Calls for Depeche Mode to be honoured in home town of Basildon

Fans of one of the world’s biggest-selling bands have called for them to be officially recognised in their home town.

Depeche Mode started out as a four-piece in Basildon, Essex, in 1980 before achieving global fame with their trademark electronic sound and brooding lyrics.

Barclay Quarton, lead singer with tribute band The Devout, said: “In Basildon, there should be some sort of mural or something that draws in tourism from around the globe to say magic was created here.”

Basildon Council has not responded to a request for comment.

Quarton said: “Magic started here in this little town in Essex and it means a lot to millions and millions of people.”

Calls for official recognition come as a BBC Radio 4 documentary Depeche Mode: Reach Out and Touch Faith speaks to commentators and guests about the group’s working class roots and remarkable journey as musicians.

The band, originally called Composition of Sound, was formed by friends Andy Fletcher, Vince Clarke and Martin Gore before Dave Gahan was recruited later.

They performed for the first time as a four-piece at Nicholas School, now James Hornsby School in Laindon, Basildon, which Gore and the late Fletcher attended, with Clarke a former pupil at Laindon High Road School.

The band, however, mostly live in the United States now and have been critical of their hometown in interviews.

Gore was quoted as saying: “I really hated Basildon. I wanted to get out as quickly as I could… I hear it’s a pretty horrible place these days,” while Gahan was quoted as saying: “All I remember about Basildon was that it was awful.”

Deb Danahay first became friends with Gahan at Barstable School, with Depeche Mode playing one of their first gigs at a party she co-hosted at Paddocks Community Hall, Laindon.

She used to help run the Depeche Mode Information Service in the band’s early days and was in a relationship for four years with Clarke, who left to launch Yazoo with fellow Basildon musician Alison Moyet and later Erasure with Andy Bell.

Ms Danahay now takes dedicated Depeche Mode fans – known as Devotees – on tours of Basildon, built to ease post-war overcrowding in London.

The majority of visitors were from Europe, particularly Germany, and South America, she said.

“Most of them think they’re going to come to the town centre and there’s going to be statues of the band – they’re really shocked [that there isn’t],” she said.

Ms Danahay, who lives in Canvey Island, said that while there was a plaque in James Hornsby School’s sports hall to commemorate Depeche Mode’s first gig, there was little else in the way of official recognition.

On tours, she is limited to taking fans to a board outside featuring photographs of Gore, Fletcher and Clarke along with former pupils Alison Moyet, The Cure’s Perry Bamonte, and Bob the Builder and Paw Patrol creator Keith Chapman.

Fans appreciated giant portraits of the band members in the Towngate Theatre too, she said.

As pioneers of the electronic sound inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, Depeche Mode and their peers were shaped by growing up in a new town surrounded by young people, Ms Danahay said.

“My parents… came from Dagenham and lots of Dagenham and East End people moved there,” she said.

“They got a brand new house and the town centre wasn’t even built then – and it’s an analogy that I’ve heard, that it was because there were no old people… there wasn’t people saying you shouldn’t be doing this or that.

“We had so much freedom and didn’t appreciate it because we thought this was how everyone’s town was: the schools were brand new, everything was completely brand new.

“It was just brilliant.”