This should be a good time for them all: synth music may have taken a back seat while indie guitar bands such as Kaiser Chiefs and the Kooks ruled the charts in recent years, but now it's back.
DEPECHE MODE 2009 TOUR DATES SOFTWARE
They don't know each other really but there is obviously mutual interest, with lots of discussion about the equipment they use, how they verge between computer software and clunky real keyboards - and guitars too, since both bands feel able to use a broader sound than just electronic. The two bands are gathered together for a drink in London before their tour. They are preparing to release their 11th album, Sounds of the Universe, and go on tour with a younger synth band, Ladytron, whose glacial keyboard pop sound is finally breaking through after several years of underground cult success. "Life keeps changing, as always, but yeah, I do enjoy a lot of that fitness stuff. "There were always vitamin shots in the bum, but you can take that how you like, ha ha", Gahan says.
In fact, all three of them are looking remarkably healthy after three decades on the road. Meeting him now though, with his bandmates Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher, it's striking how astonishingly well Gahan looks, with his dapper pin-stripe suit and glowing bronzed skin. Yet it also led him to a life of highs and lows on the road, including that near-fatal overdose. The synthesizer music that made his pop group so famous in the 1980s, with thrilling singles including "Everything Counts", "People Are People", and "Enjoy the Silence", saved him from a life of car-stealing and juvenile courts in Basildon, Essex. Dave Gahan, lead singer with Depeche Mode, famously nearly died after overdosing on drugs at a Los Angeles hotel in 1995, when his band had already enjoyed a decade and a half of hits, in more than one sense of the word.