They’ll go down on their knees: Depeche Mode 101

It’s obvious now that Depeche Mode are teen pop; was it so in 1988? As a document of a band about to go mega, Depeche Mode 101 is a hoot. From David Gahan’s arena-god boorishness (grabbing the microphone stand for a Jesus pose during “Blasphemous Rumours”) and the closeups of his white-denim-hugged ass to the great dumb hooks and the stupid-dumb lyrics, this is what North American teens with a perv streak wanted and didn’t get a year later: Jordan Knight tying Joey McIntyre up while Donnie Wahlberg fucks him with a police baton. “Route 66” even starts with the same percussive loop that graces Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now”! But whatever your pleasures, you little treasures, they aren’t as perverse as Gahan getting the audience to sing “Everything counts in large amounts.” I bet.

The band offers no insights into recording or their songs; Violator isn’t even out yet and they’re already acting inscrutable and out of reach. The closest thing to poignancy — remember the hell into which Gahan sunk in the late nineties — comes from an obviously drunk but lucid Gahan hinting during a backstage moment that he and his bandmates aren’t intimate. “I had more fun [stacking boxes],” he mumbles with a smirk, alluding to his teenage job at a supermarket. Their entourage, proud of their black sneaks and rattails and Aimee Mann coifs, enjoy the silence as a cute but earnest fashion designer wannabe urges them to stop thinking about money and instead trust whatever “comes from inside.” Only Alan Wilder, the band’s best musician and the possessor of an absurd quiff, looks like he’s having a ball, especially when he coaxes two-finger melodies from a keyboard when he’d rather be composing Kraftwerk-esque song suites.

But if you care anything about Depeche Mode or college rock in the eighties, there’s anthropological interest in D.A. Pennebaker’s shots of tens of thousands of clapping fans going apeshit during “Never Let Me Down Again.” This when the band hadn’t yet gone multiplatinum! A half dozen A&R guys near the soundboard no doubt ran outside with their brick phones and called their bosses. “Yeah, about that Cure album due up next spring…? Yeah, we’re promoting the shit out of it.”