Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on the terrifying moment he died for two minutes: “My screaming soul floated above me”
While the 1980s saw electronic powerhouse Depeche Mode soar to unstoppable heights, the 1990s witnessed their success take on a notably darker tone. Fans continued to revel in the innovative sounds of albums like Speak and Spell, A Broken Flame, and Music for the Masses until the band released Violator—arguably their most defining album to date. Yet, away from the spotlight, fame and fortune, things weren’t nearly as rosy for frontman Dave Gahan.
1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion appeared more aggressive and darker than Violator, partially due to the emerging rock and grunge scenes in the United States but also due to the natural affinity with the macabre that the band members shared. After its release, Songs of Faith and Devotion achieved the number one spot in multiple countries, followed by their most extensive tour up to that point, spanning a period of 14 months.
However, prior to the tour, the recording process proved to be intense and turbulent, so much so that it resulted in a former member, Alan Wilder, quitting the band in 1985. According to Wilder, the recording process had meetings “where the question of Dave’s drug usage was addressed.”
He added, “It was put to Dave that if he didn’t clean up his act, we wouldn’t make it through such a long tour. He agreed.”
The next couple of years would show Gahan’s struggle with addiction reaching its peak, with several harrowing incidences involving his mother and son Jack catching him using in a bathroom and a suicide attempt while on the phone with his mother. “My whole life was Spinal Tap at that time,” he said, and when you find yourself sleeping in a coffin-shaped bed with the curtains taped shut, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Although it would be easy to blame fame and success for his mental health decline, Gahan assured at the time that wasn’t the case at all. “That was the last thing I was worried about,” he said.
1996 saw Gahan’s worst moment with addiction yet, medically dying for two whole minutes. “You flatlined for a couple of minutes. You were dead,” the doctors told him. At the time, he said that it felt like it was as if a switch had been flicked off. “The first thing I realised in the hospital was that I exited my body. I was floating underneath the ceiling and could observe exactly what was happening underneath me: Paramedics were running around my body and tried to save me. I screamed that I wasn’t actually lying down there but above them,” he recalled to BILD.
Continuing, he added: “I believe it was my soul screaming which had already left my body and became a witness of what happened to my body. At that point, I was clinically dead, my heart wasn’t beating. These seconds seemed like hours to me. And suddenly, there was a complete, frightening darkness around me. As if someone had turned off the light.”
When he came to, he was arrested. “When I woke up, I was tied to the bed with handcuffs,” he recalled. “Policemen were standing in front of me and read my rights to me. I was arrested because of possession of cocaine and heroin.”
After the stark realisation for the first time in his life that “it became clear to me that I am not immortal,” Gahan vowed sobriety, a move which significantly contributed to his happiness and perhaps ensured the lasting success of Depeche Mode.
