Absolutely Pet Shop Boys Unoffical web site - Interviews

Interviews - Actually the sleeve

When they finished recording "Actually" in the summer of 1987 the Pet Shop Boys released that they still had one rather large problem: they hadn't the foggiest what to put on the sleeve. For "Please" and "Disco" they'd simply turned around and, after a bit of debate, released that they already had something that was ideal (in the case of "Please" the "towels" photo session done months before for use in magazines - it first appeared in the Bitz section of Smash Hits above a competition to win 20 red Pet Shop Boys shirts; in the case of "Disco" taken on video oft an Italian TV show by their assistant Pete).

For "Actually" they had nothing. Then Neil had an idea: they'd put a painting on the cover. In Sky magazine he had seen a self portrait he liked by Scottish painter Alison Watt that had just won the National Portrait Gallery competition. Off they went -Neil, Chris, photographer Eric Watson and designer Mark Farrow - to see her in Glasgow.

"She said she'd love to do it," remembers Neil, "and that we'd have to sit every day for three weeks! We said 'we can't possibly do that."' Instead Eric Watson took lots of photos of the two of them sitting in her flat from different angles for her to work on. She painted, they waited and a few weeks later the finished painting appeared. Chris wasn't happy. "My face was all wonky."

It went back, alterations were made and Chris still wasn't happy: "I think it still looks all wrong." Even Neil, who was very happy with it, didn't think it was the right image for the album. Instead he took it home - it now hangs in his flat. Meanwhile they were back to square one. Still, they had to forget about that for the moment. By now it was more urgent to shoot the video for "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" On the set photographer Cindy Palmano was commissioned to do some stills and to take a session that could be used for an imminent Smash Hits front cover.
To do that she sat them with a waist high piece of reflecting metal in front of them and with a similar sheet Behind them. A couple of days later, when they saw the photos, their favorite was the very first shot taken where Neil was yawning.

They immediately sent it over to Smash Hits to ask if it was suitable for the cover - Smash Hits enthusiastically said it was and kept it. Next they did a session with Eric Watson. They liked the results but still didn't think they'd got anything strong enough for the cover (those photos ended up on the inner sleeve of "Actually" and as the sleeve of "Rent"). It was only then that they began to think seriously of the shot now stored away in a drawer at Smash Hits, for a magazine cover that had to be finished the next day. They phoned up and asked for the photo back, agreeing instead to do a photo session that evening for Smash Hits. There was still a small problem - Chris didn't like (and still doesn't like) the way he looks in the photo - but even he agreed that "the image was good".

Mark Farrow suggested that it would be even stronger if they removed the reflective background and just had the two of them against a white background. "It was just a snap decision because it was the strongest idea we had," says Neil. "As soon as we got the proof (the specimen version) it just looked fantastic and we knew it was right."

"It's like a 'pop' sort of image," says Chris proudly, "like Andy Warhol." "We thought 'Please' was a hard album to follow," Neil continues, "because it's kind of minimal and funny, and yet now 'Please' looks quite weak next to 'Actually'. 'Actually' I think is very very strong. It sticks out from miles away and it fits the title. I think it's the bow ties that do that - it's a posh word, 'Actually', isn't it? "We liked it because it wasn't a cop-out 'please, please, please buy me'

photo. It was sort of uncompromising and funny at the same time. It fitted all the basic tenets - it looked really strong, it was very noticeable in the shops, it was funny and of course people were obviously going to say 'why are you yawning?"' Quite. So why was he yawning? He shrugs.
"I was tired." Oh.

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