The Pet Shop Boys, obsessively

>> Neil Tennant on being gay, Special K and how he doesn't want to be a role model. An annotated interview

by MIREILLE SILCOTT

My fixation with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe--the Pet Shop Boys--started in 1986, when they released "West End Girls." I really didn't know then that my pubescent appreciation would turn into a fully fledged, over-the-top and entirely Trekkie-like factoid-crazed infatuation by the time adulthood rolled around. Back in '86, there was no Internet, and so nights spent frothing at the mouth, scrolling up and down PSB sites comparing FAQs was not something I could foresee.

Anyhoo, as you can guess, an interview with Neil Tennant (songwriter, vocalist, born July 10, 1954, North Shields, Northumberland), the half of the duo I would choose to be reincarnated as, if reincarnation was something I could choose, was a big stressful deal for me. I daresay I have lived my teenage-to-adult life with the spooky sound of his nasal voice (enhanced by double-tracking in high notes--fact!) and his glamo-life-in-London imagery and those lurvely nouveau-disco licks plonking around my brain way more than is healthy.

I have spent many an hour organizing my pristine PSB collection alphabetically (Actually, Alternative, Behaviour...) and then changing my mind and going for chronologically ("West End Girls" single, then remixes, "It's a Sin" single, then remixes...). I have spent days trying to convince purist DJs that the PSB cover of "It's Alright" is actually better than the Sterling Void original. How could I interview NEIL TENNANT without falling down a slippery Trekkie slope of inane trivia ("When you rerecorded "Suburbia" in September of 1986, the bass was slightly more filtered than on the March 1986 version, wasn't it?"). How could I write an article about MY FAVOURITE GROUP EVER and not produce a slobbering glorification piece? How?

PRE-INTERVIEW NOTE TO SELF: Write all questions down on piece of paper-- INTERESTING questions, not TREKKIE QUESTIONS ABOUT BASS FILTERS--and STICK TO COURSE.

So that's what I did. For your sake. But mostly, for Neil's.



Mirror: Hi Neil! I have some questions and stuff written out.

Neil Tennant: Great!

M: Please talk to me a bit about the era in London pop when you and Chris met in that electronics shop on King's Road.

NT: Well, It was 1981, and I had a flat on the King's Road. I moved there in '78, at the end of the punk thing. The pub opposite the road was always full of skinheads, rockabillies, teddy boys and all sorts, and in '81, the new romantics arrived. That was when Chris and I met, the new romantics period [in 1993, Neil went on record as saying that he was never a new romantic and never owned a pirate's shirt]. Chris was an architecture student [in 1981, Chris designed a staircase in a Milton Keynes industrial development; in 1988 he observed, "it's not a remarkable staircase"]. We were both interested in electronic music, and so we went for drinks and then wrote a song [no data on this song]. Within two years West End Girls was #1 in America, Britain, and some other places in the world [Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway].

M: Is it true that you took the name Pet Shop Boys because you thought it sounded like a British rap group? Because, like, that's too funny!

NT: We became the Pet Shop Boys in 1983, when we recorded our first record in New York with Bobby Orlando [Bobby Orlando: Hi-NRG producer, met Neil for cheeseburger and carrot cake at the Applejack restaurant on August 19, 1983 before signing contract to produce "West End Girls"]. We had some friends in Ealing [middle-class borough in West London. Famous for Ealing Art School. Main tube station: Ealing Broadway] who owned a pet shop [friends: Dom and Dennis--probably gay], and we always called them the "pet shop boys," and that just came to mind. At the time, there were many rap groups that had "boys" in their name, so the Pet Shop Boys just sounded like a weird English rap group to me. "West End Girls" was actually an attempt to make an English version of Grandmaster Flash's "The Message." It was a rap record, you know.

M: Gay '80s swanky English rap!

NT: I suppose.

M: Speaking of gay... have you ever publicly come out? Did you ever feel like you needed to?

NT: I was always gay in my private life, and also the imagery in our songs, and our image, there was something pretty gay about it all. But in the 1980s, we didn't say we were gay. We had a big teen following and I've always thought it more exciting when the sexuality thing is all mysterious. I mean, do you remember the record "Love Comes Quickly" ["Love Comes Quickly": Released March, 1986. #11 on U.K. charts.]? The cover image was Chris wearing that Boy cap, and I just thought, "That's incredibly gay! We're OUT!"

M: But people just took it as a teen pop record?

NT: Yes, exactly. Anyway, five years ago I did this interview for a magazine in England and it was a new gay magazine. I figured it would seem churlish not to say that I was gay in a new gay magazine. But it wasn't much of a surprise, was it? I never pretended to be straight. We've never done fake girlfriends, or sexy videos with girls [except "Being Boring," 1990, Bruce Weber director, lots of sexy girls and boys. PSB only cameo in it for 2.5 seconds].

M: Did you feel like you lost "mystique" after that?

NT: Some people argued that we did, because men could just say, "Oh, he's gay, of course!" And you're then in a little gay box and the gay marketing division can get on with you. That's just less interesting to us.

M: Did you ever feel like you HAD to do the role model thing, or...

NT: I am totally against role models.

M: Why?

NT: It's a patronizing idea! And I don't think you should give the responsibility to POP STARS, either. Pop stars are meant to be frivolous and irresponsible. So when the Pet Shop Boys do things for causes [example: Stonewall Equality Show, Royal Albert Hall, October 26, 1997] we always try not to do it for the right reasons. I'm not prepaid to preach to people about the ozone layer or global warming or AIDS. I don't know any more than anyone else. I don't want to become Saint Neil, lecturing people.

M: Guess you're not an Adam-Yauch-as-Tibetan-freedom-fighter fan then, eh?

NT: No. For Adam Yauch 10 years ago it was topless girls in cages, wasn't it?

M: How do you write your lyrics? You have the most fantastic, evocative stories in some of your songs. Do you have a technique? Do you walk around taking notes?

NT: There's a part of my brain that's always writing a song. Like on the new album [Nightlife--PSB's seventh LP, not counting compilations], there's a song called "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk"--I thought that about someone I was in a relationship with. And this part of my brain, which is utterly ruthless, went, "Oh, that's a great idea for a song." It's sort of chilling sometimes.

M: You've mentioned that the lyrics on Nightlife are a bit less personal...

NT: Well, Bilingual [Album #6, released 1996: Spanish theme, no chart position, but among true PSB connoisseurs' favourites] was a very personal album, I mean, all the Spanish stuff on it was because I was going out with a guy from Spain...

M: Thank god you were not going out with a guy from, like, Norway!

NT: Yeah, well, you haven't heard the Russian songs yet. But anyway, Nightlife does have its personal moments. Like the song "In Denial" ["In Denial": Duet with Aussie sex-pot and gay icon Kylie Minogue. Lyrics: "I'm living my life like a vampire/working all night and sleeping in all day"], is about people I know well. It's about the creepy side of clubbing, about things like Special K [Ketamine Hydrochloride: dissasociative anesthetic, often used on animals by vets, very potent psychedelic in humans. Huge on the gay club scene. U.S. DEA Schedule III. Neil's never tried it, but has mentioned it often in interviews of late.]

M: What do you have against K?

NT: There is something vampiric about the drug, it sucks life out of people. There are just too many drugs around now. Drugs! It's all just become so mainstream.

M: You have a new look. Like a Samurai-pallazzo-pants-Kabuki-theatre-punk thing. What's with that?

NT: We like an image. I think it's great to come back and look totally different [example: "Go West" era, 1993, blue-and-yellow conehead-domes on head. Not well-received. Looked dumb]. We've always been interested in creating a huge image--like Gilbert and George [Gilbert and George: Gay British Pop artists, famous for making paintings with big pieces of poo in them]. I love wearing the Samurai trousers because you feel quite big and weird in them.

M: Yeah, image is what pop stars should just do. All this 1990s "I'm just me" stuff is incredibly annoying...

NT: It's really boring! The 1990s has been a decade of naturalism--which is really just another style. I never wanted to be like a Kurt Cobain, I don't agree with that. As a child, I remember the Supremes on Top of the Pops when I was really young, and I just couldn't imagine those were human beings! We want to be like that. Bigger than life. I'm interested in appealing to children as much as to adults.

M: Well, you got me when I was 13, and now half my brain is taken up with useless Pet Shop Boys trivia...

NT: Oh dear! Well, ha, ha, in way, that's what we were going for. And, judging from some of the Web sites, I don't think you are alone.

At metropolis, Sunday Nov. 14, 8pm, $42.50