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Halo: The Story Behind Depeche Mode's Classic Album Violator

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Halo’ is about Depeche Mode and their 1990 album ‘Violator’ – a landmark record and is beloved by fans. This period in the band’s history also found them forging a deeply trusted and influential partnership with photographer and designerAnton Corbijn, often viewed as the fifth member of Depeche Mode at this time. Corbijn’s work with the Area creative agency for the ‘Violator’ project delivered iconic, integrated artwork, photography, videos and short films across the album, its singles, and tour design. In 1990 however, the American marketplace for promoting and selling records was one where it was generally still extremely difficult to do so efficiently and effectively. The touring and media schedule had worked, pushing the band towards the edges of its then cult status, as many of those in the mainstream media woke up and realised that another group of four young lads from Britain were causing a hell of a stir on college campuses. Recorded in England, Denmark and Italy between May and September 1989, Depeche Mode’s seventh studio album ‘Violator’ was a landmark record beloved by fans and universally regarded as the band’s creative highpoint.

Blade first announced that he had heard from the police that fans were to “keep it mellow or the cops will close it down.” He later advised listeners that “things are pretty serious” and he sounds genuinely worried on the broadcast. David: My reaction was to say yes straight away! Kevin and I had of course gotten to know each other by the time he asked me, and I was aware of the Halo project. I was very surprised to be asked to join in with Halo, but I was hugely enthusiastic, to say the least. Kevin had written something for Almost Predictable Almost’s Violator month so he knew the album was a favourite of mine.

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More than an album biography, ‘Halo’ goes deep behind the scenes of the band’s ‘Violator’ period. The book takes the form of a detailed oral history from those who were there in the studio with the band, working behind the cameras, designing sleeves and appearing in the videos; support acts, tour managers, publicists and Depeche Mode fans. Kevin & David: We hope that our book prompts the band to release a WVT DVD! We would happily take the credit for that. With Halo, authors Kevin May and David McElroy have produced an essential guide for Depeche Mode fans and anyone inquisitive about the making of a classic, genre-defining album. I was never a Christian but I did go to church regularly for about two years and it’s certainly rubbed off on me. I’m almost obsessed with the idea of good and evil. I suppose my songs do seem to advocate immorality but if you listen there’s always a sense of guilt. On “Halo”, I’m saying ‘let’s give in to this’ but there’s also a real feeling of wrongfulness. Until Violator, much of Depeche's exposure to US audiences had come from its commitment to playing shows across the country and plugging those appearances close to the date of each performance.

David & Kevin: We all know the impact the album had on the band’s fans, but it clearly had an impact on everyone involved in the project. When we read the interviews that each of us had carried out, we certainly learned a lot. There is a lot of new insight and information that we think fans will love.Despite their general apathy towards parts of the media, especially in the UK where the music press had often been far from kind in its coverage of the band, Depeche had a system that was exhausting, yet successful. The band would rarely conduct interviews as a four-piece, primarily to save time rather than (at this stage) because they'd fallen out with one another. Dave Gahan and Alan Wilder or Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher, for example, would do the rounds of the radio and TV stations, magazines and newspapers to espouse the virtues of their latest public output. And then they would move on to the next city and the process would start again. Martini: In my country, we have a saying: „You know a man not by how he starts, but how he finishes.” And you did well. Congratulations! The book features detailed interviews with central figures involved with the band as they transitioned their sound and image to a stadium-friendly aesthetic, as well as those whose trusted contributions were essential for the creation of 'Violator'.

After reading the book, I might risk saying that ZooTV was born on the WORLD VIOLATION tour. U2 fans should read this book too. Definitely. They will understand where the album Achtung Baby came from. There are also many references to The Cure, REM, and Pet Shop Boys. I will not mention Kraftwerk, Nitzer Ebb, Electronic, and Front 242, because it is obvious. Writers Kevin May and David McElroy are huge fans themselves, and this book has been a labour of love for them, the result of many years of interviewing everybody and anybody they could find who was involved in the creation of the album. The band are famously wary of publicity, and didn’t contribute to the book, but a vast number of people, from producers, mixers, engineers, but also video producers and editors, cover art designers and even pluggers are given the opportunity to recall the making of the album and the equally iconic videos, and their hugely important collaboration with photographer and director Anton Corbijn, which continues to this day. Mixed in with these recollections, space is given to some fans to tell their stories of their first listen to the album. I could easily imagine my own story having been included, reading the book led to me spending some time reminiscing about first hearing ‘Personal Jesus’, just after I moved to London, aged 18. Violator is a milestone in the history of the band, it is the milestone in the history of our subculture, and it is finally the milestone in the history of music and pop culture. I am a child of the Violator too (how it sounds ;-P). If not for this album, probably I wouldn’t dive deep into the in depeche MODE’s music as much as it happened after 1989. That’s why I strongly supported the Halo – the Violator bookproject from the beginning. Eventually selling 7.5 million copies following its release in March 1990, Violator gave the cult British band – Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher and Alan Wilder – the critical acclaim they finally deserved. The adventurous, highly experimental approach that the band took for Violator recording sessions also yielded two of the band’s most recognisable and successful singles in Personal Jesus and Enjoy The Silence.During an intense and pivotal two-and-a-half years in the life of the group, we follow Depeche Mode as they complete their metamorphosis into one of the most significant bands of a generation and place the success and innovations of ‘Violator’ at the dead centre of the rapidly-changing late-80s, early-90s musical zeitgeist. While the stories from the other women in this book reveal lesser-known aspects of the Depeche creative machine at this time, they also feel a bit flat and unexplored, as mere providers of services (which, I guess technically they were) to the main attraction. The exception is the personal account of Billie Ray Martin, lead singer for Electribe 101, a support band for European dates of the World Violation tour. Straddling between creative contributor to the tour, artist and music fan herself, she briefly alludes to “male behaviour” from crew and the generally male atmosphere that made this an isolating and lonely experience for her and led her to drinking. The poor treatment she and her bandmates faced from fans of Depeche Mode is an embarrassment to read as a Depeche fan yourself.

They were, in many respects, still seen as an underground band in the eyes of those in the mainstream music industry when it came to an album launch, relying on radio play from local or university radio stations. Martini: Aaaand that’s what we wish for. Thanks for the interview and the opportunity to review your book. Depeche Mode, on the other hand, were a synthpop band from Basildon, Essex, whose career already appeared to be in trouble after only two hit singles. Ominously, Vince Clarke, the band’s chief songwriter, failed to turn up for one of Corbijn’s shoots, and would announce his departure a couple of months later.Interestingly, despite their respective high chart positions (13 and 6), neither the release of ‘Personal Jesus’ or ‘Enjoy The Silence’ led to an appearance by the band on their home turf's high-profile weekly music TV show, Top Of The Pops. Still, such appearances would be planned weeks in advance and would often mean the band and their entourage would head off to a European city somewhere to perform the song and cram in countless numbers of interviews with local media.

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