The World Violation Tour was a 1990 concert tour by English electronic group Depeche Mode in support of the act's seventh studio album, Violator. It was estimated that by the end of the tour, Depeche Mode had toured to 1.2 million fans.

Background

Depeche Mode's previous tour, the "Music for the Masses Tour", had run from late 1987 to the middle of 1988, and was supported by the live video and record release of 101 in early 1989. Violator was released in March 1990 and had already seen two successful singles to support it, "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence" by the time the tour started. In April, the band attended a record-signing event in LA at a record store, but the event drew so many fans that the band had to be escorted out, and a riot nearly ensued.

Tour details

The band rehearsed for the tour in Pensacola, Florida, the same city where the tour kicked off. It was the first time the band has performed live in the state, and the band received some flak from locals who didn't understand their appearance; Alan Wilder was quoted to Rolling Stone saying "I've been called a faggot about twenty times today, mostly from guys leaning out of trucks. This is sort of a backward place, isn't it?" The tour kicked off with a North American leg in late May, finishing up in early August in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium. The North American dates were met with high demand with sellouts in Dallas, Chicago, Orlando, Tampa and Miami; 42,000 tickets for the concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey had reportedly been sold within four hours of going on sale, while the Dodger Stadium shows had sold out on the first day of sale. Later in the month, the group played a sole date in Australia, in Sydney, prior to a six-date tour of Japan in September. Following the Japanese dates, the band commenced a European tour, beginning in Brussels in late September. The leg included three dates at the Palais Omnisports Bercy in Paris, where the group performed to approximately 50,000 people. The leg lasted two months and concluded with the final show of the tour in Birmingham, England, in late November. Tour projections were made by Anton Corbijn, presented on large video screens behind the band. The tour required approximately 100 stage crew and 11 trucks to transport the set and equipment. Rolling Stone called out the tour as one of the highlights of the 1990 summer music scene, saying "These British synth poppers offer post-industrial melancholy you can dance to. And their misery certainly loves company – on their last tour, they sold out the Rose Bowl." Industrial band Nitzer Ebb opened for the band in North America and Europe.

Recordings

Depeche Mode never released any official content from the World Violation Tour for commercial purposes, the reason for which Alan Wilder stated was that there was too little time lapsed from Music for the Masses Tour to release a new live EP from this tour, as 101 had been released the previous year. Two concerts of the American leg of the tour, one in San Francisco and one in LA, were recorded by the staff of the stadium; the band issued 90-second snippets of each song from the LA show on their website in 2012.

Musicians

Set list

Notes:

Tour dates