When Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner made their first album together as Electronic, breakfast was sometimes a tense affair. In late 1989 and early 1990, they were fitting sessions at Marr’s studio around his duties as The The’s lead guitarist and Sumner’s responsibilities with New Order, who had just released Technique. Eventually, it made sense for Sumner and his girlfriend to move into Marr’s attic. “As absurd as this sounds, Technique and The The were more side projects,” Marr tells Apple Music. “Our main passion was for Electronic. When we came downstairs in the morning, I would talk about a track and he would tell me to shut up for half an hour: ‘Please, let me just put my toast on.’ It was a bit like The Odd Couple.” This odd couple was also a dream team. After Sumner first approached Marr with the idea in 1988, Electronic brought together two of Manchester’s finest songwriters just as the acid house revolution was gathering around New Order’s Haçienda club—and dilating the ambitions of local bands who would soon coalesce into the “Madchester” scene. “I had this real dichotomy going on,” says Marr. “The fallout of [leaving] The Smiths and the effort that that was taking to deal with. Then this amazing promise of a new dawn, the nascent beginnings of this major cultural explosion. Bernard probably has a similar tale. He didn’t really have dramatic issues with New Order but was looking for some kind of sanctuary on a personal level, a change in his life.” Together, they made a million-selling debut that allowed Marr to explore synth-pop and dance music in songs that were often finessed during parties at his house. More than the other two albums the duo released during the ’90s, Electronic restated what alternative music—and the greatest guitarist of his generation—could be by cross-pollinating techno and pop, rave and rock. “One minute he was Bernard from New Order, I’m Johnny from The Smiths, we’re writing,” says Marr. “The next, there’s this wave of activity and culture and change and creativity. And we’re right in the middle of it with a bunch of our mates—it’s kind of amazing.” Let Marr take you through those days, track by track. “Idiot Country” “Bernard and I would be working during the day and quite often I would elect to not go out. But at the gathering in my house beforehand, I fed off the people. I had tracks going on in the background, road-testing them. ‘Idiot Country’ was unfinished, didn’t have a vocal on it. I thought, ‘The track’s too fast.’ So I slowed it down and everyone started really getting off on it. [Happy Mondays’] Bez was there a few times, and he was a very reliable resource. Then I had the idea to put the wah-wah on. Even when I was partying, I was working. I always had my radar on: What’s going on musically in the place or with people is more important to me than getting fucked up.” “Reality” “‘Reality’ was the first piece of music that we finished. I really pushed for that Italia disco vibe, probably a couple of years before it became really, really popular, almost trying to anticipate what I thought Bernard would do. I was saying to him, ‘How do we do that Geiger synth thing? What do we do about programming the hi-hats on that? No, let me do it. Show me how to do it.’ That was me rolling my sleeves up and jumping in.” “Tighten Up” “This was Bernard hectoring me: ‘We’ve got to at least have one fast indie-guitar track on the record, for fuck’s sake.’ He used to say, ‘Everyone’s going to blame me for you not playing guitar.’ It was very deliberate that the first time anyone saw me with Electronic, I stood at a keyboard. That was a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to all the thirtysomething indie boys trying to tell me what to do in the music press. We sat down and got a beat up. I played Ian Curtis’ famous Vox Phantom, Bernard played my Smiths Rickenbacker, and we wrote it over about half an hour.” “The Patience of a Saint” “We’d written ‘Getting Away With It’ the day before with Neil [Tennant] and Chris [Lowe]—I had us set up in a bedroom in my house. And then we all went out to The Haçienda, which was a real fun night. The next day, we wrote ‘The Patience of a Saint.’ It has a very comedown-y vibe about it—which makes sense. Neil and Chris were a really, really big part. Their involvement really helped build the foundation of Electronic and not only helped make it successful, but gave us more of a focus.” “Getting Away With It” “I always try to come prepared with some ideas when I’m collaborating with people. That was something I learned to do from being a boy, joining different bands. So in the afternoon [before Tennant and Lowe arrived], I came up with a chorus, the chord change, the bassline, and the topline. Then Neil and Chris arrived. Bernard came up with the piano chords for the verse. Then Neil kind of arranged it. And Chris said, ‘Well, the bassline should do this.’ And before we knew it, we had this single. It really helped define what Electronic was going to be about. It helped when it was a real huge hit.” “Gangster” “‘Gangster’ took quite a bit of time. That was really crafted. Bernard had a lot of faith in it. It was probably one of the ideas that he [had] before he and I started—probably one of the early building blocks that gave him the idea of doing something outside of New Order. He already had it on a bunch of floppies when we first got together. We wrote about 19 ideas over a period of a few months, and only two or three of them made the cut. We discarded so much music. Neil and Chris coming in made it real for us, I guess. We started being a bit more focused.” “Soviet” “‘Soviet’ was really done by Bernard, watched and aided and abetted by his friend. That’s his baby. Only he could have done it. He was doing a lot at that time, collaborating with other people, with Technotronic, with 808 State, and I think he was enjoying reclaiming his early influences. He has a very good empathy for 20th-century European feeling. Of course, the tracks get sculpted, but that was one of the times he caught lightning in a bottle.” “Get the Message” “‘Get the Message’ has always been really important for me because the process was magical. My inspiration, just in feeling, was [The Family Stand’s] ‘Ghetto Heaven’—that summery, loping, midtempo groove. I’d gone off to do some The The dates and Bernard was continuing working on tracks. Then my wife came out to Tokyo. It was 11 o’clock at night. I sat on this very high-tech, tall, low-lit, luxurious bullet train ready to ride through the night. Angie gave me the tape and I put it on my Walkman. As the train took off, it was the first time I’d heard what ‘Get the Message’ was, and I couldn’t believe what a job Bernard had done. The vocal was sublime and beautiful. It sounded like music I’d never heard before. It doesn’t sound like New Order or The Smiths. It only sounds like Electronic.” “Try All You Want” “This went through a few incarnations. Him at one end of the keyboard and me at the other, nudging each other out the way. ‘The next bit should do this.’ ‘I’ve got the next bit.’ The more established acid house got, the more it affected that song. We started stripping the chords out. It was more dubby in a way, and it made the vocal better.” “Some Distant Memory” “‘Some Distant Memory’ was Bernard’s baby. He kept coming back to that and crafting it and crafting it. That, of course, is a signature Bernard thing. I think that was the kind of thing he was looking to do outside of New Order, that he could have done in New Order, but he needed to be outside of New Order to do it.” “Feel Every Beat” “I wrote the backing track, and I was surprised that Bernard liked it so much. I would have discarded it. A couple of days beforehand, he was like, ‘We’re going to work on that track on Friday.’ Which is unlike him, to be so, ‘OK, put a marker down.’ He wanted to represent that communal feeling that was going on around the early times of the rave culture, without it being cheesy. ‘If there’s a place to be, why don’t you come with me?’ That was a very Bernard thing to say at that time. He was like the Pied Piper of Manchester. You would go out with him and before you knew it, 15 people would be following him. Now, as he was an owner of The Haçienda, people knew that he could get free drinks, so it might not be as cosmic as I’m making out. Another person who really liked ‘Feel Every Beat’ was George Michael. I’m pretty sure he told us that that’s what inspired ‘Freedom!’”