On This Day in 1993: Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore Was Arrested

It’s all fun and games until someone gets arrested. On the evening of Nov. 4, 1993, at a hotel in Denver, Colorado, that someone was Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.

Despite it being his day job, Gore was reportedly arrested for playing music too loud. “Other guests at the Westin Hotel complained about the noise Gore was making after the group returned from a night club,” the The Daily Sentinel published in an article back then. “The police were summoned and they arrested Gore on charges of disorderly conduct.” This resulted in the keyboardist spending a few hours in jail, pleading guilty and paying a $50 dollar fine.

As Gore himself later recalled to Pavement magazine in 1997, the incident went down differently.

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“The night before I got arrested, I had a party in my room and there were about 50 people and it was really loud,” he explained (via kbco.iheart.com). “The night of the arrest, it was me and a friend and the music was really quiet. They rang me and asked me to turn it down, so I did. They rang me again and asked me to turn it down, so I turned it off.

“Next thing I know there’s complete silence and the police knocked on the door. I stupidly opened it. They burst in, threw me on the bed and handcuffed me. There was no music whatsoever playing. I think they were out to get me for the night before. I can’t remember much about it. I was really drunk at the time and it seemed like fun. The next day, when I sobered up, I realized why some of the people in there weren’t too happy with me. I’d just been done for disturbing the peace.”

Martin Gore’s Eventual Sobriety

For as silly as the story was, Gore’s relationship with alcohol then was troubled, and it only continued to worsen over years. He eventually got sober in the mid 2000s.

“I had a lot of things to feel guilty about. I was a horrible alcoholic for years. I knew at quite a young age that I had an issue with drinking,” Gore reflected to The Guardian in 2013. “More than accepted, it’s encouraged for rock stars to be out of control. It’s funny for people if they see their idols completely drunk, singing in hotel bars. It’s fun. And, up to a point, it is, and then you cross a line and it’s not so much fun any more. When you’re waking up to two double vodkas for breakfast it’s gone beyond the point of fun.”