I hate being discribed as a Gay Pop Star Neil Tennant Its a Boring Tag

One half of the most successful duo in the history of the UK charts (33 hits and counting), Neil Tennant has been one of the most important figures of the music industry over the last 20 years, from journalist to performer to producer.
Paul Flynn meets him as Pet Shop Boys release their new album, Release Not mention the word 'acoustic' around

Likely to light the touch paper of his ire. One minute a laconic1 erudite1 Jackanory-style storyteller (with a vaguely Ronnie Corbett-esque habit of slipping from the main thoroughfare of the point in hand). And next? A ball of flames and tantrums. Well, a mild arm wave and a sigh at the very least. TMWe are not and never have been 'acoustic':' says the contuoversialised petulant Shop Boy of one reader's enquiry into the frankly lush new direction of their album. That's that then. Harrumph etc, etc. We are gathered in the Grouch club, famed private members hotspot in which Keith Allen has been known to air his genitals as a drunken 'wheeze' (so not so private members, after all). We are in London's Soho to put to Mr. Tennant your1 the readers', enquiries. You wanted to know about his last female tryst, his feelings on controversies around both Ivan Massow and Brian Paddick, and what he was doing in Tesco' 5 the other Friday. He was more than happy to oblige on all counts. So Mr. Neil, the only man in pop to use 'flaming' as an expletive, meet your troupes...

Before, I Don't Know What What I Went But I Can't Give It Anymore and now Home and Diy: to be blunt, you seem to have a perverse penchant these days for choosing the weakest track from a new PSB album as the first single, don't you?
'Penchant' is very Pet Shop Boys. The question's from Paris? Well, they're not playing Home and Dry on the radio in France. I don't necessarily think that we do choose the right singles. We normally do the first one in conjunction with the record company.
I Don't Know What You Want I thought was a great first single. Chris wanted to release You Only Thil Me You Love Me When You're Drunk but the record company thought we should do something that was a bit more up. I knew Home and Dry would sound great on the radio and I think it does. To me that is the obvious first single. Someone described it as plangent', and I don't really know what that means, but I'm sure it means what that record sounds like.

Has the family traditi6n of golf been passed down to you?
I was actually the first person in our family to play golf and I'm now the only one that doesn't play. I was ten years old. The City of Newcastle Golf Club was near where I was brought up in North Go forth. A friend had an old set of golf clubs and I think that I'd read some PG Woodhouse and thought it was very PG Woodhouse to play golf but
I actually found it immensely tedious. I was rather hopeless at it. This comes from when I was at Smash Hits and we used to have a thing called Personal File where we used to sit around thinking of preposterous questions to ask people. One of mine was 'does your mother play golf?' because mine did. You'd ask that to one of the Southern Death Cult and it'd always needle them a bit. The other great one was 'do you know anyone called Tarquin?' And my classic: 'are you gay?'

Did you go to Liza's wedding? And if not, why not?
We were invited but we had to do CD:UK that morning. She and her husband actually phoned us up and we tried to shift the promotional thing to be in New York but we couldn't manage to do it... I know that if we had gone we would've walked up to the church and Chris would've seen all the photo-graphics and
ran away. He did that at the premier of Evita.

I was looking forward to you writing a musical and expected it to be very Sondheim and dry and sophisticated, but closer To Heaven was very bawdy and crude. Your views please.
Dry and sophisticated?
The Pet Shop Boys have never done anything that was dry and sophisticated. We might have done sophisticated but we've never done dry and sophisticated. I hate dry. I like something to have feeling. The idea of the musical was love in a drug culture. We set out writing it to be different from any other musical. Some middle-class theatre critics definitely found it tacky and tasteless and I guess it's all personal taste.
The scene with the manager in the sauna I thought was rather exhilarating. I know it 5... well, I thought it was really funny. I guess I like what this guy thinks is tasteless. I can't apologies for the tastelessness of it.

Does it bother you in any way, shape or form that the majority of the people in the audience at your gigs don't dance, only nod their heads in time to the beat?
Well, that's really all I ever do. I've never been a very good dancer. I don't physically express myself well. I started doing yoga to try and get over it, because I've always had a very stiff physical presence. It didn't do anything for me. I think it was a little too late. Good old Geri has ruined yoga for generations of people, hasn't she?

Who's Sexy Northerner supposed to be about?
I know three people who think it's about them. The idea came from an archetype.
It should really be Sexy North Easterner. When you come from Newcastle you don't compete with London. When you come from Manchester you can fly to New York from there and do all sorts so you think you're very important. When you come from Newcastle you know you'll have to go to London to get on. You get these aspirational people in Newcastle who want to be a graphic designer and they want nice things and to go to Milan and Paris. All Geordie pop stars are pretentious. Me, Sting, Bryan Ferry. When I'm singing it live I have to restrain myself from singing it in an imitation of David Bowie. I have to say that it went down particularly well in Middles borough.

Do you agree with Boy G that Eminem is sexy?
He's sort of sexy, though I actually think the idea of Eminem is sexier than the reality. I think he's sweet. When you see him in interviews he's very serious. We wrote the song The Night I Fell In Love inspired by the controversy
over whether he was homophobic or not. There is some horrible homophobia on the
albums but I buy his rationale that he's reflecting the ugliness and homophobia in America. There's no question that Eminem is the most creative artist to come out of the whole gamut of pop music in the last five years. He's a real artist. Like Bowie, he plays with identity and character and he's quite sophisticated about it. I read about him on groupiecentral.com and a girl said he was really nice and polite and that he had a video camera, which is in the song. I decided not to put the genital details in the song, though it did actually cross my mind to.

Are you with Ivan Massow on conceptual art?
I am not with Ivan Massow on conceptual art. I don't think that Ivan Massow should have done that. If he felt that strongly about conceptual art he
resigned as chairman of the ICA, which ram a patron of, by the way. The job of the chairman
of the ICA is to raise money for contemporary art, some of which is
conceptual. He harmed the funding of it. As a matter of honour he should've resigned and then said it. To pose for photographs in the Evening Standard afterwards with a water pistol I thought smacked of self publicity. I saw him at the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate and said I thought it was a foolish thing to do and he shrugged and walked off. Everyone has the right to their own opinion but
when you make a comment like that as the chairman of the ICA then people
think of it as an educated opinion and I don't think that that was educated. He said some ridiculous thing about Tracey Emin as well - that she couldn't think her way out of a paper bag. Tracey Emin is a lot brighter than Ivan Massow. At least in terms of art, anyway.

You've since said that you regret coming out (in this magazine in 1994) because it has labelled you as a 'gay artist'. How do you think artists can avoid that without sacrificing their integrity?
Have I actually said I regret it? I've looked at the good and bad sides of it but I don't regret it in the slightest. I probably said part of me regrets it.
I think and I've always thought that it's a slightly ridiculous notion to define yourself to the world through your sexuality. Sex is a part of life but ~ it's your whole life it won't make you happy. I hate being described as 'gay pop star Neil Tennant'. It's a boring tag. But attitudes basically have to change from gay people as well. I don't believe in the gay community. I certainly don't live in one.

what did you think of The Shadow Lounge being dogged through the mud as the resift of the Brian Paddick farrago?
Malcolm Tume,; North Tyneside Janet (Street Porter) wrote about this. Janet Io"es
Shadow Lounge. I thought that stuff was interesting. Shadow Lounge used to be a lap-dancing club which is
seedy in anyone's estimation. ft's now a rather smart gay club that people sit around drinking and chatting and dancing in. It's become trendy because ti'. places to drink in Soho-gay or straight - are really rather limited. It's a nice place to to. I think it was the ~ Men~~ that criticised it. They immediately go back to there
old 50s clinches where Soho is 'seedy' and they can intimate that gay people
have a 'seedy' lifestyle i~ there. Anything gay is 'seedy'. Sometimes
I wish there were more genuinely seedy please. Where does Marc Almond go nowadays? If he cam. along now he'd have nothing to write about

Have you got any good advice for Will Young?
I'd be very interested in the circumstances that surrounded his coming out but my advice wouldn't be anything to do with being gay. That's all happened. I saw the News of the World when it happened and I don't actually trust them but I thought their upbeat, pro-gay editorial was very interesting. That's precisely the sort of thing that changes attitudes. The ghastly drama of being gay is fading away. My advice for him, if he really wants to survive in pop music would be to think why does he want to do it.
Does he want to be famous, or does he want to be a singer? Does he really want to do something new or does he want to be part of the music business? He has to have artistic ambitions otherwise he won't survive. He's obviously quite a bright guy so he should think what he wants to get out of it personally and creatively.

I Gathere you don't live far from Brompton Cemetery~ Do you visit?
, I think that Brampton Cemetery is meant to be Gay cruising. It's a very romantic cemetery. I've been there twice. I went there with Janet when she was doing a series of walks for the Sunday. Times. We did the Kensington and Chelsea walk and ended up in there and saw some of the Russian royal family's graves. It's very overgrown.
There's a beautiful sense of decay. It looks like a 70s progressive rock album cover. So I've only been twice but I am aware that people used to come out of the Coleheme and go cruising there.

Is Love actualy a Catstroph ?
I don't think that love as a concept or a fact of life is a catastrophe. Obviously it's the most wonderful thing about life.
But love can feel like a catastrophe. When I wrote this song I had an
Infatuation with a guy, that I don't have any more. At the time it was very painful.
You know when you get into that thing where you can't think about anything else. It was driving me mad and it was painful and I said to a friend on the telephone 'you know, love is
a catastrophe'. It was rather melodramatic. That song is like a mad diary entry. It's one of my favourite songs we've ever written. So, yes, love can be a catastrophe. But love is also the meaning of life, let's face it.

Do you look at pop artists now and think, 'My God, we really did do something amazing'
Well, we have this notion that pop music is about creativity, it's about expressing what's going on in the world at a particular time, about expressing your own feelings in a new way, about being shiny, new and sexy. And now you look at what is called 'pop music' and I don't recognise it as that. I don't recognise the Pop Idol thing as that. I recognise it as television. It's like buying a cookbook at the end of a cookery show. The Strokes to me is pop music. Five young guys with a look and a sound that is original, at least for the moment. Four minute catchy songs. It's all a bit sexy. To me, that's pop
music. We went to the Strokes show at Heaven and watched them from backstage. It was very, very groupiecentral.com. Pop Stars and Pop Idol has educated kids into thinking that pop music is an audition process. It stifles creativity. It's a horse race and someone wins at the end. I feel a bit sorry for Hear'say. They've gone through that whole thing, had a very high level of fame, probably not

Made a great deal of money, and fame very easily turns to derision if it's not backed up by respect. It's rather depressing, too, that you have all these supposedly top people in the music industry and what do they come up
with? Hear'say. If you listen to Adam Ant records now1 it is literally incredible that these weird, avant garde, punk songs were selling to nine-year-old children. If you went to a record company now and said you wanted to do
this you would be regarded as weird for having an idea.

Can you explain the Wolfgang Tillmans video for Home and Dry to me?
Well, it's been deemed unshowable. It's funny, because George Michael has just made this very self-consciously weird video, which is very conventionally weird and so is all over MTV. But a genuinely weird video, like ours1 people don't even see as a video because it doesn't have fantastically high production values. It doesn't need explaining. It is what it is. The George Michael video reminds me of Venus by Bananarama, who I love. I went to their G.A.Y show. It was great but I wish Siobhan had done the whole night. She's very arty. Because of Smash Hits I've sort of known them since 1983. They used to be real misery guts. They'd complain about everything. Much worse than Chris (Lowe). Now we often see them out and they always look so beautiful. Sarah has this statuesque beauty.

Have you ever been asked to be on
Question Time?
I've been asked several times and I won't do things like that. I have no desire to be a spokesman or pundit. I think I'm regarded as educated, even though I only went to North London Poly, as Chris always points out. I often get asked to present Arts Programmers but I've no desire to be
a television personality. I don't necessarily read the newspapers. I get all of my information from my telephone.

I met you in Goodge Street Tesco's a few weeks back Do you always buy your stamps in there and where were you going afterwards?
We were mixing our album in Sony studios across the road. I think
I was buying stamps to post a birthday card to someone... that's it. I like a good
supermarket. I'm lucky because I have a Waitrose in Chelsea and Waitrose is the only one worth going to. I'm sometimes in Marks & Spencer's but I've never been a fan of their sandwiches. I've never liked chilled sandwiches actually.

Robbie Williams seems to be a big fan of yours. he's covered your songs, sung on that Noel Coward tribute album, got you in to guest on one of his own songs. Is the feeling mutual?
The first time I met Robbie was when he was in Take That and we always quite liked them. We were in Germany doing a TV show and they were on it. Chris tried to get Robbie to leave Take That. We were going to the Dorian Gray nightclub under Frankfurt airport. There were three or four car-loads of us going to the club - the dancers and make up artists and people that were doing the wigs - and we actually had a party in McDonalds car park that night Chris was saying, 'oh, come to Frankfurt with us and come to the Dorian Gray'. I bumped into him the week his album came out and went in at Number 15 or something. He was looking rather ashen about it but I said I liked it.
I still like Let Me Entertain You now. I wasn't sure about doing No Regrets until I heard the demo and I loved the song. I think it's very New Order. The last album
I thought was treading water. I think he can be a bit too glib. You never quite know when he's being sincere. The last time I saw him he ended the show with My Way and I'm not sure what you're supposed to get out of him singing that. I like Sid vicious' version of that best, anyway. Was he being ironic? I don't think so. l don't get the swing thing. I can't see the point of replicating something exactly. He never seems very
happy with his success, either. He's one of pop's great moaners. I do have a soft spot for him, though.

Who do you thinks sexier given the choice of Bernard Sumner or Johnny Marr (of New Order)?
When we first met Bernard I used to think he was really cute. I heard he was doing a solo album and made Mark Farrow, our designer, phone him up and say I wanted to do a track with him. I then made Chris come up with me and Chris had met him before and said, 'you won't fancy him you know When I got there I turned round to Chris and said 'you're right, you know I love the pair of them. But I'm afraid that I really don't fancy either of them.

Be honest: what did you think of Taboo?
It's interesting that Taboo has been presented as somehow in competition with Closer To Heaven. In his Sunday Express column ages ago Boy George said that he was going to write a musical and he knew that we were writing one and he said that the race was on to see who would be the new Andrew Lloyd Webber and, of course, that was the exact opposite of what we wanted to be. My heart sank a bit. We wanted to do something different and I think in many ways we achieved it.
I thought the production of Taboo was probably better than Closer to Heaven, in a way. It aimed lower and hit higher. Ours was a little like an expensive musical done cheaply. The costumes and performances in The loo were amazing. There's a beautiful song called Out Of Fashion at the end. I always thought his idea was commercial, from the moment I heard about it. I think it's very enjoyable but that it's got a very, very weak script. It seems to give up at the end.

Which one of you was sleeping with Cicero?
Neither of us were sleeping with Cicero. I didn't even fancy him. And he was very heterosexual. He photographed well. He's still making records in Scotland. He stayed very loyal to electro music and high NRG. At one point Take That and Cicero were on tour together, when Take That were a notorious flop, which they were for ages. We had a Top Twenty hit with the Cicero record, Love Is Everywhere, but it didn't make it to Top Of The Pops because Michael Jackson had some poxy single out with a nine-minute video which had to be shown. We pulled out all the stops on that record. It was so shameless. It even had bagpipes to play up the Scottish angle. Spaghetti Records still exists. lt1s now our taxi account.
We had a rap duo called Ignorant who made a fantastic concept album for us and sold nothing. They were a complete pain in the arse, actually. They drove everyone mad. Artists running record labels is not a good idea. Madonna's given it a good go with Maverick, though apparently that's in some financial trouble now. Not that it1s her money.

You're records have lust started being name-checked by the 80s obsessive like Miss Kittin, Ziga and Tythansurous and Fischerspooner. In 20 years time will the hip young things be saying the same about your new acoustic phase?
I hate this talk of an acoustic phase. The kings of Convenience are acoustic. We aren't. We're not going through an acoustic phase. The interesting thing about our records is that they're never as appreciated at the time as they are just after. You read the NME review of Actually or Behaviour and they were slagged off, so now they slag us off for the show we did for them at the Astoria. It's
rather predictable. We've never actually made records like Miss Kittin and the Hacker. They
sound a bit like our early
demos when we only had a drum machine
and a keyboard. We've always put orchestras on the records, there's been guitars on every single album. I love Miss Kittin, though. That song Frank Sinatra is great but it could never have been by the Pet Shop Boys because there's a level of cynicism to it. We1re not good at icy cool. We've never done it. People think we do because of the way my voice sounds, but that's not the way it's intended. They're more in the line of Grace Jones. Or Gina X. Fischerspooner, who I love, are 50 1982 I can't believe it.

Why is Smash Hits now rubbish?
I gave up buying it about eight or ten years ago and it was actually nothing to do with the content. It was because it always came in a plastic bag. It was huge! And it was rather embarrassing to buy. I'd rather it was a nice A4 magazine. This flipping great plastic bag full of crap. It's become really old fashioned. It's actually the sort of magazine that Smash Hits despised now. The old Smash Hits wit and cleverness has filtered through the media so much now that G2 in the Guardian reads like Smash Hits sometimes. Or rather a bad imitation of it. The writing in Smash Hits when I was there would now be regarded as too old. You'd get a four-page article on hip hop in 1983, that'd be
unheard of now. Pop culture was very different then, though. It's about
regular blokes now, which is always less interesting to write about.
It's probably sexier than it used to be. When I was there I was always trying to make it sexy. I always had one idea for the cover: 'let's get them to take their clothes off!' We finally did it with one of Roman Holliday.

What's your perfect night in?
I like a night in by myself. I'll go for a run. With a view. Down the Embankment is gorgeous at night. Have a view if you're going running and, tragically, you have to have a walkman. Then I'll have an Indian take-away. Yes, always from the same take-away. Then I'll watch a DVD. I watched Woodstock last night. It's totally, weirdly rivetting. Everything has come back. It looks contemporary and it sounds contemporary. It's tragic but I was thinking Crosby, Stills and Nash have gorgeous harmonies. That's not very Miss Kittin, is it?

My friend Steve says that A Man Could Get Arrested, the b-side to West End
Girls, is all about cruising in Russell Square. Is this true?
It's sort of true. I was walking with friends through Russell Square and there was a guy standing there and they said go on, say 'hello' to him'. This was years go. I said hello to this guy and of course he wasn't gay and he had all his friends there and they were going to beat us up, basically. So we scarpe red. Bottles started getting thrown, which there's a line about in the song. Anyway, this ended up -believe it or not - with us being chased through Bloomsbury by a police car. Chris, of course, had disappeared. The policeman stopped us and we didn't get arrested but that's where it comes from.

I've always wanted to know what, in your opinion, are
the best three Pet Shop Boys singles you've ever released?
Probably Being Boring, West End Girls and Go West.
I always think I don't like Go West, but whenever I perform it
I find it really moving. We always have to do it at the end of performances because
you can't go anywhere after it.

What year was it you last had sex with a woman? Sorry but I really, really have to know.
1 981 (laughing). I think that's enough of an answer to that one. 21 years ago.
I used to like having sex with women, funnily enough. There was just always something else I'd rather have been doing. I had two girlfriends in the 70s, both of whom I was very close to at the time. One of the things I don't like about growing older is becoming less fluid as a person. Even the thought of sleeping with a woman I actually now find vaguely embarrassing.
I'd be scared of hurting somebody, also. I think the last girlfriend I had I hurt quite a lot and I don't like that. I'd be doing it as something interesting to do rather than as a fundamental urge. But I don't rule it out, though.

Do you know if a Pet Shop Boys Record ever been chosen on Desert
Island Discs?
I'm afraid that I have no idea. I never listen to Desert Island Discs. I remember years ago Sting was on Radio One doing My Top Ten, which was their version of Desert Island Discs and he chose West End Girls, which was really sweet.
And I believe Dusty Springfield
chose It Couldn't Happen Here, which she said reminded her of Elgar. But we wrote that song with (film music maestro) Ennio Morricone and it's his
bits that sound like Elgar, needless to say.
Why don't I listen to it? Do you know what?
I don't like Sue Lawley.

Attitude May 2002