Martin Gore
Martin Gore
Martin Lee Gore is an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, producer, remixer, and DJ. He is a founding member of Depeche Mode and has written the majority of their songs. His work now spans over four decades. Gore's best-known compositions include hits such as "Personal Jesus", "Enjoy the Silence", "Stripped", "It's No Good", "In Your Room", "Strangelove", "I Feel You", "People Are People", "Precious", "A Question of Time", "Policy of Truth", "Everything Counts", "Behind the Wheel", "Shake the Disease", "Never Let...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth23 July 1961
When people meet me I think they're surprised to find out I'm not always angst-ridden.
I'm not particularly prolific.
All of my kids are into music. My older daughter plays guitar, piano, sings. My young son, he sings.
I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.
When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy - but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life.
I think being in a band is probably the only job when you're actively encouraged to be out of it most of the time.
I tend to like songs that are very emotional, that strike a chord with me emotionally.
I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
You make one solo album, and some people swear you're about to leave the band or there are creative differences.
Kids today don't know that much about vinyl.
Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.
Music is really all about experimentation and lots of trial and error. It's just mind-numbingly boring until you hit on something that works well.
I started getting back into buying old analog gear while we were recording. Lots of old drum machines and synths. It wasn't a conscious thing. I didn't consider myself a collector, but boxes of vintage gear would turn up virtually every day.