Too pretty and too pop. The relationship between Depeche Mode and Anton Corbijn got off to a bad start when, in 1981, the NME sent the Dutch photographer to their Basildon home town. Those were his first impressions, and when five years later he was offered the chance to shoot their video for A Question of Time, Corbijn only accepted because it involved a free trip to the US.
Thirty-seven years on, the band sold out the two opening dates of Depeche Mode’s European tour, at Amsterdam’s 17,000-capacity Ziggo Dome, almost instantly. After the death last year of co-founder Andrew Fletcher, the group consists of singer Dave Gahan and songwriter Martin Gore but Corbijn is regarded as an unofficial member. Having been won over by the darker turn their music took towards the end of the 1980s, his stage design and visual presentation are now integral to Depeche Mode’s image.
New albums by old bands are inevitably marketed as being their best work in decades, a return to form. For once, the hype is true: Ghosts Again, the lead single from the Memento Mori (2023) album beautifully updates their signature brand of melancholy uplift. It was even more powerful live, with Corbijn’s Bergman-inspired black and white video – featuring Gore and Gahan playing chess on an urban roof terrace – projected on video screens. As the band performed World in My Eyes, a hit from 1990, Corbijn’s portraits of Fletcher, ironically the cleanest-living member of Depeche Mode, gazed out over his bandmates and audience.
My dad took me to my first Depeche Mode concert at Madison Square Garden in 1998. On stage, a post-rehab Gahan made a heroic effort to entertain the masses while clean. He can still do it. For just over two hours in Amsterdam he pirouetted and writhed. But he no longer exposes his tattooed torso or throws himself into the audience.
Things shifted up a gear with Everything Counts, which Gahan delivered from the centre of the vast arena floor, conducting the audiences through the first of the evening’s many singalongs. This catchy hit, released at the height of Thatcherism, has always been a personal favourite and, judging by the reaction of the crowd, I’m not alone.
Audiences age alongside the artists. Coming off the back of a tour of all-seated arenas in the US and a subdued audience in Amsterdam earlier in the week, Gahan looked relieved to see more people dancing than filming on their smartphones. While there was a smattering of younger people, the crowd was middle aged, and knew every word to every song. Lyrics listened to in teenage bedrooms are rarely forgotten.
Next to me was a middle-aged man and his daughter. She yawned through much of the show, before coming alive for Enjoy the Silence. Her father was the fan, but his childlike enthusiasm had its limits: the iconic opening bars of Personal Jesus were enough for him to know the end was in sight: it was time to make a quick exit and beat the traffic.
I would once have scorned any suggestion from my dad that we leave a gig early. Is it the dire state of the UK trains or me entering my fifth decade that now leads me to double-checking departure times as bands take an encore? A bit of both. But in Amsterdam I could relax: it turns out that British music and Dutch public transport is a winning combo.
As is the case with Def Leppard, the rockers from Sheffield who have just embarked on a co-headlining stadium tour of Europe with Mötley Crüe, domestic commentators often forget that Depeche Mode, the boys from Basildon, are international treasures.
