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EasyJet Inflight magazine PET
SHOP BOYS February 2002 Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe sit eating, respectively, a Fry’s Cream and a Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate bar, rustling wrappers and licking lips between giving forth on the state of pop. They have seen the changes, tastes come and go. They, at least, are still here, albeit with less hair and, perhaps unsurprisingly, more waistline now. It has been twenty years since an architecture student from Blackpool and a music journalist from Newcastle met in a Kings Road electronics shop and, as the Pet Shop Boys, in 1986 launched their original brand of Litpop – insightful, provocative and often somehow sad lyrics set to rhythmic computerised symphonics. Or “Debussy to a disco beat”, as one of their songs helpfully summarises. The forty-something Boys are in ebullient mood. Tennant, the front man of two, who undercuts and yearns – or, depending on your sensibility, whines irony – over the music, speaks with an eloquence rare in the pop world. Even Lowe, who created the now clichéd Silent Man at Synthesiser pop posture and is known for his preference for staying in the shadows, is chock full of a friendly energy usually smothered by hat and dark glasses. They have finished their new album, entitled Release, and selected the single “Home and Dry”, about a lover’s inability to settle until his partner is back safely after “all those dark and frantic transatlantic miles”. Although both live in London, the album was recorded in Tennant’s homeland of the North-East and is different for it. “I don’t think we’d have made it if it had been recorded in London,” says Lowe. “There are a lot more slower tracks on it and although it sounds a cliché, it’s more personal. And there’s no irony whatsoever. Not unless Neil’s working at a very subtle level I’m not aware of.” The album, the Pet Shop Boys’ eighth, will no doubt rack up impressive sales, be well received and add to their impressive list of more than thirty Top 20 hits to date – no mean feat for a duo who have comfortably outlasted their ’80s peers. Nor has that been all they can claim: collaborations have taken in remixing of Blur and Bowie and the writing of career-reviving songs for Liza Minnelli and the late Dusty Springfield. Interesting projects have included their visually-striking theatrical tours, film work for The Crying Game and Scandal, as well as their own disappointing movie It Couldn’t Happen Here (“That doesn’t count! It was nothing to do with us!” chimes in Tennant). More recently, their musical Closer to Heaven, got a pasting from some critics; unfairly judged, Lowe suggests, “as though it was intended to be another Phantom or draw that kind of audience”. The critics haven’t dissuaded them from plans to write another next year. “The thing is that we’ve never worried about being cool,” explains Tennant. “To me being cool is about not really engaging with what’s going on and we’ve always been too engaged and too poppy to be cool. I don’t think you should worry about credibility. Popularity is another thing. Certainly the Pet Shop Boys aren’t anything like as popular as they were in the late ‘80s. It’s the nature of pop music. No one is as popular as they were ten years ago. And when you don’t sell sex it’s very difficult to have longevity and mass popularity. Take Madonna. Forty-two. Still looking good. And still selling it.” Lowe will go further. Towards a perfected double-act, when Lowe does speak, it is with a passion that not only underpins the music but counters Tennant’s dry, wry consideration. “I hate the whole concept of credibility. It’s a really negative force,” he says. “It’s responsible for all the crap put out by Radio 1. They’re obsessed with credibility and consequently they can’t play anything that is actually good for fear of not being credible. No one can listen with their ears anymore. They listen with thoughts of others’ reactions.” [ The Pet Shop Boys remain alone with their pioneering blend of house and hip-hop and a willingness to tackle subjects as diverse as adultery, consumerism and the homoeroticism of trucking ] Whether founded on their time-tested abilities, a disregard for industry opinion or perhaps a Northern tendency towards straight-talking, these pop protectors have adopted outspokenness as Pet Shop Boys policy, seemingly without harm. Indeed, through their various ventures the Pet Shop Boys have somehow maintained commercial as well as critical success. They have unobtrusive celebrity – Tennant occasionally gets asked for his autograph in the Kings Road’s Marks & Spencer’s – but also a cult and often obsessive fan base that means they could play to an audience of 3,000 just about anywhere in the world, “from San Francisco to Moscow to Taipei, with the exception of the Caribbean,” Tennant adds cryptically. But where the duo have spent most of their working lives is their adopted home of London; Tennant in Chelsea, Lowe in Highbury. It is a place neither can imagine leaving, bar for New York, of which Lowe gets welcome reminders when he sees the Canary Wharf development and the bustle of which Tennant escapes by walking the square mile’s quieter lanes to find himself in evensong at St Paul’s. “I love just wandering around London, particularly around about five o’clock when the shops are still open and people are finishing work. It reminds me of when I had a proper job,” he adds. Familiarity has also thrown its problems into focus. “If anything happens it’s going to happen in London. Its entire infrastructure needs a massive input of investment but no one wants to pay for it,” says Lowe, getting heated again. “Everyone has a DVD player but no one wants to pay for the trains or NHS. And no political party is prepared to say it either. So we’re both thinking of moving from London, ha ha. That’s great for a magazine that wants to attract people to London! Go and live in Inverness! No, London is fantastic. Really. Just mind the needles and the street crime.” While love may fuel the rest of the pop engine, it is just these kinds of issues that may crop up as a pithy one-liner squeezed between two samples. Certainly, the Pet Shop Boys remain alone with their pioneering blend of house and hip-hop and a willingness to tackle with wit subjects as diverse as adultery, consumerism and the homoeroticism of trucking (one track on their new album even imagines that Eminem is gay). This follows Tennant’s view that a pop song should try and say something that has not been said before, or at least to say something old in a new way. Sadly, few even attempt. Indeed, the Pets apply the same critical enthusiasm to the ephemeral world they inhabit, that of pop, as they do to the capital. [ That Pop Idol thing isn’t pop. They’re auditioning people to do cabaret, people who will come on and sing “You are the Wind Beneath My Wings” ] “Pure pop still seems to be based around the idea that there’s only one kind of song you can write – ‘you’re the queen of my heart’,” says Tennant. “But what you have now is a lack of talent driven by hype. That Pop Idol thing isn’t pop. They’re auditioning people to do cabaret, people who will come on and sing “You are the Wind Beneath My Wings”. Dangerously, that has come to be regarded as pop music in the last five years. Pop music has been hijacked by showbusiness. “That said, there’s always some good music around,” he adds. “And it’s usually by people who are really into what they’re doing, who don’t just see it as a career but as a personal and musical exploration, as taking a risk. And we’ve taken a lot of risks over the years.” The Pet Shop Boys headline at the NME Carling 50th Anniversary Shows at the London Astoria on February 14th. The single Home and Dry is released in March. The new album, Release, (Parlophone) is released on March 25. PET SHOP BOY’S LONDON WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE…… Club?
Place
for breakfast? Walk?
Shop
(any kind)? View?
Place
to drink? Fancy
restaurant? Place
for a cheap and cheerful bite? Cinema
or theatre? Museum?
What
do you do on Sundays? |
