NEWSWEEK 1997

Surviving an overdose and breakdowns, Depeche Mode emerges with a powerful new album, "Ultra" by Karen Schoemer

The members of Depeche Mode aren't a typically cheerful lot but they're *really trying.* It's several hours into a very long day at the BBC studios outside London, where singer David Gahan, songwriter Martin Gore and keyboardist Andy Fletcher are taping a segment of the weekly TV music show "Top of the Pops."

Circumstances are not exactly in their favor. The dressing room feels like a purgatory: drab yellow walls, artificial lighting, stained brown carpet, lumpy plaid sofa. Due to BBC union regulations, the four-minute, lip-synced performance requires the band's continuous presence for more than 10 hours.

Strains are showing. Gahan, wearing a black T shirt, gray slacks and neon green socks examines a wilted catering tray with visible disenchantment. Fletcher uncomfortably adjusts his tall, sturdy frame on a tiny, hard chair. From beneath his shock of curly dyed blond hair, Gore stares glumly into space.

Gahan suddenly focuses on Fletcher's boom box, which is playing a jittery techno number. "Haven't you got any rock and roll?" he complains. He flips through a bunch of CDs and puts on Kool & the Gang. The funk-party classic "Ladies Night" bounced incongruously off the BBC's cement-block walls. Gahan hurls himself back onto the sofa. "The BBC's a time warp, isn't it?" he says. "F---in' boring."

Don't get them wrong. Depeche Mode is happy to be on the BBC. They're proud to have a new album, "Ultra," their first in four years and the most luminous of their 17-year career. In fact, Gahan, Fletcher and Gore are thankful to be anywhere at all. In May 1996, Gahan suffered a near-fatal overdose of heroin and cocaine in an L.A. hotel room. After two minutes without a pulse, he was revived by paramedics, sent to a hospital and then arrested on charges of drug possession. He entered a court-mandated treatment program; he says he has been clean ever since. (Charges will be dropped when he completes treatment.) "I created this monster, and it just overtook what I was about," Gahan says now. "It was almost like I wanted to kill it off, like in a movie. Some sad, tragic ending. I really fed into that drama."

But the band's problems didn't begin and end with its lead singer. Four years ago, in the midst of a 14-month world tour to support their 1993 album "Songs of Faith and Devotion," Fletcher had a nervous breakdown and checked himself into a hospital in England. Gore suffered seizures brought on by stress and alcohol abuse and was also hospitalized. Oasis's Gallagher brothers may have achieved status as the reigning bad boys of Britpop, but behind the scenes Depeche Mode has been making them look like amateurs.

"Ultra" is so sad and lovely and pure that it's almost worth the agony. The band has dropped the hokey Gothic gloom of early albums like "Black Celebration" in favor of a more reflective, sophisticated approach. Instruments like pedal steel guitar, bass and percussion sensuously mingle with eerie synthesizer melodies and sullen mechanized beats. Gahan's singing is less studiously dramatic than before: when he sings "Love will be the death of my lovely soul brothers," in the lush ballad "The Love Thieves," it carries the weight of experience. The album debuted at No. 5 in the Billboard charts, but the guys aren't pushing themselves too hard to promote it. The BBC is just about their speed. "We all came to the decision that we don't want to tour," says Fletcher. "Not just for David. We've all had our problems, and all of us aren't fit enough to do a tour. You can't get around the loneliness. To be in a hotel room for a whole year, you have to be mentally and physically very tough. Otherwise you get back into the situation you were in before."

Gahan, Fletcher and Gore know each other's situations well. All three grew up in Basildon, a working-class British town that rose up after World War II to replace London neighborhoods that had been bombed out. "Basildon's a bit of a joke," says Fletcher. "There's nothing to do, high crime, bad schools. Once you're out of there, you want to stay out. That's part of what keeps us going."

Depeche Mode got together in 1980 as a conventional band, with guitar and bass, but they quickly abandoned those instruments for electronic toys like synthesizers and samplers. Every one of their 10 studio albums has landed in the British top 10; in 1990 they broke through commercially in the United States with the album "Violator." "For a long time, we were virtually ignored by the American press," says Gore. "We couldn't be making 'real' music because we weren't using real instruments. Now that's turned around. Everyone knows the guitar is an emotive instrument. I think people have come to accept that synthesizers and samplers can be, too."

Which brings him around to the cheeriest thought all day. "After 17 years in a successful band, we all experience some problems," Gore says. "I think it's natural. It may be we've done remarkably well. Maybe most people in our position would be doing a lot worse." He brightens considerably. Attitudes are hard to change, but Depeche Mode's are getting healthier every day.