We would never Eurovision...
As the duo prepares for a greatest hits tour, Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant talks to BEVERLEY ROUSE about his creative partnership with Chris Lowe and being like the Morecambe and Wise of music
BEING part of Pet Shop Boys is still a lot of fun, Neil Tennant says happily. While other bands bicker, go on hiatus and cite creative differences for their splits, Neil and Chris Lowe just seem to like working together, even after nearly 40 years.
Their acclaimed 14th studio album Hotspot was released last week and Neil’s enthusiasm seems as fresh as ever. He says: “We have a lot of fun writing. There’s a lot of laughter. We are quite lucky really. “I know most people in music have much more difficult relationships than we do. It’s not like a job. It’s more playful than that. All creativity is out of a sense of play. Chris and I have never lost that sense of playfulness.”
Neil says they both still enjoy “the magic of going into a room and creating something that didn’t exist before”. And as for creative differences, he reveals that if either wanted to do something strongly enough, the duo would just do it, adding: “We can do what we want to do within Pet Shop Boys.”
The most successful duo in UK music history, they are “prolific” songwriters and “chose the 10 tracks we thought sat together” for their new album, and even had a few spare for B-sides, Neil says. He speaks warmly of Berlin where the pair bought an apartment about 10 years ago and where much of Hotspot was written and recorded. Background sound from the city’s U-Bahn was recorded for Will-othe-wisp, the lively opening song about seeing an old flame on an underground train, and the duo worked at Hansa studios, where David Bowie recorded Heroes. “They have a lot of old gear and we used it,” Neil explains. “You can hear that sort of sound with the album. It’s analogue rather than digital.”
Hotspot’s closing song, Wedding In Berlin, was written as a gift for an artist friend whose wedding Neil and Chris missed as they were on tour.
“We had one copy pressed for their wedding present. They played it at the reception. What was great was everyone kept dancing to it. I hope people play it at weddings.”
Neil may have dubbed
Hotspot the band’s Berlin album, but his favourite track, atmospheric ballad
Hoping For A Miracle, was written after he saw a homeless man on a
London bridge. The emotional single Burning
The Heather, meanwhile
– which features Suede’s
Bernard Butler on guitar
– was inspired by a drive across moors in County Durham. A chance meeting inspired catchy single Monkey Business, after a stranger who recognised the band in a street in Austin, Texas, told them “I’m just here for monkey business, just playing around”.
“He was a real character. He was looking for mischief,” remembers Neil. “Monkey Business has been around for ages. We wrote the basic track in 2015. It wasn’t quite right.” After a few final tweaks from Hotspot producer Stuart Price, who also produced Electric in 2013 and Super in 2016, it was ready for release, complete with a fun video set in a nightclub, where even Chris shows off some moves.
The band praise Stuart for making them sound as Pet Shop Boys should and, despite their lasting success, they still clearly feel they can learn from other artists.
They have worked with huge stars, like the late Dusty Springfield and Liza Minnelli, but Neil also describes the “fantastic energy” created by the “much younger” musicians supporting their forthcoming greatest hits tour. He also praises Olly Alexander from British synth-pop band Years & Years, who worked with them on single Dreamland. “That was a great experience. I think it worked out really well,” Neil says. “He’s a different generation from us.” It “would be good” to work with Madonna, says Neil, who sounds pretty chuffed that she featured his voice on tour as part of the band’s remix of Sorry.
His vocals also toured on In Denial with Kylie Minogue.
Neil enjoys working with women and said it was “interesting” to collaborate with actor Frances Barber, who sings Tennant/Lowe compositions as a troubled rock star in the onewoman show Musik, which returned to the Leicester Square Theatre this month. They once hoped One Direction would perform their song Winner as the UK’s entry to Eurovision, but received no reply despite having been approached several times to write for the competition.
“We would never enter personally,” Neil says firmly.
They will, however, perform to audiences across Europe after their Dreamworld greatest hits tour starts in Berlin on May 1. There are UK dates in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow. “We have never done a tour like that before. This is going to be wall-to-wall hits,” says Neil, who hopes the audience will sing along. Can You Forgive Her? – from 1993 album Very – is one of his favourites to perform live, while he admits to having been “fed up” with Go West at times, although he loves the audience’s reaction to their Village
People cover. He also enjoys dressing up in “crazy” stage outfits. He explains: “It makes you feel strong, more of a performer,” adding “I wear make-up on stage. It’s like putting on a mask.”
He won’t, however, be wearing one of the “death masks” given to the duo by a fan in Japan.
“They are in our studio at the moment. They are very macabre. They look a bit like us. Everyone who comes to the studio says, ‘What are they?!”’
A less disturbing gift came from a fan in South America, who gave Neil a painting of his Lakeland terrier, Kevin, who has since died.
“It looked just like him. It was painted in interesting colours. It sits in my larder at home. He lives on in this portrait,” says Neil.
Asked how he would like the band to be remembered, he replies simply: “For some songs.”
Neil adds: “I think Pet Shop Boys has left a mark as a particular kind of duo. When we do interviews in Germany, some of them see us as part of some sort of Britishness.
“It’s interesting that there is this thing that Pet Shop Boys are a bit like Morecambe and Wise, these two men in a duo. Chris and I are so different. There’s something quite powerful about that.”
Neil with Liza Minnelli in 1989
THE Pet Shop Boys are at Resorts World Arena, NEC, on Saturday, May 30.