Depeche Mode’s ‘A Broken Frame’ turns 44 on 27 September
Mute Records released Depeche Mode’s second album “A Broken Frame” on 27 September 1982. Martin Gore wrote all ten tracks, which turn 44 this year.
Depeche Mode recorded their second album as a three-piece, and it is the only one in their catalogue made that way. Mute Records issued “A Broken Frame” on 27 September 1982, with Sire handling the United States. The English synth-pop band from Basildon, Essex, had lost founding songwriter Vince Clarke the previous December. The record turns 44 this year.
Clarke left after the “Speak & Spell” tour finished in early December 1981 and formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet. Martin Gore took over the writing and wrote every track here. Alan Wilder had already answered a Melody Maker advertisement and played his first show with the band at Croc’s in Rayleigh, Essex, on 20 January 1982, but he was on a touring wage and did not play on the album. He became a full member in October 1982, the month after it came out. Gore addressed the arrangement in ZigZag No. 131 in November 1982, saying the band wanted the record to stand on its own before Wilder joined the studio line-up: “Alan started playing with us, but we wanted to make certain that any change in direction in our music wasn’t attributable to Alan joining. We needed to show we were capable of musical alteration by ourselves.” Wilder has given the other side of it: “I’d done my bit and I thought I warranted involvement. I had something to contribute. They said no.”
Sessions ran from December 1981 to July 1982 at Blackwing Studios in London, where the room had moved up to a 16-track desk. Depeche Mode produced with Daniel Miller, and John Fryer and Eric Radcliffe engineered. Gore bought a PPG Wave 2 with his royalties and used it first on “See You”. Depeche Mode built the drums from an ARP 2600 for the bass drum and snares from a Roland TR-808 and a Korg KR-55. They also made their first attempt at sampling: Blancmange occupied the same building at the time and marched in front of microphones to supply the boots on “Shouldn’t Have Done That”. Miller described the change in method to Electronic Beats on 26 March 2013: “It was almost like a blank sheet of paper, the songs were recorded in a different way because Vince had a very specific idea of what the song was going to end up sounding like, and Martin didn’t really have that.”
The ten tracks run 40 minutes and 52 seconds: “Leave in Silence”, “My Secret Garden”, “Monument”, “Nothing to Fear”, “See You”, “Satellite”, “The Meaning of Love”, “A Photograph of You”, “Shouldn’t Have Done That” and “The Sun & the Rainfall”. Dave Gahan sang lead throughout except on “Shouldn’t Have Done That”, a duet with Gore, and “Nothing to Fear” is an instrumental. The American edition used the longer 12-inch version of “Leave in Silence” and added a second instrumental, “Further Excerpts From: My Secret Garden”, making eleven tracks. Mute had put out three singles ahead of the album: “See You” on 29 January 1982, “The Meaning of Love” on 26 April 1982 and “Leave in Silence” on 16 August 1982, reaching numbers 6, 12 and 20 on the UK singles chart. The album reached number 8 on the UK albums chart, topped the UK independent albums chart, peaked at 22 in Sweden, 43 in New Zealand and 56 in Germany, and stalled at 177 on the Billboard 200. The BPI certified it gold on 30 August 1983.
Brian Griffin photographed the sleeve, having also shot “Speak & Spell” and the band’s press images. Griffin cited Soviet socialist realism, Kazimir Malevich in particular, and German Romanticism as his references. Martyn Atkins designed the sleeve and Ching Ching Lee supplied the calligraphy. The band agreed to stay off the front cover; a solo picture of Andy Fletcher appeared on the back of the first pressing. In 1990 Life magazine placed the photograph on its list of the World’s Best Photographs 1980-1990.
Reviews at the time were mixed. Steve Sutherland, writing in Melody Maker on 25 September 1982, called the album “ambitious and bold” while judging the band “essentially vacuous”. Smash Hits gave it 8 out of 10 in its 30 September to 13 October 1982 issue, with Peter Silverton writing that it showed “a lack of purpose”. Depeche Mode have been harder on it since. Gore told NME on 17 February 1990 that “musically A Broken Frame was a mish-mash”, and in a 2006 interview called it “probably our worst album”. Miller has kept a different line, describing it as “a transitional record and while it’s not their best record, it’s hugely important in terms of how it was made and how it gave everybody confidence.” Greek synth-pop duo Marsheaux recorded the album in full for Undo Records in 2015, later expanded to a 2CD with 12 bonus tracks.
About Depeche Mode
Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher formed Depeche Mode in Basildon, Essex, in 1980, taking the name from a French fashion magazine. Daniel Miller signed them to his independent label Mute Records and the synth-pop debut “Speak & Spell” followed in 1981, with Clarke writing most of it. His departure that December left Gore as the band’s writer for everything after it.
“A Broken Frame” was the result, and the tour behind it ran through the UK and Europe with Wilder on stage from the start. He joined the studio line-up for “Construction Time Again” in 1983, the album on which Gareth Jones and sampled industrial sounds entered the band’s productions, as covered in Depeche Mode’s ‘Construction Time Again’. The Berlin sessions that followed produced “Some Great Reward” in 1984, then “Black Celebration” in 1986, “Music for the Masses” in 1987 and “Violator” in 1990, which carried “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence”.
Wilder left in 1995, after “Songs of Faith and Devotion” and the tour that followed it. The remaining trio issued “Ultra” in 1997, “Exciter” in 2001, “Playing the Angel” in 2005, “Sounds of the Universe” in 2009, “Delta Machine” in 2013 and “Spirit” in 2017. Fletcher died in May 2022. Gahan and Gore continued as a duo, releasing “Memento Mori” in 2023 and touring it, with the Mexico City shows becoming the concert film “M”. Forty-four years after Mute pressed it, “A Broken Frame” remains the record made in the gap between the two writers who shaped the band.
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