Pets and the city

By Michael Bracewell
Friday, 21st November 2003

SINCE their first hit single, West End Girls, took the number one chart spot in January 1986, Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant - better known as the Pet Shop Boys - have sold something in the region of 30 million records.

Their dance-based, lyrically sophisticated electronic music has been embraced from Russia to Rio by way of Romford, as the sleek pop sound of postmodernism.

Tennant and Lowe have sought to maintain their modernity through an unceasing fascination with all elements of the pop world, including video production and even Pop Idol. Right now, for instance, they are standing on the pavement outside a rehearsal studio in west London trying to
sort out a stylist crisis while they are in the midst of preparing to perform their new single, Miracles, on Top Of The Pops.

"I blame Kylie," says Lowe, with sudden forcefulness. "Kylie now single-handedly employs the entire community of stylists. There are none left for anyone else. They all work for her."

It is typical of the Pet Shop Boys that, over lunch, they translate an immediate practical problem into a sustained thesis about the current climate of pop. "I'll tell you what I think about pop stars," announces Tennant, "they work harder than they used to."

"They're incredibly professional," Lowe agrees.

"Have you any idea what it's like doing Top Of The Pops?" continues Tennant, with a mixture of incredulity and outrage. "In the 1980s, we'd go shopping, drink four bottles of Pils, wear our latest outfit and go out for dinner. Nowadays, it's got much more - well, let's just say we've
got four dancers over the road who are having a panic about stylists. It's like we're Liberty X or something." He pauses, broadening his theme.

"There's an awful lot of creativity in the people who work around bands at the moment."

"There's a huge service industry for pop stars now," says Lowe. "If you're doing hair or makeup or any of those things - there's too much work nowadays."

"That's because pop is all about show business," Tennant replies. "It's like auditioning for Les Miz.

It's entirely appropriate, in fact, that the blond boy from S Club is now plastered on the front of buses for being in Les Miserables."

"So where do we fit in with that?" asks Lowe.

"Well I don't think we do, really."

Not "fitting in" seems key to both the success and the sensibility of the Pet Shop Boys.

Throughout their career, they have explored the theme of "outsiderdom" in every aspect of their music - frequently presenting the point of view of the person who is always watching, often melancholy.

Curiously, given that Lowe is from Fleetwood, near Blackpool, and Tennant from Newcastle, their music has been more eloquent of London than any other group of their generation. From early tracks such as West End Girls, and King's Cross, through more recent songs such as Survivors, The Theatre, and last year's hauntingly beautiful London, an important aspect of their music has seemed like the chorus to modern metropolitan life, as quick to celebrate the sheer gorgeousness of glamour, as to acknowledge the melancholy and alienation to be seen on London's streets.

"The basic premise of the Pet Shop Boys is to put real life to beautiful music," says Tennant. "I've always found London inspirational. West End Girls was probably the first successful attempt at putting Soho and the West End down on a record - the high life and low life simultaneously inhabiting the same space. That still fascinates me.

Although to be honest we find it fascinating in big cities generally - there's a kind of built-in pathos between reality and expectation."

In many ways, it seems as though the Pet Shop Boys continue the tradition of the urban walker - part flaneur, part outsider - who develops his philosophy of life from studying the city as a thoroughfare of human experience. And in this, perhaps, their native northern-ness gives them
an insight into the whole social network, from street life to high society, which London represents.

Certainly, their most recent collaborations - with the photographer Martin Parr, on their video for London, and artist Wolfgang Tillmans, on the video for Home and Dry - achieve a fine balance between irony and alienation by presenting ambiguous imagery of London at its most routine.

The Parr video has Tennant and Lowe busking in subways, while Tillmans's film is a delightful study of the mice that scamper under the tracks at Tube stations.

"That's a trick we've always managed to pull off," says Tennant, "of being the outsiders who are on the inside as well. I rarely do autobiography, but now and then I do. Survivors is about going to funerals, but it mentions London landmarks - crossing Hungerford Bridge, and then going across Embankment Gardens to the club Heaven in Villiers Street. We both walk in London a lot. I like being on the street; I find it very inspiring, and I feel a sense of the past following me closely, particularly at night. Ghost Of Myself is about walking down the King's Road and
seeing myself with this girl I used to go out with, sitting in the Cafe Picasso on a Sunday morning."

MUSICALLY, the poised outsiderdom of the Pet Shop Boys invented successive sub-strands of electronic dance music. They bridge the beats of classic electro and the edgy world of contemporary electronica and electroclash.

Their music is a fusion of sensibilities: the robotic and chilled balanced by warmth of emotion and vulnerability. It is an aesthetic and a temperament they share with their friend and occasional collaborator, the artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

"I think that the signature Pet Shop Boys sound," says Tennant, "is some kind of dance beat, and then a minor chord over that, and then the sampled strings. Fashionability has never been our priority. We've never sat down and thought, 'What's the cool thing to do?' but I do think
we've arrived at certain points a little earlier than other people."

The conversation resumes its pursuit of pop's various contortions, to conclude with Lowe's memory of doing "the rowing dance", as a teenager in Blackpool, to a track by Modern Romance. "In fact," he realises, out loud, "they nicked someone else's dance."

"That's pop music for you," says Tennant, adding another definition of the genre to the list.

Pop Art: Pet Shop Boys The Hits is released on Monday.