Depeche Mode - Still can't get enough
Written by Infusion Crew    Sunday, 03 July 2011 17:15    PDF Print E-mail

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Following their DJ set at Trilogy earlier in the year, Depeche Mode are back in action and releasing a brand new set of remix albums. But as Dave Gahan tells us, they almost never made it this far...

Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler presented Dave Gahan with the Stevie Ray Vaughan award at the seventh annual MusiCares ceremony in LA recently, in recognition of the Depeche Mode singer's 15 years abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

Announcing the award, Tyler (also a recovering addict) paid tribute, describing staying clean as 'harder than being a musician, it's harder than being a rock star, it's harder than selling more than 100 million albums worldwide'.

Dave Gahan responded in kind, recalling how Tyler had helped him start his recovery in the 90s as he came perilously close to death on four separate occasions. During the last near death experience in 1996, his heart stopped for over two minutes, after he overdosed on a speedball (heroin combined with cocaine) at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles.

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"Stephen accosted me in a bar one night somewhere like Chicago; He wasn't drinking and I was," Gahan began. "I was tying one on and this guy was sort of annoyingly talking to me. Apparently it was Steven Tyler f****** with my drinking. Anyway, that was a long time ago and I'm blessed to be here."

One year after he finally quit, the hugely popular alternative rock star chatted to Infusion freelancer Skruff and was extremely frank abouthis descent into drug addiction.

"One of the problems I had in particular with drug addiction was that I had an endless supply of money. The dealers came to me. It wasn't until the end that the dealers started cutting me off because of the attention that was around me. I had been followed by the police and I was a time bomb waiting to be busted," he recalled.

"Clubs in LA started turning me away because I was bad news. So then I found myself in parts of LA where I would never have gone: like the shooting galleries with all the other crack-heads and smack-heads."

Did people recognise you in the crack-houses?

"Not really, no. Before I got clean I weighed about 110 pounds and looked very different. I looked just like another junkie. I saw a different side then, I was really desperate. I found myself being a product of LA. I used to have this seven feet tall stuffed Bugs Bunny and I chained it to the wall. My thinking was 'OK, this is f****** Disneyworld and if I'm stuck here, he can be too.' I had the Tinman, the lion from the Wizard of Oz and they were all chained up. Believe me, I had many conversations with the Tinman."

Do you have an addictive personality?

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"I've always been an alcoholic, right from a very early age. I've always liked the feeling of not being myself and that's where it all begins. No matter how far back, that's always been the motivation: I don't wanna feel like I'm feeling right now.

"Many friends died and when I was using I didn't think about it. If a junkie died in my hotel room, I'd think 'Get them out and throw them on the lawn, then dial 911 and say 'someone has had a heart attack on the lawn'.

"That's the life, the only thing you care about is yourself. It's like 'F*** everybody else, as long as I have my drugs I'm OK'. You don't even think that you're affecting anybody else. It's not until you're clean that you realise."

Depeche Mode will release Remixes 2: 81-11 on Mute in June, a triple CD collection of classic remixes plus a bunch of brand new ones by producers including Eric Prydz, Roland M.Dill and former Mode members Vince Clarke and Alan Wilder.