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Nick Morgan and crew
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CONCERT
REVIEW by Luca Chichizola
DEPECHE MODE |
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Milan
San Siro Stadium
18th June 2009
|
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| Goooood
eeeeevening, Milan!!!!! Wow, these words (although
highly unoriginal) still bring shivers down my spine
whenever I hear them screamed by Dave Gahan, the
charismatic frontman of Depeche
Mode… |
| Being
a Devoted, a follower of the cult of Depeche Mode,
means that all their album releases (almost every
4-5 years) are an event: the frenzy when the album
is released (and this time it was even higher, since
it came in a very special and luxurious boxset with
every kind of goodies inside), the eager collecting
of all the singles in all the possible formats (hell,
I am even collecting the vinyl versions even if
I no longer have easy access to a turntable!), the
T-shirts, and of course the concerts. In 2006 I
had been to Manchester in occasion of the “Touring
the Angel” tour, and it was a fantastic evening.
How could I miss this time? Yeah, I know, I haven’t
written very kind words about their new album “Sounds
of the Universe”, and I still stand on every
word I have written: I like the new effort from
my idols from Basildon quite a bit less than all
of their previous records. Sure, it is pleasant,
elegant, polished and competent enough (apart from
a couple of truly bad songs) and it has some really
charming moments, but after two months still something
fails to click inside me. Probably it has something
to do with me being “old fashioned”,
or more probably with me enjoying (and empathizing
a lot with) the good old dark side of Depeche Mode,
the “pain and suffering in various tempos”,
their fascinating, twisted, perverted and corrupt
soul. And, as a consequence, I couldn’t help
but being a little upset by their new, lighter,
(slightly) more optimistic and “conventional”
style (though it’s still striking how unique
they are even in this latest album). |
| So
last November, even before we had had a chance to
hear some of the new material, my friend Alessandro
(great lover of Talisker and Arbeg) and I had bought
our tickets for one of the two Italian dates of
the “Tour of the Universe”: Milan, Meazza/San
Siro Stadium, June 18th. Yes, Depeche Mode playing
at the “Scala of Football” (that’s
soccer, for you uneducated Yanks) could be nothing
but a MASSIVE event. Anyway, as the days neared
to the night of the gig, some dark omen was cast
upon us. At the beginning of May, the tour was stopped
because of health problems for Dave Gahan: as it
turned out, the doctors accidentally found a malignant
cancer in his bladder and had to remove it surgically.
It’s weird how life is: for years you lead
a self-destructive life-style, on a steady diet
of heroin, as if you couldn’t care less if
you would ever reach old age… and then an
angel saves you on the brink of death. You sober
up, you get wiser, you actually start loving life
again. You build a family, you have a child. You
sing every night with the passion of an 18 years
old, you publish two solo albums (one of them honestly
quite good), and you actually start being a hell
of a creative input for the band in which you have
simply been a frontman for years. You find new enthusiasm
in life, you clearly LOVE every minute of what you
are doing. And then… you find a malignant
cancer in your body, as if God was there to remind
you of the times when you didn’t care a shit
about this life that you’re loving so much
now, and that all this new life could suddenly have
an end. Yeah, it may sound spooky (or corny, depending
on how much you love or hate Depeche Mode) but it’s
EXACTLY the same theme that the band had covered
in 1984 with their chilling song “Blasphemous
Rumours”. Luckily for us, but most of all
for Dave (we actually love the guy like a brother,
and would like to meet him once in our life and
shake his hand, give him a hug and simply say to
him “thank you for leading us through so many
years with your voice”), all turned out well
and the cancer was removed… so you can imagine
the joy of seeing him back on stage, full of renewed
energy just a few days after his operation. |
| We
arrived in Milan in the mid-afternoon, a hot and
humid day of the worst kind you can experience in
Northern Italy. So hot that we were sweating like
fountains even when standing still. |
| Luckily,
San Siro stadium is covered for the largest part
of it, so once inside we were at least slightly
better than we had been outside during our quest
for the nicest T-shirts at the various stands (why
do the unofficial ones have always to be more attractive,
not to mention cheaper, than the official ones?
Damn!). The sight inside the stadium was impressive:
it was still partly empty, but slowly filling up
and already giving us a taste of how crowded it
would get. |
 |
| As
it turned out later, the audience that night was
of approximately 70000 people… and you can
imagine how loud and cheerful such a large gathering
of people can be. Yep, and that’s where my
two biggest complaints for the gig come. First,
there were TOO many people. But not only too many,
actually many more than the venue could take: at
the beginning of the concert, it was immediately
clear that (since “the grabbing hands grab
all they can”) the promoters of the event
had sold many more tickets than the number of available
seats. |
| The
result? People not knowing where to go, stomping
the feet of those who had secured a (rightfully
paid for) seating place and gathering around like
a flock of sheep obstructing the view from the seated
places. Of course we solved this by standing too,
but paying a bonus for a seating place and then
having to stand is a bit of a fraud. Second problem,
of which we already got a hint of it during the
performance of the support band: the wolume was
abso-fucking-lutely low. |
 |
| I
like to listen to my music loud enough to have punch
but not too loud, so I hate rock concerts where
my guts are shaking and where I wish I had brought
some heavy-duty ear plugs (of the kind we use at
the engine test benches) with me. So, a reasonable
volume is fine with me: if I want to go deaf and
enjoy the experience of 120 dB I’ll go to
the Caselle airfield and ask for a permission to
go on the airstrip when the Eurofighter is taking
off (after all, I have worked for the military and
I still have connections). But this wasn’t
the case of this gig: the volume was so low that
sometimes it was hard to understand what song had
started playing, and overall all the songs lacked
the needed punch, not to mention that the subtleties
in arrangements were lost under the cheering and
singing-a-long of the 70000 Devoted mentioned above.
|
| It
turns out that this unusual restraint was due to
a recent decree of the over-eager mayor of Milan,
Mrs. Letizia Moratti: well, a heartfelt f**k you
to Mrs. Moratti, who from the mummified look of
her face has obviously never been to a rock concert.
And, while we are at it, f**k her brother too (big
oil tycoon and owner of the nauseating Inter football
club – sorry, Alessandro). Anyway, over with
the bad stuff, because the evening was magical… |
|
 |
| The
concert started, as in previous gigs from the tour,
with three songs from the new album: “In chains”
(its long intro so perfectly suited for building
anticipation into the show), the rousing “Wrong”
and the fine “Hole to feed”. Good songs,
among the best ones from “Sounds of the Universe”,
but just an appetizer for what was yet to come…
yes, because we were then treated to a lovely and
energetic version of “Walking in my shoes”
(with the extended and rawer bassy intro that is
now customary after the Devotional Tour and the
“Grungy Gonads” remix of the song),
the classy and ultra-cool “It’s no good”,
the usually punchy live version of 1986’s
“A question of time” (because you may
not know that since 1993 Depeche Mode have been
employing a live drummer on stage, which accounts
for “rockier” and rawer alternate takes
of their all-electronic album songs: and Mr. Christian
Eigner sure is an exciting live drummer!), and a
sparkling and heart moving rendition of “Precious”
(a song which anyone who has children and knows
the personal story of Martin Gore will find absolutely
touching). Personally, I was overwhelmed by the
following song, one of their absolute darkest and
most nihilistic: “Fly on the windscreen”,
unrelentless, gritty and mean, and it was the first
time I heard it played live in person. Sure, the
“Devotional” version from the early
‘90s was still grittier, jerkier and meaner,
but I’m not complaining. Then, as it is usual
for Depeche Mode concerts, the pace slowed a little:
Mr. Gahan took a break, and it was time for Mr.
Gore to sing two of his songs personally. |
| If
you know your DM, you know that since the early
‘80s Martin Gore writes the songs and Gahan
sings them except for a few (although this changed
in the last two albums, where Gahan asked to include
some of his compositional and writing efforts too
for a change, and at times with very good results).
It’s not that Martin Gore, in addition to
being a great writer, hasn’t got a nice voice
and so prefers Dave to sing in his place. On the
contrary, Martin has a beautiful voice, probably
even more skilled and emotional than Dave’s.
Get yourself a copy of “Counterfeit 2”
(where Martin covers songs from Nick Cave, David
Bowie, Kurt Weill, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Lou Reed
and others) and you’ll hear what I mean. Or
the “demos” disc in the “Sounds
of the Universe” boxset, where many of the
classic DM songs are performed by their own author.
The truth is that he has a more delicate quality
in his chords, while many songs actually call for
Gahan’s operatic and menacing baritone. So
Martin, being a very unselfish and humble guy, prefers
his friend Dave to sing them. Anyway, no Depeche
Mode concert can exist without at least two songs
sung by Martin himself, and usually it’s one
of the most intimate moments of the gig also thanks
to the sparse acoustic piano and guitar arrangement
(very different from the one in the albums). This
time, Martin chose the new song “Little soul”
and his classic workhorse “Home”, one
of the most beautiful and haunting songs ever on
the theme of the beauty and comfort of death(!).
Great stuff, although personally I had
enjoyed even more what he had done in the previous
tour, when he dug out from the archives some extremely
old and moving songs like “It doesn’t
matter”, “Shake the disease” and
“Leave in silence”. |
| After
this break, Dave was on stage again. Nice to see
him on good health: we were a bit worried because
he usually is very dynamic, and we didn’t
want him to stress his stamina too much after the
operation. OK, he was a little more static than
usual, but he didn’t spare any of his microphone
stand twirling antics: let’s just hope that
he will still be fine on the long run, because in
his place I would have called it quits for a while
and got six months’ rest… But luckily
Dave is made of stronger stuff than I am, and actually
we noticed that Dave’s voice was even better
than usual in spite of everything. Yes, during the
whole show he managed an incredible control of his
voice, and an unexpectedly extended vocal range:
sometimes in the past (either in Manchester or in
live recordings) he could sound a little nasal and
“stretched” in some passages during
the performance, but this time he truly topped himself
from start to finish. |
| The
next song was Dave’s own “Come back”,
in a version which is hands down the best I have
ever heard: rocky and lively, not as noisy as the
album mix and not as wimpy as the demo. Great stuff!
Another pleasant surprise was “Peace”,
a song which I had found a bit cheesy on the album
and which sounded pleasantly majestical in such
a big stadium. The rest of the show was completely
dedicated to some of the legendary old hits: the
brooding “In your room”, the arena-stomper
“I feel you”, the moody and energetic
“Policy of truth”, the now-classic live
version “Enjoy the silence” (with an
always different guitar solo from Martin), and of
course “Never let me down again”: a
song which is always played live and as such might
seem a little abused… but you should have
seen the waving of hands from the crowd in San Siro…
massive! |
| It
was then time for the encores. First the ominous
“Stripped”, then the wicked and tongue-in-cheek
S/M hymn “Master and servant”, then
another song I had never heard played live in spite
of being one of their classics from the ‘80s:
“Strangelove”. To end the show, a usually
fine rendition of “Personal Jesus” (though
I preferred the extended final guitar soloing from
“Touring the Angel”), and then a choice
of song which was just as great as “Goodnight
lovers” had been three years ago: “Waiting
for the night”, in a specially sparse and
delicate acoustic arrangement with Martin and Dave
under the spotlight in front of the stage’s
catwalk. And then, moving as usual, a big hug between
the two… friends for a life, band companions
for a life… and in a blink, two wonderful
hours had passed. |
| It
was a pleasure to see Depeche Mode live once again,
and especially being there to shout all of our gratitude
to the band at the top of our lungs. It was nice
to see our old friends on stage, and give them our
support once again. Little did we know that on the
next day Depeche Mode, stunned by the incredible
success of their Italian gigs, would announce two
more dates… including one in my hometown
of Torino on November 26th 2009. Oh, well, I guess
we’ll have to attend there too (if we still
manage to find the tickets, since they went away
like hot cakes in a matter of minutes)… and
it will be a pleasure because (apart from the organization
issues) the show was great. |
| Maybe
next time we’ll also manage to see something
of keyboard player Andrew Fletcher… because
at San Siro we were in a lateral position and we
could only guess he was there! |
 |
| Special
thanks, for the wonderful company and friendship,
to the two lovely young Devotees we’ve met
in San Siro at the gig, Licia and Teresa. Can’t
wait to see you soon again at the next DM concert! |
| As
usual, our recommendation: please buy Depeche Mode’s
music! All concerts from the “Tour of the
Universe” are available in official recordings
of the highest quality here.
- Luca Chichizola |
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