1990 08 18 Electronic NME

GETTING L.A. WITH IT

The first supergroup of the '90s or the latest in a long line of rich men’s follies? Despite the follicle-jangllng brilliance of their debut single 'Getting Away With It' the jury was still out on ELECTRONIC - thanks largely to a dearth of live ‘put up or shut up’ shows. That is until last week, when Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr's Mane miracle took to the stage at LA's Dodgers Stadium - with THE PET SHOP BOYS! - as support to Basildon's finest DEPECHE MODE. DANNY KELLY was there-rubbing shoulders with Brit rock's homesick exiles THE CULT, 'hard working' (sic) HAPPY MONDAYS and 'im Out Of Simply Red - to declare Electronic rock-solid state of the art. Tattooed love boys: KEVIN CUMMINS

Sunset Strip West Hollywood, is about eight miles from NWA's Compton. And a million light years away. This is the cash money part of town and, within 200 yards of one another, Sunset boasts three hotels simply oozing rock 'o' roll history.

First there's the Chateau Marmont where .John Belushi sniffed his last. Next to that there's the Hyatt (more familiar to Hammer of the Gods readers as the Riot), scene of Led Zeppelin's more disgusting excesses and venue for the end-of-tour party in Spinal Tap. And across the road from the Hyatt is the strangest hostelry of the lot, the current fave of rock bands both resident and visiting...

Hotel le Mondrian (I ask you!) is a triumph of rampant designerism over such things as good taste and common sense. Decorated outside to resemble one of the primary-coloured works of the painter whose name it bears, its rooms are filled with all manner of hopeless daubs; art with a capital F. Its unfortunate staff are obliged to ponce about in Mondrian-look grey and yellow karate pyjamas, while the music piped into the lifts and corridors is always that of the current guests.

Hence, today, the scented stillness is full of the strains of Depeche Mode, Taylor Dayne, the Masters Of Reality and the group that have caused me to check into this Play School-on-acid nightmare.

Electronic is the baby of New Order's Bernard Sumner and former you-know-what Johnny Marr. Their debut (Pet Shop Boys-assisted) single, 'Getting Away With It', was a gliding beauty, the best pop record of the last 12 months. Easily. The group (right now the Sumner/Marr nucleus plus keyboardist Andy Robinson and percussionists Kesta Martinez and Donald Johnson) are here, with the Pet Shop Boys, to make their live debut supporting Depeche Mode's two-night stand in LA's giant Dodgers Stadium.

As yet, Electronic is a mystery. It has the potential to be both wondrous and woeful, either the dawn of a shimmering new pop, a celebratory collision of the best of '80s Britnoise, or the indulgence of rich men, that most ugly of mutants, the supergroup. This weekend In Los Angeles will begin to tell us which...

IN A stately - not to mention ostentatious - convoy of white stretch limos, Electronic (and their Pet Shop Boys collaborators/ guests) arrive at the venue of their first concert, the vast (60,000 seats) and gobsmacking Dodgers Stadium. In this imposing cathedral of baseball, they'll play warm-up to our own Depeche Mode, who are, in these parts, both gigantic (even U2 only did one night here!) and, amazingly, Total Sex Gods!

The band (pronounced El- ectronic, rather than E-lectronic!) took this gig at short notice; they're not really ready. Two of their numbers will be instrumentals because Barney hasn't yet written enough words; and those he has finished, he's struggling to remember. As the minutes to showtime tick away, the nerves in the dressing area are visibly fraying.

"At the soundcheck, everything was just fine." sighs Neil Tennant resignedly, "Except me. I always sound dreadful; that's probably why we do so few live things."

Barney (who, after New Order's last US jaunt swore never to tour again) has his own way of dealing with the mounting tension: "No, I'm not nervous," he giggles slyly. "I'm too pissed to be nervous!"

A chain-smoking Johnny Marr takes an opposite tack. On The Smiths' '86 US tour he was permanently plastered but now he goes onstage completely sober. "It's a muso thing," he explains, "I just like to be in control of what I'm doing.”

Before the words have died, an outgrown golf buggy arrives to whisk Marr, Sumner, Robinson (formerly New Order's road manager), Johnson (ACR stalwart) and Martinez (origins unknown) to their first moment of truth.

Within moments of Electronic's arrival onstage, the audience (clad in equal parts LA sexercise gear and mattest Mode black) gets its first shock, and it is a belter! For the opening number, 'Big House', Johnny Marr - axe hero to a generation - doesn't touch his guitar! Indeed, swathed in Mano stylo baggies, he pokes enthusiastically at a compact keyboard. With Sumner and Robinson at similar consoles and Johnson and Martinez thumping away at electric drum pads, the band presents an odd spectacle - a vibed up advertisement for cutting edge technology. Kraftwerk after a day trip to Joe Bloggs!

'Big House' and the instrumental that follows it ('Try All You Want’) are less songs than percussive grooves, uptempo and dancey. Their unfamiliarity keeps the locals at arms length. The fourth number, ‘Sun', does, however, snag their attention in time for ’Get The Message', the first occasion when Electronic begins to make vibrant unquestionable sense.

A ballad, ‘...Message' requires all Johnson and Martinez's chummy determination to withstand Marr’s guitar (hurrah!). Throughout, Barney's lost in his trademark dance, grinning hugely. He's having a ball. For Marr who persuaded him to get back onstage, that alone marks this debut as some sort of success.

Then it's the Pet Shop Boys. The crowd, excited now, squeal their delight as Tennant (designer dapper) and Lowe (flasher's mac!) stroll on to feel their way through ‘Patience Of A Saint' and 'Getting Away With It' .‘Patience.. ' is wonderful (epic, lyrical, very PSBs) out if s the single, a hit in the States, which finally drives the LAds and LAsses to the edge of, erm, ecstasy.

Its sweeping, insistent yet gentle grace is the clearest clue yet that Electronic are aiming for (and capable of achieving) something truly special. By the climax of the song, the stage is a scene from a music fan's wettest dream; chunks of Britain‘s best rock band, most influential dance mob and most successful pop group of the '80s combining to glorious, almost moving, effect.

Tennant and Lowe depart and Electronic finish with ‘Gangster and 'Donald'; mobile meshes of relentless funk fuel, cinematic dance keys and brooding rock flecks. Their muscles flexed and their promises made, they scamper off.

It's gone well. Not triumphantly, but groovily enough for the band to wear almost sheepish grins at the post-gig neck-oiling, into this little round of beer and back-slapping familiar faces peer: The Cult's Billy Duffy, a Los Angeles resident, drops in briefly and threatens to turn up next day at the hotel, while Bez and drummer Gaz from Happy Mondays (who're recording their new LP out here) chat easily with Barney and Johnny, old friends...

But far and away the oddest arrival is that of Mick Hucknall. He swans into the backstage area like some Dickensian actor. His studied cool has made him few friends among his contemporary Mancs. For an age. nobody talks to him. Nobody at all. Eventually Susan Blond (the Pat Shop Boys' highly experienced American press officer) approaches him.

She returns a few seconds later, her face a hurt purple. "That," she splutters. "is the rudest human being I have ever met!"

Not bad, coming from a woman who spent ten years dealing with Bob Dylan!

FOR ME and photographer Cummins the next day will turn info an almost surreal spin through LA's British rock exiles, a cross between the idle daydream of a rock fanatic and a series of out-takes from Spinal Tap...

It starts early with the sun-honeyed tranquility of Le Mondrian's swimming pool shattered by the deafening snarl of raw revs. The mobile commotion is Billy Duffy - complete with Harley Davidson, natch - making good his 'I'll-pop-round' promise/threat of last evening.

With the chromed monster, his blond mane and gigantic tattoo, Duffy does a fair impression of the cartoon rock animal abroad, but looks are deceiving. Bright, funny and affable, his presence has a galvanic effect on the sun-greedy poolside Mancs.

Donald Johnson hasn't seen Billy for ten years, since they were in rival struggling bands in post-punk Wythenshawe. Equally, Johnny Marr knows him from way back when he was a 12-year old waif trying to blag his way into Buzzcocks gigs. As the nostalgia for old Manchester intensifies, it's Marr who suddenly remembers that The Cult's guitarist was once, and for one night only, in a band with Morrissey.

'That's right!" Dully laughs uproariously. "The now legendary Band With No Name. We did one gig supporting Magazine We needed a singer and Morrissey just asked if he could be it.

"I'd known him around the place for years. I remember he organised this campaign to get some New York Dolls session played on Radio 1. You should have seen him then!" Duffy howls, before holding his hands a foot from either side of his head. "A bloody great mop of fuzzy hair all over the place.

"Some time after The Cult and The Smiths had started to happen, Ian Astbury and I met him in Wardour Street in London. He crossed the road so he wouldn't have to acknowledge us. Strange lad."

Leaving the sun-bathers to their rays, Donald Johnson, Cummins and me accept Billy Duffy's invitation and drive over to his newly acquired house in sedate Glendale. Billy is happy enough in exile because California is now The Cult's biggest market, but he clearly misses English company. On the road to Glendale he pumps us for information about the scene at home. While he himself finds it hard to grip the world of flares, dance remixes and boys on the floor, Ian Astbury, he reckons, is massively into all things Manc.

Billy Duffy's new house reflects The Cult's arena-huge status. It is a scaled down mansion. Around it, in addition to the Harley. are parked a Jeep and a black Range Rover. The pool, Billy says, is in need of urgent renewal. In his living room there's a TV the size of a Ford Fiesta (he stays in specially to watch All Creatures Great and Small - honest!); by the settee are a pile of '60's Life magazines, all with Vietnam on the cover. He makes us a cup of tea (PG Tips, naturally!) and settles in for more nostalgic natter with Donald and Kevin.

Before you can say 'Southern Death Cult', the phone goes. Billy picks it up, says "'''ello", listens, then covers the mouthpiece and smiles at us: "It's the Dark Lord!" Returning to his caller, he begins ‘Hi boss, how ya doin'?"

'Boss’ - the 'Dark Lord' - is Cult frontman Ian Astbury. He lives in Toronto these days but has spent the last couple of months holed up in another swanky LA hotel, plotting his mad schemes.

The purpose of his call is simple. He's become obsessed with the Happy Mondays. having seen their recent LA gig, and wants us to take him to where they're doing their recording and introduce him. This could become a Great Moment in Rock, too good to miss. We leave Billy Duffy at home as we head off into the night. He reckons he's got lots of phone calls to make about The Cult's new rhythm section; but, as we leave, I could've sworn I heard the voice of James Herriott booming from that huge TV...

OUTSIDE ASTBURY’s swish digs we wonder if the day's events can get any more bizarre. They can.

The mainstay of The Cult has always cut an eccentric figure, and now... mmm. With his goatee beard, denim bell-bottoms, flowing silk flower-power shirt and matching headscarf, he cuts a dash not unlike some slightly scatty scorcerer. In his customised hotel room he has some 800 CDs; when we enter his lair, he is playing The Rutles!

In some ways he is totally LA-Rock-Biz. The city's musical top guns get referred to by their Christian names- “Axl this”, “Sebastian that”, “Lenny the other” - but beneath the oddball clobber and the absolute adoration of Guns N’ Roses (“the only rock band left in the whole f---ing world with any integrity") he is engaging, thirsty for knowledge. He is also, he has no hesitation in telling us, “the only politically active musician in this whole city.”

As if to prove this point, he regales us with details of the consciousness-raising rock festival he’s in the latter stages of planning and promoting. The bash will take place over two days in October and we're not talking about local youth club bands:

“I’ve already got confirmations from Guns N’ Roses, Public Enemy, Lenny Kravitz and tons of others. I tried to get The Stone Roses, but their manager- whatsisname? -asked me for $250,000. I told him to f----right off!”

And now he wants to get the Happy Mondays involved. Even if they can’t, or won’t, do it, he’s mustard keen to meet them. We set off for Hollywood and Vine where they’re recording the follow-up to ‘Bummed’.

The Capitol Building, our landing zone, is extraordinary. Circular in shape and with a great spike sticking out the top, it was built in the '50s to look like a stack of records on a jukebox. Stranger still, it does! Deep in the jukebox's bowels, the Happy Mondays are, believe it or not, hard at work.

We arrive late at night, just as they're packing up after another 12-hour slog. Gaz, Mark, Paul, Bez and producers Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne are gathered round the twinkling desk, reviewing the day’s toil. It has gone well, and so have most of the days the Mondays have spent here. So far, in record time, they’ve laid down the basics for the seven new tracks. They are keen for us interlopers to hear them.

Steve rolls the tape and from the studio's chunky speakers boom the rhythm tracks and guide vocals for the newies. It’s hard not to be impressed. Impossible. The best bands have spells when they can do no wrong, when they sweat and piss and crap gold. For the Happy Mondays that time seems to be now.

The embryonic ‘God’s Cop’ sounds tough and taut but the real standout is one with the working title of ‘Donovan’, its steady opening giving way suddenly to an explosion of guitars and drums. It’ll take up where ‘Wrote For Luck’ left off; that good.

“That’s really happening,” enthuses a swaying Astbury, “really f----ing happening.” When we arrived, the Mondays had no idea who the over-dressed Catweasle was, and, even after introductions, were a touch wary. Now the music - and Ian’s obvious delight at it - melts the ice. He gets his picture taken with each member of the band, a kid in his element.

Meanwhile, over at Glendale, poor Billy Duffy has no idea that the next Cult LP is gonna be called ‘Boogie All Weekend’.

ELECTRONIC? Oh yeah. In all the excitement, I'd nearly forgotten about them.

It’s the afternoon before their second Dodgers date and, on a balcony overlooking the pool, Johnny Marr and Barney Sumner are talking about their new toy. There is some reticence, however.

After three years of monkish silence, Marr is still not quite ready to reveal all. He will be, he says, when the LP comes out. Watch this space. Barney, meanwhile, is just being Barney; cute, astute and slightly untrusting. So we stick to basics.

How did Electronic - you ’n' him - come about?

“It’s a really boring story,” shrugs Barney.

“In short,” offers a chirpier Johnny, “several years ago Andrew Berry told me that Barney was alright, a nice bloke. We’d bumped into one another around Manchester, in the Hacienda and that. So we first met socially, as friends...

“At the end of the American tour New Order did with Echo And The Bunnymen, '87 I think, I arranged to come out and meet Barney, for a laugh... ”

“We were in the toilet,” Sumner interrupts, “having a slash and I just said to him ‘do you fancy making this album?’ He said yeah.”

“It was funny really, and ironic,” Marr continues. “But just after that, Hooky asked me if I wanted to work with him. I had to say ‘sorry, but Barney’s beaten you to it’. It was some time after that that Hooky started slagging me off in interviews, saying my work was rubbish. I thought to myself -‘You’ve changed yer tune’...”

Why did you form Electronic?

J: “Electronic is a way for both of us to have our cake and eat it too. We’re both in groups that are cool -I’m a massive fan of both The The and New Order - and Electronic is a way for us to make records outside those cool groups.”

B: “We’re trying to break all the restrictions that you get in a group, to do everything that we couldn’t do in those groups.”

J; “On paper, I know it looks like some big ‘hey-wow’ strategy, but in fact it's just the opposite; just two mates from Manchester making records together. Two mates who like to make pure dance music or interesting, dark rock music.”

B: “The whole idea is that we don’t use much equipment, and what we do use we can hire, so if we get asked to do a concert and it’s somewhere interesting, like... Iraq or somewhere, then we can just fly out and do the gig....

The most common barbs aimed at Electronic will be Rich Man’s Hobby and Supergroup.

J; “Well, I have to admit it looks like a supergroup, but, I'm repeating myself, the real story is two mates who see each other a lot making records. It's actually an idealistic thing; the only rule is that we make good records.”

B: “With both our outside things, both Hooky and I have been accused of just having hobbies, but the truth is that when I started in Joy Division that was a hobby, and I want my music to be more of a hobby again. Not quite so heavy and serious, and not such a piece of... industry, really.

“And when I go back to New Order, I can be more relaxed, less possessive about the songs. ”

For Marr, Electronic is, at long last, a way in. Back, that is, into the public glare as a creative force again. For Sumner it’s a way out, however temporary, of New Order. But why the need for an escape hatch at all?

“Everything in New Order,” he begins, picking his way carefully, “has to be a big compromise. I wanted to do something with less compromise. A group is a democratic thing and I wanted something less democratic.” He looks up and then, with a devilish grin, adds: “Going back to my fascist roots, see?”

This time last year, I saw the final date of New Order's massive US tour in New York. Barney looked tired, ill, uninterested and generally pissed off with the whole affair.

“We were all sick of each other by then,” he concurs. “The result of that is that I'll never do another tour like that again.”

“New Order,” Johnny jumps in, “had foresight. At the end of that tour they decided to have a break to help the group survive. If The Smiths had given me even two weeks off, everything, I think, would've been cool.”

“In New Order, ” Barney goes on wearily, “we used to rehearse Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I’d go in on Sunday and write stuff and sleep there Sunday night. Then I’d wake up next morning and start rehearsing again. It got.. a bit... depressing. Our rehearsal rooms back onto a graveyard! It just wasn’t working out.

“After the last New Order tour I came to the conclusion that the whole rock thing is a load of old bollocks. Rock is impressive, but it’s not serious, and this is my way of not taking it so seriously.”

What did you set out to make Electronic sound like?

B: “Less acoustic.. .emptier... more synthetic.. .dancier...”

J: “The things I liked in New Order were the Italian disco melodies. For me, as a fan, ‘Round & Round' and ‘Mister Disco’, off ‘Technique’, were perfect New Order. The first thing we wrote together was ‘Sun’, pure Electro.

“You see, I like late 70s disco and naff euro-melodies. Barney was really surprised by my tastes. Tell him what you thought my house was going to be like. Go on.”

B: “Before I saw it, I always thought Johnny’s house was gonna be all guitar-shaped ashtrays, ties with keyboards on and pictures of Elvis!”

J: “Gee, thanks Barney! But I was equally surprised to discover that he likes some of the early Stones singles - oddly enough, the same ones that Mozza likes - and some of the early, heavy, dark, Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac stuff. That surprised me no end. ”

DESPITE BARNEY lying motionless in the dressing room before the show - complaining of sickness, tiredness, everythingness - Electronic's second Dodgers gig far outstrips the first. By the show’s end we have solved some of the mysteries that confronted us just three days ago.

We now know that this is a team effort, that neither Sumner nor Marr is looking to nab the limelight. We know that the music is a pulsing amalgam of disco and rock, still basically melodic, but throbbing too... We know what ‘Technique’ had already made dear, namely that both Barney’s lyrics - the heartfelt cries of ‘Sun’ and ‘Get The Message’ for instance - and singing have improved beyond all recognition... And we know that, because of all these things, Electronic make a noise that is their own, unique.

And tonight that noise sounds great. Except, that is, on the stage. There the monitors are playing up and Barney’s coming down. So much so, in fact, that when the Pet Shop Boys emerge onstage 

(understandably nervy; this is only their eighth gig, ever) they're greeted by a bent-double singer encouraging them with the words “This is the worst experience of my life.”

He’s wrong. Tonight Electronic sound fabulous and, during ‘Getting Away With It’(what else?), there comes a moment to savour forever. At the exact second that Barney sings ‘I've been walking in the rain/Trying to get wet on purpose' a smir of rain descends Into the stadium from an apparently cloudless Californian sky. It’s only a drop, but it’s a sign too. A sign that with this music tonight, there’s (literally) magic in the air.

Afterwards there are muso moans and recriminations. They’re unnecessary. On the important side of the stage we loved it and were left panting for the forthcoming LP.

'Til then, of course, the jury remains very much out on Electronic. Sumner and Marr have taken a big gamble with their reputations. If they cock up, there’ll be a queue round the Hacienda to dance on their artistic graves. Naked talent and shining success breeds such jealousy and bile.

So Electronic is a gamble for them, sure. But it’s one that may very well, judging by the evidence of these first two days in the unforgiving public gaze, see the ‘two mates from Manchester' getting away with it.