Career
In 1977 and took a job as a bank cashier. During evenings, weekends and any other spare time, he was involved with the local band Norman and the Worms with school friend Phil Burdett who later went on to become a singer/songwriter himself.
In addition to composing music and writing lyrics of the Depeche Mode songs, he has also sung some of them as the lead vocalist, and usually solo, (for example, "Somebody", "A Question of Lust", "One Caress", "Home", "The Things You Said", "Jezebel" and "Sweetest Perfection"), as evidenced by most of the Depeche Mode concerts, and has been a backing vocalist on many of the others.