JOHN EARLS
After the tour for Exciter, Depeche needed time out. While Martin Gore worked on his covers album and Andy Fletcher started a record label, it was time to see if Dave Gahan could be a songwriter. Released in 2003, Paper Monsters proved him to be more than capable. Wanting to tell his story of his addictions and becoming sober, Gahan wrote its 10 songs with Knox Chandler, a session guitarist he’d befriended when Knox played on Exciter. “I needed to express the feelings inside of me more,” Dave told Beyond Words. “Singing Martin’s songs has been great, but I wanted to challenge myself, not live vicariously through someone else’s feelings.”
Paper Monsters led to Gahan finally starting to write for Depeche, but also it opened the doors for his own style. The more electronic Hourglass followed in 2007, this time written with Andrew Phillpott and Christian Eigner, Depeche’s drummer since 1997. Explaining how Hourglass was more comfortable to make, Dave told Spin: “Singing Martin’s stuff has rubbed off on me. I’ve really started to find my own voice.”