‘Depeche Mode 101’ Is ‘80s Synth Pop Postcard And Reality TV Blueprint 

Who are the next 1980’s icons that need to be rediscovered like Kate Bush, Metallica, and The Cramps via a meme-generating series music synch? My vote’s for Depeche Mode, though, like Metallica, they never really went away. It seems like their influence is everywhere, from emo to EDM. Their ability to transition from mopey verses into gigantic pop choruses, their pulsing synthesizer textures, their ability to bring British post-punk influences into the American mainstream, even their metrosexual personal style, seem as current as the latest TikTok trend.  

The 1989 concert documentary Depeche Mode 101 captures the band at the moment of breakthrough. The title alludes to the 101st and final performance of the band’s Music For The Masses tour, which saw them playing to over 60,000 devoted fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Again, like Metallica, they had been considered a marginal underground act up to that point in time. They would never release an album that didn’t debut in the US and UK top 10 in its wake. Newly restored, the film is currently streaming on Showtime. 

Depeche Mode could have easily followed in the footsteps of U2’s Rattle and Hum and hired a hip young music video director to create a glamorized concert film presenting them as musical demigods. Instead, the hired storied documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, who’s history stretched back to such trailblazing movies as Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back (1967) and Monterey Pop (1968). The only glamour found is when Depeche Mode are on stage. The rest of the time, Pennebaker casts a sober eye towards the doldrums of tour life and the banal exploits of a group of teenage contest winners who follow the band cross country to their final stop in L.A.  

Though consistent hitmakers in their native UK, Depeche Mode had failed to make much of a chart impact in America prior to 1987’s Music for The Masses. They may have played cutting edge electronic pop during the MTV heyday but they built a dedicated following Stateside like any self-respecting rock band, by putting on a killer live show and touring their narrow English asses off. Dancing to abandon while singing his heart out, Dave Gahan was one of the best frontmen of the era and despite playing music that could have easily been pre-programmed, bandmates Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher and Alan Wilder play nearly everything live on racks of keyboards, synthesizers and electronic drums.

In casual interviews, the band tell us that outside of their coastal power bases, where they consistently draw between 10 and 15 thousand, they still play to crowds as small as 2,000 in outposts like Nashville. Visiting the country music capital, they go to a guitar store, Gore playing a convincing bluesy groove on a vintage Rickenbacker, and buy stacks of old school country and rockabilly cassettes. In between tour stops they suffer through tedious soundchecks, clueless radio DJs and condescending interviews, one journalist getting a realer story than he figured when asking the wirey Gahan about his last fistfight.

Following the band are a group of fans from Long Island who won spots on a tour bus through a contest on local alternative rock radio station WDRE. While rednecks out in the middle of America scoff at their funny haircuts, the kids on the bus seem just as ignorant about the lives of anyone from outside their suburban bubble. Besides the occasional argument, little of interest happens to the kids one the bus whose idea of a good time is drinking beer until they puke. 

Upon arriving at the Rose Bowl, Depeche Mode are told their show needs to end an hour early. Backstage, the band frets over between song banter and what is to be their biggest US concert to date. In another trailer, their managers bicker over how much money to pay the venue for damage to the sod and marvel at how much money they’ve made between ticket and merch sales. After the show, Gahan talks about the disappointment that follows the end of tour, which, even at its most mundane, is preferable to the boredom waiting back home. 

In the pantheon of rock docs, Depeche Mode 101 should loom larger. It features impressive performance footage, a compelling and realistic document of everyday tour life and presages The Real World and its progeny in its portrayal of the “bus kids.” It also perfectly captures America in 1988, before the advent of portable computer technology and the mainstreaming of underground culture turned everything upside down. It’s like a postcard from a world that seems utterly different even as its echoes sound familiar.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.