19 Oct '05 - 265 W, 3 I - + 7 - 6 Embarrassing Pix - Depeche Mode!

Here is an image from that ancient photo session for the scurrilous '80s magazine, Flexipop! - here reprinted in 18 Rated, a scurrilous magazine from the '90s (now what's the connection between those two magazines? Oh yes, I wrote for them )

I often wonder if Dave Gahan ever regrets agreeing to get into that coffin! This was back in the early ‘80s - 1981 as far as I can recall. Back in those days Depeche Mode were seen as those ‘chirpy boys from Basildon’. They played bubbly pop songs and kept daily diaries all about bananas (you don’t believe me? see HERE). Little did anyone guess that one day they would go on to become international stadium-filling megastars with a keen interest in some of the darker byways of human experience…

The actual flexidisc that inspired the photos - note the authentic '80s tatty bit of Sellotape...

So when they recorded a song called Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead for a flexidisc on the cover of a somewhat dubious and salacious teenage magazine by the name of Flexipop!, Dave Gahan didn’t so much as blink an eyelid when the editor suggested that he lie down in a coffin clutching a crucifix.

Actually, given the dark overtones of some of their later music, they might even have ended up looking back on that photoshoot with a sense of pride...

...if only Dave hadn’t worn that daft smile on his face…!