In the summer of 1989, Britons opened the “personal” sections of regional newspaper classified adverts and saw a curious entry. “Your own personal Jesus”, it read, followed by a telephone number.
Call the number, and you heard two notes, followed by a command: “Reach out and touch faith.” Then came an irresistible guitar riff and stomping beat. So began the ascent of “Personal Jesus”, a seductive blast of blasphemy or piety — depending on your interpretation — and the song that vaulted Depeche Mode to lasting legitimacy.
The band had charted with synth-pop hits such as 1981’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” and 1984’s “People Are People.” In the US, they were dismissed as dance music, a designation songwriter Martin Gore found patronising. Depeche Mode wanted to be something more. With each album they made, they took on a darker, sexier, more industrial sound, winning over critics and a growing dedicated fan base.
In 1989, they set up in Milan to work on their seventh album, Violator. “Personal Jesus” was inspired by Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley’s memoir, released four years earlier. “It’s about how Elvis was her man and mentor,” Gore told Rolling Stone, “and how often that happens in love relationships — how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone, is it?”
Warner Bros released “Personal Jesus” as a single in August 1989, months before the album was finished. The label’s marketing department came up with the idea for the classified ad. The personals were often infiltrated by phone sex lines and religious movements scouring for lonely people. Some papers stopped running the ad when they found it was promoting a song.
The offer of a religious or personal connection overlaps in the song’s lyrics, but the sinister synth and sexual grunts leave no ambiguity that there’s a decadent underlining to this promise. Like a tent revival sermon, “Personal Jesus” had the power to whip an audience into a mania. Melody Maker’s Paul Lester reviewed the band’s show at Wembley Arena in 1990. “Every last single person in the arena holds their arms aloft and chants, ‘Reach out and touch faith,’” he wrote.
The song peaked at number 13 in the UK. The band thought it would flunk in the US, where radio stations preferred to avoid offending those with religious beliefs. However, MTV, with its edgier sensibilities, had supplanted radio as the main conduit of musical mass media. The channel loved the video, featuring the band in Western wear riding on horseback into a ranching town. The song reached number 28 in the US.
With similarly alluring material on Violator, Depeche Mode overcame all past reputations and brought their electro-rock sound to the masses.
There have been a few covers of “Personal Jesus”, of which two stand out, both released in the early 2000s by very divergent artists: the freakishly dressed hard-rock provocateur Marilyn Manson, and septuagenarian country singer and devout Christian Johnny Cash.
Manson, who owed some of his industrial sound to Depeche Mode’s influence, recorded “Personal Jesus” as a single for his first best-of album. His version was driven by a brisk drum track and his creaking voice. He chose it for the era of President George W. Bush, a man who spoke of his own relationship with Jesus as American forces bombed Iraqi villages. Bush is seen briefly in the video, otherwise full of menacing shots of the band in their ghoul make-up. Manson, a keen observer of American hypocrisy, seemed to be critiquing those who personalised their savior.
Cash’s “Personal Jesus” appeared on his fourth album for producer Rick Rubin’s American Recordings, which featured old standards, pop classics and stripped-down arrangements of recent songs such as Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”. Cash’s “Personal Jesus” features just an acoustic guitar and piano. In Cash’s humble voice and presentation, an offer of “your own personal Jesus” sounds like a promise to show the recipient the selflessness and devotion of the singer’s saviour.
“That’s probably the most evangelical song [I’ve] ever recorded,” said Cash, who had released versions of countless gospel songs. “I don’t know that the writer ever meant it to be that, but that’s what it is.”
We’re keen to hear from our readers. What are your personal memories of ‘Personal Jesus’? Reach out in the comments section below
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: BMG Rights Management/Mute Records Ltd; Polydor Associated Labels; Virgin EMI
Picture credit: Rob Verhorst/Redferns