USA Tour

The following photographs were taken on the
American leg of the Pet Shop Boys' 2002 tour and then later captioned by Neil and Chris, who also took the opportunity to reflect on life on tour. (Also taken at the same time was the photograph on page 2, shot on May 13th under the red light in one of the lifts of Miami's Delano Hotel.)
For greatest enjoyment, Literally subscribers should read the Pet Shop Boys' comments, and examine the photos, vertically down each column before proceeding from left to right across each page.
May 13,2002.

Neil: Miami, the day before the first show. We were sniffing in the auditorium looking at different ways the stage could be lit. People thought it looked like no staging but in fact the way the show looks was very deliberately staged, with all the flight cases and everything. Every show was different because every venue is different and there would be the bit where you see the back wall of the venue. Here we are judging how it looks.

Neil: Sound checking "Home and dry". I can tell because I only play that guitar during "Home and dry".

Neil: Ian MacNeil, award-winning stage designer.

Chris: It's not the first time we've worked with him.

Neil: He did the Nightlife tour and he's been working
on the American version of Closer to Heaven.

Chris: He's part of the team.

Chris: Me and my keyboards. I decided for this leg of the tour to play a real Rhodes piano. That one's rented. And I've got a Nord lead, a Nord electro and a Korg Prophecy. And there's my sheet music. I don't need to look at it quite as often now.

Neil: I've noticed you still do though.

Chris: Not quite as often as I used to.

Chris: The fabulous Dawn Adams. Is it "fabulous"?
Or "amazing"?

Neil: "Magnificent". She was described in one of the
reviews as "the magnificent female percussion player".

Chris: Bid Hayes. He's a vegetarian.

Neil: He's very good at making electronic noises.

Chris: Sounds capes.

Neil: And he's got a very good sense of humour.

Neil: Mark Refoy. He's from Northampton.
Chris: He's got a different style of guitar playing to Bic. It complements our music really well. He comes up with really hooky riffs. He's also got a very good sense of humour.

Neil: He doesn't drink.

Chris: But he's not a vegetarian.

Chris: Pete Gleadall. An Essex boy.
Neil: He's a programming legend. He's the person whom U2 asked about our version of their song.

Neil: It's Neil Tennant, rock God. The lighting looks
good.

Chris: The back lighting.

Neil: This is the dress rehearsal.

Neil: This is during "Love comes quickly". When we did the dress rehearsal for the first time I thought, I don't know if I can do this show every night, because there's so much singing and words and playing the guitar and everything to remember, and I don't get to go offstage and change or anything. I suddenly thought it was a bit intense. But after a few gigs.. .1 realised I'd grown as a performer. Probably how Madonna felt after three months in that play.

Chris: Just me in front of something.

Neil: I like that picture. I look like I'm directing a play.
Chris: Why do you not have all the lyrics on a teleprompter?

Neil: Because I can remember them. I don't look had for 48 there. Though of course I was only 47 then. I'm holding my annoying American mobile phone. In America it's difficult to use text messaging, believe it or not, readers.

Neil: That's a very Whistler-esque portrait of Chris at
the same meal.

Chris: I look deep in thought, don't I? I wonder what
I'm thinking.

Neil: This is when we had dinner outside at Tides hotel with Merck, and I'm asking for suggestions from every one of what to say between numbers. It's a funny thing, having to speak between the songs. I've never thought it was entirely fair that Chris doesn't speak.
Chris: What have I got to say?

Neil: I don't know - what have I got to say?
Chris: You are what they call A Front Man. And that is part of the job description. Keith Richards doesn't chip in halfway through, does he?
May 14.

Chris: That's a great line-up. This is who was playing
The Jackie Gleason Theater.

Neil: Cinderella is a group, is it?

Chris: In England it would be a pantomime.

Neil: Good picture, that.

Chris: That's me as a teenager. I don't know anything about this picture. I don't know what I'm thinking again. But at least I'm not horizontal. This is in the afternoon on the day of the first show.

Chris: Well, the merchandise has arrived.

Neil: It's my sad clown face. It quite suits me, the t-shirt, I think. That was the first one I put on when we got the merchandise.

Chris: This is all the merchandise, on my bed in the dressing room. I'm amazed we got the merchandise in time for the first show.

Neil: That's the first time we've ever done that. Normally there's only one t-shirt. Closet Homosexual didn't sell very well, you'll be surprised to know, but Sexy Northerner did very well.

Chris: That's the first gig in Miami. We didn't sell many tickets.

Neil: It wasn't sold out. This is shot from our summer season in Blackpool last year. Have you seen the film The Entertainer? It's a bit like that. [Deciding to tell the truth at last] I believe it's actually from the sound check just before our first show.

Neil: It's Mr Bic Hayes again, at sound check, looking very rock'n'roll there.

Neil: The magnificent Dawne Adams again.

Chris: Can you hear the Dawne coming?

Neil: Break.

Chris: That's me...

Neil: . . .with a lot of keyboards. Setting your gear together.

Chris: For the first show. The nerves are definitely showing there.

Chris: Me spinning in my chair.

Neil: I had my chair specially made for the show. I had a regular chair and Ian Mac Neil didn't like it, so we found this old drummer's stool with a seat put on top of it and then had it put on a spinning thing.

Chris: I've just got an office chair. I spin around occasionally. I've got a chair that can spin and I take filly advantage of it

Neil: We're doing an interview for a Miami TV show, Ocean Drive, at the back of the theatre before the audience were let in. They kept us waiting - I got in a bad mood with them.

Chris: It's that t-shirt again. Neil's really is selling the merchandise.

Neil: I was going to do the encores in that at one point, but I decided not to.

Chris: That's me not in a piece of merchandise. In a Stussy t-shirt. Soon after that we did the show. It was good.
May 15.

Neil: I'm on the telephone, doing an interview, in my hotel room in Melbourne, Florida, where the second show was.

Chris: It's what we call in the business "a phoner".
Neil: That's "Neil doing a phoner".

Chris: We live for them. That was one of those ones that said, "we don't want to speak to Chris". They only want Neil. One of those ones.

Chris: The beach.

Neil: That's me on the balcony outside my hotel room. I liked this hotel even though it was horrible because it was right on the Atlantic Ocean. Later that night we had a little after-show party on the balconies.

Chris: It's a great view. It's a shame, because the American coastline is really nice, but they've put horrible buildings along nearly all of it. Condos.

Chris: Just before the show. That's me saying, "you know there's no one out there".

Neil: I just carry on regardless.

Neil: Sound check. I look very rock'n'roll in that picture. They're prescription lenses.

Neil: That shirt, by the way, has shrunk since then.

Chris: You had good eye make-up.

Neil: Actually there's not eye make-up - I didn't have any eye make-up in the show; that's my natural eyes.
Chris: Wow. You look like Dusty Springfield. And without anything!

Neil: Onstage, the second night. In Melbourne there was a very mixed audience in terms of ages - quite a lot of old people. But they were all up at the end - I'll give them that. I think this is during "Where the streets have no name..." when it was the second song in the set.

Neil: This is Mark and Dawne and Bic after the show in our dressing room. Very relaxed and happy. What a nice team of people we had on this show, by the way.

May 16.

Neil: Waiting at the airport. My bag is a computer bag, bought in Cologne. We were about to take our first trip on the private jet we had for most of the American tour.

Chris: Neil's on the phone again.
Neil: Neil's doing another phoner.

Chris: Our Gulf stream 2. Or was it a 3?
Neil: It was a 3. Because it wasn't a 4.

Chris: It's only got five windows. That's James, Neil, Dawn and Mark.

Neil: James, our tour manager, said it would be very slightly more expensive to use a jet and it just makes touring much easier.

Chris: There was a War On Terror, so it makes flying a lot simpler. It was good. I had chicken Caesar salad almost every day.

Neil: Reading a book on the plane.

Chris: How The Conquer Fear Of Flying.

Neil: No, it's The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Which they've made a film of.

Chris: CNN Headline News, Atlanta. This is where
Neil was asked if he thought Ermine was gay.

Neil: A great moment, actually. When the woman asked
me, the two main Headline News presenters behind the
desk were making a cheering motion. A lot of people in
America don't like Ermine.

Chris: They don't see the humour in his work.

Neil: Whereas we regard him as a sort of clown.

Chris: We regard him as a camp classic.

Neil: Like Cher or someone like that.

Chris: That's very rock'n'roll. Wow.

Neil: That's me in Primal Scream. At the Atlanta venue.

Neil: Another one of Chris Lowe. He doesn't like being photographed.

Chris: The t-shirt popping through there is the one I got from the video shoot with Bruce Weber, only because I spilled something on my t-shirt and bad to change.
May 17.

Chris: The next morning we flew to Washington where we had a day off; and this is Bic Hayes in the hotel lobby there. He doesn't look too happy. There was a very strange smell in the hotel entrance. Not caused by Bic.

Chris: Neil with another book.

Neil: This is me at a bookshop in Washington. I
remember looking at The Bosh Dyslexic on there, about
George Bush and his misuse of the language.

Chris: Neil's obsession with Eminem...
Neil: That's me reading the NME. That, by the way, gives the impression there's an interview with Eminem, I think we'd all agree. There isn't actually. There's a kind of scissors-and-paste piece. I'm in the café~ in Borders bookshop. I bought the new issue of the New Yorker and had a piece of carrot cake or something like that.

Chris: A nice time was had by all...
Neil: It was pissing down with rain outside.
May 18.

Neil: In the morning we went shopping. Here I'm at Abercrombie and Fitch and I'm waiting for Chris to try something on.

Chris: I was there a long time. I was looking for some shorts but I bought a pair of swimming trunks instead.
Neil: Wait a cotton-picking minute! I've lost that top I'm wearing. I don't know where it is. That's a Yohji Yamamoto top.

Chris: The band.

Neil: From left to right: Pete Gleadall, Mark Refoy,
Dawne Adams and Bic Hayes.

Chris: And a standard lamp. In the foyer of our
Washington hotel.

Chris: Me in front of the t-shirts at the venue in Washington. I am wearing a Prada raincoat, black. It folds up into itself. I bought it Cologne because it was raining there.

Chris: A very strange picture of me. I think I look like Tim Burgess of the Charlatans.

Chris: Neil's guitars.

Neil: Just a few of them anyway. Actually three of them are mine - the three acoustics - but Mark Refoy played one of them, so I just played two guitars.

Chris: We've had guitars on every Pet Shop Boys records. The electric guitar is an electronic instrument. It's not acoustic.

Neil: My theory is that not a lot of people know what acoustic means.

Chris: Me, again.

Neil: In his trademark lying down position.

Chris: In Washington, I'm told.

May21.
[On May 19 the Pet Shop Boys appeared in Boston, where they were without Literally and hence un photographed]

Neil: Me asleep! You don't get many of those. That's backstage at the Hammerstein Ballroom before the first night's show in New York. Actually I normally have a half hour snooze! lie down! read before putting my contact lenses in, and all that.

Chris: Some powder.
May22.

Neil: This is us rehearsing on the set of the morning TV show Regis and Kelly extremely early in the morning. Because of doing Regis and Kelly we'd left our party the night before early so we didn't see David Schwimmer getting hit.

Chris: They were very, very nice to us at that programme Jennifer Lopez was on before us, with her husband, and she wanted a jelly donut and so somebody had to go out to get her a jelly donut.

Neil: After rehearsals we went for a walk.
Chris: A great picture of me. I like that. But why are the police there?

Neil: Because there's a war on terror. Though we could just walk into the studio to do Regis and Kelly with a lot of unidentified people and no one asked who they were.

Chris: This is a very.. special moment. This is like us going to Graceland. We went to pay our respects.
Neil: To, as he would be if he was still alive, Sir John Lennon. This is in a memorial garden for John Lennon called Strawberry Fields, opposite the Dakota building.
Chris: It was just a place to go and think. About breakfast. Actually it was very, very nice. It's a really nice garden. Of course, we set off in the wrong direction it took us ages to find it.

Chris: Neil's come as John Lennon.
Neil: It's what John would have wants I think.

Chris: Strawberry Fields again. Strawberry Fields forever. Us and Pete Gleadall on a bench. It was a lovely day.

Neil: A gorgeous New York morning.

Chris: There's someone being mugged just round that tree.

Neil: Breakfast, at last. I'm reading the New York Times
Chris: We had an American breakfast. It was a very nice day, that.
May25.
[Though Literally would not be on the rest of the
American tour after the New York dates, the Pet Shop
Boys returned to New York two days later in order to
Appear live on the morning TV show The Today Show.]

Neil: This is when we go up at the crack of dawn to do
The Today Show live, outdoors, in Rocker feller plaza.

Chris: That's us waiting beforehand.

Neil: In the Rocker feller center.

Chris: I was probably hungry again.

Chris: There, again. I've not been wearing sunglasses much recently, so that's unusual.

Neil: We did "West End girls", "Home and dry" and "I get along".
Chris: But "I get along" only got broadcast in certain areas.

Chris: There am a lot of me yawning. But this is not
Through boredom, but through being tired.

Neil: Waiting to start.

Chris: It was freezing. It was very hard to play.

Neil: There was a wind blowing through it.

Chris: You can see Dean & Deluca in the background.

Neil: One or two fans were there.

Copyright Areagraphy Ltd 2002: All Articles have been
Taken From Literally 2002 Issue 26