This is a sort of review of the video for “Suffer Well”. It was meant to be part of a project that’s currently on hold, but which I hope to pick up again in the future.
2006.
Two months to go.
“Suffer Well” is released, the second single from Playing the Angel.
I welcomed it with great joy, given that Exciter hadn’t really done it for me and that I’d read loads of interviews with Dave in which he was venting all his pent-up anger at Martin because his ideas were always being rejected. At the time, I wasn’t yet fully aware of Dave’s endless cycle of constantly seeking Martin’s approval and Martin’s perpetual emotional block, which shut him off from Dave. I would only come to understand this later on.
It’s strange that I didn’t understand this… Basically, these were the ‘arguments’ in my family until a few years ago. (Note the quotation marks, because they weren’t arguments, they were monologues against a brick wall).
His subsequent threat to leave Depeche Mode and, naturally, Martin’s determination to say as little as possible on the subject didn’t bode well.
The situation was more or less this:
- Paper Monsters: Dave Gahan isn’t throwing knives at Martin Gore, he’s throwing chef Tony’s entire collection, the Miracle Blades and every big knife you can find at a Tuscan butcher’s (the worst is “Bottle Living”, but the others also sound like the classic post-break-up album: “Why don’t you love meeeee?!?!?!”)
- Counterfeit2 (yes, it’s on the board, I can’t remember how to do it, it’s evening, it’s late, don’t give me a hard time): Classic Martin Gore-style dig (Stardust) and then let’s change the subject. Total silence.
So when Playing the Angel came out, it was a proper big party!
I pretty much ignored the first single “Precious”, which I find too easy listening for my taste, at least musically. The lyrics are lovely but they’re about broken hearts, so they trigger the usual response in me: “love = 404 page not found”, “maybe in the next life?”, dunno.
Suffer Well, on the other hand, is right up my street.
Those indefinable electronic sounds return, and the atmosphere alone makes you feel uneasy. Not even Martin’s interesting guitar intro lifts the mood a bit; on the contrary, it sounds completely desolate, with that minor key that doesn’t promise anything happy on the horizon.
Cold tones everywhere – the set design, the lighting, the clothes, everything.
A charming, well-dressed Dave stares you in the face, a blank expression on his face.
Even his suit is grey.
Dave may well be handsome, but this Dave conveys nothing to me. He’s an empty shell.
Is there anyone in there?
He takes his wedding ring off his finger.
I don’t like the direction this is taking.
He breaks into a jewellery shop, which is also completely cold and grey.
He grabs some tacky jewellery… Oh my God, is the Dave from ‘It’s no good?’ coming back?
He turns round and bam! It’s him!
Except it isn’t him.
This Dave isn’t self-deprecating; he doesn’t smile. He’s got a scruffy beard and, worse still, sunglasses – the perennial best friends of those who take drugs and don’t want to reveal either giant pupils (coke) or pin-point pupils (heroin), nor suffer from photophobia and crash into various surfaces because the whole world is a giant ball of light.
He steps out of the jewellery shop and finds himself face to face with a beautiful angel!
She’s gorgeous!!! She’s got a port-de-bras that gives me the creeps a bit, but her face really fascinates me. It’s yet another proof, though, that you can’t be slim with real boobs. Guys, slim women either have no boobs or fake ones—that’s just how it is. It’s nature. Want big boobs? We’ve got a few extra pounds. (Apart from certain models who’ve won the genetic lottery)
Dave wants to go towards her but some cars cut him off. Bro, look both ways before you cross!!!
Too late. The angel disappears.
Dave, where’s your head? Did you miss out on the hottie because you didn’t check for oncoming traffic? It’s fine that pussy is always the most important thing for men, but please stay alive, thank youuuuu.
Anyway, this angel walks off, Dave changes his mind, turns back and heads towards another building, the ‘Future’, which looks like your classic pub for drunks or strippers.
‘Future’ – ‘We sell hell and suffer well’?
That says it all.
A strong wind is blowing and Dave seems to start struggling.
He enters another bar with difficulty, and this really is the classic pub for drunks and strippers, complete with red lights – I’m not sure if they’re a reference to the strippers or to “Walking in my shoes” – with Dave bathed in red light as a sad omen, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dave’s story (and Martin’s and Andy’s to a lesser extent) reminds me so much of Hubert’s words at the start of Mathieu Kassovitz’s film “La Haine”:
“It’s the story of a man who falls from a fifty-storey building… On every floor, as he falls, the man keeps repeating: ‘So far so good, so far so good, so far so good’. This is to say that what matters isn’t the fall but the landing.”
I’m sure they all felt that way, right up to Dave’s overdose, right up to Martin’s thousand crises (he publicly admitted to using Dave’s disastrous state to divert attention from his own slightly less disastrous state), right up to Andy’s nervous breakdown.
I would have felt the same way myself, when I crashed to the ground two months later.
Red lights and a floor reminiscent of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks give me a moment of pure anguish stemming from childhood traumas I’ve never got over (I love Twin Peaks as a script but everything else still makes me shit myself to this day), but this feeling is immediately overtaken by an even worse one: the sadness of seeing Dave with his head on the bar, dancing alone, drunk, thinking he’s seeing who knows what.
I’ve been seeing this scene for years, more and more often, more and more often.
So many images flash through my mind, every time I’ve come looking for you.
This scene hits too close to home.
Let’s move on.
Dave walks out and his hair is getting longer. I’ve realised where we’re heading.
He keeps walking and ends up in front of a wedding dress shop.
Oh my God!!! Is that Martin?!?!?
Sorry Andy, you rock in a tuxedo 10/10 but MARTIN AS A BRIDE?!?!?!
Oh my God, he looks amazing!!! Trolls, say what you like, but he looks amazing!!!!
Curls! Tiara! Dress!!! Even those who say, “But the chest hair…” Who cares!!! You’re men, it up to you to have chest hair or not!
(Martin as a princess bride even charms our Jenny, who, in the making-of video, says to Dave, “Look at your darling. He really is something special. Quite a beauty.” All this was recorded; I didn’t make it up.)
Anyway, after five minutes of dissecting every inch of Martin, Dave takes my place and, drawn like moths to a flame, like bees to honey, rests his hands on the shop window looking like:
- Me, gazing dreamily at the display of chocolate cream puffs
- David Gahan staring at Martin Gore at any given moment
Dave is hoping for a reaction from Martin, who instead simply ignores him, looking straight ahead and harmonising sweetly with his beautiful voice.
There are so many, many expressions crossing Dave’s face right now: Adoration, sadness, resignation, pure “I’m completely wasted and can barely stand up”.
They’re re-enacting the Dave vs Martin drama from years gone by. What the hell is this, shock therapy? Did someone lose a bet? But who came up with this idea?!?! It’s pure masochism or sadism, depending on which side you look at it from!
Poor Dave, rejected by the person he adores, turns to Andy, pleading with, I don’t know, a gesture, something. Andy remains stoic, without batting an eyelid, and Dave loses all hope right there.
A snowstorm begins to fall. Dave now has long hair and teardrop-shaped glasses. The circle is complete.
The Dave from Songs of Faith and Devotion succumbs amidst the snow and the cold.
It’s true, Dave. The others didn’t help you, they didn’t understand. Perhaps, like me, they’d had enough of the lies, the fears, the constant anxiety that that damned phone would ring and that this time you wouldn’t be able to find a living body.
At some point, you can’t fall into the precipice too; you have to let go.
I had to do it myself not long ago, and how much it hurt, but I couldn’t go on living like that any longer. I hope you’ve come to understand that, in time. We tried so hard.
The well-dressed Dave is back! And we’ve got some warm tones!
There’s a brief contrast between the Dave from Sofad, surrounded by the cold of snow and death, and today’s Dave, surrounded by sunshine and life.
For a moment, you find yourself thinking about the crossroads we encounter in life. That ‘What if…’…
Unfortunately, we can’t see where certain paths will lead us. We can only understand it afterwards, if we survive.
Thank God. Thank you, Dave, for making it through.
A girl arrives and Mr Elegance lifts her into the car like a gentleman, not like he’d be picking up a hooker.
Wait…! It’s the angel!!! I can’t believe it!!!!
I thought it was odd that Dave didn’t get the girl… I mean, come on… He’s hot,alt she’s hot…
Today’s Dave points out Sofad’s Dave in the snowdrift to the angel, as if to say, “Look, that could have been me.” We get a close-up of the angel, as if to confirm that he’s now on the right path, he’s made the right choice, he’s chosen to live.
Dave and the angel kiss.
A story with a happy ending.
Two months later, my life would come to an sudden halt.
–
“Where were you when I fell from grace?
Frozen heart, an empty space
Something’s changing, it’s in your eyes
Please don’t speak, you’ll only lie”
“I just hang on, suffer well
Sometimes it’s hard, it’s hard to tell”
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