Last month, human punching bag Richard Spencer claimed that UK synthpop legends Depeche Mode were "the official band of the alt-right," a statement the group obviously and immediately disputed, making sure it was clear that they had no ties to repulsive movement. Now in a new interview with Billboard, DM lead singer Dave Gahan continues to distance his band from white supremacists: "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." He went on to describe in greater detail his views on Spencer and the incident:
I think it was one of those things he threw out there for whatever. But he’s not that type of guy -- not like the other guy, the Milo [Yiannopoulos], an attention seeker, a bit crazy obviously. I saw [Milo] on Bill Maher and I was just like, “Wow, he really is a nut job.” Those people to me aren’t so dangerous, but this guy's [Spencer] got some weight behind him. I don’t like that, and certainly he had absolutely no right to...[Pauses.] well, he has every right. He lives in a free country, and he can say what he likes. But at the same time, it was a bit disturbing. I haven’t had as many phone calls or texts from people over something like that -- friends here and in the city, and other artists who were kind of shocked and like, “What’s this?”
He also offered a brief, but unconvinced reflection as to why their views might have gotten misunderstood in the first place:
I think over the years there’s been a number of times when things of ours have been misinterpreted -- either our imagery, or something where people are not quite reading between the lines. 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. We come from the council estates of Essex, which is a really shitty place, just 30 minutes east of London, where they stuck everybody when London was getting too overpopulated in the late '60s. So I don’t quite get what he was [saying].
The interview reveals a good deal of insight into how Gahan sees the band in the current political moment, which makes the whole thing worth a read. Revisit the band's latest single "Where's The Revolution" below.
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The group's 14th studio LP Spirit is out 3/17 via Columbia.
