Watch Depeche Mode’s stripped-back performance with BBC Concert Orchestra

Depeche Mode have shared two stripped-back performances with the BBC Concert Orchestra – check them out below.

• READ MORE: Depeche Mode: “Do the best you can – you don’t know if you’re going to be doing it again”

The duo – Dave Gahan and Martin Gore – took to the Radio 2 Piano Room to share versions of ‘Walking In My Shoes’ and ‘Ghosts Again’. It aired on the radio during the band’s huge North American arena tour behind comeback album ‘Memento Mori’.

Asked by the BBC‘s Gary Davies of their memories of recording ‘Walking In My Shoes’ in the early 1990s, Gahan said: “I don’t have many. That’s not a good thing, but I really don’t remember recording that song and it was a particular time when we were all having too much fun outside of work and I guess it caught up with us, but it’s one of those songs that never gets old when you perform it.

“It always evolves. And over the years, songs do that if they’re good songs. They take on different meanings, depending on what’s going on in your life at that time and in the world around us and it’s one of those really. It’s why we keep it in the set.”

Davies then told the frontman: “Do you know a few weeks ago we had Bono and The Edge from U2 in the Radio 2 Piano Room and Bono has that song on his ‘sixty songs that saved my life’ playlist. Did you know that?”

Gahan then responded: “I didn’t know that. No, but I do know he is a fan of the song and over the years we crossed paths, many times… Yeah. There’s a connection.

“We were in a rehearsal room in New York a few years back and playing the song. And we came out the rehearsal room and Bono was standing in the hallway and he was eavesdropping on the song and we had a little chat after about it. He told me that it was one of those songs that he wished he’d written.”

Watch the two stripped-back performances below.

Depeche Mode are also scheduled to tour in Europe, the UK and Ireland later this year. Find any remaining tickets for the UK dates here.

From then, the duo will head out on a second leg of North American shows between late September and mid-December, 2023 (buy tickets here).

In a four-star-review of ‘Memento Mori’ – Depeche Mode’s 15th studio effort, which follows 2017’s ‘Spirit’ – NME said the record is “comfortably their best album this side of the millennium, and, most importantly, a testament to creativity and friendship. The music world is richer for it.”

Speaking to NME about the album and the band’s ethos, Gahan said: “It’s a ‘get up and do it yourself’ spirit. Do it your way and don’t be told how to. Eventually it will work out for you.”

The post Watch Depeche Mode’s stripped-back performance with BBC Concert Orchestra appeared first on NME.