Depeche Mode: Pleasure, Pain, Death, and Resurrection
DISGRACELAND
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 13.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Machines, eyeliner, ecstasy, and a West Hollywood overdose that left their frontman clinically dead—Depeche Mode were never just a synth-pop band. From cops in riot gear to an onstage heart attack, from stigmas about softness to the hard edge of addiction, this is the story of Dave Gahan’s descent into heroin, his two minutes on the other side, and the band’s unlikely resurrection as one of the most dangerous—and enduring—acts in rock history.
This episode was originally released on September 24, 2025.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is exactly right. |
| 0:10.0 | Double Elvis. |
| 0:13.8 | Disgrace and is a production about machines, about eyeliner and ecstasy, synthesizers, and subversion. |
| 0:37.2 | This is a story about how one of the softest looking bands in pop music |
| 0:41.4 | became one of the hardest to kill, |
| 0:44.3 | and about how their frontman went from a teen dream pinup |
| 0:47.3 | to a clinically dead junkie on the bathroom floor of a West Hollywood hotel. |
| 0:52.3 | This is a story about addiction, about stigma, about the line |
| 0:56.9 | between pleasure and pain, and about death and resurrection. And this is a story about Depeche Mode, |
| 1:05.3 | a band that made great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. |
| 1:13.1 | That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Gothic GoTee, MK, 2. |
| 1:19.6 | I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to The Crossroads by Bone Thugs in Harmony. |
| 1:27.1 | And why would I play you that specific slice of Reaper on the Mountain Top cheese, |
| 1:31.9 | could I afford it? |
| 1:33.5 | Because that was the number one song in America on May 28, 1996. |
| 1:39.9 | And that was the day that Dave Gahan, lead singer for Depeche Mode, overdosed, flatlined, |
| 1:46.0 | and spent two minutes on the other side before dramatically coming back to life. |
| 1:52.1 | On this episode, Sins, Sex, Stigmas, Speedballs, Salvation, and Depeche Mode. |
| 2:00.7 | I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. A geish is a kind of piercing that one gets in one's perineum. |
| 2:37.6 | You may know the perineum by its more colloquial name, the taint. |
| 2:41.8 | You know, taint is dick, taint his ass. |
| 2:45.2 | A geish is not to be confused with a prince Albert, which is a ring or a barbell that is |
... |
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