Founded in 1980 by singer David Gahan, songwriter Martin Gore, Alan Wilder, Andrew Fletcher, and Vince Clarke (who left early on), and named for a French fashion magazine, the British rock group Depeche Mode began by playing synthesizer-based "technopop" for British teens. Increasingly, Gore's songs introduced blasphemy, anticapitalism, S&M, and assorted angst to the repertoire. A succession of albums sold respectably, especially in Southern California, where Depeche Mode drew 75,000 to the Rose Bowl in 1988. After its 1990 World Violation tour, which yielded the 2-million-selling album Violator and saw 10,000 rioting fans trash a Los Angeles neighborhood, the band dispersed. In 1993 they reconvened, with once clean-cut Gahan sporting a goatee and shoulder-length hair, and the synthesizers discarded for a guitar-bass-drums configuration, to record Songs of Faith and Devotion. The album, redolent of heavy metal, gospel, and even classical music, quickly achived number-one status in the United States, and then vanished just as suddenly. Wilder left the band in 1994, but Depeche Mode continues to fill concert halls.