| TONY
MARCUS PET SHOP BOYS HAVE ACTUALLY MIXED INTROSPECTIVE SONGWRITING WITH
VERY RELENTLESS DISCO BEHAVIOUR. THEIR LATEST NIGHTLIFE INSPIRED OFFERING
IS BOUND TO PLEASE. ER... ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE BILINGUAL.
The Pet Shop
Boys have taken over a floor of the disused St Pancras Hotel in Kings Cross,
London to promote their new single. It's difficult to establish the connection
between the disco-tinged (and David Morales co-produced) "I Don't Know What
You Want But I can't give it Anymore", their new album Nightlife, and this
near-derelict Victorian architectural landmark. Also confusing are the recordings
of barking dogs playing in its empty hallways, the giant videoscreen showing
the boys' new promo and the room full of illuminated perspex cubes where
Neil and Chris agree to meet the press.
"It's art,"
sighs Tennant, when I ask for an explanation, "you're part of an installation."
"We're secretly filming you with infra-red cameras," adds Lowe. The Pet
Shop Boys like to play double-act. I should have suspected as much. Their
new video shows them getting dressed and made-up into their new look: a
fusion of samurai and mental patient. And their career, bona fide pop stars
since 1986's "West End Girls", contains enough artful moves to warn that
I might be about to meet a multi-platinum Gilbert and George. There is much
that is interesting about them - their choice of collaborations (Dusty Springfield,
Bruce Weber, Liza Minnelli, David Bowie, Derek Jarman) or their politics
(they dressed as miners for a Brit Awards performance and played for the
campaign to equalise the age of homosexual consent). Or even their music:
electronic, dance-inflected, mainstream and global and yet also adult, sly
and often (as some critics have noted) dealing with what it is to be gay,
male and alone in the modern city.
"You know,"
ponders Neil as I set-up my MiniDisc, "when you're doing a week of press
the most interesting thing is the variety of recording walkmans you get
to see." "You've got powder on your nose, " hisses Chris. "At this time
of day [it's 11am]," gasps Neil, "must be talcum." They're a funny couple.
Dressed in metal-look Versace ("It's our uniform for the week," says Neil.
"Part of the installation") it's hard to really know anything about them
in the 22 minutes we spend together except that Neil seems more acid, Chris
more helpful and conciliatory. Anyway, first question. The first single
from the new album is about infidelity and the end of a relationship - is
this an autobiographical lyric? An other sad story in a pantheon of songs
about contact ads, casual sex, dancefloors, breaking hearts, guilt and tears?
"It's inspired by real events," says Neil, "but I'm not in a constant state
of heartbreak or loss. Maybe those states are more interesting to write
about. Happiness is legendarily difficult to write about." I once interviewed
Tom Watkins, the boys' first manager and later manager of East 17 amongst
others.
Watkins told
me that gay men are uniquely positioned to make pop because they have much
in common with teenage girls (pop's biggest consumers). Both gay men and
teenage girls, he insisted, share a passion for cock and live in a constant
state of romantic angst and tearful break-up. "I don't think I'm in a teenage
state," protests Neil (Neil Francis Tennant, born July 10 1954; Christopher
Sean Lowe, born October 4 1959). "I think you can be a heterosexual man
and still behave like a teenager. Look at all the laddish 45 year olds running
around shagging supermodel type things. I don't think it's a uniquely gay
phenomenon. Or even a celebrity phenomenon. I wonder if celebrities can
live to different rules from everybody else - or how strange it is that
so many famous people tend to date and interbreed ." "I'm always discussing
who I'm going to have a baby with," laughs Neil. "Michael Jackson did that.
That was like a real project,
him marrying
Lisa Marie to have the baby that is Michael Jackson's son and Elvis Presley's
grandson. That's like art. Pure genius." It's always useful to harp on the
gay aspect of the boys (only Neil has officially come out). As Neil warns
me, he hopes his songs are universally applicable. But there's much about
them that's queer: their feeling for hi-NRG, the influence of show tunes,
samples from Jean Cocteau movies, and a trilogy of songs allegedly about
HIV ("It Couldn't Happen Here", "Your Funny Uncle" and "Being Boring").
Especially the hi-NRG. Working with producer Bobby O at the beginning of
their career, the Pet Shop Boys could have almost been a gay dance act.
Isn't it the case, I suggest, that passes for mainstream entertainment now
(fast electronic music, bare flesh and designer drugs) was prefigured or
invented by the gay NRG scene of the' 80s? "That was mass entertainment
in the '80s when I worked in New York with Bobby," recalls Neil. "Places
like Paradise Garage were huge. And I used to go to Heaven on a Saturday
night in 1982 and it was heaving." "But Neil," corrects Chris, "it wasn't
mass across the country. It was the house explosion that made the difference."
"There was a time,"
remembers Neil,
"when hi-NRG seemed like a gay underground movement. When I was at Smash
Hits I used to sit near the record player we had for checking the lyrics
on records. And I used to get these Bobby O records and gay records and
play them all day long and at incredibly loud volumes in the office. Before
that they used to sit there in silence. And I realised it was a kind of
pop thing as well because the records had great tunes, big melodies and
were great to dance to as well." Chris points out that hi-NRG then became
the sound of mainstream pop thanks to producer/writers Stock, Aitken and
Waterman team. "Which is where we came in," says Neil. "You seem to find
that the underground dance sound at the beginning of an era is normally
the mass pop sound by the end of that era. So you have disco in the '70s,
the gay hi-NRG of the '80s and by the end of the '90s it's the music that
came out of heavy sampling.
I wouldn't know
what to call it really but it's led to Fatboy Slim and what could have been
regarded as rave music going into the charts at number one. "In the 1970s
snobbery dictated that you had to like progressive rock but all everyone
remembers now from that period is disco music. I think there's an unbearable
amount of snobbery around music nowadays and I wonder what people will remember
in ten years time. It's more likely to be records from the pop end of things
that will endure." A minion appears to tell us that the next journalist
is ready. Two more minutes. Quick then, do Neil and Chris still go to clubs?
"I was out last night," says Chris. "Were you?," asks Neil. "Where did you
go? I don't get out much myself." "You should go to Bedrock," suggests Chris.
"I don't want to stay up after 3am. I know that's an incredibly unfashionable
point of view. I like to be up by 10am every morning.
Like when we
were in New York we wanted to see Danny [Tenaglia] play and I was asking
what time does he come on? Like seven in the morning. I'd rather he came
on at nine at night." "You could always go to bed before he came on and
get up extra early," suggests Chris. "It's down to the influence of drugs
and ecstasy," sighs Neil. "When I used to go out in the mid '80s the clubs
used to close at three. I had to be up for work. Don't people work now?
I don't know how they do it because the clubs are always full." One minute
left. So why do the Pet Shop Boys think people are drawn to nightclubs?
"I think you can get into a lifestyle where you can't see an alternative
to it," suggests Neil.
"I think it
becomes a way of life where you get into a biological rhythm of staying
up all night and sleeping all day. And of course there's a basic human need
to meet other people and socialise." "And there's casual sex," offers Chris.
Thirty seconds. And drugs, what about drugs? "You can't talk about drugs
any more," snaps Neil. Ten seconds. What about pop music then? What's pop
music? "Pop music is music that is easy to listen to but contains hidden
depths that stir your emotions," says Neil.
Special Thanks
to "Susanne Brendgens" for Translating time for me. |
