Munich wears black. On the one hand, this is always a worthy non-color for the festive attire, for the eyeliner and the fingernails of the community, if Depeche Mode celebrate their High Mass in the Olympic Stadium. 64,000 fans of the British synth-pop heroes have once again made the pilgrimage to the city’s largest open-air arena in anticipation of their darkly romantic anthems such as “Personal Jesus” or “Enjoy The Silence”.
Actually, it’s still much too bright for the first track, “My Cosmos is Mine”. Not all the spectators have arrived for a long time, Martin Gore, Peter Gordeno and Christian Eigner come onto the stage for a rather amorphous intro, deliberately inconspicuously, followed a few seconds later by Dave Gahan, who watches the whole thing. The intro is still booming, the first song will boom too, the concern – no war no more no fear – vanishes in dark clouds of sound. The real beginning: “Wagging Tongue”, then “Walking in My Shoes”, 30 years old. Runs!
Hardly any followers of a band are more devoted, fanatical, more loyal than “the black swarm”, as the musicians themselves sometimes call them. Every appearance of Depeche Mode on the tour of Germany that started in Leipzig at the end of May – more than 500,000 tickets were sold for the ten concerts – is cause for celebration.
And yet there is also cause for sadness. On May 26, 2022, Andrew Fletcher, the keyboardist and calming influence of the core trio, died unexpectedly during the recording of the 15th album – the twelfth, with which Depeche Mode would land at the top of the German charts (which no other band has managed to do before). Fletcher is said to have been involved in new tracks such as “Wagging Tongue” or “Ghosts Again”, and the title of the record and thus of the tour is said to have come from him: “Memento Mori”.
Since then, this “remembrance of the dead” has hovered over everything. Surviving musicians Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are said to have even considered quitting, but agreed that “Fletch” would have wanted them to continue. Since then, the emotional highlight of the concerts on the “Memento Mori” tour has been “World In My Eyes”, which singer Gahan and songwriter Gore dedicated to their missing friend.
A detailed review of the Depeche Mode concert in Munich’s Olympic Stadium will follow on Wednesday.