The group continued to promote Songs of Faith and Devotion the following year on the Exotic Tour/Summer Tour '94, which included an additional North American leg. Q magazine refers to Devotional Tour as "the most debauched rock tour ever".[1]
The tour began with an eleven-week European leg, which kicked off in Lille, France, in mid-May and culminated in London in late July. In September 1993, the group began a North American leg, which commenced in Quebec City, Canada. The 50-date tour continued until early December, when it wrapped up in Mexico City. Later in the month, the band returned to Europe for a short tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The five-date jaunt began in Dublin and ended, once again, in London.
Depeche Mode had recorded their album Songs of Faith and Devotion from February through December of 1992,[2] releasing it in March 1993.[3] The band planned a tour to last through the end of 1993 in support of the album.[4]
The development of the album had been difficult due to fraying relationships within the band and lead singer Dave Gahan's growing heroin addiction.[5] Band member Andy Fletcher later said, "during the whole recording of that album, all the early signs of the break-up that was going to come were starting to become apparent. And we agreed to do this year-and-half tour – straight from the album, straight to tour. It was probably the worst two years of our lives."[6]
Tour development
Long-time collaborator Anton Corbijn, who had designed the album's and supporting singles' cover art and had shot most of their recent music videos, was asked to design the stage and projections for the tour.[5] Corbijn admitted that he didn't know much about designing tour sets, and didn't plan for how much it might cost to support the stage as it moved around the world.[5]
According to band member Alan Wilder, the tour was "planned by ourselves, our agent and Jonathan [Kessler]. Between us all, taking into account many factors, we would decide which countries and cities to play and when. Once we had a general plan, the specific routing would be optimised, again depending on travel times, venue availability, local promoter advice, record release dates and other logistical considerations."[7] Kessler, who had been with the band for several years, was called their "spiritual adviser"[7] and "manager",[8] despite the band being self-managed for many years. Said Wilder, "[Kessler] became more and more involved in the coordination of tours, and his skills go way beyond pure financial organisation. As his tour negotiations invariably involved talking to record companies and promoters, it was, for him, a natural progression towards management. He is the kind of manager who does not get involved in the musical or artistic aspects of the band, but rather excels at public relations and people management."[9]
Wilder started working with sound engineer Steve Lyon to prepare the backing tracks for the songs for the tour around Christmas 1992.[10] Wilder and Lyon struggled with a Roland Corporation sequencer, saying,
"Unfortunately, putting the Devotional live show together proved to be more of a handful than either myself or Steve [Lyon] bargained for. We knew when we started that we didn't have a lot of time on our hands, and it didn't help that the Roland sequencer was giving us continual problems. However, we persevered and had nearly completed the work when disaster struck: the machine couldn't handle the sheer volume of traffic we were demanding from it and one day the whole system just crashed – we lost everything; three-and-a-half months of work! Luckily, we had the foresight to back up all the music onto multitrack [tape], but the edits had gone."[11]
Wilder and Lyon then "worked night and day" for a few weeks to re-edit the tour based off of the multitrack backup.[12] The band ended up suing Roland, who refunded the price of the two machines they had purchased, worth around £20,000 at the time,[12] about £51,500 today.[13] According to Wilder, "the problem was that we had also invested in loads of data – DAT backup equipment, which became redundant. also, ... we had to acquire two digital multitrack machines to take on the road instead, so we still lost out financially."[12] The work was started at Olympic Studios in London, and finished at Thin Line Studios.[12] Wilder said that they tried to play as much of the music live as possible in concert, but some of it was always pre-recorded.[14] Some songs, such as "Condemnation" were played entirely live, with no backing tracks, with Wilder on an acoustic grand piano.[14] For some tracks during the tour, Wilder played live drums, a Yamaha Drums 9000, and Gore played two Gibson Country Gentlemen guitars and two Gretsch Anniversary guitars.[15]
The band rehearsed for the tour in Lille, France, at the same venue that the tour began on 19 May 1993.[16]
Staff
More than one hundred roadies accompanied the band, to assist in the stage production.[8] Someone to keep the grand piano in tune was included among the entourage they brought on tour.[12] Wilder knew that Gahan would struggle with his addiction on the road, and so insisted that they pay $4000 per week to bring a professional psychiatrist along with them.[17] Wilder said the goal was to help get Gahan off of his drug addiction, which didn't happen.[17] Said Wilder, "ironically, I think everyone went to see the shrink at some point – except Dave [Gahan]!"[17] In total, approximately 120 staff were brought along with the band to support the tour.[17]
For the first time on a tour, the band brought backup singers with them, Hildia Campbell and Samantha Smith, who both had also provided backup vocals on some songs on Songs of Faith and Devotion.[8]
Set design and equipment
The set was described as "an elaborate stage on two levels. Raised at the back, [songwriter] Martin Gore, Fletcher and Wilder would bleep keyboards in front of eleven enormous video screens of gnomic, abstract imagery: down below them, prowling an empty space, Dave Gahan would do his ultimate-rock-star shtick."[4]
The tour was the first tour for Depeche Mode where they had in-ear monitors to hear what they were playing. Said Wilder, it "was the first where I could actually hear what I was doing. ... The main advantage for me was the fact that it blocked Dave [Gahan]'s side-fills, which [threw] out his vocals at ball-busting decibel levels. The volume of his voice used to be so loud that it could obliterate all the rhythm tracks as well as our keyboards and vocals."[18] The band also had concealed floor monitors "for low bass frequencies."[18]
There were no synthesisers used during the tour, instead Wilder, Gore and Fletcher had keyboards they used which were tied to Emax II machines.[18] Wilder would program the sounds across everyone's keyboards, and new presets for new songs, or parts of songs, could be loaded off of hard disk into a keyboard with a foot switch.[18] These triggered sounds on the Emax via MIDI.[18] To synchronise with Corbijn's videos, the film ran via SMPTE sync codes from the multi-track tape.[19] For some songs, such as "Judas", slow-moving videos of candle flames 'free-ran', with no need to sync to the music.[19]
The opening track of the tour was "Higher Love", in which the band performed behind dark gauze curtains, with a faux thunder and lightning show to open the night.[20] "Walking in My Shoes" was the first song performed that showed off Corbijn's stage design; behind Gahan on the lower level, five eight foot by eight foot screens, previously only backlit with colour, "transformed into full-blow synchronised video screens, through which 'walked' several disturbing Corbijn-created characters. These included a 'bird-headed' woman lit blood-red, strutting in a slow-moving, strangely sexual predatory manner, set against a deep blue background."[21]
Early in the tour, for four songs, on "I Feel You", "Never Let Me Down Again", "Rush" and "In Your Room", Wilder played live drums on stage.[22] During the second leg of the tour, as Wilder's drum skills developed, he also drummed along to "Stripped" and "Halo".[22] Said Wilder, he also had "a couple of electronic pads which were incorporated into the kit for triggering samples – [on] 'Personal Jesus' for example, [but] to have played the older songs on an electronic drum kit would have been very difficult since many of the parts are unplayable. ... I also don't think it would have been as much fun."[6]
Set lists
The band wanted some variety in the setlists for the tour. Said Wilder, "this was to be a long haul and to play exactly the same songs night after night for 15 months would have been agony. You also have to consider each different country, because every audience reacts differently, preferring different songs that have been particular to their territory."[14] Due to the partially pre-programmed nature of the tracks, tapes were made for four different setlists, split in two halves for eight tapes total.[14] Given that partway through a show, Gore would typically perform an acoustic track, this allowed the band to change up the setlist from night to night by switching up the tapes.[14] Said Wilder,
"We had four set lists – red, green, yellow, blue. ... Effectively, therefore, we could mix and match any combination of first and second half tapes. ... This gave us the opportunity to perform many different running orders, although all of them had the same overall shape and structure. So, for example, a quick chat beforehand might result in 'Let's play the blue/red set tonight with 'Somebody' instead of 'I Want You Now in the middle. We could also change tapes for the encores, if necessary."[23]
Tour incidents
The fractures between the band that had grown during the album's recording sessions continued during the tour; Gahan and Wilder took their own limos from hotels to the show, with Gore and Fletcher arriving in a third.[17] Producer and label owner Daniel Miller later said, "It was different limos, different hotel floors. I don't think anyone spoke to Dave [Gahan] the entire tour. They saw Dave on stage and then he went off into his dressing room and his candles and everything. Alan [Wilder] wasn't really talking to Martin [Gore] and [Fletcher]. Obviously it was very sad."[17] The band attempted interventions with Gahan, as they had during recording the album, but their efforts went unheeded.[24]
The English band Spiritualized were originally hired to be the tour's opening act, but audiences reacted so poorly to them at early dates that the band were replaced by Miranda Sex Garden[17] after about a month.[16] Spiritualized were told on 28 May that they wouldn't be needed after the show on 29 May, leading Spiritualized the refuse to open for Depeche Mode for the 29 May show in Stockholm.[16] To fill in at the last minute, the band had the band who were playing at their hotel to fill in.[16] Miranda Sex Garden was able to take over the opening slot starting with the 31 May show in Hanover.[25]
Releases
The concerts in Barcelona, Liévin and Frankfurt in July 1993 were filmed, with the compiled footage issued later that year on a video release entitled Devotional.[26] Tracks from the first European leg of the tour were also recorded for a live album.[27] The live album, titled Songs of Faith and Devotion Live, was released in December 1993 and was a track-by-track live duplicate of Songs of Faith and Devotion.[28]
Reviews
A review of the Hanover show in Melody Maker was positive, saying the show was "a masterpiece of subtlety; a stark Bauhaus reminder that stadium pomp, when stripped of the hoary trappings of MTV, can still hold you in awe at its sheer mind-blowing magnitude" and that it was "a purely pleasurable experience."[18]NME reviewed the tour in Budapest on 27 August 1993, by which time Gahan's struggles with drug addiction had become obvious, with the review saying "[Gahan's] 'problems' have become Depeche Mode's dirty little secret – everybody in the camp knows about them. ... [Gahan] means to get things sorted out, he says. But everyone knows a rock'n'roll tour isn't really the place to start sorting things out."[24]
Hallard, Ross (director); Lane, Phil Michael (director) (2006). Depeche Mode: 1991-94: We were going to live together and it was going to be wonderful (DVD). Mute Records.
Malins, Steve (2001). Depeche Mode: A Biography. Andre Deutsch. ISBN978-0-233-99430-7.
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