TERRIBLE MIMING! SAXOPHONE DISASTERS! A KIM WILDE CAMEO! STEPHEN MORRIS AND GILLIAN GILBERT’S ACCIDENTAL POP CAREER AWAY FROM NEW ORDER AS THE OTHER TWO HAS BEEN AN ADVENTURE THEY HAVE NEVER QUITE CONTROLLED...
JOHN EARLS
It wasn’t so much that we came up with the name The Other Two, it’s that other people kept calling us that anyway.” So begins Stephen Morris’ explanation of the strange and subterranean history of New Order’s most mischievous side project.
When Bernard Sumner began Electronic and Peter Hook launched Revenge in the wake of their parent band’s rave-era classic Technique, New Order’s drummer and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert were initially left kicking their heels.
With perfect timing, the pair were then suddenly reminded that they had work to do after all. Shortly before recording began on Technique in Ibiza, New Order had been approached to compose the soundtrack for BBC1 series Making Out, a Manchester-set factory drama that starred Keith Allen and Margi Clarke. “We agreed, and immediately forgot that we’d said yes,” admits Morris.
And just as Bernard and Hooky announced their solo plans, Making Outproducer John Chapman appeared at the mixing sessions for Technique to ask how New Order were getting on with that soundtrack...
“I didn’t think four people doing a soundtrack at the same time would have worked anyway,” says Gilbert. “We didn’t know what we were doing, but it got me and Stephen writing a lot of music. We got professional about soundtracks later, learning how to write to a scene.”
Rather than working at New Order’s increasingly sedate pace, the couple would have a week to score each of the series’ eight episodes. “That was fine,” breezes Stephen. “One of the hardest ideas in music is: ‘What do you write a song about?’ When someone sticks a video in front of you and says they want something to go with it, that’s half a song done straight away. We then ended up with loads of two-minute pieces of music.”
Two years later, in 1991, The Other Two released their debut single, Tasty Fish. By then, New Order had turned Morris and Gilbert’s theme for Janet Street-Porter’s documentary series Reportage into their only UK No.1 single, World In Motion, for England’s 1990 World Cup team.
Tony Wilson’s business partner, Alan Erasmus – “The man of mystery at Fa
