Chris Heath
London, February 1998

pet shop boys Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe - who are the Pet Shop Boys - met in London in 1981, and began writing songs together soon after words. They subsequently discovered, and were inspired by, the records of New York, disco producer, Bobby Orlando. Flown to New York by his employers, Smash hits magazine, to interview Sting in 1983, Neil Tennant went for lunch with Bobby Orlando and mentioned that he was in a group. Orlando suggested - before hearing any of the Pet Shop Boys' songs - that they make a record together. Their first single, "West End Girls," was released in 1984; anew version of the same song was released towards the end of 1985 and become number one all around the world.

In the earliest songs on this Pet Shop Boys collection, which includes songs recorded between 1985 and 1990, you can clearly hear the spirit of their original ambition: to hove a twelve-inch single, with their name on it, available to buy inane of London's import underground dance music shops. This ambition brought out the best in them from the start. The dumb rock world criticism of dance music is that it is superficial and emotionless, but people who make dance music come to think of it, people who dance) hove always understood that the most rigid rhythms offer the widest, freest backdrop for extreme emotion.

Even in the beginning, the Pet Shop Boys rarely wrote anything that ended up as a simple dance record. "West End Girls", with its half-sung, half-spoken verses, seemed to be a song about escape and longing, but it was also laced with urban paranoia and unlikely historical references. "Opportunities", which was sometimes mistakenly seen as hymn to mid-Eighties Thatcherite and Resonate consumerism nod greed, dripped with sarcasm and irony. "It Couldn't Happen Here", which was written portly using music supplied by film composer ennui morricone, was a stately shocked, sombrero response to 0 world in which people were dying of AIDS.

like much of the best pop music, the Pet Shop Boys' often fed on contrariness ca contrariness which, as it happens, is fully embodied in the two Pet Shop Boys' natures). It is not surprising that one of the saddest songs the Pet Shop Boys' hove ever written Being boring-sounds happy, and one of the happiest - "Love Comes Quickly'-sounds heartbreakingly sod. It's a far more realistic reflection of how life is lived -you dance to shake off sadness, and you wallow when you are happy because wallowing is one of the luxuries which happiness allows you. Likewise, the Pet Shop Bays had always raged against the kind of vacuous, mindlessly positive mid-Eighties pop songs with lyrics like "it's going to be aright' and so when they fell in love with Sterling Void's Chicago house classic, 'it's Alright" which was also an inspirational hymn to the enduring power of music in times of trouble, a very Pet Shop Boys theme) it made perfect, perverse sense to do a cover version.

As pop stars the Pet Shop Boys tried to create their own world. In photographs, at a time when everyone else bored cheesy grins, they looked solemn and detached. On TV shows, when everyone else jumped about and showed off their musical prowess, they stood still and showed off nothing but their sang. The songs created their own world too. Nat in any simple way: there are different viewpoints in these songs, and the narrator of the song is not always Neil Tennant or Chris Lowe. This collection includes two of the occasional series of songs on which Chris Lowe's voice can be heard, 'Paninaro" and 'We All Feel Better In The dark'.) But same themes, unusual in pop music, are returned to: that this is a world where things don't always go right, where yearning is to he expected and satisfaction is a wonderful surprise, and where you measure your success at living as much by your compromises as your triumphs.

Many of these versions have been long unavailable:

The Pet Shop Boys' own seamless long dance version of 'West End Girls', the alternative version of 'Domino Dancing' which strips bare the plaintive heartbreak hidden by the original's joyous Latin disco motif), the rough-edged seven-inch version of "That's My Impression' the Pet Shop Bays used the dance mix on Alternative), and three other long versions -the Stephen Hague mix of 'Love Comes Quickly', the extended version of "Being Boring", the extended version of 'We All Feel Better In the Dark' - all of which are less remixes than versions which simply stretch and draw out the mood of the originals. The original British single version of "Opportunities' with its melodramatic spoken finale call the love that we had and the love that we hide/who will bury us when we die?') that the Pet Shop Boys removed from later versions because it was 'too pretentious', only reached number 116 in the charts there, and has not been available since.

Since then in Britain, they have had 29 consecutive hit singles. Currently the Pet Shop Boys are preparing to tour Russia and are writing their first musical.

Track listing

1. Domino dancing (alternative Version)
2. West End Girls (Dunce Mix)
3. Opportunities (Lets Make Late Of Money)
4. Paninaro (7" Version)
5. That's My Impression (7" Version)
6. We All Feel Better In The Dark (Exuded Mix)"
7. It Couldn't Happen Here (LP Version)
9. Left T0 My Own Devices (7 Version)
10. In The Night (Remix)
11. Two Divided By Zero (LP Version)
12. Love Comes Quickly (Dance Mix)
13. Being Boring (Extended Version)

This interview was by Chris Heath London, February 1998