Interviews - They're Out
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But Not Very. AS THE Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have created some of the smartest dance-pop of the past decade. But they've never cultivated the cult of personality other artists consider stock-in-trade.

Left to their own devices their private lives would remain, well, private. "Our ideal," says Tennant, "is for the records and videos to have a life of their own. If it's not about the two of us personally, it becomes sort of less real, which is what we like ." Success spawns scrutiny, however, and silence spawns assumptions, especially when it comes to the deliberate sexual ambiguity of most Pet Shop Boys songs. "It's one of those things we can't win either way on," says Tennant. "Our work has a very strong 'gay subtext,' if you like, but we don't make a big deal of it because we've always hated being categorized.

Gay militants don't like that. I think it's called trying to have your cake and eat it, actually, but that's what we do. I personally think it means you can write more interesting songs, to be honest. When you do something creative, you give away of yourself what you want to give away." In addition to insightful songs about modern love, shameless celebrities, and the unshakable guilt that accompanies a Catholic upbringing, Tennant and Lowe have repeatedly gone on record about the ravages of AIDS. It's evident, says tenant, in the sense of melancholy that pervades even the most upbeat Pet Shop Boys songs. "AIDS entered my life in 1986. A very good friend of mine, whom I grew up with in Newcastle, was diagnosed with AIDS in that year, and he died two and half years later.

The song 'It Couldn't Happen Here' on Actually was specifically about the experience of finding out his diagnosis. 'Being Boring' on Behaviour was about him dying." The specter of AIDS reappears on their latest album, Very, in "Dreaming of the Queen," in which Lady Di laments that "there are no more lovers left alive, no one has survived." Tennant says three other songs on the album also have gay themes: "Can You Forgive Her?" about a guy "who can't face up to the fact that he is gay," "To Speak Is a Sin" about wanting to talk and not wanting to talk at the same time in a gay bar," and "Go West," their latest single, a remake of the Village People's "gay utopian anthem, very much like 'Somewhere' from West Side Story." Nevertheless Tennant remains guarded when asked if he and Lowe consider themselves out. "We don't deny anything," he says laughing.

"We can sort of have an interview where we discuss whether we regard ourselves as being out or not - which is truly out in itself to discuss it - but I guess we don't give quotes about it. "At the same time," he continues, "I think we've written the strongest songs of that kind anyone's ever written, and those two facts are not unrelated. Because we are not politicians. There are people who work within dance music who are politicians - that's why they're in it, which is great - but that's not what we're about." Would be being completely frank be a limitation? "You mean, would people stop buying our records? No,

I don't think that at all. I just personally think that as far as the public perceives you it narrows the point of view from which you can write. And also it's like you kind of join a gang, which I don't necessarily want to join." He also doesn't want the same thing to happen to the Pet Shop Boys that happened to a certain other pop group. "You didn't know anything about ABBA's sex life, really. As soon as you did, it broke up. You've got to have some kind of mystique. The rest can be posthumous or something." - LARRY CLOSS

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


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