The last Depeche Mode show with Vince Clarke – Watch it now
The last Depeche Mode show with Vince Clarke - Watch it now
In 1981 Depeche Mode were: Vince Clarke, Andrew Fletcher, Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. When the Speak & Spell tour ended on Monday November 16 1981 at the London Lyceum, Depeche Mode knew they would end up with 3 soon after. In November 1981, Vince Clarke publicly announced that he was leaving Depeche Mode. Soon afterwards, Clarke joined up with blues singer Alison Moyet to form Yazoo (or Yaz in the United States).
Vince Clarke performed for the final time with Depeche Mode on Thursday 3 December for a television show, Off The Record, in Chichester. For those who wandered what that show looked like, you can now check it out below. Poet John Cooper Clarke was the support act.
The setlist:
- 00:00 Off The Record Intro
- 00:20 Photographic (Some Bizarre Version)
- 03:38 New Life
- 06:36 Puppets
- 10:10 I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead
- 12:19 Tora! Tora! Tora!
- 15:20 Just Can’t Get Enough
- 19:04 Boys Say Go!
- 21:48 What’s Your Name?
Why did Vince Clarke leave Depeche Mode?
It was with their third single “Just Can’t Get Enough that Depeche Mode struck gold. It was also the only Depeche Mode video to feature Vince Clarke. As a result they were soon playing on Top of the Pops. At this point Vince had decided to part ways with Depeche Mode as he felt that they were in favor of taking a different musical direction than the one he wanted to pursue citing arguments regarding songwriting, and admitting his own dogmatism where it comes to creating music. He also added: “There was never enough time to do anything. Not with all the interviews and photo sessions”
Clarke also said he was sick of touring, which Gahan said years later was “bullshit to be quite honest”. Gahan went on to say he “suddenly lost interest in it and he started getting letters from fans asking what kind of socks he wore.”
In a later interview with Vice, Clarke would say that he left Depeche Mode because the band was young and weren’t getting along adding “nothing more, nothing less, no regrets”.
Initial talk of Clarke’s continuing to write material for Depeche Mode ultimately amounted to nothing. According to third-party sources, Clarke offered the remaining members of Depeche Mode the track “Only You”, but they declined. Clarke, however, denied in an interview that such an offer ever took place saying, “I don’t know where that came from. That’s not true.”
Side-Line also covered Depeche Mode’s ‘Television Set’.
About Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode formed in Basildon, Essex, England, in 1980, initially under the name Composition of Sound. The lineup that became Depeche Mode came together that year around Vince Clarke (keyboards, guitars), Andy Fletcher (keyboards, bass) and Martin Gore (guitars, keyboards), with Dave Gahan joining shortly after as lead vocalist. The band adopted the name Depeche Mode at a gig at the Bridge House in Canning Town on 24 September 1980, where Mute Records founder Daniel Miller saw them and signed the group.
Depeche Mode’s debut single, “Dreaming of Me,” was recorded in December 1980 and released on Mute in February 1981, followed that October by the debut album “Speak & Spell.” Vince Clarke left the band that November, going on to form Yazoo and later Erasure; Alan Wilder joined on keyboards in 1982 and became an official member from the 1983 single “Get the Balance Right!” The band’s catalog through the 1980s includes “A Broken Frame” (1982), “Construction Time Again” (1983), “Some Great Reward” (1984), “Black Celebration” (1986) and “Music for the Masses” (1987), the latter turning the band into arena headliners in the US off the back of their Rose Bowl concert, later documented in the film “101.”
“Violator” (1990) and “Songs of Faith and Devotion” (1993) marked the band’s commercial peak, but Wilder departed in June 1995, continuing his own project Recoil, leaving Gahan, Gore and Fletcher as a trio. The band released “Ultra” (1997), “Exciter” (2001), “Playing the Angel” (2005), “Sounds of the Universe” (2009), “Delta Machine” (2013) and “Spirit” (2017) as a three-piece, touring with long-serving live members Christian Eigner (drums, keyboards, since 1997) and Peter Gordeno (keyboards, bass, since 1998). Alongside the band, Gahan released solo albums “Paper Monsters” (2003) and “Hourglass” (2007), and Gore released “Counterfeit²” (2003).
Depeche Mode was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 7 November 2020. Andy Fletcher died on 26 May 2022, and Gahan and Gore continued as a duo, releasing “Memento Mori” in 2023 with Eigner and Gordeno again on the road. The band has sold more than 100 million records and placed 54 singles on the UK charts. Vince Clarke left the band in November 1981, shortly after the release of debut album “Speak & Spell,” going on to form Yazoo and later Erasure.
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