Gahan describes his most recent album entitled ‘Impostor’, full of covers performed with his alternative group, Soulsavers.
Paris (AFP) .- “It’s a story that I identify with,” Depeche Mode leader Dave Gahan told AFP to describe his latest album Imposter (Imposter), full of versions performed alongside his alternative group, Soulsavers.
The title may surprise, but not a rock star who lived like so many others a difficult adolescence, and that later he tasted the honeys of triumph, and also the ice of the drug and alcohol.
Impostor because “I always saw myself like this, even before dedicating myself to music. When i was teenagers I wanted to be part of something, to be accepted ”, explains Gahan in Paris, where he gave a concert with the Soulsavers.
When he joined Depeche Mode, Gahan also felt displaced, confesses. For years he limited himself to performing the songs of the group’s mastermind, Martin Gore. It cost him but after a while he ended up writing his own compositions.
“We all have that insecurity,” Rich Machin, architect of the Soulsavers and producer of the album, also explains to AFP, next to the singer in a Parisian hotel.
“We all say to ourselves at some point ‘I shouldn’t be here, I don’t deserve it’, like when you have the opportunity to play with incredible musicians,” adds the instrumentalist, clad in black jeans and white boots.
Difficult tour
For Imposter, Gahan and Machin take standards, from Neil Young a Nina Simone, and works by much lesser-known artists, such as Cat Power o Mark Lanegan.
It is a twilight album, the mirror of a life of addictions and problems, before reaching the threshold of 60 years, that Gahan will meet in 2022.
The album is illustrated with a silhouette advancing in a corridor, the light behind him, the semi-darkness in front of him. A staging that reminds The Dark End of the Street that popularized Aretha Franklin.
“Talk about someone dissatisfied where they are. It is part of me, I have an addictive personality but I work hard to live in the present, right now [tras acabar con las drogas y el alcohol]Gahan adds, dressed smartly in a black suit.
Shut Me Down, A song by Rowland S. Howard (guitarist for Birthday Party, Nick Cave’s first lineup) evokes all the loved ones one might have hurt in the past.
“This album came, as often happens, by accident, but once finished, it revealed many things,” he said.
“You have to take risks if you want to change,” emphasizes the singer.
“Change those behaviors that you think are solutions, such as drugs, alcohol, love relationships, that are only temporary, because I realize that music has been the only constant in my life ”, he confides.
Tribute to others
Imposter ends with a song that sounds like reconciliation, Always On My Mind, one of the most resounding interpretations of Elvis presley.
Gahan says he has a serene life, with a recomposed family and now with the Soulsavers, an alternative group with ten musicians. A chosen family, with whom he recorded at the renowned Shangri-La studios in Malibu.
“The most important thing that I have learned in 40 years of career is that you have to know how to capture the moment under study. And that’s what happened, ”explains Dave Gahan. “Every day I pinched myself, every morning I said ‘is it today that everything is going to spoil?’, But no”.
It was at Shangri-La Studios that country singer Johnny Cash covered Personal Jesus, perhaps the best known Depeche Mode title. This time it’s time to return the favor and pay tribute to others.
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