A Broken Frame

A Broken Frame is the second studio album recorded by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, working as a trio, and released on 27 September 1982 by Mute Records. The album was written entirely by Martin Gore and was recorded as a trio after the departure of Vince Clarke, who had left in December 1981 and formed Yazoo with singer Alison Moyet. Alan Wilder was hired in Clarke's place, initially as a touring musician only. Consequently, he was not involved with the recording of A Broken Frame, but was promoted to official band membership in October 1982, the month after the album's release.

The album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart and was promoted by the singles "See You", "The Meaning of Love" and "Leave in Silence", all three of which reached the top 20 of the UK singles charts.

Background

Depeche Mode had released their first album Speak & Spell in October 1981 and after the subsequent tour was completed in early December, founding member Vince Clarke left the band. That same month, the remaining members of Depeche Mode, Martin Gore, Andrew Fletcher and Dave Gahan, went back to Blackwing Studios to record a new song, as they felt the pressure to continue the band after a string of successful singles, despite having lost its main songwriter. In addition, all three had quit their jobs or university, and none of them wanted to return to their old lives. Rather than write a new song immediately, they re-arranged and recorded a song Gore had written as a teenager called "See You". Producer Daniel Miller remembered that Gore's demo for the song was "very basic, just a melody on a Casio synth and Martin tapping the beat with his foot." This was in contrast to how Vince Clarke had a strong musical vision and direction during the Speak & Spell sessions, but the shortcomings of the demo were overcome by the band's enthusiasm and energy. A PPG Wave 2 synthesizer, purchased by Gore from his royalties, was used by the band for the first time in recording the song. Released on 29 January 1982 in the UK, "See You" went on to reach number 6 on the UK charts. To support the song, Depeche Mode embarked on the See You Tour, with shows in the UK, Europe and the US from January to May 1982. In January 1982, the band were already talking to the press about making a new album, with an article in Best magazine saying the new album would "be different. More mature. More personal. They want to talk about serious things. About life, death, and society. They want to be taken seriously."

Hiring Alan Wilder

Although the band were initially hesitant to replace Clarke, their heavy tour commitments forced them to relent to pressure from their producer Daniel Miller, and to find a musician to play the tour, the band put an advertisement in the music magazine Melody Maker stating "Synth / Vocals needed for electronic pop group with UK & International commitments – must be under 21." Despite being 22 years old, musician Alan Wilder was hired as a result. The band needed someone who could play well, as Fletcher had said in an interview the previous year, "None of us play piano. ... You'd have to go into it seriously, and we haven't got the time." Gahan recalled later that "we auditioned [potential replacements] at Blackwing, and all these strange and wonderful characters showed up. And they were all dressed up to the nines, but couldn't play. And Alan [Wilder] came along and could play anything." Wilder, who had trained as a classical musician and was able to play flute, piano and brass instruments, admitted he didn't know much about electronic music when he auditioned, but he knew who Depeche Mode were before he decided to go and try out for the part. At the audition, he found that he could play along with the band immediately and easily, and since he was desperate for a job, he was happy to join. Wilder found Gahan, Fletcher and Gore to be very shy and, to avoid confrontation, the trio often asked Miller to deliver news, be it good or bad. Initially hired as a touring musician and paid a weekly wage, Wilder's first show with Depeche Mode was a warm-up gig at Croc's in Rayleigh, England, on 20 January 1982. Fans seemed to accept Wilder's place within the touring band quickly. Anne Swindell, Gore's girlfriend, noticed that fans were screaming Wilder's name at shows within the first month of him joining, saying "I'm glad they're screaming for Alan [Wilder]. It makes him feel more a part of it." Said Gahan, "I don't think it's right really, not yet, it's just like someone jumping in after you've been together for two years. And if he came in the studio now it would be hard for him to fit in." The first new song he wrote for the album was "Leave in Silence", Of his writing, Gore said "I write about anything really, whatever it is I just exaggerate it." Miller said that the instrumental track "Nothing to Fear" gained its title from Gore, who was "reading some weird book during the making of the record, a book of prophecies or something and he looked up his birthdate and it said, 'Nothing to fear.' So that actually ended up being a track title, and it made him very optimistic about the future." Miller recalled that the process of production was quite different from the previous album, saying "It was almost like a blank sheet of paper, the songs were recorded in a different way because Vince [Clarke] had a very specific idea of what the song was going to end up sounding like, and Martin [Gore] didn't really have that. It was more like, 'Here's the words, here's the melody. Let's figure it out.' Miller also believed that "some of the more experimental elements of the band came out in A Broken Frame, which I enjoyed. They were making pop records, but they, especially Martin, were into experimental music and that started to feed into tracks like 'Monument'."

In an interview released in late August 1982, Gahan said "we've done eight tracks now and we're in the middle of the ninth with one more to go," adding "whereas the stuff on the last album was Euro macho dance music really, beaty synthesizer music, this album's a lot weightier." Said Gore, the new material is "getting away from dance music. It's not that you can't dance to it – it's just that the charts are getting too dance orientated. Our publishers advise us to write dance hits. In America they tell us we won't have a hit if we don't do a dance number, because the only way they can break a record through there is through the discos." Griffin has displayed on his website a gallery of alternative images from the same shoot. In 1990, Life magazine included the picture in their list of "World's Best Photographs 1980–1990".

Title

The titles of A Broken Frame and its follow-up album Construction Time Again were, according to Wilder a few years later, likely a reflection of what was going on within the group at the time, saying that the former was "some kind of comment on Vince leaving" and that the latter reflected how the band was putting itself back together.

Release and promotion

125px|thumb|Promotional poster for the album's release, including tour dates

"Leave in Silence" was released as the third single from the album on 16 August 1982 in the UK and reached number 20 on the UK charts. A Broken Frame was released on 27 September 1982 by Mute Records in the United Kingdom (catalogue number STUMM9), and Sire Records in the United States, with whom the band signed a 5-album contract earlier that year. The US release of the album included the "Longer" (12") version of "Leave in Silence" as well as the track "Further Excerpts From: My Secret Garden", which was not included on the original UK release.

Tour

The band supported the album with the A Broken Frame Tour, which ran from October 1982 through May 1983 with shows in the UK, Europe, the US and Asia. Although the album didn't sell as well as its predecessor, the supporting tour, especially in the UK, was strongly attended. The band had upgraded their transportation since their last tour, with Fletcher explaining that "now we've got a luxury coach and can do it in some style. There are video recorders and stereo on board and you can't beat a bit of comfort to put you in a good mood when you arrive in a foreign city and have to go straight to do sound checks before you can rest." On tour, the band used a variety of synthesisers, including an ARP 2600, Moog Source, Roland Promars, Roland SH-101, Roland MC-4 Microcomposer, Korg KR-55, and a Roland TR-808. while a review in Melody Maker of their show in Birmingham a few days later was not kind, reviewing the music, stage, lighting and the band negatively.

In mid-November, while still on tour but on a break between the UK and European legs, the band including Wilder went back to the studio to record a new song, "Get the Balance Right!". The song was released as a non-album single in January 1983, before the US and Asian legs of the tour. "Get the Balance Right!" reached number 13 on the UK charts.

Attendance during the US leg of the tour was disappointing, leading to Depeche Mode not returning to the US for their 1983 Construction Time Again Tour.

Live performances

Most songs from A Broken Frame were performed as part of the band's 1982–83 A Broken Frame Tour, but few tracks from the album were performed live after 1983. "See You" and "The Meaning of Love" were performed during their 1983 Construction Time Again Tour, and "Leave in Silence" was performed on the 1984 Some Great Reward Tour, a performance of which is available on UK and Japanese versions of The World We Live In and Live in Hamburg (1985).

Critical reception

Smash Hits wrote that A Broken Frame, in contrast to the group's early post-Clarke singles showed "a lack of purpose", "makes a virtue of their tinkly-bonk whimsy". Reviewer Steve Sutherland considered the songs "daft aspirations to art", the album's musical and thematic "larcenies" sounding like "puerile infatuations papering over anonymity". "DH" said that the album "falls together well and shows we can expect a lot more from the clean cut quartet", adding "[a]t times it reaches high points far exceeding their first album." Depeche Mode worked hard in the second half of the 1980s, while working on Black Celebration (1986) and Music for the Masses, to shed the teenybopper image they'd acquired during their first few years as a band. Said Gahan in 1990, "I've got to accept the fact that we made a lot of mistakes in terms of the way we put ourselves across and put ourselves about. We were prepared to do anything. Not necessarily to sell ourselves. We were just completely naive. We thought it would be good to be in Smash Hits answering questions about our socks, appearing on Saturday morning television, making prats of ourselves. We didn't realise at the time that we were degrading ourselves. Then it reached a point where we realised it wasn't helping us anymore. In fact, it was becoming very negative. So we made a conscious decision to say no. From that point, we've been able to pick and choose. We decided not to make prats of ourselves anymore." In a 2006 interview, Gore said he considered A Broken Frame to be "probably our worst album". Dave Gahan called A Broken Frame the band's "weakest album," noting that they were "learning at that point. It was very naive. It was Martin's [Gore] first album as a songwriter ... he was thrown in at the deep end, to be honest." Miller later said that the album "was a transitional record and while it's not their best record, it's hugely important in terms of how it was made and how it gave everybody confidence. It's when people really started believing in the future of the band."

Depeche Mode

David Gahan
Martin Gore
Andrew Fletcher

Technical

Daniel Miller – production
Depeche Mode – production
John Fryer – engineering
Eric Radcliffe – engineering

Artwork

Brian Griffin – photography
Martyn Atkins – design
Ching Ching Lee – calligraphy

Charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ 1982–1983 chart performance for A Broken Frame

! scope="col"| Chart (1982–1983)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

! scope="row"| UK Independent Albums (MRIB)

| 1

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|+ 2006 chart performance for A Broken Frame

! scope="col"| Chart (2006)