In
1975 Neil Tennant finished a degree in history at the Polytechnic Of North
London. For a while he considered doing a postgraduate degree specializing
in Imperial and Commonwealth history; instead he became British editor of
Marvel Comics.
"A friend of mine who'd been a journalist before had a copy of the UK Press
Gazette1 with an advert in it from a London comic publisher looking for
a production editor. She said 'that'd be a good job if you want to be a
journalist' so I phoned them up, they said come over and then I went home
for my 21st birthday and I got a phone call offering me the job. I didn't
want it really - I felt that I'd like to doss around for a while -but I
said OK and I started within a week."
He wasn't exactly well paid - £25 a week for the first six week trial period,
rising to £30 a week -especially since at the same time he moved into a
flat that cost £18 a week.
"In other words I had £12 a week2 to spend. It was terrible. I never had
any money. We'd get paid in cash on Fridays and often on Monday morning
after the weekend I'd only have £2 left." The job basically consisted of
taking the long-successful American monthly color Marvel Comics and converting
them into British black-and-white weekly ones.
"I had to read them all and Anglicize the spellings, do things like put
the 'u' back into 'color'. It was very strongly felt that they shouldn't
have American spellings because it confused kids." Sometimes the artwork
needed changing too. "Occasionally you'd get stories where you had to cover
up women. Conan the Barbarian3 in particular was all a bit sexy - the artists
were always having to add bras, basically."
The second part of the job involved putting in all the adverts, letters
pages and trails. Occasionally Neil would also write two page articles
about something or other. There's his celebrated "think piece" on comics
in Europe, entitled Marvel In Europe (or How To Say Spiderman In Six Different
Languages) which begins "Oh, Seekers of the Truth, so you're all hip to
British Marvel now There's his considered appreciation of comic fan and
rock star Alex Harvey: "On stage Alex Harvey and his band perform fast-moving
rock'n'roll pantomime, featuring a brace of heroes culled from comic book
and adventure stories There's even the first interview he ever did - with
T. Rex's Marc Bolan5 - during which Marc Bolan had to point out to Neil
that his tape recorder wasn't working.
As well as this there would also be a special event to set up. When Stan
Lee, the man who invented Marvel Comics came to London, Neil organized
a book signing for his book Bring On The Bad Guys and got 2,000 people
to turn up: "he was thrilled; he didn't think anyone would come." When
artist Herb Trump came to London he arranged for a specially drawn picture
of The Incredible Hulk6 to appear on the cover of London magazine Time
Out:" I used to enjoy sorting out things like that." When the winners
of Marvel Mastermind - a competition in which you had to answer lots of
interesting questions like "what is Spiderman's father called?7" and then
think of the best sentence in which each word begins with a different
letter from the word MASTERMIND8 - were chosen he'd get their pictures
in the local paper. When it could be arranged he'd accompany Spiderman
around the country.
"We had this Spiderman costume so we'd do personal appearances of Spiderman
on Saturday mornings at ABC minors' matinees. You had an actor as Spiderman
- don't worry, it wasn't me; I refused to do that - and we'd give away
gifts. There'd always be a nauseating child saying 'he's not really Spiderman!'
and you'd be saying (loud whisper) 'Shut up!'. But the little kids would
be quite excited. Spiderman would stand up there and throw shapes. Walking
up walls? No, he would resolutely fail to walk up walls, though I think
people would ask him to."
Oddly enough it was then that Neil met the man, Tom Watkins, who would,
years later, become the Pet Shop Boys manager. "He was managing a group
called Giggles and they liked comics so Tom used to come round and hassle
me to borrow our Spiderman suit. Tom apparently has still got a copy of
a really snooty letter from me to him because he used to borrow the suit
and then either he wouldn't give us it back or it'd be returned in disgusting
condition. I remember going to see Giggles once at the Marquee with Krysia'
and Spiderman wandered on at the end.
I can't remember the point, really. It was 1976 and they thought they
were just about to sign to EMI and I remember saying to Tom 'they shouldn't
sign a group like Giggles, they should sign a group like the Sex Pistols'
because Krysia and I had seen the Sex Pistols at The Nashville not long
before that. I didn't see him until years after that when XL10 were designing
the sleeve for the original 'West End Girls'. I went into their office
and suddenly I thought 'that's bloody Tom Watkins! What's he doing here?'
I remembered he was always such a hustler and that's why I asked him to
be our manager."
At the time though Neil's musical ambitions were almost forgotten: "once
I left college in 1975 I thought it was never going to happen." Before
that, when he'd first come to London, he'd dressed up in the best clothes
he could borrow - "enormous flared trousers and huge shoes with enormous
heels on" - and played songs with titles like "Telephone Blues" and "Summer
Rain" to publishing companies; they'd shown considerable interest but
it had never come to anything. But by the time he was at Marvel Comics
he'd mostly just play songs to friends.
"It got to the stage where I didn't even play songs to them." He was more
concerned with gaffing a better job. He nearly got a job as a sub-editor
on teenage girls' magazine - "I thought that's what I'd end up doing."
He almost became a sub-editor on the mass circulation magazine Reader's
OigesL "I passed the copy-editing test and then I had a final interview
with the editor and I argued about politics. He decided I was most unsuitable."
Eventually the publishing firm Macdonald EducationaP1 offered him a job
near the end of 1977. "They were quite excited to have someone who worked
in comics." So off he went. .
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