Pet Shop Boys: Out Of The Doghouse

Pet Shop Boys: Out Of The Doghouse

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Harold DeMuir

Meet Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, respectively the vocal and musical halves of England’s Pet Shop Boys. They’re older than your average British pop sensations (Neil is 31, Chris 26), and they didn’t start their group because they were on the dole with nothing better to do. In fact, they had respectable careers going prior to entering the music biz. Chris had completed six of the seven years of schooling necessary to become a professional architect, and Neil was an editor

for the mega-successful U.K. pop glossy Smash Hits.

Yup, you read that right. Neil Tennant was one of those frustrated-musician music journalists that rock stars are always complaining about, and which we hacks invariably deny the existence of. “I think there’s quite a lot of truth to the allmusic-journalists-are-frustratedmusicians theory,” he chirps, ruining my day.

Perhaps I should draw some consolation from the fact that the singer was a mere book editor (he’d previously worked in Marvel Comics’ London office) when

he met his current musical partner in a Chelsea music store in 1981. The pair found that they had similar taste in dance records, became friends and began writing songs together.

Both Pet Shop Boys (despite all the talk about gay slang for certain exotic sexual practices, Neil and Chris maintain that the name was inspired by some friends who worked in a—surprise—pet shop) had been working up tunes in their spare time in the years before they met, but had pretty much given up on the idea of doing music full-time.

“I always used to spend a lot of time

“I think there’s a lot of suspicion when you’re a music journalist and you start making records. ” —Neil Tennant

messing around on the piano at home, and Neil did the same on his guitar,” Chris recalls. “It really wasn’t a conscious thing; we never really said, ‘Let’s get into a group.’ We were just interested in music, and it seemed to develop and take off by itself.”

During the summer of 1983, while in New York to interview the Police for Smash Hits, Neil paid a visit to one of the duo’s idols, eccentric disco producer Bobby Orlando, who immediately demanded to work with the Boys. Faster than you could say “All music journalists are frustrated pop musicians,” Neil and Chris were in New York recording the original version of “West End Girls” (a minor hit in Europe) with Bobby 0.

After a year-long hiatus imposed by a contractual dispute with Orlando, the Pet Shop Boys inked with EMI, who released “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)” and a new, improved remake of “West End Girls.” The latter track became the worldwide Number One smash we all know and love; meanwhile, the former ditty’s irony escaped some listeners, who took its cynical tone at face

value and assumed the Boys to be typical greedy, calculating pop prats.

“I think there’s a lot of suspicion when you’re a music journalist and you start making records,” says Neil. “People think you must have discovered some gap in the market and decided to fill it, but that’s not the sort of thing that can be planned. We’re far too haphazard to be bothered to sit down and think about anything like that.

“There’s a kind of fashion amongst a

lot of British groups at the moment to have the style of a business corporation and pretend that you’re ruthless and that everything’s been planned and plotted out. I don’t think that actually has much depth to it; all that talk about strategies and marketing is just kind of parasitical. That’s what ‘Opportunities’ is about, that kind of cynicism.”

Please, the Pet Shop Boys’ debut album, includes “West End Girls” and “Opportunities,” plus hits-to-be like “Love Comes Quickly,” “Suburbia” and “I Want A Lover.” It’s a curious blend of sincerity and archness, and manages to sound simultaneously effervescent and morose.

Melancholic undertones also manifest themselves in the duo’s television and video appearances, which generally contain as little actual physical movement as possible. Neil considers the dour, minimalist image to be a reaction to the false enthusiasm that often dominates pop events. “We’re suspicious of all that rock tradition, and we don’t want to fall into all the usual cliches,” he explains. “We don’t do that kind of recording you could mime a guitar solo to, or do a Wham! dance routine to. We’re also a bit self-conscious, which is probably more important.”

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Adds Chris, “When we do programs like Top Of The Pops, everyone’s egging us on and everyone’s happy, but the whole time I’m thinking, ‘Oh, here we are now, but someday we’ll be finished.’ So I always come across as being a bit unhappy.”

Despite their lack of conventional gung-ho stagecraft, the popularity of “West End Girls” has turned these seemingly unlikely lads into— dare I say it?—teen idols. “It’s very strange,” frets Chris. “I don’t really know what to think about that.”

“We get lots of letters from teenage girls,” says Neil. “We never expected to get a teenage following; we thought what we did might go over their heads.”

“One of the nice things about having a successful record,” Chris notes, “is that it touches a lot of people. We were walking down the street in London the other day, and these two girls said, ‘Oh, you’re the Pet Shop Boys. Your record made my year.’ Music can really move you and stir you and make your heart pound. It’s the only thing that’s ever moved me that way, and it’s nice to have that effect on other people.”

“The basic function of music,” Neil states, "is just to orchestrate a backdrop for people’s lives, and to make people feel better. Or to make them feel worse if they want—Frank Sinatra made all those depressing late-night records, which people can wallow in when they’re feeling miserable. Music is there to heighten your emotions, like a drug or something.

“This is something that I always dreamt of doing and never thought I would do,” the singer continues. “There’s obviously things about it that are just as much of a drag as any normal nine-to-five job, but writing songs and making records is extremely satisfying. Producing something that people suddenly like is kind of miraculous, and it’s something you don’t really get in other jobs.”

The Pet Shop Boys do intend to remain a pop group long enough to undertake their first-

ever concert tour in the fall. “We’re hoping to do it with just the two of us, using sequencing and triggering things,” says Neil. “We’ve only performed live twice before, so I’m very apprehensive about it, but that’s what makes it exciting. The show’s going to be quite spectacular to look at, because we’re going to be working with a theater designer on it.”

Chris elaborates: “We’d like to get away from the idea of the rock concert, and create something more theatrical—that sounds a bit corny, doesn’t it? We’d like to present each song with a different backdrop, different sets, different lighting, different ambience. We’re not gonna make any big statements about musicianship, we’re just gonna try and present something exciting. And I can’t see us doing a song-and-dance routine, so we’re gonna have to overcome our static-ness with visual surprises.”

But the tour’s a few months off yet, and the Pet Shop Boys have a more pressing matter to attend to: flogging Please to the American public. “I think it’s quite a good album, really,” says Chris matter-of-factly. “I don’t usually buy albums, but I’d probably buy ours. I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like!” 0