Dave Gahan family. Penthouse in Manhattan next door to DiCaprio: what Depeche Mode musicians spend money on

Dave Gahan sits in the conference room of the Knights Bridge Hotel, leaning his elbows on the table. His elastic wrists sprout from the sleeves of his biker jacket and bend like two thin trees in the wind. He has silver chains, a swindler's hair, a look emaciated from all the chemicals he's been using for years, and a sharp, irritable smile. Under the shirt is a giant tattoo of angel wings, he got it for ten hours. His piercing is almost invisible. Once he pierced his crotch, and then said: there are so many holes in his “apparatus” that he urinates like a garden watering can. Gahan nearly died three times. The first time he had a heart attack was on stage in 1993. He was carried out on a stretcher and the group had an encore without a leader.

Two days before we meet, Gahan, tanned as if fresh from a tanning bed, wearing a leather vest over his bare torso, is giving a concert in Glasgow. Out of habit, he looks around the front row for a devoted fan, one of the kind he runs into fifty times a year on his European tours.

- My vision! Gahan says. “I was prescribed sunglasses. I can look at the stars in the night - that's all. My home is far away, on Long Island, and when you lie on the lawn in the summer, the stars are like - bam! His fingers mimic a flash.

He thinks and speaks, picking up the pace, like all former drug addicts, the Essex accent is diluted with an American one. His bandmates Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher are being interviewed at another hotel. Because Depeche Mode Dave Gahan doesn't get along. Gore and Gahan live in different parts of America. They meet only when it's necessary: ​​they get closer to tour the world with grandiose shows, performing in front of stadiums where sixty thousand people gather at a time.

fans Depeche Mode not like those cold play. They managed to become a separate race, a diaspora: a gothic mass, watching their idols with gratitude and awe. It seems that there are more people who want to see the band live than ever. And no one understands why.

A successful band is a life sentence. A man at 18 or 25 is different from a man in his forties or seventies, but rock stars spend their lives with their fans, to a certain extent signing a pledge not to change. I ask Gahan, 55, married three times and died three times, if he thinks the band's problem is that all the members went to different schools?

- Undoubtedly! Dave answers. “Fletcher and Horus have some kind of pact that I constantly tried to wedge into. He waves at imaginary colleagues. "Hey, I'm here too, with you!" But now I have stopped bothering: a lot of time has passed, and I realized where my place is.

Gore, the songwriter, and Fletcher, the keyboardist, studied together at Basildon. Gahan went to another school and occasionally visited the Romford Correctional Center for petty theft and auto theft. Over time, he graduated from Southend Technical College as a window dresser. Gore and Fletcher spotted him while he was performing Heroes David Bowie at a jam session and Gahan joined the band.

“Because nothing f***ing else happened in my life at all!”

In 1992, Gahan went to Spain, where he, Gore and Fletcher were going to record an album. He had moved to Los Angeles two years earlier, leaving his wife and child in England, growing a beard and getting piercings all over his body. Gahan was constantly talking about American music, about Jane's Addiction And Alice in Chains. He weighed 57 kilograms and got hooked on drugs.

Gahan remembers this time well:

“Let me burn, but I felt real power!” I was filled with confidence. Our manager looked at me and said, “Great! That's what we need!" When I think back to those days, I think I must have shocked the others a bit. I was constantly showing off.

In America, Dave no longer thought about his native Basildon. Depeche Mode ceased to be boys from the province: in 1988 they played in front of a crowd of 60,000 at a stadium in Los Angeles. They had armies of goth fans and clubbers from Detroit.

Renewed and skinny Gahan destroyed the cozy little world of the Spanish villa, where the band came to work on the album Songs of Faith and Devotion. He imprisoned himself in the room. Photographer Anton Corbijn, who was hired by the band to shoot the new image, periodically visited Dave to check if he was okay. When Gahan wasn't using drugs, he was creating something other than music.

“I started painting in oils,” Dave recalls. “Mostly portraits or something like that. Once Anton came into my room, and I was sitting, painting a portrait of my cat. The cat flew in space. And Anton said that he takes pictures only because he cannot draw. He liked my pictures. He kept repeating: “You have been sitting here for several days. The boys want you to come down and sing a little." I think they hated me then, but I didn't care.

For a whole generation, the new Dave Gahan has become an idol. On television, a depressive character with black circles for eyes twisted his arms in deserts and followed dubious women down dark corridors. Teenagers got the feeling that everything was so: that the person who composed Personal Jesus, engages in self-flagellation. Small news line on the channel ITV Chart Show reported by: vocalist Depeche Mode last week was taken to the hospital after a suicide attempt.

Suddenly, the music press, which loves when the lines of the songs come to life, was completely delighted with Dave. All the magazines that criticized him wrote about him. Depeche Mode at the beginning of the journey, and Gahan gave interviews to everyone. Lots of interviews.

In 1997, in an article entitled "A Conversation with a Dead Man," he told NME that drug abuse was part of his strategy:

“I decided there were no more fucking rock stars. No one is ready to go their way to the very end. And I created a monster... And dragged my body through the mud.

But there was one problem: he could not control the process. One of the popular stories of those years is how during the 1993 tour (magazine Rolling stone called it the craziest tour of all time) Gahan bit British journalist Andrew Perry on the neck like a vampire. Gahan later confessed to him, "You're the only one who thought to ask if I was okay."

In 1994 Gahan's mother and son Jack came to visit him from England and found Dave on the bathroom floor. He told them he was on steroids. In August 1995, he called his mother from Los Angeles and cut his wrists while talking. Two years later, an overdose caused his heart to stop for two minutes.

I was warned before the interview that memories of those times are painful for him, but Gahan picks up any topic almost immediately.

“I had fun in LA.” His eyes sparkle. - With my second wife Teresa, whom I married there, we had a great time. We had no problems with her - only I have one. I behaved disgracefully. And she divorced me.

After clinical death, he moved to New York, where his girlfriend, actress Jennifer Skliaz, lived. They have been married for twenty years.

“She didn't love me, she loved Billie Holiday and John Coltrane. And I realized that I need to be with people who absolutely do not care that they hang out with Dave Gahan.

Gahan saw his father only once: when he was ten years old, returning from school, he found a stranger at home, whom his mother introduced as his father. The man took them for a walk with his sister, “bought us gifts: I think a sweater,” and then disappeared forever.

Malaysian bus driver Len Kelcott left the family when Dave was six months old. Gahan later learned that Len was constantly calling their neighbor, one of the few who had a phone, and wanted to talk to his son. But his mother did not tell him about it.

“It would be nice to know that I have a father,” Gahan laughs. “But almost everyone has stories like that. My mother was raised by an aunt, whom she considered her own mother. Horus had something similar.

Martin Gore was thirty when he found out that his father was a black US soldier.

“The only thing Gore and his father have in common,” Gahan says, “is love for David Bowie and peas.

Your last album Spirit Depeche Mode recorded in a stressful environment. Producer James Ford had to come up with psychological training: Gore and Gahan expressed to each other at the table everything that was boiling.

All their quarrels started when Gahan decided that he would write songs himself.

- I said: “Martin, I should be your partner in the studio. I can't be the dude who just sings and gets over-paid anymore." Gahan co-wrote the song cover me from the new album. He gets excited when he talks about her. This song is about a man who discovered a new planet, flew to it and realized that it is exactly the same as the previous one.

“This song is about wanting to be loved,” Gahan says. For most of my life, I've tried to figure it out.

When he showed the song to Gore, he did not understand all his metaphors.

- And I say to him: “F ***, what do you even understand? I never criticize your songs Martin, I just sing them!”

When you see Gahan on stage, you ask yourself: why is he doing this? He is too arrogant. His arms are open like Jesus's, the holes in them have closed up and become scars. Pouty lips worthy of Freddie Mercury; the butt is more unbridled than Mick Jagger's, and the strong, deep baritone contrasts with his lean figure.

“When I imagine how I will stand on stage in my seventies, I am terrified,” says Gahan. - It's really scary. When I think about the future, I imagine walking along a deserted beach with Jennifer and a couple of dogs - and me with a beard to the balls.

“Martin and I have had a strange relationship for many, many years…” he says. - The stage is the only place where I don’t feel my age ... We have so many songs, I look at them in separate blocks, sort them out by era, they are all different for me. They are all in different colors. I think that's how people perceive music, right?

It took years before he became the singer he dreamed about in the early 1990s:

- I wanted to reach such a level that even other people's songs became mine if I sing them. And Gore was always satisfied because he fully expressed himself through our songs.

“I have been married three times,” Gahan says. I am one of those people who gets up and leaves. But Depeche Mode is the only place I don't leave.

“I didn't fully understand it. And I probably never will.

Does Martin Gore understand this?

- I think yes. I think he understands everything very well.

I ask him if there are any bands in which the musicians get along with each other?

“If someone says that there are such groups, I don't think they are sincere,” Gahan concludes. We all have inflated egos. The trick is that it is impossible to understand where the ego destroys everything beautiful, and where, on the contrary, it helps to create.

When the interview ends, Gahan stands up - his silver chains jingle - and hugs me. I can smell his leather jacket. When I leave, he calls me and hugs me again:

“Sorry, this is me. ≠

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Biography, life story of Dave Gahan

Dave Gahan (born David Calcott) is a British musician and leader of Depeche Mode.

Childhood and youth

David Gahan was born on May 9, 1962 in Epping, Essex. His childhood was far from cloudless - he had to endure the first divorce of his parents, the death of his adoptive father Jack Gahan and the second flight of his father, Lin Calcott. David's mother Sylvia Ruth worked in the Salvation Army, but her son was far from charitable deeds. On the contrary, the guy had fun stealing cars, painting graffiti in the wrong places and vandalism. Not surprisingly, by the age of 14, Dave had a bunch of drives to the police station. After graduating from elementary school, young Gahan tried to work and in a short time changed a lot of professions - from a seller of soft drinks to a handyman at a construction site.

In 1977, David entered the Southend Art College, during his stay in which he received the specialty of a window dresser. An interesting fact is that John Lydon () and George O "Dowd (Culture Club) studied at the same institution. Gahan spent his student years in a punk environment, however, having matured a little, he changed his bearings.

Musical career

In 1980, he met Vince Clarke, who at that time was a member of the French Look group. A little later, when Clark, in company with Andy Fletcher and Martin Gore, started another project, Composition Of Sound, Dave was invited to their rehearsal. The composition Heroes performed by Gahan made a great impression on everyone. David was immediately accepted into the team, and thus the first line-up of Depeche Mode was formed. By the way, the name of the group was invented by Gahan, who borrowed it from a French fashion magazine. Depeche Mode quickly gained popularity and, despite the changeable musical climate, stomped their own path to the heights.

The path to fame for David was not easy and was accompanied by a number of personal troubles. In 1991, his first marriage collapsed, and a few years later, the second also broke up. In addition to family troubles, Gahan was also tormented by drug problems. In May 1996, a bad habit almost brought the musician to the grave, but the ambulance doctors managed to save him from the consequences of a heroin overdose.

CONTINUED BELOW

David had to undergo a nine-month rehabilitation course before he could return to normal life. Having got rid of the heroin fetters, Gahan continued his work in Depeche Mode, and his personal life soon improved (he married for the third time, and, apparently, successfully). After touring in support of The Singles 1986-1998, David began to think about a solo career, and his first attempt in this field was the performance of the song A Song for Europe, made for a tribute to Roxy Music. Since 2000, Gpan with his friend, guitarist Knox Chandler, began to record material that formed the basis of his debut album. Released in 2003, Paper Monsters was a moderate success and received mixed reactions from the press.

The most successful single was Dirty Sticky Floors, which took the 18th line in the British charts, and the album itself only reached the 36th position. In support of the disc, Gahan held a world tour, which resulted in the release of the Live Monsters DVD. In 2005, David returned to the Depeche Mode camp, but this time not only as a vocalist, but also as the author of several songs.

In 2007 Dave Gahan released his second solo album. The Hourglass record turned out to be more electronic than Dave's debut compilation, and gained great popularity. Hourglass was one of the best albums of the year in the UK, France and Germany.

In 2012, Gahan released The Light the Dead See, a collaboration with the electronic rock band Soulsavers. The album had some success. In 2015, the musicians got back together to record Angels & Ghosts.

Wives and children

In 1985, Dave married Jo Fox, his longtime girlfriend. Two years later, a son, Jack, was born in the family. In 1991, the family broke up.

Just a year after his divorce from Joe, Dave is remarrying. Teresa Konra became his chosen one. This marriage lasted 3 years.

Gahan married Jennifer Skliaz in 1999. In the same year, Jennifer gives the musician a daughter, Stella Rose. In 2010, Gahan adopted Jim, his wife's son from his first marriage.

drugs

Dave Gahan became addicted to heroin in the 1990s. A couple of times the musician was literally returned from the other world. In the mid-90s, Dave had a heart attack on stage, but despite the protests of doctors, he returned to work, giving himself only a short break.

In 1995, Dave Gahan tried to commit suicide. A little later, the musician said that he cut his veins solely in order to attract attention. In 1996, due to an overdose of speedballs, Dave experienced a small death - his heart did not beat for about two minutes. After such shock therapy, Gahan began to struggle with his bad habits.

r On July 17, we figure out what, besides the love of millions of fans around the world, allows us to call Depeche Mode one of the most successful bands in the world, including in Belarus.

If you ask Depeche Mode what is the secret of their success, they answer like this: "We just love what we can do best, and put all our energy, time and money into what we love." Let's figure out what they mean.

How Bank Clerks Became Musicians

One of the most anticipated albums of this year is Depeche's Spirit, the release of which was announced on March 17 via Columbia Records. This is the 14th studio album by the British, whose production cycle has been stable since 1993 - an album every 4 years. Last Friday, after another 4 years of silence, Depeche Mode presented the public with a single from the upcoming record - Where's the Revolution.

But the band released their first album on the British indie label Mute Records. This deal, according to the recognition of both the owner of the label Daniel Miller, and members of Depeche Mode, was mutually beneficial. By the time they recorded their first album, the band was rapidly gaining popularity and received offers from several major record labels. However, the musicians relied on the young label Mute. They entered into an agreement with Miller, according to which the income from sales in the UK was divided 50/50, and from foreign sales - 30/70 in favor of the group.

Depeche Mode remained loyal to Mute for a very long time, despite numerous attempts by the recording giants to outbid the group and the fact that the label itself was bought out from Miller long ago by the EMI major. Moreover, the shares into which the label and the group divided the income remained approximately the same, only the size of sales changed significantly.

Nevertheless, for the first two years, the musicians almost did not help out and were forced to earn extra money somewhere else. For example, Fletcher and Gore worked as bank clerks until the very moment when sales of their debut album and singles did not exceed half a million. This proved to be the decisive argument that convinced the musicians to drop everything and come to grips with investing in the production of their own music.

Each tour brings tens of millions of dollars

The band's latest album, released on Mute Records, Delta Machine, was released in the spring of 2013. It was well received by critics and was certified platinum and gold for sales in most European countries. In support of the album, a worldwide tour was organized, culminating in a concert in Minsk. On the tour, the band earned $148 million, selling out 51 of 54 concerts, and ranked 9th in terms of tour profitability in 2013, ahead of Madonna and Paul McCartney. And that's just the ticket price. But there is also income from sales of CDs and records, sales via the Internet and royalties.

The 2009 Tour of the Universe was no less profitable, completing the top 20 most successful tours of 2009, according to Billboard magazine. Tickets for it were purchased by about 2.7 million people, bringing the group over $45 million. Part of the money earned on the tour - more than $ 1.4 million - "Dispatches" spent on charity, transferring in favor of charity: water, which supplies clean water to the inhabitants of Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

And yet, so far, the legendary album Violator, which made its authors world-class stars, remains the highest-grossing album in the history of the group. It was the first Depeche Mode album to become a real boom in the US: over a million copies of the record were sold in the year of release alone, and in 1996 the album was certified three times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. This means that the total number of its sales in the United States exceeded 3 million copies. In total, more than 7 million copies of the album have been sold worldwide. The album was included in the 500 best albums of all time and in the top 100 albums of the 90s, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

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The statistics are inexorable: it is obvious that in order to regularly have only growing profits from your music business over the years, you need to either ingeniously invest in it, or talentedly create something that millions of viewers around the world will really like.

What do Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andrew Fletcher spend their money on?

The size of the personal income of musicians is much more difficult to estimate than the proceeds from tours or the number of album sales. Depeche Mode members are not included in the list of the richest musicians in the world according to Forbes magazine, they do not like to be frank in interviews and almost do not talk about their personal lives. Martin Gore, who lives with his family in Santa Barbara's upscale Monticetto neighborhood, was worth an estimated £25m in 1995 and is now rumored to be worth around $65m. At the same time, in 1995, the press got information that Gore was engaged in investments - his own label, Grabbing Hands Music Ltd, acquired real estate at one of the London ship repair enterprises.

Dave Gahan is said to be worth $45 million. He has lived in New York since 1997. The musician, who he remembers sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag as a child because the bunk bed was taken over by his younger brothers, now owns a Manhattan penthouse in the $6 million Riverhouse condominium next door to Leonardo DiCaprio. Gahan says in an interview that with age he fell in love with simple things - he spends a lot of time with his family, loves pizza and does not really like to read. Like Gore, Gahan invests a lot in his professional career. He works from his private studio Blanco in New York, designed and equipped by Swedish sound engineer Kurt Unala, who has worked with both Depeche Mode and Dave for a long time. The average cost of equipment for a similar studio in dollars is calculated in seven figures.

Andy Fletcher, keyboardist for the band, owner of a $40 million fortune. In an interview, Fletcher said that all the musicians have settled down long ago - everyone has families and children, and he was the only member of the group who still occasionally drinks alcohol. The musician himself lives in London, owned a restaurant in the 90s, and now often performs as a DJ.

The main investment is in music

No matter how many seaside houses and yachts Gahan, Gore and Fletcher could buy, Depeche Mode's main investment to this day is music. The group carefully works on the quality of their product from album to album, sparing neither money nor effort, and this allows them to make a "firm", set the "fashion" of the sound, create trends in the visual and promo. As Andy Fletcher said in one of his interviews, "apparently, this is the secret of the success of the eternally young Depeche Mode." They always put a huge portion of their revenue into sound equipment, post-production and their highly professional team, and each release comes with something special for their fans. And it is this investment that never ceases to bring them the maximum income, and the audience - incomparable pleasure.

The Depeche Mode formula for success is this: do what you love better than others (by all means) and success will surely come. And you can recharge with the energy and strength of unsurpassed musicians on July 17, 2017 at the Minsk Arena, where Depeche Mode will perform in Minsk as part of the Global Spirit Tour in support of the new album, which will be released in the spring. Beginning at 20-00. Tickets are already on sale.

You can buy tickets on the site website.

The number of fans of "dispatches" is constantly growing, and their last concert in Kyiv is yet another proof of this. Today we decided to talk about the band's lead singer - Dave Gahan - a rock icon whose hip movement drove millions of fans crazy.

1. Curious and Observant. According to Dave Gahan, while studying at school, he could not even imagine future success. Dave was sure that after school he would wash dishes all his life, because he studied very poorly. Sitting in the classroom, he could not concentrate on the material, but constantly looked out the window, because it seemed to him that life outside of school was much more interesting. The singer claims that he carried observation through his whole life: “I am very happy to watch my children grow up. Every day I ask myself the question: “What will they achieve? How will their life turn out?

2. In his youth he was a local bully. Dave Gahan admits that in his younger years he was sorely lacking money, and to remedy the situation, he and his friends stole motors from motorcycles. The money received was spent on girls and parties. The soloist also admitted that if he had not become a singer, he would have been a professional killer.

3. Raised by my mother. Dave grew up without a father, so all the worries fell on his mother's shoulders: she worked three jobs, cooked dinner, and the house was always clean. Dave Gahan claims that being a mother is the most difficult job, he realized this when he became the father of three children.

4. Tried to quit my career. Dave got into the group by chance: at first he was an errand boy, and then he had a microphone in his hand - and away we go... through glass. After such evenings, I am very ashamed of myself, and I swore that I would not do this anymore. But when you find yourself in a hotel in Warsaw in winter, and the heating is not working, and there is a three-day break on the tour, then again you think: “That's it! I'm done with this!"

5. "The sex symbol for me is my wife!". The singer admitted that he loves sex: “It only gets better with age: you know your body and can show a lot in bed. As you know, the more you give, the more you get. People often ask me: “Who is your sex symbol?” What a question? My wife, of course!

6. Quarrels with his wife about washing dishes. Dave claims that all his quarrels with his wife begin because of the wrong loading of the dishwasher: knives and forks need to be loaded into the machines with the sharp end down, then more dishes fit. "But if my wife comes out of the kitchen, I have a great chance to do it my way."

7. Loves chocolate.“Drug addiction in the past. My new addiction is chocolate. Fans know this and always give it to me at concerts.”

8. Scares daughter with his performances. Dave said that his daughter is afraid of his performances, because there she sees another dad.

9. Nicknamed "The Black Pack" to fans. Depeche Mode call their fans the "black pack". Gahan is amazed that from concert to concert for 20 years in the forefront he sees all the same faces. “Frankly, it scares me that people spend all their savings to attend our concert. And the worst thing is that long-term fans then bring their children, who are dressed exactly like me. I think it's abnormal."

10. Seeks solitude after a concert.“During the concert, we do everything to turn on the audience, and after it we sit in the dressing room for a while and discuss the fans. After that I go to the hotel. After the performances, I don’t want to talk to anyone, but just relax and sleep.”

Basically, for the sake of an interview with Dave Gahan (and bonus keyboardist/bassist Andy Fletcher) I'd be willing to walk there, and don't say you wouldn't if you were me. The group has a tradition: when releasing a new album (about once every four years), they hold a press conference in one of the European cities. It seems to be just for fun.

“There are all these cool shops in Milan that my wife loves, and we also eat here all the time - just some kind of delight!” Fletcher says. At the official conference, where the musicians joked all the time, and Dave lifted his legs in golden heeled ankle boots (it seems from Saint Laurent), they played the fresh single Where's The Revolution, by the way, a black and white video for this song from the band's permanent clip maker Anton Corbijn recently appeared on the Web, but the most interesting thing was the next day: I had two exclusive interviews with Dave and Andy (separately).

Naturally, for beauty - the meeting was scheduled in Milan's Four Seasons, strictly forbidding anyone to give out passwords and appearances, and ideally, eat a letter with instructions in general. A small party of journalists admitted to the "despatches" occupied a couple of sofas in the hotel lobby the next morning, some of them pissed off by the fact that they nervously walked back and forth all the time. Because I also wanted to. In parallel, the hotel was casting male models for some kind of show. A blue-eyed brunette, the likes of which do not exist, was pensively reading the English edition of Nabokov's Transparent Things across the living room. How do you order to work in such a mess?! Moreover, the organizers warned that it was impossible to ask questions about the new album. Okay, I thought, I'll just have tea with them then. English or not, after all.

According to the plan, I was first sent to Fletcher, he asked what city I was from, and gave out: “Petersburg is a fantastic city! Fortunately, my wife and I had the opportunity to spend quite a lot of time in it. We tried to go on all possible excursions: we went around all the palaces and went around country residences. And Peter the Great! He built a modern fleet, and then a whole city out of the blue. No, we strongly prefer Petersburg to Moscow. She's kind of weird."

“I love British politeness,” I thought, and asked what he was truly proud of.

“My family. Our children, by the way, often go on tours with us - and get great pleasure from it. The fact that I'm not a frontman gives me the right to privacy. In London, I calmly go to a pub, cinema or restaurant - and no one rushes to me with an iPhone camera at the ready. And every four years on tour, I have the opportunity to work out crazy gigs and experience rock stardom while basking in the spotlight. You know, it's just a great way of life! It’s more difficult for me to talk about achievements in music. I guess I'm proud that we made electronic music popular with the masses (Music for the Masses is one of the Depeche Mode albums. - Note. ed.). The secret of our popularity is that we write songs about life, relationships, love and sex. In the new album, we paid attention to global problems. Before, we tried to avoid pathos, because we did not think that we could change the order of things in the world, after all, we are not Bono. But we decided to try to make our listeners think, that's why, by the way, we chose the name Spirit. For the concert tour, we will build the program like a musical - there will be a selection of fast and slow songs, high and low notes and, of course, a grand ending! Multimedia videos for the show will be shot by photographer Anton Corbijn, for which we will go to Miami for a week or two. I think I'm starting to envy myself."

The assistant starts to rustle, which means “your time is up,” and I go to Dave Gahan.

***
He greets me in a tight lavender jacket and smiles like a Cheshire cat. I pretend, “Just think, musicians, I do this every day”, but it doesn’t turn out very convincingly. He is very plastic, he has a velvety voice, and he also makes a sign to the assistant, and she slips out the door. Dave and I are alone in the Four Seasons suite. I try to convince myself that I am a professional.

You, a designer by profession, are still responsible for the group's visual codes. What do you consider truly beautiful now?

Energy! And the easiest way to feel it is to go to the wild. I really like to be by the ocean, in the very east of the coast of America. There you can still catch the feeling of some kind of primeval danger in the air. Something magical draws me there and, regardless of the time of year, inspires and pacifies. Another powerful source of energy is the ocean. Rather, urbanism gives me a visual impulse. Especially New York, where I have many friends from the art world: artists, painters, photographers. I often go to the art galleries around my little studio in the Chelsea area.

Do you collect art?

Yes, but very selectively. I have works by New York artist Marilyn Minter, who is also a close friend of mine. I started buying her things a long time ago, and now she's a real celebrity. I like spiritual works, like Betty Saar, which draws on the voodoo tradition, mystical and spiritual. It is an exciting mix of ritual practice and healing process. By the way, that's what I like about the ocean! I feel cleansed in a way.

You have to deal with a huge stream of attention. How do you keep balance?

With some people I feel comfortable, like with you for example. Do you feel the energy between us? (Dave takes my hands, I'm about to faint, but I continue to maintain an extremely interested look. - Note. ed.). And with some, no. No offense, but with the previous journalist it was quite the opposite. Too intense communication is uncomfortable for me, as well as an overabundance of communication. Then I take a break: I do yoga, breathing and, the most difficult thing, keep silence. The channel opens only at such moments. If you don't keep quiet, you won't get answers. (Enjoy the silence - flashes through my head. - Note. ed.). When we perform in front of thousands of spectators, we not only give our best, but also receive the strongest wave of energy. And then such a moment: you need to both restrain it and surrender to it, giving up control. Just let it fill you up, feel it. She both energizes and depletes. It's like surfing: finally you catch a wave, you feel in its power, you rush on it, but you understand that you will inevitably fall. And getting up on the board again will require effort from you.

A musician needs to be a medium. How to tune in to the wave?

I'm trying to find a place where I can really feel the music deeply. Ideally, this is a journey inward. During concerts or when recording an album, I try to put all my energy into what I perform. The danger is that you can overdo it in pursuit of the ideal and lose naturalness, that is, truthfulness. Therefore, perfectionism is rather harmful. Again, this is a matter of balance.

You move on stage like a shaman. Did you take dance lessons?

No! (Laughs.) This is natural plastic for me. It's not like I'm dancing all the time (but that's how Dave walks! - Note. ed.), but there is something liberating about dancing. When my voice works well, when I am absolutely confident in my instrument, I can relax, just breathe into the music and follow it with my body. Sometimes even small gestures create big waves. There is definitely a religious moment in this - I'm trying to come from the heart as a melody, no matter with what emotion - anger, sadness or joy.

Your music can be called as William Blake's cycle - "songs of innocence and experience". How do you manage to keep it so clean?

It's going to sound weird, but we still don't feel like a popular band. Rather, a team united by some kind of common secret. But we became part of pop culture in an underground version.

Is it a matter of depth? After all, pop stars are made by a producer?

Partly. Pop artists cannot show, shall we say, unvarnished emotions. But it is your broken part - real and vulnerable - that is the source of true feelings, creativity. I can discover in my music that I am depressed, I can dive into dark depths. Perhaps such honesty is the key to purity.

In your first interview in 1981, you described getting a Depeche Mode song on the BBC Radio chart as your biggest achievement. What would you say today?

It's funny how things have changed! ( Laughs.) Needless to say, I was very lucky. I write music, meet great like-minded people like Rich Machin from Soulsavers. The main thing is that now instead of being afraid to try something new, I just do it. Previously, I tried to fit in somewhere, to correspond to something, but now all this does not matter to me. My greatest achievement is freedom."

***
I had a hundred more questions, but the assistant who floated in made it clear that "your time is up - 2." It suddenly dawned on me that Miloradovskaya sent me with a clear task to get a selfie, which I never learned how to take. “Better the bitter truth,” I thought, and blurted out: “Dave, I was forbidden to return without a photo with you, but I can’t take a selfie.” You should have heard him laugh.

"No questions, now we'll ask my assistant." And, as in the most stupid sitcoms, it turned out that my phone ran out of memory. “This is a failure,” I said, but in slightly different and slightly more expressive words, and actually got excited. I think my hands are shaking a little. “Well, just don’t start,” he laughed again, “now we will do everything.” And we did. And then he kissed me. Twice. Like a good song says: Dream On, Dream On.

Thanks to PMI Corporation for help in arranging the interview