Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan "totally lost it" and started sobbing uncontrollably at Andy Fletcher's funeral.
The 60-year-old musician was stunned by the loss of his longtime bandmate - who died in May aged 60 after suffering an aortic dissection - and reveals he started sobbing at the memorial service when he and guitarist Martin Gore reunited with their former record label boss Daniel Miller.
Gahan told the Guardian newspaper: "He [Miller] walked in with his wife, and Martin and I stood up and kind of fell into him, and he put his arms around us and all of us were just … I was sobbing. It was just the three of us. I can’t explain it, but that’s when I totally lost it. He pointed it out: when he met me and my band, I was a teenager, just about to turn 19. I thought about that. It’s been 40-odd years. My entire adult life."
The rocker went on to admit he briefly considered ending Depeche Mode after his friend's death, but he put the notion aside after a candid conversation with Gore.
He explained: "Martin and I had a conversation. I was just calling up to see how he was doing and he was like, ‘We’re moving on, right?’ I said, yeah. I didn’t miss a beat."
Gore added: "I did question for a second whether it was a good idea to carry on with the schedule we had,” he says, “because we were due to start in the studio six weeks after he died, and I wondered if we should put that back a little bit. But we decided it was probably best for us to focus on the album, on the music, something we know, something to take our minds off Andy’s death."
Gore went on to insist the tragedy has brought the pair closer as it's now just the two of them working together. He added: "There’s nothing positive about it [Fletcher's death]. But you know, the one good thing is that it’s brought me and Dave closer. We have to make decisions as the two of us, so we talk things out, we talk a lot more on the phone, even FaceTime sometimes. That’s something we just never did before."
Depeche Mode's new album 'Memento Mori' will be released in March and they will also hit the road for a tour.
