1989 saw The Stone Roses finally hit the big time, with their eponymous debut album. The Stone Roses was quickly established as an indie two-fingered classic, a new band sending post cards from Manchester with love. By the end of the year, the Roses were filling London’s Alexandra Palace with 7,500 punters. After The Smiths and before Oasis, The Stone Roses were the guitar’s saving grace and the precursors of the next ten years of real dance music in the UK. At the same time, New Order presented Technique. One of Morrissey’s greatest solo singles, ‘The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ continued his interest in cultural icons of the Sixties as his gaze turned to the Kray Twins and the London underworld. ‘The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ so impressed Johnny (and the record-buying public, who took it to within one place of the top five) that, according to Johnny Rogan in The Severed Alliance, he sent Morrissey a congratulatory postcard.
Neil Young, a long-time hero for Johnny, released his hugely influential ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’, beating the hell out of the guitar that had influenced Johnny so much in his early years. In March the first single from Mind Bomb was released. While ‘The Beat(en) Generation’ was a huge success, it was not the first choice of single, which initially was slated as ‘Armageddon Days’. As mentioned, just days before the release however, the Satanic Verses affair kicked off, the political, religious, ideological and moral fracas inspired by the novel by Salman Rushdie, and the release was canned. While Rushdie was under sentence of fatwa, he was given a round-the-clock guard by security forces. Rumours abounded as to where Rushdie had sought refuge, and the story was a major feature in international news. Astonishingly, Johnny later claimed that Rushdie had been living in the apartment above him in London!
“I’d go and get the mail,” Marr remembered in conversation with Matt Johnson later, “and I’d see all these letters for ‘S Rushdie’… and I’d think ‘Shit! – he’s got to have a few words with his friends.’” While the pair apparently never met, when Oasis’ Noel Gallagher was living in the same flat some time later, the post had still not been redirected. He was still receiving mail for a Mr S Rushdie.
It was a period of convoluted family ties for Johnny. In April, Chrissie Hynde’s The Pretenders released ‘Windows On The World’, at the same time as Morrissey released his own single ‘Interesting Drug’. One of the singer’s finest solo-single moments, this song featured Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals, and at the same time Kirsty was promoting her own album Kite, she had also covered the Smiths song ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby’ as the B-side of her 12-inch version of the biting chart hit ‘Free World’, on which, of course, Johnny featured. Was there a conflict of interests for Kirsty, as she guested on one Smith’s record, had another Smith appear on her own album, and covered a song written by the pair of them at the same time?
According to Kirsty there was no issue. She candidly explained to Melody Maker that both Morrissey and Johnny had contacted her independently and that both records were a ‘natural progression’ from her having worked previously with The Smiths on ‘Ask’. On the subject of Morrissey and Marr possibly never working together again, Kirsty again pointed out that “I don’t think it’s really any of my business… but I think it would be a shame if they never wrote together again because the standard of their songs was so brilliant.”
After Mind Bomb was released in May, Johnson decided to tour the album worldwide. In July ‘Gravitate To Me’ was released as a single. Johnny joined the tour, and the hundred shows around the globe were a resounding success, bringing in audiences beyond all expectations from twenty-two countries between the USA and Australia. For Johnson it was an affirmation that putting the band together had been the right decision for his own work at the time. For Johnny it was his favourite – and most extensive – touring experience to date. The tour concluded with three superb nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which was filmed for video release as The The Versus The World. After the final date at Dublin’s The Point in mid-July, Johnny returned to Manchester.
The The provided Johnny with a vehicle that carried him over a period of several years. In 1989 he tentatively began another such project, however, that would arguably become his most successful and would certainly rival The Smiths in terms of commercial, chart and – almost – critical success. Electronic was glibly labelled a ‘supergroup’ in some corners of the media: a former Smith, a member of New Order, and, though not a permanent member, a Pet Shop Boy, the threesome making a Cream for the Nineties. The blend was irresistible, though its genesis was low key. Initially Johnny and Bernard intended the project to, at best, produce “a white label twelve-inch and maybe an album,” but – with typical understatement – Johnny admits that “things turned out okay.”
The pair had met back when Sumner was producing Quando Quango, but they were also introduced by DJ Andrew Berry. “We knew each other,” said Sumner, “but we didn’t know each other that well.” It was the former Hacienda hairdresser who suggested to Bernard that he get in touch with Johnny, and – tired of the stresses and strains of working in his own rehearsal studio alone – Sumner did contact him and ask Johnny if he fancied working together. “We started working weekends,” remembered Johnny. “Really, really long writing sessions.” As mentioned, these sessions ran concurrently with recording with The The, often on the same day.
For Bernard, Electronic was an opportunity to work outside of the strictures placed upon him by New Order. “I really needed a bit more freedom than I was getting,” he recalls. “I felt that too many things I wanted to do were treading on people’s feet. If I wanted to do a track, for instance, [that was] just me and a synthesizer, or me and an acoustic guitar, I couldn’t do it in New Order because everybody’s got to play their bit.” While Bernard was looking for personal space, Johnny was looking also to find room to work for himself, away from collaborations. “It’s an opportunity for me to work on other instruments,” Marr was to say, “and pursue the ideas that I’ve only been able to explore in demos for other people really… and explore them more fully.”
Electronic was a slow starter. “We were formed very much as an anti-group,” said Johnny. Given their histories, there was a relief to simply be able to go away and make music for themselves. “[It] was almost like a refuge for the two of us to be still able to make music.” It took the pair a long time to get to know one another’s working methods and to gel personally. “Johnny had to get his head around the way I worked,” said Bernard, “and I had to get my head around the way he worked, because Johnny is a very accomplished musician.” Neither he nor New Order as a band had the level of sophistication that he found in Johnny’s work. “[We] don’t really know what we’re doing – but we end up doing it!” said Bernard, but admitted that working with Johnny had made him a better musician himself.
If Electronic at times seemed overly serious, the humour within the band was evident from many of the interviews that Johnny or Bernard gave. In one of the funniest interviews on record, for a Canadian radio station, Johnny was asked who out of Chrissie Hynde, Matt Johnson, Beck or Morrissey, was the biggest diva. After a moment’s pause he chose someone else instead. “Bernard Sumner,” said Johnny with enthusiasm. “He’s terrible. You’re not allowed to make eye contact. The wrong kind of flowers in the dressing room send him into an all-day tizz. [He’s always] talking about how he wrote ‘Blue Monday’ incessantly, when no-one really cares… or likes it!” Johnny’s tongue was, of course, firmly in his cheek, but the immediate leap to cite Bernard as a diva was very entertaining. It also offered him the chance to dodge answering the original question with utmost professionalism! “I was a [young] guy,” Johnny would say later, “living in a city that was just exploding with a new culture. I’d been waiting for my city to do that since punk, because I was too young for punk.” The excitement around Manchester was tangible. “Suddenly the place was experiencing new music, new technology, new clubs, new drugs.” As always for Johnny, the moment was the key thing – there was no career plan, it was simply this music at this moment in this town.
Electronic fused Bernard Sumner and Johnny’s pop sensibilities and song-writing skills, Marr’s structural proficiency with Sumner’s programming ability, and – with Neil Tennant as part of the team – the gorgeous, rich voice of the Pet Shop Boys. Marr was keen to work with the Pet Shop Boys, and when Neil expressed interest in being involved with Electronic, Johnny jumped at the chance. As well as wanting to work with him, Johnny was also aware that to be involved with such an out-and-out pop act would shake up some of the Smiths community too. The Pet Shop Boy connection also brought a great sense of fun to the project too. The four guys got to know one another when Bernard and Johnny invited Tennant and Lowe to Manchester. “We got them down to The Hacienda within about five minutes of them getting there,” remembered Bernard, “and they experienced the delights of the Manchester scene.”
Johnny has analysed his work and working practices over the years and has come to the conclusion that each ‘generation’ of his career is a natural progression from the last. “The sort of person I was in The Smiths needed to write the songs that [he] did for that group,” Marr observes… “I wanted to find my feet as a writer.” The The expanded his musical vocabulary and consciousness further. By the time of Electronic, the work that Marr and Sumner produced was very much a representation of a particular scene and lifestyle that the pair shared. But it wasn’t cosy. Working in Manchester, with The Hacienda still a priority for Sumner, put all kinds of things at risk. “That whole scene was a lot more complex than [just] a lot of people wearing flares,” remembers Marr. “There was a lot of violence around, and guns. People were swallowing ecstasy and all that, but there were gangsters around, and violence.” The scene came up against the media-heavy local Chief of Police, James Anderton, determined to stamp down on the increasing violence engulfing the southern suburbs of Manchester in particular. It was a heady, dangerous time – the press nicknamed the city ‘Gunchester’.
The intensity of the circumstances made for a remarkable working relationship between Johnny and Bernard, the ‘extremes’ of the situation particularly good for the creative process. While The Smiths and Joy Division/New Order walked different paths throughout the Eighties, each had clearly always kept an eye on what was happening along the other track. In a sense, the duo were Manchester ‘united’, but there was one problem for the Sky Blue Marr however – working with Bernard also meant working with a Man U fan.
Near-neighbours, Johnny was deeply passionate about the work they began to do in 1989, as he has been with every project with which he has been involved. It was the first time Johnny had got involved with MIDI guitar playing, giving a synthetic feel to much of the music. Bernard was the perfect partner in this for Johnny, able – as Marr put it – to set up great sounds on a vast bank of keyboards whilst almost having the volume in the studio turned off.
As Johnny had with Morrissey and Matt Johnson, with Sumner and himself at the centre of the project they were able to bring a thousand different influences to bear while trawling through a shared love of similar kinds of music, from The Kinks to Kraftwerk. While The Smiths had given Johnny the experience of co-writing with a remarkable lyricist and The The had given him extra experience of working on material largely completed in the writing process by someone else, Electronic was a revelation. “For the first time,” Johnny enthused, “I am totally writing with another musician.” Sometimes Johnny would write all the music. Sometimes the roles were reversed and Sumner would do the same – it was a genuinely shared experience, as at other times they would literally write together. ‘Getting Away With It’, the timeless first fruit of the partnership, was a perfect example. “He wrote the verse,” said Marr, “and I wrote the chorus… that is when the real sparks fly!” Johnny’s initial intent with the song had been to write the song as if it were “Sister Sledge, with the Pet Shop Boys as a backing band,” and he felt that the finished piece was a perfect pop song. To prove him right, the single went into the US top forty and sold over 350,000 copies, while in the UK it made it to number eleven in the chart.
Electronic reached a new audience for both partners. While The The and New Order were commercial and critical successes, Electronic proved that serial collaborators Sumner and Marr had found their own voices within the format of the duo. The new venture was a breath of fresh air, although the two often seemed to come to the task from different directions. “Bernard thinks the whole ‘born with a guitar in your mouth’ story very corny,” says Johnny. While easy bucks had never been Johnny’s priority in the past – it has always been the work rather than the income that motivates him – Marr has always loved commercial pop, whether it be glam stomps, cool grooves or out-and-out disco. And while income was not the driving force behind Electronic either, what was clear from day one was that both Sumner and Marr had developed a new kind of pop sensibility. Electronic – especially with their link to the Pet Shop Boys – just happened to be a very saleable concept. At the same time, lest the critics accuse them of trying to make a fast buck while their other bands were no longer clawing the top reaches of the singles charts, Johnny was keen to emphasise that his involvement with The The was still ongoing, and so was Bernard’s with New Order. This was by no means an idle hobby for a couple of rich musicians.
“We’re intensely ambitious,” Johnny told Stuart Maconie for Select, pointing out that while the project did not compete with their daytime jobs in other bands, it gave them both an outlet for other creative urges. Electronic had an air of the idealistic, a sense of refinement and of polish. Working with new machinery and escaping the ‘Johnny Marr sound’, Marr was also able to indulge his life-long passion for up-tempo dance music and electronica. “If it’s a good song,” Johnny told one interviewer. “I’ll play alongside machines all day.”
The relationship was immediately successful, the music vibrant and joyous. In December, within months of the duo coming together, Electronic – with Neil Tennant on vocals – released, ‘Getting Away With It.’ It was, of course, a huge success and one of the best-loved songs of the late Eighties, putting to bed the decade that Johnny’s first band had so defined. While Morrissey’s haunting and hysterical ‘Ouija Board, Ouija Board’ was also out over the closing weeks of the year, it was good to see both Johnny and Morrissey hitting the singles charts so successfully. The refined tone of Tennant’s vocal, the killer melody and perfect production seemed to justify the careers of all three major performers on the record, as if to say, “See – we really do know what this is all about.”
Some twenty-five miles west of Manchester, literally on the River Mersey itself and in the shadow of Runcorn bridge, Spike Island saw a festival in the summer of 1990 that was headlined by The Stone Roses. It was a mini-Woodstock for the generation, when many of the bands who went on to enliven Nineties pop were congregated in one place. Electronic made their live debut in Los Angeles in August, playing to a huge crowd at the Dodger Stadium. The concert came about after they were invited by Depeche Mode to play with them. Johnny explained, “I thought it was completely impossible,” but it was an important date for the band in America. Neil Tennant – himself a pop junkie – told an amusing story about Johnny’s obsessive love of pop music. “We’re getting so used to this,” Johnny said to Neil, “that we’ll just be strolling across the stage soon chatting to each other about ancient pop music.” Neil described Johnny ‘strolling’ across the stage towards him the following night. “During the drum beat in ‘Getting Away With It’, Johnny Marr comes over, playing away at his guitar, and says, ‘What was Picketywitch’s first hit?’ It was dead funny.” As Grant Showbiz confirms, “that sounds very, very Johnny! Good for him…” Meanwhile, Electronic’s first UK gig was in January of the New Year when they appeared at The Hacienda, to celebrate the renewal of the club’s licence.
With northern-born singer Lisa Stansfield cruising the charts in the late Eighties and early Nineties, there was a penchant among the record-buying public for soulful, breezy vocal acts with a bit of attitude. Another of Johnny’s projects during 1990 was recording with Banderas, a duo who could have, but didn’t, make it big. Their album Ripe was to be released in March of 1991, featuring the likes of Jimmy Somerville and Bernard Sumner. Johnny appeared on the single, the distinctive album-opener ‘This Is Your Life’, which was released in February of 1991. It was an affirmative, Latin-style hustle, sung beautifully by one half of the Banderas duo, Caroline Buckley, with chugging ‘Shaft’ style funk guitar throughout. The project didn’t quite sink without trace, but while the name of the band and the album’s cover suggested a bunch of Spanish female skinheads, Banderas failed to hit the mark on either side of the Atlantic. It was a shame – ‘This Is Your Life’ had in spades the same kind of upbeat feel-good groove that had served Swing Out Sister and Stansfield so well in the previous few years.
By now though, Johnny had so many offers that he could afford to work with exactly who he chose and on what projects. One of the most productive was a more direct collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys. Almost a decade into their career, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s Behaviour was the band’s fifth studio album, and their perfect blend of distracted ironic pop lyrics and shimmering, faultless production values had rightly made them one of the world’s biggest-selling acts. Marr, Tennant and Lowe obviously already had a working friendship via the Boys appearance with Electronic, and it was a continuation of that natural synergy that brought Johnny into the recording studio to work on two tracks with the duo.
Like Johnny, the Pet Shop Boys had a major-league work ethic, but their creativity was often glossed over by the interpretation of their techno-heavy production. “A lot of people have this idea that Neil and Chris just sit around the studio with machines making the music, while they read Vogue,” Johnny was to say, reviewing the experience of working with PSB on jmarr.com, “which is very far from the truth.” Attracted to the project for personal reasons – Johnny has always claimed that any working relationship he has, has to have a sound personal relationship going on for him to get involved – he was impressed with both the work rate of the band, and their musical abilities. “They both work constantly,” he added, “and are never short of ideas.” Marr was also quick to credit the proficiency of Lowe and Tennant, reminding fans that the guys proved themselves great musicians as well as great writers.
The album was produced by ex-Gorgio Moroder keyboardist and future Grammy-winner Harold Faltermeyer, who found a rich and warm strain in the songs that Johnny was able to flesh out. In fact, the two tracks to which Johnny contributed were the most guitar-driven pieces in the Pet Shop Boys’ catalogue to date. ‘October Symphony’ mirrored the more reflective tone that Behaviour signalled in the Pet Shop Boys’ career. The track is a faultless, beautifully arranged piece, linking haunting strings and Johnny’s Cry Baby wah-wah guitar with Tennant’s beautifully delivered vocal, his tone less sardonic than on previous releases. As with Banderas, Johnny could not have been further away from The Smiths in terms of the work he was engaged in, but on the reflective ‘This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave’ the tone is more Smiths-like. Marr thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with Tennant and Lowe, recalling “great memories” from the process. “I still really like those songs,” he said later. “Especially ‘This Must Be The Place’…”
Liverpool’s The La’s blended perfectly-produced guitar-based pop melody with a nostalgic slice of Sixties retro. ‘There She Goes’ drew a direct line in the sand back to The Smiths, and Johnny was a big fan, going on to work with that band’s Lee Mavers on unreleased demos. Although the fruits of their labours have never seen the light of day, the pair spent several days playing together at Johnny’s home studio, hanging out and jamming, each very much a fan of the other’s music. What might have come out of a longer-term working relationship between the authors of ‘There She Goes’ and ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ is mouth-watering.
At the same time Morrissey delivered his own Hatful Of Hollow-style collection of hits and B-sides, Bona Drag, neatly encapsulating his post-Smiths work. 1991 was in many ways the year of Massive Attack [aside, of course, from the approaching grunge juggernaut, heralded by Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’], when dance music got serious, and the burgeoning Bristol-based trip hop scene provided the soundtrack to the next couple of years-worth of pop. Massive Attack’s Blue Lines became one of the UK’s best-loved and most-played albums for decades, while Nellee Hooper, Neneh Cherry and Tricky coloured the first half of the decade with some superb and innovative singles. Some of the movement appealed to Marr, and he stayed closer to his traditional roots over the coming year – soul, folk and the continuing work-in-progress that was Electronic.
The first release of his continuing work was an appearance on the Stex single ‘Still Feel The Rain’, with Johnny included on various different format releases of the A-side. The Banderas album was released to a fairly indifferent world, while Morrissey continued his solo schedule with the critically acclaimed Kill Uncle. April saw the release of the new Electronic single ‘Get The Message/Free Will’, the A-side one of Marr’s favourite Electronic tracks of all. Rather than Johnny’s usual speed of light composition, ‘Get The Message’ was a ‘crafted’ song, over which he spent many, many hours of searching before he was happy with the result. Sumner’s vocal take was perfect too, a stream of consciousness piece expanded in one take to complete the song. “I knew I had a really great verse, and a potentially great chorus,” Johnny told Martin Roach of the ardour of the song’s composition. “I had to really rack my brains to nail it… had to really concentrate to get [that] middle eight.” Accordingly, the rhythm track alone occupied Johnny for five days solid.
In July 1991, Billy Bragg released another of his pristine, beautifully-judged collaborations with Johnny as a single. For Marr fans it was another glorious outing for the pair, and everything Johnny did on the track worked perfectly alongside Bragg’s lyric. The song ‘Sexuality’ was in fact a joint composition. “Thank God it was a co-write,” says Billy of the song that was born of the newly-renewed partnership. The former Smiths soundman Grant Showbiz, a long-time working partner with Bragg too, was producing Billy’s album Don’t Try This At Home, and the pair presented Johnny with a number of tracks to elicit his input. “I was in the studio labouring with ‘Sexuality’ which originally sounded a lot more like ‘Louis Louis’ than the track we know and love,” says Billy. “Johnny came down and just kind of got hold of it and played those glittering chords over it, and changed it completely.” Marr took the track back to his attic-based studio at home in Manchester. To what he described as “a three-chord change [that was] kind of reggae-ish,” Johnny added his own backing tracks, backing vocals, and completely re-worked the song for Bragg, who was stunned by the piece that he heard. “[He] gave us back this beautiful shining pop song,” remembers Billy. “And me and Grant looked at one another and thought ‘Christ – now what are we going to do? We’re going to have to make an album that sounds like this.’”
Inspired, the pair made one of Bragg’s best-loved albums. “That’s how that album became a big pop album. We were trying to work up to the level of Johnny’s production on ‘Sexuality’ – he did an incredible job. A really, really incredible job. He has a great melodic ear.”
As well as the single – which enjoyed five weeks on the chart – Johnny also played on the lovely ‘Cindy Of A Thousand Lives’. “‘Cindy’ was another one of the tracks he took when he took ‘Sexuality’,” recalls Billy. “He took that and ‘Accident Waiting To Happen’. He did spooky, scary things with them.” Bragg travelled up to Manchester to join Johnny in the process, and watched him at work. “I went up and stayed with him and watched him do it, but how he did it I have no idea” says Billy, mystified. Buried away in Johnny’s attic, his song came to life once again. “‘Cindy…’ has a great feel,” Bragg recalls fondly. “And it’s got Kirsty all over it too, singing away.”
While the melodic ear of Marr helped set fire to Bragg’s writing, his work with Kirsty MacColl also continued to progress, and Johnny co-wrote one of her most moving and exciting songs to date. ‘Walking Down Madison’ was a groove-led departure for Kirsty and a perfect snapshot of Johnny’s creative flavour at the time, all loops and heavy dance riffs set against a lightness of melody and touching modulation, a track completed by Johnny and presented to Kirsty intact, much as he had in the past with Morrissey.
June saw the long-awaited release of Electronic, and the debut album did not disappoint. For those not knowing quite what to expect, the overall flavour was more New Order than Smiths, but Johnny’s fingerprints were all over the album and his guitar high in the mix. Marr had clearly shed his former band both emotionally and musically. Electronic declared a future with no past, an opportunity for Marr to graze new pastures and for Sumner to indulge his time outside of New Order. The band exercised Marr one hundred per cent. The first track, ‘Idiot Country’, featured a cool Mancunian rap from Bernard, Johnny’s guitar as funky as it had ever appeared on record to date as the synthesized harmonies drifted over the complex rhythm track. The majority of the album was tight funk grooves, dance tracks with attitude, but often suffused with strong melody and a sense of claustrophobia too. ‘Reality’ was based on a synth riff, with Johnny’s tight guitar filling the spaces in the drum track. While the rhythms are very ‘up’, Sumner’s vocal is sparse and emotionally distracted. If this was dance music it would appeal lyrically to Smiths fans. Outside of the musical context, Bernard’s lyric and delivery could easily have been that of a New Order or Joy Division song.
‘Tighten Up’ featured Johnny’s strumming high in the mix, adding a warmth to the synth riff that started the song. ‘Patience Of A Saint’ was based upon Bernard’s drum beat and a handful of chords dropped onto it by Chris Lowe. Johnny added the bass line, and the whole song – a pure Pet Shop Boys/Electronic collaboration – was completed very quickly. Tennant’s vocal contrasted superbly well with Bernard’s; although Electronic were always a duo, the contrast of the two voices over the course of an album was fascinating.
‘Getting Away With It’ featured the drums of David Palmer, the sticksman with whom Johnny had probably worked more than any other. Bernard’s plaintive vocal again harmonized perfectly with Neil’s – the song is another perfect happy/sad concoction, so typical of much of the work that Johnny has been involved with over the years. After ‘Gangster’ and ‘Soviet’ came the single ‘Get The Message’, featuring Primal Scream’s Denise Johnson on vocals, one of the highlights of the album.
Electronic later went on to claim that their music was dance music for people who don’t go to dance clubs. As more time passes and the band’s first album becomes more of an archaeological relic of the early Nineties, the synth bass lines and metronomic beats that defined the dance grooves of the time give way to Sumner’s vocals. There is a timelessness to Bernard’s delivery, halfway between tender and dead-pan, that works on so many levels. This is particularly evident on ‘Some Distant Memory’, which has the plangent wistfulness of The Blue Nile, but on an E-fuelled night out in Manchester rather than wandering the wet streets of late night Glasgow. Johnny’s glissando acoustic guitar is a real treat on the track too. The closer, ‘Feel Every Beat’ opens with some of Johnny’s backwards guitar, swelling until the opening riff rocks more than anywhere else on the album. Palmer’s drumming is supplemented by Donald Johnson. The album vamps into the distance with Johnny’s harmonica pumping away…
Electronic made it to the number two slot in the UK album charts – like so many of Johnny’s albums over the years, not quite getting to number one. It was, as Johnny might have said at the time, a fantastic piece of vinyl.