Photo: Press
Dave Gahan has proved that you can take the boy out of Essex but you can’t take the Essex out of the boy. Having already denounced Richard Spencer after the white supremacist claimed that Depeche Mode were “…the official band of the alt.right”, Gahan has now deemed him a “cunt”.
Which is fine by us.
Gahan let rip in a new interview with entertainment bible Billboard. Clearly unhappy at the amount of press that Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute, a right-wing, white nationalist think tank – where there’s probably more tanking than thinking – Gahan laid into the alt.right posterboy.
“What’s dangerous about someone like Richard Spencer is, first of all, he’s a cunt - and he’s a very educated cunt, and that’s the scariest kind of all.”
Gahan also fumed about Spencer’s misinterpretation of Depeche Mode’s music: “If anything, there’s a way more sort of socialist - working class, if you like - industrial-sounding aesthetic to what we do. That’s where we come from … So I don’t quite get what he was [saying].”
The Depeche Mode frontman revealed that he was prompted to speak out against Spencer by his sources close to home: “Well, my son Jimmy, who is 24, he was kind of shocked by it. He was one of the first to say, ‘You got to make a response immediately.’ Because people read sh*t - unfortunately, as we know -and they interpret it as being real. It’s hard these days, because you really do have to search what you’re reading and where that information came from.”
He also pointed out that Depeche Mode have made plain their feelings on various topics over the years, which makes it all the more surprising as to why Spencer actually likes the band.
“Well there were songs like ‘People Are People’ which was way back in 1984, which was very political. We were making songs on [1983's] Construction Time Again - which was a very socially, almost a Commie album, with some of its content: ‘Everything counts in large amounts. The grabbing hands, grab all they can.’
“But to put it in a pop format though, that is palatable and sing-a-long, is kind of interesting to us, and has always been kind of interesting to do. It doesn’t always have to be gloom and doom. Sometimes the most political content is hidden.”
