The best song Depeche Mode never recorded

“Just Can’t Get Enough” was the song that helped launch i Depeche Mode towards stardom. That song was written by Clarke winsthe ‘mind’ of the English band’s first album released in 1981 entitled “Speak & spell”. After that one album Clarke left the group.

Leave yourself i
Depeche Mode Vince Clarke
formed him
Yazoo
together with the singer
Alison Moyet
and released the album in 1982
“Upstairs at Eric’s”
. The song is present on this album
“Only you”
which launched Clarke’s successful career. Exaggerating a little, one could argue that this is the most important song I have ever written, perhaps the best song I have ever written
Depeche Mode
they never recorded.

The 21 year old
Clarke wins
he left the band with a little resentment on both sides. His farewell will force
Martin Gore
to become one of the best songwriters of his generation, ei
Depeche Mode
to recruit
Alan Wilder
which will help provide the Basildon group’s new songs with that dark and menacing atmosphere that distanced them from Clarke’s synth-pop that had profoundly characterized their first album.

According to the discoverer of the
Depeche Mode
and boss of
Mute Records
Daniel Miller
Vince’s departure from the band’s original lineup was not unexpected. He told it in an interview with
Andy Jones
of Classic Pop in 2020: “We did a small tour of Europe, playing in Amsterdam, Paris, Hamburg and Brussels. I was driving the van, as tour manager, and I noticed that Vince had distanced himself a lot from the rest of the band. He would sit in the front next to me, while the others were in the back joking around and he would just sit there in silence. When he decided to leave, I guess it was a shock, but I felt something was wrong. Another memory I have is when he played the band a rough version of “Just Can’t Get Enough”: the band really didn’t want to play it because they considered it too pop, so I think there was already a certain musical divergence, not huge, but subtle.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the love of
Clarke wins
for synths, as part of his decision to leave the
Depeche Mode
it was due to the opportunities that technology offered to effectively become a one-man band. To Electronics & Music Maker in 1984 he stated: “The MC4 (one of the first music sequencers, ed.) turned out to be very useful when I left Depeche Mode and formed Yazoo, because I used it instead of the other musicians. I’m not a very technically good keyboard player, and after getting a Jupiter 4 I bought an MC4 Microcomposer, which I used mainly to play the parts that I couldn’t do myself. It means that if you compose a melody, you can store it in the machine’s memory and more or less forget about it, which allows you to concentrate on getting the right sound for that part. It’s very similar when recording too, because you don’t have to worry about playing the part absolutely perfectly: it’s already there, in one take, and this leaves you free to concentrate on the recording process itself.”

Alison Moyet he was looking for new collaborators and then he published an advert in a newspaper, in 2011 he had the opportunity to tell The Quietus how the partnership with Clarke was born: “I was looking for another group of blues musicians to collaborate with. Vince was looking for a singer other than Dave Gahan, but at the same time he was also looking for my number, so it was real luck that he opened the newspaper and found my number. It seemed like destiny.”

Clarke wins he wasn’t exactly the musician she had in mind, but she was impressed by his attitude. “Everything we did during that time worked out perfectly. I don’t think Vince ever intended to form a band with me. He was still very bitter, Depeche Mode were his friends and leaving them was like the end of a marriage. I think he felt angry and disillusioned and wanted to prove himself as a songwriter, so we got together with no future, and it was ups and downs.”

The first song they worked on together was “Only You”. A song with melancholic lyrics that described the emotions that follow a breakup. Naturally, fans interpreted this as Vince talking about his departure from his former band, and often claimed that the song was rejected by Depeche Mode. It wasn’t true. The truth was that she was almost rejected by the label boss, Daniel Millernot too convinced by the first version of the song. “I thought it was a great pop song, but when I first heard it I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. I was a little distracted because I was trying to do something else. I’m always distracted when these things happen! But obviously we ended up working on it, and it was a fantastic project.”

What happened next was that Vince sent Alison a demo of “Only You”and she recorded some rough vocals. This convinced Miller to record the song and release it as a single, one of the band’s first three songs Yazootogether with “Don’t Go” And “Situation”.

Always talking to Electronics & Music Maker
Clarke wins
he said: “When I started with Yazoo, I don’t think much had changed musically, although I suppose my lyrics had become a little more serious. One of the things I regret is that I can no longer write as lightly as I used to. The lyrics seem to be more important to me, even though I know that’s not the case. I’ve never wanted to say anything particularly shocking in my lyrics. I have my opinions, but I’m not so sure that anyone really cares.”

“Only You”
brought Vince back to the top of the charts, reaching number two in the UK in May 1982. Alison wasn’t used to success like that, and was overwhelmed. As he recalled to the Independent: “We released ‘Only You’. It did great. Then we released another one which did equally well. And an album. It all happened in the space of about three months. We never talked about anything other than recording, about anything else. Suddenly we were in a very successful band, but we’d never gone for a beer together. It was really strange, almost like an arranged marriage.”

This, however, is the memory of
Daniel Miller
: “‘Only You’ became a huge hit in a very short time. Vince was already in the business and it catapulted Alison into a world she didn’t know. She was basically a blues singer and I don’t think she particularly liked electronic music. In a very short time the success exploded and we found ourselves touring Europe and going to America.”

The relationship between Vince and Alison would soon fall apart, especially in the studio, where they recorded their debut album

Yazoo
,
“Upstairs at Eric’s”
. The title came from the fact that the album was recorded upstairs
Blackwing Studios
Of
Eric Radcliffe
where i
Depeche Mode
had recorded their debut album,
“Speak & Spell”
. Moyet recalls: “I would write a song and he would arrange it. Then I would sing on it, or he would sing me a song on the guitar and I would work on the melody, add vocals and sing it the way I wanted. There was no discussion about whether it was a sweet song or a dance song, I just sang it the way I wanted.”

It even got to the point where she refused a song,
“Happy people”
which was sung by Vince, and although they managed to release another album the following year,
“You And Me Both”
the pressure of fame was too much for Alison to take and she had to take most of the spotlight while Vince hid behind his synthesizers. Miller about the chemistry between the two
Yazoo
she said: “They didn’t have a particularly strong relationship. They just knew each other. Of course, it was exciting, but I think it also took its toll on both of them. Alison wasn’t the conventional frontwoman of the early ’80s. There was a sort of stereotype of the frontwoman at the time and she wasn’t that. She was, I don’t know, 19 or 20 at the time, they were young people plucked from the working-class areas of Essex and thrown into this other world. It’s a huge pressure.”

This affected both of them greatly, as he said
Alison Moyet
to The Quietus: “Already when we started working on the second album we knew it was over. He had already decided that he no longer wanted to collaborate with me”. Years after the dissolution, in 2008, there was a reunion of the
Yazoo
. Moyet commented to the Independent’s notebooks: “The irony is that we really wanted to talk to each other. The conversation flowed so smoothly it was like saying: ‘Wow, after all this, we actually have a lot in common’.”