Daniel Miller is one of the most trailblazing forces in modern music. Miller founded the iconic Mute label in 1978 as a way of releasing a single he’d recorded under the handle of The Normal, but since he’s been more than just a label boss to the myriad artists who have passed through Mute’s doors. His closest and perhaps most famous association has been with Depeche Mode, acting as producer and then mentor once he stepped away from the mixing desk to see what magic other collaborations could inspire.
Despite the fact Depeche Mode hit the ground running in the UK though – even if they had to put up with some snarky comments from the music press along the way – Miller told this writer that it took a few years for the US to get up to speed. It all coincided with the point where the major labels across the Atlantic started to take little old Mute a bit more seriously, he said in 2021. “I think when Depeche started having really big success in America, people started to wake up. I remember going to Warner Brothers for a meeting , because Warner Brothers were doing marketing and stuff like that for [Depeche Mode’s US label] Sire. Depeche had just sold out three nights at The Forum in LA, about 10 or 12,000 seats each night. We went to the head of Warner Brothers at the time and he was kind of, ‘Okay, these limey indie kids, we'll have a chat.’ We told him we’d sold out three nights at The Forum and he just looked at us in shock and then he started calling all his marketing people into this meeting. It was really funny. You can do really well in the UK, in Europe, but when you get America, that's when people start to take you seriously.”
