I know I’ve mentioned this many times before, but here’s the short version once more: in early 2000 I met one of my childhood heroes, George Harrison.  I believe he was visiting a holistic campus a few towns over from the mall where I worked, and one day he came in to the store looking for music.  Suffice it to say, I was a) gobsmacked, b) nervous as hell and c) did my damnedest to make him feel at home.  I even chatted with him about music for a few minutes, which was super cool.

I bring this up as this past Friday was the long-awaited release of some major Beatles archival music:  the almost-forgotten 1977 compilation album Live at the Hollywood Bowl and the release of Ron Howard’s documentary of their live years, Eight Days a Week.  The hashtag #ISawTheBeatles has been floating around Twitter for the last few days as well.

Remembering that unexpected meeting with my childhood hero made me think of what my definition of ‘hero’ is.  I rarely use it to define any of my characters in my writing, as I’d rather write the Flawed Human Who’s Just Trying to Do Their Best.  [I rarely use it to describe someone in the military or someone who saved the day, come to think of it.  Not that I believe it unearned, far from it…more that it’s a word that’s been so overused and abused that it no longer rings true as an adequate descriptor for me.  But that’s another post entirely.]

I think at this point in my life, my kind of hero is someone I admire who’s influenced and/or inspired me, or taught me things I’ve desperately needed to know.  Someone who put me on the right path to where I wanted and needed to be.

Someone like Ray Bradbury, whose Dandelion Wine made me realize that reading is not always a chore — I just need to find what connects with me on a deeper level.  [Met him in 2006 at Worldcon and let him know he inspired me to become a serious writer.  He appreciated hearing that.]

Someone like George Harrison, who aside from being the lead guitarist for my all-time favorite band when I was a kid, inspired me to seek inner peace as a way to calm myself when I most needed it.

Are all my heroes musicians and writers?  No, there are everyday people who have been my heroes as well, like my history teacher in college, Rev. John Coffee, who taught me how to look at history not as a list of facts to memorize for a sememster-end exam but as an ongoing and evolving world story.  But yes, I will admit a lot of my personal heroes are creative people.  They’re the ones that have influenced and inspired me to do the best I can with my own creative works.  They’ve all shown me just how far I can go.

I’m not much of a hero worshiper, either.  Over the course of the last twenty or so years I’ve met with such people, I treat them as they would treat me: ordinary humans who just happened to get away with doing extraordinary things.  Doing meet-and-greets during my college radio and HMV tenures, and chatting with numerous writers at conventions, I’ve learned that meeting my heroes doesn’t have to contain a high level of squee and OMG.  If I ever met Hayao Miyazaki or Rumiko Takahashi in person I would most likely stutter and laugh a bit, but in the end I think I’d be able to thank them for their wonderful works and masterful storytelling.

After all, heroes are like you and I.  We all wake up groggy in the morning and in need of sustenance, and we all go to bed at the end of the day, exhausted by the day’s activities.  Heroes to me are the ones who actively, relentlessly look for answers in between those moments.

Ultra was an interesting album, in that it was their first in four years — an unprecedented timelapse for the band at the time, whose last stretch (between Violator and Songs of Faith… and not including the SoFaD Live set) was nearly three years.  It was also their first without Alan Wilder, who’d provided all the unique industrial sound effects to their albums and singles since Construction Time Again.  And it was also their first album after singer Dave Gahan’s recent health and emotional issues had become public.  This was going to be a make or break album for them.

As if to state the point right off, pre-album single “Barrel of a Gun” was a track of jagged misery and anger that mirrored all the personal issues they’d been dealing with over the last few years.  But it also proved that the more rock-oriented SoFaD wasn’t just a fluke.  The keyboards were still there, but they had truly evolved from a synthetic post-punk quartet to a 90s alternative rock band.  They had retained their dark moods and sounds, but they were now being delivered with a heavy punch.

The follow-up single, “It’s No Good” (released two weeks before the album itself) on the other hand, tripped up fans with its heavy sequencing and lighter melodic touch — hinting at their Some Great Reward era, come to think of it — but it was one of Martin Gore’s best and catchiest songs on the album and became a hit both in the US and the UK.  [And as if to drive the point home that they hadn’t completely lost their sense of humor, the video shows the trio performing as a skeezy lounge act and totally hamming it up.]

Third single “Home” showed that Martin Gore could still write and sing their best ballads, even though it failed to hit the charts.  Gore once again writes about the pleasures of a solid relationship and the reminders that things couldn’t get any better than this…even when things aren’t as good as they used to be.

Final single “Useless” brings the band full circle, sounding both strong and delicate at the same time.  It’s a track that hints at Violator-era songwriting but with a modern production.  The single itself was not a chart-topper, but it proved that they had persevered and remained an extremely popular and inspirational band.

The album itself dropped in mid-April 1997 alongside numerous other big-name alt.rock albums such as Supergrass’ In It for the Money, The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut (and just a month after U2’s long-awaited and sadly much-maligned Pop).  They couldn’t have timed it better, as that year was quite a turning point for the genre.  Britpop was dying a long and painful death, commercial alt.rock was splintering between mainstream rock (such as U2 and 3EB) on one side and the alternative metal of Korn, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit on the other.  This gave them a unique chance to release an amazingly strong album — even as they chose not to tour for it due to health reasons.  Numerous tracks would also pop up on American television shows — 90s TV was big on the popular sountracks back then — enabling them to stay in the spotlight.

They would finally return once more to touring for the next album — a second singles compilation — in late 1998, along with a new song, “Only When I Lose Myself”.  A lovely midtempo song, it would be the bridge between their harder rock sound of Ultra and the more acoustic and mellow Exciter album in 2001.  It’s a swan song in a way, a thank you to the fans that had seen them through an extremely turbulent but ultimately successful decade.

So while on my 90s kick, I of course had to listen to Violator, quite possibly Depeche Mode’s best album ever.  It’s an amazingly strong album from start to finish.  I was a relatively new convert to DM, having bought Some Great Reward and Catching Up (their US-based singles collection) in late 1986, with Black Celebration showing up in my collection soon after.

I usually see SGW as DM Phase II, where their songs were less about the synth bloops and more about the moods they could create with them.  This phase would end two albums and a greatest hits later with Music for the Masses, which one could conceivably see as their Joshua Tree — the album that broke them to a much wider audience.  Come 1989, after their highly regarded live show (documented on the live album and documentary, 101), they were back in the studio and creating something new.

DM Phase III started with a single that sounded nothing like they’d released before.  Continuing their habit of releasing a new single six months or so before the new album would drop, August 1989’s “Personal Jesus” was definitely a change of pace.  A country blues foot-stomper that featured a fantastic twanging guitar riff from songwriter Martin Gore, this new track sounded stronger and more current than their previous works.  They’d long grown out of their 80s industrial post-punk image and found their sex appeal.

They followed it up with in early February 1990 with what would become their most popular hit, “Enjoy the Silence”.  Driving, danceable and a hell of a great song to crank up on your car stereo, it’s one of Martin Gore’s best songs in his entire oeuvre.  It’s not a love song about trying to get the girl, or trying to impress the girl; it’s a song about already being with the girl; he’s blissfully happy and knows he doesn’t need anything else in this world to add to that happiness.  [In fact, the rest of the world pales in comparison, come to think of it.]

The third single, “Policy of Truth”, is the mirror opposite of its predecessor, even though they’re side by side on the album.  This is a relationship nearing its end, where trust is all but gone.  But in true Martin Gore form, the narrator would rather continue hearing sweet lies than the bitter truth, given the status of their relationship.  The song also contains one hell of a great last verse, in which nearly all the instruments have stuttered to a halt, underscoring the message: it’s far too late to fix this connection.

Fourth single, album opener “World in My Eyes”, is a quirky choice for the last single release, considering that in the context of the album as a whole it sets the scene: you’re about to hear a whole new Depeche Mode.  Still, it also works as a final single to remind us that we’re not going to be hearing the bloopiness of A Broken Frame or even the gloominess of Black Celebration.  This is the new Depeche Mode, like it or not.

Singles aside, the album tracks are equally as fantastic.  Album closer “Clean” harkens back to their dark-and-dirty dirges like “Little 15” and “Pipeline”, although this time the message isn’t grim — it’s a release, an awakening.

“Sweetest Perfection” employs both sampled and live drums, but it also includes stellar guitar work from Martin Gore.  The song builds from a creep to a stall to a full-on blast of emotion in just under five minutes.

Violator is still considered one of Depeche Mode’s greatest albums, and it’s a well deserved accolade.  They chose to go in a new direction here, one that would update their sound considerably, and Martin Gore is at his top form as a songwriter.  It still stands up well to this day, and their ‘new’ sound doesn’t sound dated at all.  You’ll still hear “Enjoy the Silence” right alongside today’s songs on alternative radio, and it hasn’t aged a bit.

Up next: Depeche Mode in the 90s: Songs of Faith and Devotion

I’ve been thinking about writing one of those writing memoirs over the last few years.  Specifically, I already know the title: Everything I Learned About Writing I Learned from Rock History.

I mean, think about it:

The Beatles, “Love Me Do”:

Their first single, and their first professionally recorded song, back in the summer of 1962.  It’s an incredibly simplistic song: barebones production, moon-June lyrics, and Paul’s vocal fill at the end of the verse is so full of nerves that you’d be surprised how often he fearlessly belted out songs at the Cavern on any given day.

What do I learn from this song as a writer?
–Your first work is more than likely going to be crap, because you’re too nervous about trying to get it right the first time that you fail to get it right the first time.
–On the other hand, if you have something unique and catchy enough, fans will look past that and give you another chance.  Single #2, “Please Please Me”, was released in January of 1963, and you can definitely see the improvement in not just the sound but the songwriting.  That track would end up being their first #1 hit.
–End result:  It’s okay to kinda make a fool of yourself first time out.  As long as you’re going in the right direction and you’re confident from the get-go, that’s all that matters.

Another example:  Woodstock.

The great thing about Woodstock is that it was the ultimate “let’s put on a show in the barn” and it was blessed with an amazing amount of luck and good karma that it ended up being a success (as an event, at any rate — financially I believe there were numerous hiccups) and a defining cultural event.

As a writer?  I learned the following:
–Sometimes the weirdest, craziest ideas might end up being the best and most successful ones.
–Go for it.  No, seriously: go for it.  What are you gonna lose?
–Caveat: At least have a general idea of what you want and how to get it.  Don’t make hasty and questionable decisions that could possibly bite you on the ass later on (yes, I’m thinking of Altamont here).  But trust your instincts if they’re screaming out that this is the right thing to do.  Or the absolute worst thing to do.

Or perhaps something more up to date:  One of my favorite indie bands of the moment, Dirty Dishes:

What, pray tell, did I learn here?
–Going indie is totally a viable career choice nowadays.  I heard about this group via NoiseTrade, and quickly downloaded their entire available discography to date from Bandcamp.  I’m on their mailing list, so I went out and downloaded this new track the day I got the note that it had been released.  They’ve become one of those bands where I’ll download their new works when they drop, even if I haven’t heard it yet.  [Just a few weeks ago, someone wrote something along the same lines as their review of one of my books — and let me tell you, that just about made my damn year!]
–The great thing about indie releases is that you can upload it to all sorts of sites if you wish.  I’ve seen bands on Bandcamp, eMusic, Amazon, and elsewhere.  You can do that with books too:  My ebooks are through Smashwords, but they’re also available through Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and elsewhere.  I’ve even put them up on NoiseTrade Books, and I’ve gotten a good handful of downloads from there as well.  Point being: be creative about getting your stuff out there, and keep an open mind.  You never know which avenue is going to bring in new fans!
–If you’ve got a unique voice and you know how to use it, perhaps releasing your work in a way you feel fits best may no longer be via the high-end pros.  I most likely will try selling future stories to agents and publishers, but in the long run, I realized that going indie was the best avenue for my trilogy after all.

The point is, it seems my decades-long obsession with music and its history has influenced my writing in more ways than what I write.  I’ve learned a lot from the music business as well, and I can see so many parallels with the writing business that it’s given me a clearer path to future endeavors.

So yeah…maybe writing a book about that might not be a bad idea…?