Bands could not function without a member designated as a quiet flag bearer, and in Depeche Mode it was Andy Fletcher, who died suddenly at the age of 60. Constitutionally modest, he was lucky as the group had two members: singer Dave Gahan and guitarist Martin Gore. – that they were comfortable with being the public face of Depeche Mode. This allowed Fletcher, universally known as Fletch, to remain his backbone.
It was crucial for their makeup, to push the band to achieve this, to encourage them to enter the studio or the road. Without their tenacity, exercised for 42 years, Depeche Mode would have broken down long before they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020.
Fletcher was a keyboardist and passionate electronics enthusiast, boasting of the role of the synthesizer in reversing the convention of music with guitars and drums. “Obviously, it’s sad to see the disappearance of the traditional rock band,” he said dryly in 1993. “But there will always be a place for cabaret.” But his musical interests rivaled that of a businessman. He enjoyed controlling receipts and merchandising, and for Depeche Mode, which became one of the largest tour groups in the world in the 1990s, he won it all: Fletcher was on stage behind his keyboard every night, but off-stage he was doing dusty management tasks. He estimated that he spent 17 years as a player-coach; even after the band acquired the direction of heavyweights, he held his hand.
Andy Fletcher performing during Depeche Mode’s Global Spirit tour in Washington, DC in 2017. Photo: Owen Sweeney / Invision / AP
His knowledge of the industry was recognized. When his death was announced, the Pet Shop Boys, a former brother of the 1980s, tweeted, “Fletch was a warm, kind, and funny person who loved electronic music and could also give sound advice on the music business.” . During the induction into the Hall of Fame, Gahan characterized the early Depeche Mode as “outsiders, weird eyelashes of Essex,” but Fletcher was never as unconventional as Gahan and Gore. Rather, it was considered “the tall guy in the background, without whom this international corporation called Depeche Mode would never function.”
He was the eldest of two sons and two daughters born in Nottingham to Joy and John Fletcher. In the early 1960’s, his father, an engineer, was offered a job at a cigarette factory in Basildon, and they became one of the first families to settle in the new city of Essex. Andy joined the Christian organization The Boys’ Brigade and remained a member until the age of 18, during which time he became an active religious figure. He attended church seven days a week and preached in the Brigade Cafeteria with his companion Vince Clarke. That period, he said, “shaped my beliefs and moral attitudes.” His ecclesiastical activities also aroused interest in music, and it was there that he picked up his first instrument, a guitar. He retained his faith after leaving the Brigade; In the 1980s, when Depeche Mode presented tense electropop singles that would influence rap, EDM, and metal, he felt guilty about not going to church.
Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher attend the Q Awards in 2002. Photo: Yui Mok / PA
He studied politics at A level and planned to go to college, but instead he and Clarke formed a band with a classmate from Nicholas Comprehensive School in Laindon, Gore. With Gahan, a friend of Southend’s, the new group had a ready audience at Southend’s crowded social circuit. The band’s musical direction was modeled on Gore, who had bought a then-revolutionary synthesizer, while his image, according to Fletcher, was “post-Blitz kids in ruffled T-shirts.” He got a job as a clerk at SunLife Insurance and stayed with her until he was pretty sure he could make a living from music. By then, Depeche Mode’s second single, New Life, had reached number 11 on the charts and had been on Top of the Pops.
They maintained a considerable presence on the charts throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with music evolving in an ornate and Gothic direction since the late 1980s. of the 1990s: The 14-month Devotional tour was described as “the craziest rock’n’roll tour ever” by Q. Fletcher magazine, who had previously seen the tour as “very fun”, now depressed . In addition, he was used as a mediator by the haunting Gahan and the extravagant Gore during his usual creative quarrels.
“We Had Something” – How Andrew Fletcher of Depeche Mode Watched Music, Fans, and Band – Video
Gahan took over in the late 1990s and the band resumed live recording and playback. Gore and Gahan launched solo careers, but Fletcher, who once said he had little interest in writing songs, founded his own record label, Toast Hawaii. He signed with the band Client, which released several albums, but the label was always secondary to his commitments to Depeche Mode and it became known shortly after Client left in 2006. His involvement with the group was arouse interest in DJing: he learned the techniques. at their concerts and since then they have occasionally played solo at clubs and festivals.
Since the mid-1990s, Fletcher and his wife, Gráinne Mullan, have run a restaurant in St John’s Wood, north London. He sold it after a decade, blaming it on “all the little things that went wrong.” It was enough to get back into the hospitality business in 2021, investing in the relaunch of a Hampstead pub, the Duke of Hamilton.
Gráinne, whom she married in 1993, survives, as do her children, Megan and Joe.
Andrew John Leonard Fletcher, musician, born July 8, 1961; died May 26, 2022