Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode)

‘Superstar Dies From Overdose In Hotel Room’ - a headline that appears with saddening regularity. Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Anna Nicole Smith - all tragically slipped away, alone in a haze of terrifying darkness. The same can be said of Dave Gahan, Depeche Mode’s turbulent vocalist. He too found himself in a hotel room, slowly abandoning reality, a fatal injection of cocaine and heroin coursing through his veins until his heart stopped and, officially, he died. But only for two expansive minutes as an unknown force looked down upon the ambulance and decided May 28th 1996 was not his time to perish.

Clearly, an event like this is bound to have a lasting effect on a mere mortal. The prolific scars left by such a trauma mean Gahan’s perception of time is heavy and complex. He spoke openly with base.ad recently about the introspective inspiration behind his latest solo album, Hourglass.

“It’s an album that deals with my concern about time, being where I am, working from that place. Rather than dwelling on the past, stepping into the future before it’s even come”.

Undoubtedly, Gahan is a serious man with some serious issues on his mind, yet he quickly points out how secure he feels with his present existence. “I feel like I’m in a really good place in my life. I feel very fortunate that I managed to crawl my way out of that hole. It could’ve easily gone another way”. He cites his family as the reason for his current happiness - “without them I wouldn’t be doing this, that’s for sure” – along with New York, where he has resided for the last ten years - “this is the first place that I’ve felt at home”.

With a hybrid mix of Basildon missed consonants and Americanisms such as “like” and “y’know”, the singer is keen to distance himself from the man he used to be. “Life catches up with you. I’ve always tried to avoid actually participating in my life. In the last five years I’ve felt a lot better about who I am”. He summarises, with a hint of mischief, “being able to reflect a lot more on who I am, the way I act, what I do and the trouble it gets me in”.

His problematic past includes an attempted suicide and a period when he would lock himself in a wardrobe for days. In the decade that has since passed Gahan has been entirely clean. Yet only now has he been totally free to write candidly. “It wasn’t possible for me to do that within the roles we laid out for ourselves in Depeche".

In a career spanning 27 years, it wasn’t until DM’s eleventh studio album - 2005’s Playing The Angel - that original Gahan material was first adopted. This, obviously, makes Gahan uncomfortable as evident from the restraint he displays when discussing the matter. “Making the first solo album [Paper Monsters] was definitely a step in the right direction and it enabled me also to come back to Depeche with some ideas which were embraced rather than….kind of….erm.…well.… it wasn’t immediately embraced but after we talked about it a lot I got to record a few songs on that last album”.

Although he worked with DM’s tour drummer, Christian Eigner, and guitarist, Andrew Phillpott, Gahan revelled in the autonomy afforded him on Hourglass. “My band contract with Mute was finished. I was kind of like a free agent. I think that has a lot to do with the way we were working as well. There was no one peering in and listening to what we were doing. With a Depeche record there’s a lot of thought that goes into how we’re going to do it, where we’re going to do it, who we’re going to work with. Demo-ing songs, all that kind of stuff. I knew I didn’t want to do that".

Gahan was adamant about executing a more primal work ethic for Hourglass, such as using his voice “in a more honest way”. This, he claims, is as a result of “years of singing somebody else’s songs and not having to be in that position. Being free to go where the melodies, or the lyrics, take me. If you get too precious about sounds or the direction of a song before you’ve even begun recording it, somewhere something’s lost”. It’s therefore quite clear that the liberty he experienced whilst making this album has helped him expose the fragility of his self-awareness as well as experience a new way of musical thinking.