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"Once they were young hacks together on a pop music magazine. Now one of them's famous. Neil Tennant talks to Tom Hibbert. All-action man who's big in Iran. Back in the 1980s, I was working at Smash Hits writing about musicians such as Duran Duran and others who have been forgotten by time. In the corner sat another journalist who was much given to announcing with a cackle and a Newcastle accent how ghastly almost all pop music was. He was going to be a pop star himself one day, he proclaimed. What a joke, I thought. If anyone in that office was going to be the next Bruce Springsteen, or even the next Duran Duran, it was surely me. But life is cruel. Within months that other journalist, Neil Tennant, was on Top of the Pops with his dour keyboard playing chum Chris Lowe performing a huge hit, West End Girls. They were the Pet Shop Boys. They were famous. They were gay (although Neil had once almost fathered a child which would be in its thirties by now). They were all the rage. I was still at Smash Hits. I was interviewing them. We were discussing the role of the Action Man toy in society, for some peculiar reason. And now, years later, I am seated in the sunshine of a Notting Hill eating establishment talking to the fabulously wealthy Tennant. About, naturally enough, Action Man. "Chris is not in any way constrained by taste," says Tennant. "Our new single started off by being a response to the record Barbie Girl. Chris decided: 'Barbie Girl's a huge hit, so let's write a song about an Action Man.' So I loyally went along with this - and wrote If Anyone Can, the Action Man Can. I quite liked that. But we finally dumped it because it was too embarrassing. We couldn't get away with that at our age, really. "Of course, I used to have an Action Man. I remember that because a French journalist asked us something in an interview based, I think, on an article by you. He said: 'I think you have on your bookshelf a male toy.' Ha ha." Neil, rum old cove that he is, used to have a Donny Osmond marionette, too. I know this because he lent it to me once when I interviewed Sir Donald. Neil has forgotten all about this. "That's outrageous," he says. "How did Donny take to that? He always looks like he's a good sport, Donny. They still have a TV show in America, Donny and Marie. It's like Richard and Judy. It's so good. Chris always watches it. Chris is always trying to get us to appear on it. They always have a reunion with the whole family at the end. Meryl, Jay, Donny, Alan, Little Jimmy - who is now HUGE. Ha ha ha." Strangely enough, despite the riches, the success and the glamour, Tennant still occasionally misses his days as a journalist. "Oh, yes," he says. "I've always missed working in an office. I worked in an educational publishers in the late 1970s on books about tropical fish and I edited The Dairy Book Of Home Management which sold 1.35 million copies in four weeks. I, of course, never read any of it because it was so boring. "We had a lot of fun in the office. We did books about B films and we used to go to the Scala Cinema to see ghastly films like Plan Nine From Outer Space. And the Smash Hits office was really great. It was really good fun although I used to hate interviewing people . I hate writing. "So I miss the office but I don't miss the writing. The only time I considered having anything further to do with journalism was when I read that you could buy the New Statesman for £10,000. I thought 'Wow, how f****** brilliant'. So I rang up my accountant and said I know this sounds stupid but I'm going to buy the New Statesman, phone them up and tell them. But the trustees were slightly confused about me buying the New Statesman which I thought was a bit spoilsporty of them." Pop star buys political magazine; that would have made a welcome change from pop star binges millions on drug-crazed sex romps, wouldn't it? But that's Neil Tennant for you. A pop star, but one of intellectual urges. He's met Tony Blair, too (though that scarcely counts as an intellectual pursuit with this seemingly star-struck Prime Minister of ours). Neil was at THAT Downing Street soirée along with Noel Gallagher of Oasis and the gang. "Tony ignored me and we didn't get in the papers. But we drank champagne which was quite exciting. And we were on the news leaving but we hid behind Lenny Henry. He's quite nice, Tony Blair, actually. But I think he's gone raving mad now." The Pet Shop Boys will be setting off on their first tour in nine years this winter in collaboration with the architect Zaha Hadid. "It seemed like a good idea to get an architect to do the stage sets. She's Iraqi. She's quite big and she wears Iraqi dresses split up the side. Chris and I are very scared of her which I always think is a good starting point. There are obviously going to be tantrums at some point. There always are." The Pet Shop Boys are, amazingly enough, big in Iran. Neil smiles - "Yes, the concept of the Pet Shop Boys and this Islamic Republic is a bit weird, isn't it! All the kids have pictures of us on their textbooks. I find this completely unbelievable." They are big in Russia, too. "When you're in Russia and you hear It's A Sin, it's completely mad. It sounds so Russian. We played a club in Moscow on this tiny stage and it was such a hoot because behind us were all these bored Mafia types aggressively and sneeringly ignoring us although they'd paid $100 to get in to prove they could afford it. It was very strange." Whether the musical Neil is writing will ever make it to Iran or Russia seems unlikely, however. "I've got a secret agenda to reinvent the musical," he says. "It's got two funny songs in it. It'll probably never happen." If it does, who will be starring? Sir Clifford Of Richard, perchance? "No. Actually, now you come to mention it there is a part for Sir Clifford. But I'd rather have Marianne Faithfull . . . The trouble with musicals is you've got that classic thing of why are they all singing?" And now the man has to leave. He's off to write some music for the eclipse during which the Pet Shop Boys will be appearing in Cornwall. "Chris just wanted us to do Total Eclipse of the Heart followed by Here Comes the Sun in a rattling high energy melody sung by Hazel Dean." He pauses. "But somehow I can't quite agree with him.'" The Times |
