Depeche Mode had immediate success in England, but Clarke wasn’t happy. “Egos were flying around, mine especially,” he said. There was too much squabbling, so he quit. He figured he’d go back to one of his earlier jobs, which included emptying chemical toilets on airplanes, and make music as a hobby.
He wrote a beautiful ballad called “Only You” and needed a singer to demo it, so he replied to a newspaper ad by Moyet, a big-voiced, soulful singer whom he’d known distantly since childhood. But their personalities clashed — she was combative, he hates conflict — and the partnership ended quickly.
In a period of only five years, he made the first Depeche record, two Yazoo albums, the Assembly hit and the first Erasure single, “Who Needs Love Like That.” This hot streak, he said, happened because he spent almost all his time in recording studios. “I couldn’t soak it up fast enough.”
Near the end of our two-hour conversation, he proudly showed off his Eurorack, which is upstairs in the bedroom. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed. A Eurorack isn’t a machine, but a format, developed by the German company Doepfer in the mid-1990s, that allows users to link individual modular devices, made by small, specialty manufacturers, to create elaborate DIY super-synthesizers. Clarke has two Euroracks, and each has at least 30 different devices: oscillators, filters, envelope generators, sequencers, and more.
“It’s an infinite learning and discovery process,” Clarke said. “That’s what got me hooked.” The nerd in him was ecstatic.