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Depeche Mode about the album's songs
"Love, In Itself"
Dave Gahan: "This is the s-s-s-s’s track. It had a very soft vocal, with a lot of s’s, it sounded awful. I was a bit disappointed with this, it could have been brilliant."
Andy Fletcher: "We had a lot of problems with the equipment with this one, just trying to get that softness of sound we wanted without it all blurring was a real nightmare. It’s one that’s always good live, though."
"Pipeline"
Dave Gahan: "Well 'Pipeline' was very experimental in that every sound on there has been made from us just out on the street hitting things, recording it and playing it back in different ways – like, even the vocal was recorded in a tunnel!"
Andy Fletcher: "We went down Brick Lane and just hit everything and then recorded it and took it back to the studio and then put it into the keyboard. That's how we made the track 'Pipeline'. We was like smashing corrugated iron and old cars. The vocals were recorded in a railway arch in Shoreditch - you've got the train three-quarters of the way through and the aeroplane up above. It's really interesting doing that."
"Everything Counts"
Martin Gore: "I think 'Everything Counts' was partly inspired by going to Thailand as well as the song 'Shame' — that's where the oriental flavour comes in, like Korea 'n' all that. But you go over there and all the hotels are full of, like, businessmen and basically they tend to treat people as though they're nothing. All they're interested in is their business — that's what I really hate about big business, people just don't seem to matter. Just money. You see all the women over there 'n' they're all prostitutes — that's the only way they can make any money. 'Course, the businessmen love it. Work [will "remove the stains"]. It's no good just sitting back and hoping things'll change, you've got to actually work together. The material's there; it's like, there's enough food in the world to feed everybody and then half the world's eating three quarters of it and the rest of the world's starving. But the food is there. There is a solution. The thing is, the people in power don't care about someone with a low wage, they only care about their own power. But I think people should care about other people, y'know, cos from the moment we're born we're put into competition with everybody else. I really don't understand why people go into politics — what makes someone at 16 or 17 decide to go into parliament? It's got to be people themselves. People's attitudes have got to be changed. For instance, when I wrote "All we need's universal revolution", I didn't mean, like, everyone to take up arms, but more a total change of attitude. That's what's needed. People's attitudes have got to be changed. You've got to look at the world to change things. Attitudes in the world, poverty in the world. The thing is when we talk about socialism, we don't mean "English Socialism" we mean "International Socialism"."
Dave Gahan: "It's one of my favorite songs. It's taken from the Construction Time Again album, which was an important step in our career. That's when we started becoming successful in Europe. At the time, in England, 'Everything Counts' went into the Top 10, but elsewhere, it did not work. That's why we wanted it to be on the live album. The lyrics are timeless. They talk of money, power and corruption."
"Two Minute Warning"
Alan Wilder: "It was about the nuclear arms race of the eighties."
"The Landscape Is Changing"
Alan Wilder: "I saw a TV documentary about acid rain which gave me the idea for 'The Landscape'."
"Work Hard"
Dave Gahan: "I remember a B-side called "Work Hard", which mainly consisted of wood breaking. We ran around with a hammer and toolbox across the junkyards in East London and crashed everything we could find. Gareth Jones had a cassette recorder and a microphone, and so we came back into the studio with loud, strange sounds, which we would put in a sampler or on an analogue tape, and cut up again and again until a good rhythm came out of it."
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