I can't stop watching this video... What a pity it ends so quickly!I was involved with Depeche Mode's career right from the very beginning, when I was a dj at KUSF in San Francisco playing the "Dreaming of Me," "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough" singles in 1980 even before Mute (and Sire) released Speak & Spell, their debut album the following year. Soon after, I became general manager of Sire Records and the first task label head Seymour Stein assigned me was to "break Depeche Mode in America." Years later, when I became president of Reprise Records, the very first band I asked to leave Warner Bros and join Reprise was Depeche Mode. I got to know them pretty well, as a band and as individuals. If Nazis liked their music, it was because they didn't quote understand what the band was saying-- which wasn't all that obscure. "People Are People" was one of their massive worldwide hits:
People are peopleSo why should it beYou and I should get along so awfullySo we're different coloursAnd we're different creedsAnd different people have different needsIt's obvious you hate meThough I've done nothing wrongI've never even met you so what could I have doneI can't understandWhat makes a manHate another manHelp me understand
American neo-Nazi Richard Spencer-- who said the other day that "Depeche Mode is the official band of the alt-right"-- may have been attracted to Fletch's shiny leatherette cap in the "New Life" video, but there's nothing Nazi or fascist about Depeche Mode. Quite the opposite. Have you watched their new Anton Corbijn-directed video, "Where's the Revolution" from the new album, Stark?Looks to me like Dave is heaping scorn on a certain fascist pig Spencer adores. The band has always seemed to me to be coming from a distinctly progressive anti-fascist perspective. Spencer made his dumb statement as he was being kicked out of CPAC, too extreme even for the closet fascists in the Trump camp who now control the conservative movement. And in case that wasn't clear enough, after Spencer's statement of affinity, the band disowned them through a spokesman: ""That's pretty ridiculous. Depeche Mode has no ties to Richard Spencer or the alt right and does not support the alt right movement."