivered forcefully or victoriously, it almost sounds as if he knows he’s in a weak bargaining position. If all we need is love, and we’re all essentially the same, then why meet up with someone from our past with baggage, after all? Why not choose a less complicated route?

The arrangements do a lot of the song’s work and are in places downright beautiful. The melancholic melody lines which emerge beneath “If the water’s still flowing we can go for a swim” are almost trying to sound victorious, bordering on a fanfare, but ultimately collapse into defeat. The endless tug-of-war at the heart of this song, portraying a man who doesn’t even really know what he actually wants, is unbelievably effective, and force the listener to imagine someone hanging around by the telephone wondering whether to invite themselves back into their ex’s life again, all the time knowing it’s futile and potentially damaging. Five years is a long time, and the times change – and the longer the communication gap, the longer the odds of closing it are, and the less likely it is the contact will be well received.

10. Pigbag - Sunny Day (Y Records)

 

Number one for two weeks from 14th November 1981

Well, this is a sticky situation. The indie number one we’re tackling by Pigbag is not the track for which they are best known – that single (“Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” if it really needs to be spelt out) has spent months dithering around the indie charts, selling out, being repressed or reissued then selling out again, and has yet to reach the summit. This means we’re discussing the group’s other minor hit before we come to their biggie, which was recorded and released before it. Confused? I will be.

Obviously, there should be little doubt that “Sunny Day” made it to the indie summit (and the middle reaches of the National Top 75) on the back of the goodwill created by its older brother. “Papa” had been played on evening radio and in clubs for months on end and the group’s name had gone from being an ultra-underground concern, a vague rabble of jazzy post-punk garage jammers from Bristol, to a promising, potentially mainstream act.

On paper, a group creating wigged-out instrumental post punk records seems like a deeply unlikely commercial proposition, but 1981 was a time where normal rules didn’t always apply, and Pigbag’s sound wasn’t as isolated as it might appear. Other groups such as Rip Rig and Panic were blasting out their own ramshackle bedsit party soul-jazz sounds to a curious public, so even the denser, harsher aspects of their style wouldn’t have felt like a bolt from the blue. For all their angularity, Pigbag also swung like demons when they wanted to, the sheer size of the band membership allowing for various instrumental grooves to thread their way through the mix, from hooky brass riffs to clattering carnivalesque drum patterns.

“Sunny Day” is good evidence of this. What’s surprising about it is how much more of a fluid funk groove it seems compared to “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag”. That single regularly took shrieking and jarring slip roads away from the motorway of the track’s central riff before rejoining it, whereas “Sunny Day” is actually more radio-friendly, less of a racket and frankly less likely to confuse Dave Lee Travis. It almost has as powerful a hook as “Papa”, and doesn’t veer too far way from it, augmenting it with funky guitar riffs and elastic basslines.

The group and label could perhaps have been forgiven for expecting a proper breakthrough hit, but its comparative conventionality may have been a curse. These days you’ll struggle to find many people who respond to it. I used to carry a vinyl copy of “Sunny Day” in my DJ’ing box, but quickly removed it when I realised the only reactions it got were requests for “Papa” to be played instead (“Haven’t you got their other one?”). Pepped up audiences know what they want to hear, and it’s the group’s anthem, however jagged that was.

5. Theatre Of Hate - Nero (Burning Rome)

 

Number one for one week on 29th August 1981

Every era produces cult rock stars who are slightly too well known to be deemed underground, but not successful enough to be immediately recognisable to casual listeners. This was something I understood at a very early age, precocious nerd that I was.

This ability is perhaps best illustrated by a pointless school playground row which broke out about my cluelessness around the topics of sport, film and tv programmes.

“He knows nothing about anything!” mocked one short-arsed kid, who seemed to be the ringleader in all this. “Doesn’t watch The A-Team. Doesn’t support a football team. Reads stupid kids’ comics and not war comics. And I’ll bet he hasn’t even seen [insert name of some obscure “video nasty” here]. He wouldn’t even know where to get [name of obscure “video nasty”], but I do! I’ve watched it TWICE!”

“Oh yeah?” I countered. “Well, you know nothing about music. You probably don’t even know who Kirk Brandon is!”

People began to titter, and the short-arse retaliated.

“Berk Brandon? Why the hell should I give a shit who Berk Brandon is?!” he sneered, and everyone laughed uproariously.

I don’t know what became of that kid, by the way, but so far as I know he didn’t become a sub-editor at the NME despite seemingly already having the requisite skills at the age of eleven (It also now strikes me that with a few modest alterations, the above exchange could be an argument between Stewart Lee and Richard Herring in series one of “Fist Of Fun”.)

But still… the fact I can still remember this playground exchange points to two things – firstly, I possibly still have some stuff I need to work through with a therapist. Secondly, it signals that Brandon was neither muckling nor mickling in the eighties, even at the height of his success (which is when I had the argument). He was the kind of rock star who crept into the corners of Smash Hits as well as gaining the full-spread treatment in the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. He was invariably portrayed as an edgy and out-there dude, but somehow lacked the recognisability and warped glamour of a Julian Cope, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey or Robert Smith character. By accident or design, those singers became mighty brands, supremely individualistic in their stylings and opinions and adopted as gurus by impressionable kids desperate for idols. Brandon, with his short crop of peroxide hair, looked as if he could have been a member of any number of post-punk bands. I’m not arguing that this matters to me, but – certainly in the eighties – this mattered if you wanted to be something more than a casual curiosity to most.

To make matters possibly more challenging, his early music career was also unsullied by involvement with major labels, despite growing interest in his work. His recording career initially began with the group The Pack on Rough Trade, before shifting onwards to Theatre Of Hate, who issued all their records on their producer’s own Burning Rome records – a label solely set up to deliver Brandon-related product. Despite taking this none-more-Buzzcocks styled DIY approach, Theatre of Hate certainly weren’t akin to the various standard issue punks and anarcho-punks littering the indie charts at this time. Rather, their sound was gloomier, with agitated vocals and slow rattling rhythms being anchored by clattering and swooping basslines. While the group have seldom been tagged with the ‘g’ (goth) word elements of their sound are certainly some steps ahead of that movement.

4. Depeche Mode - New Life (Mute)

 

Number one for seven weeks from 11th July 1981

The camera on Top Of The Pops focuses on Simon Bates. He appears to be about to go into some kind of public announcement for the benefit of families at home, standing on command. Bates as a broadcaster never seemed to know how to express excitement for music, news or ideas, instead clinging purely to a Reithian idea of mature gravitas. His Bisto brown voice, perfect for piracy warnings on VHS rental tapes, also loaned their authority to subjects as diverse as teenage lost love and the unexpected death of partners on his “Our Tunes” segment, or occasionally irritated disappointment about an irresponsible act (such as the KLF trying to “ruin it for everyone else” at the Brit Awards).

In this case, he tells us that he’s going to introduce us to a new group. The last single of theirs, “Dreaming Of Me”, didn’t do “all that it might” (he sounds slightly pained as he says this) but this time it’s going to be different. That feels like a threat more than a promise, as if he’s almost daring us not to buy the record. It’s strange he should care so much – whatever else you want to say about Bates, he rarely threw his lot behind new bands.

It’s stranger still that the band he should pick would be Depeche Mode. On the surface, they were an unpromising long-term proposition. Despite press acclaim and a rapidly growing fanbase, Mode seemed inherently flawed, hemmed in by their limitations. While other synth-pop bands like Soft Cell, The Human League and Ultravox had major label budgets and carefully controlled imagery, Depeche were cash-strapped teenagers from Basildon on an indie label. They looked like New Romantics, but they weren’t carefully coiffured like Steve Strange or threateningly feminine like Phil Oakey, appearing more like hyperactive fashion students grabbing the first clothes they could afford off the sales rails. On their debut “Top Of The Pops” performance, you get the sense that they’re all trying to suppress grins (Vince Clarke is noticeably failing at points) and there’s a twitchy, antsy energy to them. Gary Numan performing “Are Friends Electric” this isn’t.

Their sound, too, lacked the gloss or technological sophistication of “Tainted Love” or “Don’t You Want Me”. Those songs showed that synthesisers could be used to portray heartbreak and complicated emotions in an eerie, detached and timelessly relatable way – anyone who is in the early throes of a painful break-up can probably relate more to the ominous digital backing of “Tainted Love” than the organic earnestness of one of Abba’s finest ballads (which tend to be the kind of resigned thing you turn to when the dust has almost settled). At this stage in their careers, however, Depeche Mode’s A-sides bubbled, bounced, pinged and ponged for all they were worth, with drum machines punching and snapping in a staccato way in the background.

“Dreaming Of Me” even featured oscillation in its instrumental break, recalling the Theremin experiments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Joe Meek in previous decades. While it didn’t sound dated in 1981 to my ears, listening back to it now, recontextualising it against the moment it came out, it feels sonically a year or two behind its time, like a bunch of teens with Electronics magazine subscriptions mending and making do.

Sometimes, though, weaknesses can turn into strengths and limitations, self-imposed or otherwise, can create a sound which becomes a group’s early signature. Depeche Mode were lovable in those days precisely because they were new town dabblers. When Daniel Miller started the Mute label, he created a fictional group called The Silicon Teens to fulfil his as-yet unrealised fantasy of an adolescent pop group playing with affordable modern technology. The idea of kids using keyboards to express themselves fascinated him, but scanning the gig circuit and the demo tape pile for candidates, he found only mature(ish) twenty-somethings ready to fill that role. When Depeche Mode emerged, however, the Silicon Teens concept was retired and he threw himself wholesale into his new, real-life flesh and blood project.

The idea obviously didn’t just appeal to Miller. A bunch of kids lugging synths around on public transport to every promotional appointment was marketable and exciting to a novelty-chasing media as well - the future, after all, was about technology being accessible for us all - and the group had in Vince Clarke a great songwriter, and in Miller an astute producer. Clarke could pen memorable futuristic anthems, while Miller, almost operating in a Joe Meek role to begin with, knew how to make their bugs seem like features and their low budget sound appear punchy and current.

“New Life” is an extremely good example of this. The synths slide in angelically during the intro, only to duet with some dinstinctly Binitone ping-pong sounds. This repeats itself, building up tension, until there’s a low descending synth bass pattern and those “drums” kick in, as metronomically as ever. While they sound undeniably cheap, the reverb packed on to them gives them a pulsing, addictive kick – the first time I heard “New Life” on a Sony Walkman in 1984, it slapped against my ears far harder than many other more current sounds.