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Pet Shop Boys. interview with

Author/s: Andrew Sullivan Issue:
Sept, 1996
Devoted to disco when disco wasn't cool, the Pet Shop Boys have never hidden their love for lush, ecstatic pop. And they've never grown tired or stale. They've also never really received all the credit they deserve. That may change. Now that dance music is ruling the airwaves, this daring duo is more vital than ever. On their new album, Bilingual, they present music that speaks to the body and soul.

Here is an interview with one of the Boys by one of their longtime fans, someone who also speaks to body and soul, culture critic Andrew Sullivan Since their earliest hits in the mid-'80s, "West End Girls" and "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been scoring heartbreaking, danceable pop.

At a time when disco was considered rock's public enemy number one, the duo championed its lush, uplifting grace and recognized that it was a format ripe for experimentation: Their ingenious injection of literate, sophisticated lyrics into high-energy dance-floor epics has earned them success in Europe and Japan as well as a growing cult following in the U.S. And though a passion for remixing their material keeps their output steady and evolving, it is what former rock journalist Tennant calls "the proper albums" that keep fans hooked.

With the release of Bilingual (Atlantic), the first such "proper album" in three years, TeNNant and Lowe try Latin-infLected tempos, while retaining their trademark wistfulness. The first single off the album, "Before," is classically deft Pet Shop Boys and is already a hit. An obsessive fan since their first recording, I at last got a chance to chat with Tennant, who was vacationing in a castle in Italy's Umbrian countryside.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: One of the things that your supine fans are in awe of is your productivity. From my point of view, it seems every time my life gets depressing and I long for another Pet Shop Boys album, you produce one.

NElL TENNANT: Well, I think what we do is we make the so-called proper albums, of which this new one, Bilingual, is the first in three years. Then we'll put out a disco remix album, which we do now and then. It seems a shame to bring out these dance mixes only to have them disappear into the murk of twelve-inch singles - some of them are pretty good.

AS: With other artists, it seems there's a yearning to produce something grander than a pop song. Have you ever thought about writing a musical or an opera?

NT: Actually, we are planning to write a musical at the moment with an English playwright named Jonathan Harvey. Originally, we were going to do a version of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, but we couldn't get the rights.

AS: How did you get the idea of putting music to Graham Greene?

NT: Well, the main character in Brighton Rock is seventeen and a gangster. I think it's a subject that would lend itself to our kind of music.

AS: There seems to be this notion of the Pet Shop Boys as being extremely satirical or cynically ironic, but I think so much of your music is in fact incredibly naive, especially about love. Are you ever frustrated that the authenticity in your writing is missed?

NT: Yeah. On the occasions that we do interviews, I normally try to bring something like that up. One of our first records was "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," which was a cynical joke song - actually, it was a little bit like a punk song - so people's ideas about us were awfully colored by that. In truth, we've only ever really done one or two like it. But yes, I think I am quite a naive person.

AS: A song like "Liberation," or even "It Always Comes As a Surprise" on this new album, reveals extremely touching moments of intimacy. Is this an expression of your own life?

NT: Those songs are both about the people I was going out with at the time. The incident in "Liberation" about a head resting on my shoulder is true.

AS: There's also a tension that puts most of your work at a different level than most pop music. You often have a high-energy beat with a very sad lyric. Or you put a happy lyric and a somewhat melancholic melody.

NT: Well, when I was growing up, I was someone who liked the lyrics of Bob Dylan, but didn't like the music. [laughs] And I didn't see why you couldn't have dance music with lyrics that were like Bob Dylan's. But in pop, when you're being serious, you're expected to announce, "Hello, I'm now being serious." I believe that music can have a major disco rhythm in the background with swooshing strings and all that, and you can still listen to it quite seriously.

AS: It's almost as if you're disrespectful to the various traditions, especially the pomposity and self-importance of rock.

NT: Yes, well, we used to have a real bee in our bonnets about rock music. I like music that sends a shiver down my spine. I also like music that is sort of uplifting. And, you know, pop music, ecstatic pop music, does that for me.

AS: And yet you also bring a large amount of social commentary into your music. Are you using pop as a medium for journalism?

NT: I don't think quite like that. I'm a historian, really. That's what I studied as a student.

AS: If an historian were to look at what you've written, it seems that one of the things they would notice is an AIDS narrative.

NT: Definitely.

AS: Would you say that "Being Boring" was the first self-conscious song about that?

NT: No. The first song [about AIDS] was "It Couldn't Happen Here" on the album Actually, in 1987.

AS: I always thought that was about Thatcherism for some reason.

NT: Well, I could see how one might think that. The phrase itself sounds like it's about fascism. But it was actually about a friend of mine who was dying of AIDS in 1986, when we'd just become pop stars in Britain and Europe. His illness was an incredible shock, and the song was about a conversation we'd had several years previously, where I remembered him saying to me as we were walking to [the London club] Heaven, that it was thought that there wasn't going to be the same explosion of AIDS in Britain that there was at that time in America. It wasn't going to happen here. And that was what gave me the idea for the song. "Hit Music," on the same album, was just about what happens when you take the sex out of the disco. What role does the music then play? So those were the first two songs about AIDS.

AS: I guess the song "Being Boring" was sort of a reflective lament on, or in some ways a celebration of, people whose lives burned brightly, but then disappeared. Now, on Bilingual, "The Survivors" is another extraordinary piece in terms of understanding how it is possible to feel hope in the middle of such extraordinary loss. Am I misinterpreting?

NT: No, that's precisely what it's about. But it isn't just about AIDS. It was partly written because a friend of mine committed suicide. It's about being forty or so, and there's this sense of looking around at the people you've known in your life, and quite a few of them aren't there, but you still are. It's quite simply that you've survived. It's also about the guilt you sometimes feel that you have survived. I was reading a book about the First World War and found it was quite common for people to feel trauma about the fact that they lived through it. The AIDS crisis is like a war, where you're waiting for that telegram to arrive.

AS: Yes, and you carry the dead with you, even though you are still around. Anyway, this is getting too serious. Tell me, where do you live?

NT: I live in London, in Chelsea, in a Regency-style house built in 1920, I think. I've got three bedrooms with a little garden. I've always liked Chelsea. I used to live there years ago when I had a proper job. [laughs]

AS: Is it possible for you to go out?

NT: Oh God, totally. The Pet Shop Boys are 100 percent accessible in London. We are always out and about, possibly to an almost ridiculous extent.

AS: Where do you go?

NT: Well, I go out to restaurants probably every night of my life. And I go to a place called Substation. It's a completely idiot gay club in London, where a friend of mine deejays. A total den of iniquity. I go there occasionally because I know that I can go into the DJ booth and feel really cool and hip.

AS: That reminds me of one of my favorite Pet Shop Boys songs, a B-side called "Jack the Lad." What was that song about, if you don't mind me asking?

NT: "Jack the Lad" is about being an individual, daring to do what you want to do. The song refers to Lawrence of Arabia, Oscar Wilde, and Kim Philby. It's also about the application of the idea of individuality to masculinity and not worrying too much about falling down. When you're a Jack the Lad type, you can be the fool, too.

AS: Does that apply to you, as well? It seems that the way you sing is rebellious enough. It's like listening to Churchill give speeches. It's a preposterous way to sing.

NT: Well, it's just the way I sing. And I try to do it so the words can be heard. Also, I have this thin little voice, but as we've gone on, I've gotten more into the sound of it. When I sing quietly, I call it my choir-boy voice. It has a sweetness that I like. It sounds very unrock.

AS: And frankly, It sounds as if you don't give a damn about the notions of masculinity and femininity.

NT: It was always meant to do that. I have occasionally written songs from the point of view of being a woman. For example, I always imagined the song "Rent" was meant to be about a kept woman. And it was great when Liza Minnelli sang it on the album we did with her, because she made it sound like it was in a Broadway show or something.

AS: She sang with all sorts of emotions, but that's not what you do. You distance yourself.

NT: Well, I think restraint gives pathos, which I like, depending on the song. To me there's something affecting about a restrained-sounding voice singing of deep emotions or passions.

AS: All your music is, in fact, one tension working against another. You have the beat working against the melody, the lyrics working against the mood, your voice working against the words -

NT: And of course you also have Nell Tennant working against Chris Lowe. [laughs] I mean, Chris likes very simple, repetitive dance music, with a single uplifting phrase. He loves that "Take Me Higher" kind of thing. Then I come along and put a complicated middle bit in and make the words sound a bit depressing.

AS: How have you gotten along so well for so long?

NT: We give each other space and we understand each other. And though we have completely opposite qualities, we do actually share a sense of humor. Plus, we are the only people who have ever been in the Pet Shop Boys, so we're in a little club of two there.

AS: At so many times in my life, your music has truly uplifted me at Important moments.

NT: Well, in many ways we've written it to uplift ourselves. Sometimes when I'm depressed, I actually will play one of our songs. There's a line in one of our new tracks, "Red Letter Day," on the new album, that says, "For all of those who don't fit in / Who follow their instincts and are told they sin / This is a prayer." I've always seen our songs as misfits, and at the same time, that's their strength. COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

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