Violator Is 21 Years Old. Buy It A Drink.

The date was 18 June 1988, and Depeche Mode had just performed the final show of their Tour For The Masses at the venerated Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Thus ended their hugest tour of their relatively young career, and the obvious question on everybody's tongues was, How on Earth do they top this?


How, indeed. The tour was filmed by renowned music documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, and later released as the concert film 101. In fact, at the end of the movie, one saw a shockingly young Martin Gore backstage, sitting in the green room with a mixture of shock and elation on his face, tears streaming from his eyes, repeating as a mantra: "What now? What do we do now?" It was a fantastic moment of honesty and, yes, fear in young Gore's features.

After taking a much needed rest, the band hunkered down with their long-time manager Daniel Miller of Mute Records and famed producer Flood in May of 1989 to record what would become their biggest-selling album ever; a dark masterwork featuring some of Gore's most intimate writing to date, and three of their most ground-breaking singles ("Personal Jesus," "Enjoy the Silence," and "Halo" come to mind) that helped launch Depeche Mode into the stratosphere, cementing their place as the world's most successful (and probably only, these days) stadium-filling electronic act of all time.

I'm talking, of course, about Violator. Did you know that it was released 21 years ago, on the 19th of March, 1990? Wow, it's amazing how fast the time has flown by, isn't it? But listening to it now causes one (me, for instance) to realize how immediate and timeless this recording really is. Being the first DM album to utilize real drums (Alan Wilder's bombastic stick work in the highly spiritual "Clean") and certainly a more "rock 'n roll" sound (more guitars, for instance, and some highly stylized harmonica samples), I think Violator was quite possibly the first DM album to solidly register with the "rock kids," and, as such, spread the joy that is DM all over the proverbial map.

Which is a great thing. What's not to love? There's something for everybody here, whether it's the blistering blues influence coursing through the train-inspired "Sweetest Perfection" (sung to, er, sweetest perfection by the eternally-youthful Martin Gore); the stomping rock 'n roll fever that permeates every second of "Personal Jesus;" the haunting spareness of "Waiting For The Night, with probably the most plaintive and introspective vocals ever sung by Dave Gahan (and the twinkling stars represented by Wilder's synths are simply gorgeous); and, of course, Gore's bewitching vocals on the most lovely and romantic "Blue Dress" ("Can you believe - something so simple - something so trivial - makes me a happy man - can't you understand - say you believe - just how easy it is to please me - because when you learn you'll know what makes the world turn")

So! How about cuing up Violator (on vinyl if you got it) and toasting its 21st birthday in style? That's what I did. Cheers, kids. Here's "Halo" for you.