Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant
by gregg shapiro

Nightlife (Sire) marks the triumphant return of the Pet Shop Boys. An outstanding mix of ballads ("You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You´re Drunk," "The Only One," "Footsteps"), hardcore dance ("For Your Own Good," "Closer To Heaven," "Radiophonic," and the brilliant "New York City Boy") and a bit of r&b/hip– hop ("Happiness Is An Option"), Nightlife also ranks as one of the best gay albums of the year.

Prior to embarking on their first national tour in nine years, Neil Tennant was kind enough to take the time to do an interview. Here´s what we talked about.

[FYI: Third Coast Marketing hosts a Pet Shop Boys CD release party Saturday night, Nov. 6, 9– 11 p.m., at Cocktail, Halsted and Roscoe, with lots of give– aways. The boys perform in concert Sunday at the Riviera—you never know, they just might stop by the release party. No promises!]

Gregg Shapiro: As gay men, we like to think of ourselves as trend– setters, wouldn´t you agree?

Neil Tennant: (laughs) Well, "think of ourselves," yes. The reality may be different.

GS: The 1996 Pet Shop Boys album Bilingual, was heavily influenced by Latin rhythms, and now here we are, a couple of years later, and there is this huge Latin music craze happening. Do you feel responsible for that?

NT: I don´t feel responsible for it. I just think we had the same idea before everyone else did. Latin music is always around. We made a Latin record in 1988, when we did the song "Domino Dancing" in Miami with Lewis Martinee. That came about because we toured Latin America and we loved the clubs and the different kind of music with the big Samba drums on it. We thought that it would be interesting to put together the English sound of the Pet Shop Boys with those rhythms, and that´s what we did. In a way, I kind of wish we were releasing "Se A Vida E" now because we would be going with the flow (laughs). We tend not to go with the flow. We tend to do what we feel like doing. So you can find yourself being a trend– setter without having set out to do that.

GS: There are songs on Nightlife, such as "In Denial" and "Happiness Is An Option," that have a very strong female presence. Can you tell me who the female vocalists are?

NT: On "In Denial," it´s Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop singer who lives in England. On "Happiness Is An Option," it´s Sylvia Mason– James, who´s sung with us a lot, and she´s going to be on tour with us.

GS: How is it, when you are writing a song, that you decide, for example that those two songs would benefit from having female vocals?

NT: Well, (with) "Happiness Is An Option," we decided to do a sort of hip– hop song. Actually, it´s based on a piece of music by Rachmaninoff and I was thinking about the record "Everything´s Going To Be Alright," which was the hip– hop record from last year based on a piece of music by Bach. I´ve been fascinated by R&B and hip– hop in the last few years, in the way they structure vocals. Ever since the Fugees, basically. They´re doing it in a different way, where people sing all the way through the song against the lead vocal. I think it´s really interesting, that. Also the way they rap against the lead vocals sometimes and the vocals are very much layered. I didn´t think we´d be able to do that. It´s a completely new style of music for us, so we got Sylvia in and we did that and I think the result was great.

GS: What about "In Denial"?

NT: "In Denial" is actually a song from a musical that Chris and I have written with a gay playwright called Jonathan Harvey. he wrote the film Beautiful Thing. Jonathan´s written the book for our musical. This is from a scene in the musical, which is basically set in a gay club, and the manager, who is gay, was bisexual when he was much younger and had an affair with a woman that resulted in a child. He hasn´t brought up the child. In this scene of the play, the daughter comes to see him in the club, and she thinks the gay club is really sleazy and horrible and that he needs to change his way of life and he´s in denial about what a mess he is. The song is a duet and I´m playing the father and Kylie is playing my daughter.

GS: The song "New York City Boy," also from Nightlife, does an extraordinary job of conjuring up late 70s disco. Do you think that the late 70s, as opposed to any other time, was the best period for that style of music?

NT: No, I don´t think it was the best (time). I remember the first time I went to a club, which was a gay club in London, and they were playing "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" by the Temptations. And that was the first kind of remix that I ever heard ... it was actually made as a kind of remix on the album. And I loved that. There were lots of records that I liked from around that period, when what became disco music was just starting to emerge.

I love the very early disco records, like Lady Marmalade by LaBelle, and Disco Tex and The Sex– O– Letts. There are loads of disco that were out then that I really liked. The late ?s period was great. The high era of disco was absolutely fantastic, when it really crossed over. Then there was "disco sucks" in America and you got those great records from the Hi– NRG period in the early 80s. That´s when we first came into music, working with Bobby Orlando in New York. There are loads and loads of great records from that period. Then when rave culture started in England in the late 80s and when house music started, there are loads and loads of great music from that time. I think there have always been some pretty good records being made. What has changed is that dance music has gotten less and less song– based. Disco songs are really old– fashioned songs with a different, disco– rhythm beat. I kind of miss that. It was an era of great songs. You could just sit and play them on the piano or something. When you think of the Chic songs, particularly, or Bee Gees songs. The idea (for "New York City Boy") came from David Morales, who produced it. He suggested that we do a disco anthem in the style of the Village People. He thought that no one was doing that kind of music and that there was an audience for it ... that people wanted to hear something like that again. It´s a kind of tribute to the Village People. One of the reasons that it sounds so authentically 70s is that Vince Montana, Jr., who used to be the arranger for the Salsoul Orchestra, did the orchestra arrangement on it.

GS: The subject of vampires comes up a couple of times on Nightlife, in "Vampires" and "In Denial." What it is about that subject that´s so fascinating?

NT: In "In Denial," he says that he´s living his life like a vampire, working at night and sleeping all day. The whole album is called Nightlife because it´s really about the night. It´s about people going out and getting wrecked, having fun, getting laid, taking drugs. And the first and last songs about someone staying in (laughs). It´s an album about how the night effects people, why people want to go out into the night. How the perceptions are different. We have the phenomenon now, and have for quite a while, of the night lasting into the day (for some people). The song "Vampires" is really about people who just live for the night. When people live for the night, they´re probably taking a lot of drugs, and it´s kind of almost about (the drug) Special K, that song. When the drug is more important than anything else and they will do anything for the drug. There´s something rather vampiric about this.

GS: You´re about to embark on a national tour. What can we expect?

NT: The last time we toured it was kind of theatrical, the show. It was very theatrical, actually. This time it´s futuristic. It´s being designed by one of the most famous modern architects in the world Zaha Hadid. It´s this brilliant structure which adapts to different sizes of stages and venue and changes during the course of the show. It has film elements involved in it and the lighting is very futuristic and comes out of the middle of the structure as well as from the outside of the stage. We´ve got the four backing singers from "New York City Boy," we´ve got Sylvia Mason– James with us and a couple of other musicians. It´s a concert, but it´s going to look really spectacular at the same time. It´s going to look very, very, very modern.

GS: Did you maintain contact with Dusty Springfield towards the end of her life?

NT: Yeah. We knew she was ill. Dusty was ill for ages and then she would go into remission and then she was back in the hospital. When I did this album two years ago of people singing songs by Noel Coward, I asked Dusty to sing one and she was going to it, and then she couldn´t do it and it was just due to her illness. But, we used to send her flowers, and then not long before she died, I got this lovely letter from her thanking us for the flowers and a message we sent to her. It was a very sweet letter. She was ill for a long time, but she had no bitterness about it, I believe. So I was told by her neighbor. She just kind of dealt with it, she had a sense of humor about it. She got this award from the Queen, the MBE (Member of the British Empire), and her secretary got it from Buckingham Palace and they pinned it on her while she was lying in a hospital bed. She was laughing at the silliness of the whole thing. She was an amazing person.

GS: You produced albums by Dusty and Liza Minnelli. Is there anyone else for whom you would like to produce an album?

NT: Chris and I have always wanted to make a record with Nina Simone. I don´t know about a whole album. I don´t expect that she´d want to do it with us, because she´s really a jazz musician and she probably despises our music (laughs). I absolutely love her voice. I love her music. I particularly like a record she made in the very early ?s called Baltimore, which is a song by Randy Newman. She´s a brilliant, great, heartbreaking singer, with a very unusual voice.

GS: I recently interviewed Marc Almond, who just released a new album, as well. Would you consider your relationship to be on a friendly or professional basis?

NT: Well, I don´t know him very well, but I liked him when I meet him. So, I suppose, both (laughs). Did you ask him about us?

GS: Yes, and he pretty much said the same thing. That you say hello when you see each other, and so on.

NT: He´s really, really nice. He´s probably more relaxed now than he used to be, as well. When I first met Marc Almond, I was journalist and I interviewed him (laughs). That was when I worked for the magazine Smash Hits in England in the very early ?s. Chris and I loved Soft Cell, and they were the inspiration for the Pet Shop Boys.

GS: Almond has written his autobiography, which will be published soon. Joe Jackson and Aretha Franklin have also written their autobiographies. Are their plans for either you or Chris to tell your story in book form?

NT: We have published two books, although we didn´t write them. They were written by Chris Heath. One is called Pet Shop Boys Literally and one is called Pet Shop Boys Versus America. The first one is about us touring in Japan and Britain. It was written in 1990. America is about our American tour in 1991. It´s actually a very funny book. We do have a plan to do a book project, but it´s actually going to be more of a visual project than a biography. Maybe I´ll write my own autobiography when I´m much older.

GS: What kind of advice do the Pet Shop Boys have for the Backstreet Boys?

NT: I would have given them this advice, but they wouldn´t have taken it, and that is, sack your manager (laughs). They´ve (the managers) taken control of the whole affair, haven´t they? Because I read that they (the Backstreet Boys) were getting almost nothing for the first album that sold so many copies. My other advice would be make sure that you enjoy yourself.