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Interviews - Shop Talk Sipping tea

Sipping tea and pumping irony
With Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys and playboys of the Western world By Caren Myers Neil Tennant knew he'd be a star.

It seemed his life would be boring and pointless if he didn't become famous, and he wasn't having that. So he moved from his native Newcastle to London and got a job in publishing. But nothing happened. By his mid-twenties, Neil was getting a little embarrassed. Then in 1981 he met Chris Lowe, an architecture student with a passion for disco, in a local hi-fi shop. They started writing songs together.

Five years later, their first single, "West End Girls," went to number one in England and America. Now, many hits later, they can get a table at swanky, overbooked restaurants but not get mobbed when they leave. They figure they have the right level of fame. "The kind," says Neil, "where it's better to phone in advance." The Pet Shop Boys are a pop group who make gorgeous, poignant dance music that leaps up the charts without losing its sparkle. Claiming Noel Coward and Joe Orton as their cultural forebears, they put comedy, heartache, and social satire to a disco beat.

For years their carefully controlled presentation was a parody of British reserve: They never smiled, didn't dance, barely moved. And if Neil Tennant sometimes bothered to lip-sync in their videos, Chris Lowe didn't appear to do anything at all. Thousands were dismayed to find later that he actually wrote most of the music. The sceptical take on them was that they were faking it. Tennant, who had been deputy editor of Smash Hits, a British teen-pop magazine, had merely tapped into music-business trade secrets and had revealed his true colours on "Opportunities," a single whose brazen chorus was "Let's make lots of money.

" Unlike the rock bands who cared, the Pet shop Boys were fey, bloodless, and devoid of spontaneity. The postmodernist take was that this apparent lack of spontaneity was actually a knowing comment on the process of pop itself. The Pet Shop Boys were ironists: By embracing artifice and distancing themselves from their product, they were having a sly dig at the prevailing culture of sweaty authenticity that means it, man, in front of a different crowd every night. The public didn't care about irony. Teenage girls liked Chris and Neil because they were cute in a clean, unthreatening way. Hip club-goers danced all night to their electro-house remixes. Suburban matrons thought they made lovely music, and wrote them doting fan letters. Even soccer fans adopted chants like "Paninaro" for stadium terraces. The Pet Shop Boys celebrate the frivolity of the pop music that gets played in malls and bedrooms and on the radio, but they also understand how it moves people. At the heart of their shimmering technology, there's a sense of sadness that ripples through the good times.

Their love songs are tormented by jealousy and loss. When the surface self-awareness melts away, what's left is old-fashioned songwriting, more in tradition of Rodgers and Hammerstein than Lennon and McCartney. "It's funny for someone who has a reputation for being cynical and ironic," says Neil, sitting in his record company's offices. "I've always been more interested in something that is wholeheartedly romantic and sincere, and maybe has within that the seeds of complete disappointment or tragedy." He has just been fussing over the fact that his tea ("It's not tea with lemon," he tuts, "it's lemon tea. It comes out of the machine. It tastes exactly like Fairy Liquid [British dishwashing soap] in warm water") has arrived in a Styrofoam cup. Chris is reading a copy of Music Week. It's the Pet Shop Boys' way of doing an interview. Part of heir appeal is that they reflect the way the English want to see themselves: literate, witty, devil-may-care. In person, they are all these things, and determined to keep their distance. They're delighted whenever they can send the conversation on a tangent, be it the stage production of Sunset Boulevard or whether math can be boiled down to mental arithmetic. So why are your songs so sad? You seem so insouciant. "Well, ultimately it's one of the reasons why you do write songs," says Neil.

"I suppose that's how I express that part of my life, which I probably don't express in conversation very much." He pauses wickedly. "Being English, of course, I never talk about my emotional life." CHRIS: I don't believe in openness anyway. I think it's bad. Ha ha! I prefer the Victorian way. NEIL: You like to brush everything under the carpet. Is that how you were brought up? CHRIS: I can't answer personal questions. A ha ha ha! Neil is frequently lampooned as a latter-day dandy, spending evenings in his immaculate apartment with a glass of claret and a classical CD, while Chris is out clubbing every night." Both stereotypes are largely," says Neil. Except Chris goes out only half the time. The nights he stays in he's keenly aware that "there's people out there having a good time and I'm not one of them." Part of being the Pet Shop Boys is maintaining a certain blankness. Chris is a genius at it. When the going gets tough, he pulls down his baseball cap and flips through a magazine. So they skip lightly over "the gay thing," as Neil calls it. They play benefits for equal rights and AIDS care. Some of their songs are about growing up gay.

They're not hiding anything, but they have never made a concrete statement. "We don't want things to be too defined about us," says Neil. "We don't want people to think that they know all about us or have it all worked out. And I think it's very easy for that to happen if you become a Gay Artist. I don't want to be seen as writing with a particular agenda, but I don't think we've ever masqueraded as anything else, unlike approximately one million people in show business in America." Chris laughs. "This line of questioning - really, it's out of order." NEIL: See, we don't talk about sex. CHRIS: We're British.

WHEN "WEST END GIRLS" REPACKAGED EURODISCO for a mainstream audience in 1986, its fat house bassline, chirpy synths, and Tennant's wan, vulnerable voice sounded downright futuristic. In the cherry electro-pop world of Wham! and Duran Duran, the Pet Shop Boys seemed dignified and austere. They were cool, not trendy, which may be how they've sustained a credible career for nearly a decade. The first album, Please, perfectly captured the experience of living alone in a city, looking for kicks, looking for love. It took the feel of New York's disco underground and the chatter of tiny Italian hi-energy records, and gave them a sense of drama and grandeur. Actually reflected the spirit of the Thatcher era in 1987 Britain: An alternate delight and disgust in consumerism peeped out from the shiny beats and cinematic sweep of songs called "Rent," "Shopping," or "Hit Music." The Pet Shop Boys were hitting their stride.

They persuaded '60s chanteuse Dusty Springfield to come out of semiretirement to duet on the glitzy but heartfelt "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" They produced a disco album for Liza Minnelli. They upset legions of U2 fans by turning "Where the Streets Have No Name" into a galloping dance with Vegas overtones. (U2's response was reportedly "What Have We Done to Deserve This?") When they finally toured in 1989, it was with a troupe of dancers and more costume changes than Cher. They outdid themselves in America two years later with a phantasmagoria of boarding school brutality, Catholic guilt, pumpkinhead dancers, and Chris Lowe taking half his clothes off and hunkering down to read a magazine. With Introspective, and particularly 1990's Behaviour, Tennant's songwriting became more confessional and intimate. The new album, Very (released in Europe simultaneously with a dance album called Relentless), is a return to their jubilant hi-energy roots, despite the aching lushness of songs like "Dreaming of the Queen." The first single, "Can You Forgive Her?" puts a spin on sexual disorientation: A man, mortified that his girlfriend has mocked his masculinity, remembers the intensity of his first sexual experience but can't face the fact that he is gay.

But it's their cover of the Village People's "Go West" that has the most resonance. Revisiting the innocence of a utopian gay ideal with the perspective of an AIDS-scarred decade, it's "uplifting and inspirational, with a tinge of sadness." Which is what Chris says the Pet Shop Boys are all about. AS A CHILD NEIL WAS A DEVOUT CATHOLIC: AT AGE nine, he wanted to enter the seminary and become a priest. His parents told to wait until he was sixteen. He was most upset. "I was very religious. And I wanted to be the Pope. That's typical of me - I immediately go on a power trip. But I also wanted to be a ballet dancer." St. Cuthbert's grammar school was "dreary," so Neil joined a local youth theater and found the arty friends he was looking for. They would cut school and talk about how famous they would become. They once held a séance and summoned up the spirit of Oscar Wilde. He told them, "Oh, my dear children' you are so young, do not make my mistakes." Neil moved to London around the time of Ziggy Stardust.

He dyed his hair, tottered around with his toes curled in women's wedge shoes two sizes too small, and got a degree in history. For a while, he answered music publishers' Songwriter Wanted ads, then settled into publishing, first at Marvel Comics, then at MacDonald Educational Publishing, where he edited useful tomes like The Dairy Book of Home Management. Chris Lowe grew up in Blackpool, a seaside resort in northwest England. His family encouraged him to be a musician (his father and grandfather played jazz trombone). But Chris wanted to be an architect. He spent most of his adolescence studying, and the rest of it playing trombone and piano, composing tunes which he would promptly forget.

Then he heard the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. When he met Neil, he was working toward his architectural degree, clubbing all night and sleeping in front of the drawing board during the day. His sole legacy to this world's architecture is a staircase in an industrial unit in Milton Keynes, a town on the outskirts of London.

AT THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S STUDIO THE NEXT DAY, Chris and Neil are scrutinizing the lunch tray: three sandwiches and a plate falafel. "Well, it's not too lavish, is it?" says Neil, who has lost twenty pounds on the Dine Out and Lose Weight plan. He picks up a samosa. "This is not on my diet," he says cheerfully. They are being photographed in the blue and yellow space suits from the "Go West" video, and the orange jumpsuits and dunce caps from "Can You Forgive Her?" Neil's space boots are too small, so he has to scrunch up his toes. "It's taking me back to the early '70s." The Pet Shop Boys' Devo-ish costumes are part of an image overhaul. "We decided that on this album we weren't going to be 'real' in our presentation of us," says Neil. "We've always said that we inhabit our own world." They are shocked when the photographer shows them some recent shots of U2, also wearing blue jumpsuits. "They've ripped us off!" Neil exclaims. "I'm horrified," laughs Chris. "It's war again," Neil declares.

Neil and Chris are of saying, like Noel Coward, that they are essentially superficial people. It keeps the rest of the world at arm's length. I spend two days in their bright, brittle company, and they stay in character the whole time. In their world everybody is fabulous, and the extremes range from "lavish" to "dreary." It's Neil who sets the tone of the conversation: a froth of show-biz gossip, disputes over invitations for their record-release party, and announcements like "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille." With Neil, anything - even something as mundane as getting into a van - can be played as a comedy of manners. "Turn off the air conditioning, it's absolutely appalling!" he orders, settling in. "I actually quite like sleazemobiles. You always feel like some heavy metal band has just had sex here. I wish I'd put a towel on the seat before I sat down." Chris provides the counterpoint, complaining chirpily. He's opaque but lovable.

At thirty-four, five years Neil's junior, he dresses like twelve-year-old: baseball cap, T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, unfaded. His dream home would be "a house with no windows on the outside at all." Somehow this doesn't surprise me. "My ultimate city dwelling would be a concrete bunker which you drive straight into and shut off the outside." But inside he could play really loud music and party all night. We drive by the fancy hotels on Hyde Park. "Oh dear, there aren't many fans in front of Madonna's hotel," observes Neil in a gleefully shocked voice. "There's literally no fans there. Oh, there are a few more, maybe ten. She might stretch it to ten." Their next performance is on a radio show called "Rocksat," which is beamed all over Europe. The jovial host starts the proceeding with what turns out to be the question du jour: Why are they releasing two albums at once? Then the callers - Stefano from Italy, Josef from the Czech Republic, Maria from Greece - put forward their questions: how they met, why are they releasing two albums at once, which are their favourite songs. The Boys remain unfailingly polite. They neatly sidestep a request to do an impromptu Pet Shop Boys Unplugged over the air. The last caller is Timo from Germany. He sounds put out. "I want to know why you actually never learned to dance," he says tersely.

THE PET SHOP BOYS ARE SO RESOLUTELY PLAYFUL that you sometimes wonder what they're avoiding. Most of the time, their much-trumpeted "superficiality" is quite genuine - they like gossip and champagne. But there's something else going on. In Pet Shop Boys songs, there's almost always a yearning, pervasive melancholy. Neil's favourite song, and probably his most personal, is "Being Boring" from Behaviour. It looks back to his youth in Newcastle, when he and his friends would get drunk on barely wine and make impossibly glamorous plans. Neil remembers:

"We all used to want to be famous, and we didn't want to be boring. And I sort of achieved that to some extent." I never dreamt that I would get to be / The creature that I always meant to be. "And then it's contrasting that success with my best friend from Newcastle, who had just died of AIDS." But I thought in spite of dreams / You'd be sitting somewhere here with me. "I always felt bad that I had become a rich pop star and got AIDS. It was both in 1986. The contrast seemed particularly savage. He died in 1989." Now I sit with different faces / In rented rooms and foreign places / All the people I'd been kissing / Some are here and some are missing / In the 1990s. "One of the reasons there's so much sadness in Pet Shop Boys songs on Actually and Behaviour is because this was going on at the same time. I was always at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington - it gave the whole thing incredible perspective."

THE PET SHOP BOYS' PARTIES ARE ALL CALLED BINGO Bango Bongo. This is their fourth. "Our last one was called the last great party of the '80s by Harpers & Queen," boasts Neil. "Our parties get better reviews than our records." Tonight's party is held at the Roundhouse, a circular warehouse in North London. There's a maze with untrustworthy lovelies in fiberglass Marie Antoinette dresses pointing you in the wrong direction, baroque chandeliers, sunflowers on the bar. A string quartet plays silently on a small podium while "Don't Go" by Yaz booms from the sound systems.

It's part Fellini, part David Lynch, and, as the invitation promised, very Pet Shop Boys. Star power arrives in the form of Johnny Marr, the cast of EastEnders, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and the guys from EMF, one of whom is swigging champagne from the bottle. Barney Sumner from New Order shuffles around the dance floor in his sneakers for several hours. "It's really a great party," he says. "I just wish there was more than one toilet." Chris bounces past. "Where is your notebook?" he asks genially. "We just got a fax saying Details doesn't grant copy approval. I've been panicking all day - you're not meant to find out our inner selves." There's not much risk of that, I tell him.

"Oh, phew! What a relief." Around 5 A. M. the police turn up. Neighbors have complained about the noise. "Isn't it typical?" grumbles Chris. "I was just getting into it." "It's over," says Neil melodramatically. "As Noel Coward said, 'The party's over.'" But half an hour later, the music is thumping quietly again. Neil and Barney are chatting cozily under one of the potted trees. And on the empty dance floor, in the middle of an unheated warehouse, Chris spinning happily.

Special Thanks to "Susanne Brendgens" for Translating time for me.

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