Happy Anniversary: Electronic, “Getting Away With It”
25 years ago today, the singer from New Order, the guitarist from the Smiths, and a Pet Shop Boy got together to deliver one of the last great singles of the ‘80s, even if most Americans didn’t get a chance to hear it until 1990.
Picture it: the UK music scene in 1989. Johnny Marr is two years out of the Smiths and enjoying the opportunity to play with a variety of different artists, including Bryan Ferry, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, and The The; New Order has milked three singles out of their latest album, Technique, putting Bernard Sumner in a position to contemplate doing a solo album; and the Pet Shop Boys are post-Introspective but pre-Behavior, thereby giving Neil Tennant a bit of downtime. When Sumner realized that you tend to be rather solo when working on a solo album, he decided to call Marr – who he’d first met in 1984 during a Quando Quango session – and ask if he’d up for helping him put something together. As to Neil Tennant’s involvement, it’s been said that he found his way in after Factory Records artist Mark Farrow told him about the collaboration between Sumner and Marr and found it intriguing enough to reach out to them about chiming in.
There are more musicians involved in “Getting Away With It” than just that trio, however: the drums are played by David Palmer, late of ABC, and the string arrangement comes courtesy of Anne Dudley, whose handiwork can be heard all over Trevor Horn’s production efforts, not to mention in a number of films. (She’s written scores for motion pictures ranging from American History X to Monkeybone, though you may know her best for her contributions to The Full Monty.)
As wonderful as “Getting Away With It” may have been, it took ages for Electronic to produce a full-length album: their self-titled debut didn’t make it to record store shelves until 1991. Once it did, though, they found further success with such singles as “Get the Message” and “Feel Every Beat,” and the collaboration continued onward – sometimes with Neil Tennant, sometimes not – all the way through 1999, when the Twisted Tenderness album was released. At this stage of the game, it seems unlikely that we’ll see another Electronic album, but the time Marr and Sumner spent together still seems to hold fond memories for the musicians: Marr regularly breaks out “Getting Away With It” in his solo sets even now.
