The boys are back in town

The Pet Shop Boys have been noticeable by their absence from pop. That's because they've been writing a musical for Andrew Lloyd Webber. But is the West End ready for singing drug dealers?

Sheryl Garrett
Sunday May 13, 2001
The Observer

In closer to heaven, the new musical theatre production by the Really Useful Company in London's West End, Frances Barber plays Billie Trix, a faded rock star who bears some resemblance to the Velvet Underground's Nico. The show opens with her in the backroom of a club and being called onto the stage for her big number. First, though, she leans over and snorts a line of cocaine.
It's not what you expect from a new Andrew Lloyd Webber production, but then Closer to Heaven is an attempt by his company to forge a new identity for the musical in an era when the big spectaculars such as Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera are starting to look distinctly near their sell-by date. Set in a London nightclub with a drug dealer and the manager of a boy band among the central characters, it features a sharp, contemporary script by Liverpool-born playwright Jonathan Harvey (Babies, Beautiful Thing, Gimme Gimme Gimme) and music by the Pet Shop Boys.

'It won't sound like a West End musical at all,' says Chris Lowe, generally perceived to be the silent, sulky Pet Shop Boy but tonight so excited he scarcely lets anyone else get a word in. 'We haven't compromised at all in the way the music is produced. We've got the computers playing, the electronic keyboards and samplers.'

'It's very exciting,' adds Neil Tennant, 'and unbelievably scary.'

It's 8pm on a Friday night, and we're in the Quality Chop House in London's Clerkenwell, eating Caesar salads followed by posh variations on a breakfast fry-up. 'You can tell we all have hangovers,' Lowe says cheerfully, pouring out more wine. The night before, the Pet Shop Boys had been out with some of the cast at the fashionable club Kabaret where, they are pleased to report, Cilla Black was on the dancefloor 'looking fabulous'. They love this kind of absurdity: later, Tennant is telling me about Elton John's fiftieth birthday party, a fancy-dress event where he got to introduce 1980s pop star Rick Astley, dressed as an astronaut, to a bemused Michael Stipe of R.E.M.

The Pet Shop Boys first talked of doing a musical in 1986. At one point, there was talk of them creating it for television, and it was the BBC drama department which first introduced them to Harvey as a possible collaborator. He'd just written a 30-minute play about a fan of the boy band, E17, calling it after the Pet Shop Boys single, 'West End Girls': 'We were, of course, outraged by this.'

None the less, they began going to see Harvey's plays, and in 1996 finally started working with him on the project, talking about the plot and characters, writing songs and watching films like The Sound of Music to analyse just how it all worked. 'At the end of each song, people have changed, or the situation has changed,' says Tennant. 'By the end of "My Favourite Things", for instance, the governess is the pal of the kids. Before, they all hate her. And they do that in four minutes. And if you look at every song, that is the case.'

The basic idea for Closer to Heaven came quickly, and the club world seemed an ideal setting. 'Jonathan inhabits the kind of world we've inhabited,' explains Lowe. 'He's been to clubs like Trade and Heaven, so it's not like he's an outsider.' The plot revolves around Straight Dave, a good-looking, ambitious young man who comes to London from Northern Ireland 'and goes on a journey to do with his ambition and sexuality', falling in love with both a girl and the club's Scally male drug dealer, Mile End Lee. It's a classic love triangle, with a modern twist: 'Even at the end of the show, we don't necessarily know whether he's gay or straight.'

As the script took shape, they had discussions with various people, including the National Theatre, but it was the Really Useful Group which decided to take things forward. I have a hazy memory of the Pet Shop Boys once saying that their musical would show the Lloyd Webbers of this world how it was done, but the duo has now developed amnesia on that point. 'No, that never happened,' says Lowe, deadpan.

'That never happened, like my review of Starlight Express for Smash Hits never happened either,' says Tennant, who famously wrote about music before he was making it.

In fact, it's the Really Useful team who've done much of the teaching. They held a workshop, three weeks of rehearsals leading to a couple of performances last year which enabled Lowe and Tennant to pinpoint the weaknesses in their show. When writing a play, Harvey says he can easily read it and imagine how it will look and sound. 'But with the musical, I've never been able to do that, because I could never really imagine what it would be like when people stopped speaking and started to sing.'

After that, there were endless changes, the search for investors and a long search for suitable actors: Mile End Lee proved particularly difficult to cast. 'A lot of people are talking about doing musicals at the moment,' says Tennant. 'Boy George, Robbie Williams and Bono often talk about doing one, but it takes a lot of stamina to do something like this, a lot of time and energy.'

For the Pet Shop Boys, this is the point. 'After being in pop music for so long, this is just like releasing our first record,' continues Lowe. 'It's as exciting as making "West End Girls". We kind of know how record companies work now, but the theatre's so different. The director, the choreographer, the actors all ask constant questions: "What's the context? What are you trying to say in this song?" It's a really great collaborative process.'

Once, says Harvey, the soundtracks to musicals like West Side Story were considered mainstream pop. The film of Grease was probably the last musical to slide effortlessly into the pop arena, and Closer to Heaven is an attempt to redress that, to put different bums on the seats of the small, 340-seat Arts Theatre. 'I hope we can appeal to a younger audience that maybe doesn't usually go to the theatre. I'm writing for my mates, to encourage people to get in there.'

The Pet Shop Boys describe Jonathan Harvey as 'a comic genius' with a talent for mimicry that has been an endless source of amusement during their collaboration. Harvey, in turn, confesses that he's bought every CD they've ever done. 'They're very, very clever. They've always been quite aloof and elusive. You've never known too much about them, so you've never got that bored with them. They've always been a bit of a mystery.'

'Famous control fiends' by their own description, image has always been important to the Pet Shop Boys. When they started, they were a deliberately faceless antidote to shiny Eighties pop. More recently, when pop became more about beats than personality, they've hidden behind an ever-changing array of hats, wigs and disguises. It's a delicate balancing act, and after 15 years and 28 million album sales, we still know very little about them at all.

'Good,' says Lowe firmly. 'I like the fact that people don't even recognise me. I don't want people to know anything about me personally. I've never wanted to be a celebrity or to be famous. When we do interviews, they're to explain what we've been doing or to promote the record. It's not to promote ourselves. A lot of pop stars now promote themselves more than their music. The music is like an attachment, in a way. Is there anything we don't know about Robbie Williams? We know about his problems, his therapy, every person he's had sex with, every thought he's ever had. I even know now from the paper today that he's a good golfer.'

A few weeks before, we'd been to see Kylie Minogue play live, a camp pop extravaganza that marked a return to form for the diminutive pop queen. As Kylie chatted to Tennant at the after-show party, they were surrounded by flashing cameras and I was surprised how calmly he continued talking.

'Chris hates being photographed,' he shrugs. 'I don't really care, because we're not what's happening for them, so they're not going to use them. It's not like it's Kylie and Geri. We're not newsworthy and we've never sought to be. Our press officer occasionally phones up when we have a record coming out and asks for a story for the tabloids. And we occasionally try to think of one. But it's not what we're about, really. There's definitely a way of making that work for you now. If you're in the press all the time, the radio might play your record. But it's not going to work for very long. Nor does it work abroad.'

'Maybe that's why a lot of our pop stars are only a success in England,' says Lowe. 'Very few of the current artists mean anything outside. It's all become very parochial.'

It's an issue they deal with in one of the standout tracks in the musical, 'Shameless': 'We're shameless/ We will do anything/ To get our 15 minutes of fame/ We have no integrity/ We're ready to roll/ To obtain celebrity/ We'll do anything at all.' As for the current celebrity crop's tendency to complain about fame, Lowe has little sympathy. 'Robbie invented all that, didn't he? Whinge, whinge, whinge... if it makes you unhappy, give it up. Do something else.'

After the meal, we move to Chris Lowe's flat nearby, a gorgeous modern warehouse conversion with a clear Perspex stairway leading to the bedroom, from which a transparent bridge takes you out on to a roof terrace with a view across the rooftops to St Paul's. After another bottle or so of wine, he pulls a pod out of his shiny wall to reveal a sound system and plays some demos of the next album, due for release next year.

It's still recognisably the Pet Shop Boys, but after the musical they boast that there's 'not a show tune or dance track to be seen' in the new material. One track is a kind of sequel to Eminem's glorious 'Stan', a tale of unrequited love and passionate obsession in which the fan kills himself after thinking he's been ignored by the rapper. In their version, the fan gets to sleep with his hero instead. The idea is hilarious but, of course, the Pet Shop Boys take it deeper, the intelligent lyrics and Tennant's wistful, yearning voice combining to make it extraordinarily moving.

Next month, they reissue their entire back catalogue: six albums, every dance mix and even radio jingles collected together with extensive sleeve notes. Initially, Lowe wasn't in favour of the repackaging, but now he sees it as a neat full stop, a chance to move in a fresh direction, 'like shedding a skin'.

'I feel like we're on a real roll now with songwriting,' he says. 'It seems effortless at the moment. When you've been around as long as we have, it's not good enough just to have OK songs; you want to produce exceptional stuff.'

Later still, we play the new Daft Punk album, and Lowe starts pulling out CDs to play, enthusing like the fan he is. Once pop music was for the young, and adults were supposed to leave such foolish things behind. But what we have now is a generation of artists, like Madonna and the Pet Shop Boys, who never tired of it, never stopped investigating new trends or being excited and inspired by them. We also have a generation of fans, like me, who have continued to buy the music they make. Chris Lowe is 40 now; Neil Tennant is 46. Neither of them shows the slightest sign of being bored with what they do, nor with being content to wallow in nostalgia.

'I've never liked retro, being in the past,' says Lowe. 'The excitement is moving forward. I like new things.'

Closer to Heaven previews from 15 May at the Arts Theatre, London WC2 (020 7836 3334).

Parlophone are reissuing the Pet Shop Boys' first six studio albums ( Please, Actually, Introspective, Behaviour, Very and Bilingual) on 4 June. Each will include a bonus CD of material from the period in which it was recorded .