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Andy Fletcher (at a Depeche Mode concert in 2018)
Photo: R7056 Gonzales Photo/Lasse Lagoni / Gonzales Photo / Lasse Lagoni / dpa
You know them in team sports, the athletes who hardly attract attention but make the stars look good with their work – Wimmer for Günter Netzer, Schwarzenbeck for Franz Beckenbauer.
And occasionally there are even athletes who owe their place in the team less to their sporting achievements and much more to their role in the team structure: Eintracht Frankfurt, for example, extended the contract with the manageably talented right-back Timothy Chandler for several years, also because he is such a is integrative type.
Now he is European Cup winner.
Bands have a lot in common with sports teams, this is also about bringing different individual skills together to create a common whole.
In the classic rock band format, you can usually recognize the team players by their role.
The bass player, for example, is rarely the one who pushes himself to the fore (unless he is also the singer) - but of course he is hardly dispensable for the sound.
To top it all off, with a synthesizer band it's not so easy to tell who's doing what.
You can't see the keys and you don't know which sounds the keyboard players are getting out of their devices.
That's why heretics have had the thought that Andrew Fletcher is actually pretty redundant in the band he co-founded, Depeche Mode.
Martin Gore writes the songs, Dave Gahan sings them, Alan Wilder used to take care of the technical stuff, since he left the producers.
And Andrew Fletcher, the football fan (Chelsea FC) they all just called Fletch?
"Fletch made her laugh"
Early in the band's history, a mutual acquaintance remarked, "Fletch couldn't play at all." Andrew Fletcher was, of course, assigned bass when he and Vince Clarke, a friend from a Methodist church youth group, formed a band called Composition of Sound, which was joined by Martin Gore, a school friend of Fletch's from the Nicholas School in Basildon, southeast England.
The shy Vince and Martin needed someone like him, emphasizes the contemporary quoted in a band biography : »Fletcher made them laugh.
He held the band together with his personality«.
Another friend remembers: "Fletch was just the opposite of cool." So he suddenly started talking about his youth group in front of the punk girls in Basildon and didn't stop talking.
He fulfilled this role to the end.
When Depeche Mode 2020 was inducted into the "Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame" in the middle of the pandemic, there was no classic inauguration concert and the three band members had to give their acceptance speech via video call.
Dave Gahan found unctuous words, "Who knows where we would be without the music," he sighed.
And while Martin Gore nodded pensively, Andrew Fletcher scoffed, "You'd probably still be stealing cars, Dave!"
With Gahan as the exalted frontman, Composition of Sound had become Depeche Mode in Basildon in 1980, and just a year later they had their first hit singles with "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough."
Fletcher, meanwhile, continued to work for Sun Life insurance and is said to have negotiated a one-day tube ticket for the band's debut appearance on the chart-topping TV show Top of the Pops, allowing them to travel to the BBC studios.
A first example of Fletcher's work in the band's economic area, early on he took care of the merchandising and at times also took on management tasks.
Faithful to the pop tunes
After the main songwriter Clarke left and Gore took over this task, the rise to an international phenomenon began: the largest group in the world perceived as an outsider band, which had huge hits like "People Are People", "Personal Jesus" or "Enjoy the Silence" and a committed one has a following.
Alan Wilder, who joined in 1982, took on more and more work in the studio, telling Depeche Mode biographer Steve Malins, "Fletch wasn't particularly involved as far as the recordings went."
Fletcher is not a musician, nor does he have any musical opinions and is mainly in the studio "so that Martin would have someone to go out with at night." Wilder left the band in 1995.
But Flood, co-producer of the albums Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion, said he did listen to Fletcher's comments, because "to me, his view was the opinion of the outside people."
In an interview with journalist Max Dax, Fletcher said he brings the pop element to the band.
Gore loves blues and country, Gahan has discovered jazz for himself: »I, on the other hand, will probably stay true to the simple pop melodies and the lightness they stand for forever.
My children also like pop.«
Andrew Fletcher radiated this lightness again and again at the Depeche Mode concerts.
He danced around behind his keyboard, jumped euphorically and clapped along.
Some fans have already complained that the clapping is not in time and anyway, has anything changed in the sound since Fletch took his hands off the keys?
But secretly they loved Andy Fletcher for it - unlike the genius Gore or the swaggering Gahan, Fletch was someone you could relate to.
Our man on the stadium stage.
Despite all the euphoria that was broadcast, Andrew Fletcher's health was poor for some time.
In the early 1990s he suffered from depression, had a nervous breakdown and even left the Depeche Mode world tour in 1994, which continued without him in increasingly excessive ways.
After a stay in the clinic, he described himself as cured and kept fit with yoga and relaxation exercises.
"Oh, it's opening time"
On May 28, 1996, Dave Gahan's heart stopped for two minutes after a drug overdose.
The fact that Depeche Mode continued as a trio for six studio albums was also widely attributed to the role of Andrew Fletcher, who acted as a buffer between Gore and Gahan.
He staged himself as a voice of reason and as a down-to-earth guy – while Martin Gore moved to California and Dave Gahan settled in New York, Fletcher stayed in England, living with his childhood sweetheart Grainne, whom he married in 1993 after 15 years.
Five weeks ago, she posted two pictures on Instagram showing Andrew Fletcher with his arm in a cast after a bicycle accident in Barcelona.
That Fletcher still enjoyed going to the pub gave Gahan a taunt in the Hall of Famer induction video: "Oh, it's opening time!".
As the only Depeche Mode member, Andrew Fletcher never showed any ambition to compose songs himself.
In the early 2000s, he realized his dream of having his own record label.
But the only band on Toast Hawaii ended up being the group Client, which parted ways with the label in 2006 because Fletcher couldn't find time for label work on the Depeche Mode tour.
On the other hand, Fletcher liked to travel around to DJ performances during Depeche Mode breaks - he played electro and house pieces, but also pop hits by Goldfrapp or Blur, and sometimes something by Depeche Mode.
To do this, he jumped on stage – like a fan, as his fans loved.
On May 26, Depeche Mode announced via social media channels that Andrew Fletcher had died at the age of 60.
No information was initially given about the cause of death.
Depeche Mode has not yet released any information about the future of the band.