Depeche Mode | Some Great Reward Tour, Stadthalle Offenbach
With “Some Great Reward” Depeche Mode had a new album out and went on tour to promote it. For me this was the first time I saw Depeche Mode live, in fact, it was my first visit to a live concert ever. Obviously, this show took place long before the internet and world wide web became a thing, and writing a blog wasn’t heard of either and as I have very little recollection of the show there isn’t much to write about. But for the sake of completeness, I’m adding this event anyway.
This is one of the very few shows for which I no longer have the ticket, and that is a little annoying to me. I only started later saving my ticket stubs as part of the good memories and it also didn’t cross my mind at the time to purchase a tour book. There would have been one available especially for the European leg of the tour but buying tour books is a habit I also only picked up later.
However, searching the web I was eventually lucky to find a picture of a ticket stub from back then:
One thing I do remember is the circumstance that the show had to relocate from Frankfurt to Offenbach. It was originally scheduled for Frankfurts Alte Oper but ended up taking place at the Stadthalle venue in Offenbach. If you search the web you will find at least two versions of the story of why the show had to be relocated.
One version states that after a chemical irritant had been released by someone from the audience on the night before during the Böblingen show, the City of Frankfurt did not want to risk anything happening to their old opera house. So they canceled the show a few hours before the planned start, the organizers delayed the concert for an hour, moved the event to Offenbach’s Stadthalle, and got all of the fans to Offenbach on coaches.
The other version of the story relates events as follows: the event was moved from Frankfurt to Offenbach’s Stadthalle on short notice as an earlier show by ‘Madness’ resulted in fans causing damage to Frankfurts Alte Oper and the operators of the building feared similar behavior by the Depeche Mode audience.
I don’t know which version is true (or at least partially true) but I do remember that we didn’t arrive in Ofenbach in a coach but drove there ourselves and that we knew about the relocation of the event days ahead of time. Maybe one day I will find somebody that has a personal recollection.
What I also remember is being at the Stadthalle in Offenbach, standing somewhere far away from the stage and due to my small height seeing nothing of the band all night but Andrew Fletcher’s head once in a while. And that kind of experience when visiting concerts hasn’t changed much since.
This was the evening’s setlist, not from memory but from the web that has brought forth awesome web pages like setlist.fm or dmlive.wiki and people that make an effort to maintain this kind of pages: Master and Servant (Intro), Something to Do, Two Minute Warning, Puppets, If You Want, People Are People, Leave in Silence, New Life, Shame, Somebody, Ice Machine, Lie to Me, Blasphemous Rumours, Told You So, Master and Servant, Photographic, Everything Counts, Encore: See You, Encore 2: Shout, Just Can’t Get Enough.
These are memorable times when songs like Leave in Silence, Ice Machine, and Shout made it onto the setlist and I believe in the case of Ice Machine and Shout it speaks to the quality of Depeche Mode’s b-sides at the time.
And thinking back on those days brings back other memories, especially the ones when hearing of Depeche Mode for the first time when a friend played “Get The Balance Right” to me from a self-recorded tape. To this day that song is still one of my Depeche Mode favorites and the band’s music has resonated with me ever since.
I’d love to get your feedback if you have thoughts about the world we live in and life in general, especially if you visited the concert in Offenbach 1984 or if you saw the show in some other place during the “Some Great Reward” tour. Leave a comment and I’ll make an effort to respond.
Links:
Depeche Mode
The evenings setlist on setlist.fm
Stadthalle Offenbach
Post last updated on 13. September 2021
Hey Christopher,
great to read your recollections from back then! It was my first DM show as well, the 1984 one in OF.
As for the change of location – as far as I can remember it was the first version of events, the mysterious attack (?) incident at a show some days before. The new location was announced on pop radio station hr3, I recall; it wasn’t a last minute thing but certainly calling it close. I remember my friends and I were afraid the show or rest of the tour might be cancelled altogether…
The Stadthalle OF isn’t a very atmospheric place, and when you’re a 14 yr old kid and not 2 m tall, chances are you won’t really find a spot with good view of the stage anywhere (unless you sat on the balcony but of course those ranks were full when we got there…)
I vaguely recall enjoying the show – even though I may have been too busy acting “cool” to really have fun. 14yr olds, eh?! 😉
I did buy the tour book, indeed… just pulled it out and had a look.
Thank you for sharing your memories and research here!
Hi Melanie,
thanks for your kind remarks and sharing your memories of the event, it is much appreciated! Treasure that tour book! 🙂
Chris