http://www.dave-gahan.net

By GAVIN MARTIN

Ten years ago, I met Dave Gahn to his dressing room; before Depche mode played a stadium in Hungary. The show hadn’t started, but the emaciated singer’s voice was already shot. He looked and soundes at the end of his target.

The scars on his arms, his haunted appearance and erratic behaviour all suggested a heroin problem. But no one, certainly not Dave, would admit it. The may have been a rock star but he desperately needed help. It seemed he was heading for a grimsly end and soon. Shortly after we met, he collapsed on stage with a heart attack, and three years later, attempted suicide.

But Gahan received help and his recovery has been a joy to behold. Today he is healthy, fit and sitting in a London hotel room with his 15 year old son Jack, from his first marriage. Gahan is concerned, when I remind his of our earlier meeting,

“Did I get aggressive with you?” he asks. “I remember reading what you wrote and it pissed me off. But I was glad you did it. There were people like you who said: ‘Forget the music, this guy is sick and needs help’. But at this time I was beyond receiving help”.

“That’s the tricky thing about addiction. When you are in that world, you have to be willing to change everything about yourself. If you don’t change, you are not going to get better. I wasn’t one of these addicts who lost home and money. When I went home after that tour I realized what trouble I was in. I was propelled into an abyss.”

In 1996, Gahan’s heart stopped for two minutes after a cocaine and heroine overdose, but he claimed it was more a cry for help than a suicide attempt. “I don’t think I was trying to harm myself – I was just looking for attention” he says. “It was a dark time but it was also when I realized it was up to me to make the change”.

Gahan was living in Los Angeles when he had his overdose. Busted by the police, he was told to clean up or go to jail. But his future wife Jennifer, an actress and scriptwriter, provided the real incentive to change his life.

“I met her eight or nine years ago in Arizona” he smiles. “Jennifer went back in New York. I went in LA and we kept in touch. I’d visit her and her kid, who is now my stepson, and we remained friends. I could see something in her I wanted. She didn’t give a crap about the band I was in. She just genuinely cared about what I was doing to myself and I saw that right from the start. There was something about Jennifer that hit a candle in me. I can’t say I moved in New York for her, looking back, I was hoping something more would come from it”.

New York may not seem the ideal place for a recovering addict, let alone one who, like Gahan, was a juvenille delinquent in Basildon, Essex. But the city has been the making for him. He says Jennifer gave him confidence to make out of his own.

His recent debut album Paper Monsters is a fine document of his dark past and present optimism. Life in the Big Apple obviously suits him.

“My friends have started to call me New Yorker”, he says. “It was the first place that I ever felt like home. The city has been good for me. I still hang out with people who have been through similar experiences”.

Gahan blames himself about his past problems, but the roots go back in his childhood. “My stepdad died when I was nine” he says. “My real father showed up once when I was eleven and that was the last time I ever saw him. There was always distrust for people you were meant to feel safe after that – teachers, getting trouble with the police. I’m still a bit like that. I’ll still choose to put through the prickly bushes rather than go down the smooth road”.

His current band is a more of a rock ‘n’ roll outfit rather than Depeche Mode, comprising friends who have been through the drinks and drugs treadmill and live to tell the tail.

“We’ve chosen to find other ways to relax” says Dave. “One of them in playing music. It’s not a chore. It supposed to be a fan and it – more than ever”. His solo career does not spell the end of Depeche Mode, but the band will never be the same again. “We’ve been around too long to just go away” he admits. “But we’ve reached a point where we have to open up the doors to new influences and not put so many restrictions on who we are and how we should sound like. We could play to 20,000 people a night all over the world which is fantastic, but we should be using it in a more challenging way”.

“Next year I will get together with Martin Gore and talk about making a Depeche record, but it has to be different. I’ll put forward my ideas. As I’ve been older and wiser, I realized the old set-up wasn’t working for me anymore – much like the drugs didn’t work after a while”.

“This album has helped me get rid of my insecurity. There’s nothing I want to change about my life and I want to give some of that back – to my wife, my family through my music”.