CityLife

Interview: Neil Tennant

The Pet Shop Boys live

IN February, presenting Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe with their Outstanding Contribution Award at the Brits, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers gushed that as a callow 13-year-old, he found himself choosing between albums by The Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys, with only enough cash to purchase one.

Opting for the latter, he was “introduced to a new world of beats and sophistication.”

It was a neat, heartfelt tribute that acted as the cherry on the cake in a year when the Pet Shop Boys – essentially the Morrissey and Marr of electronic music – seemed to be experiencing both a commercial and creative renaissance; and with smart, subversive pop once again in the ascent, found themselves feted by a new generation of acts, including Lady GaGa, La Roux and even Doctor Who himself, David Tennant (who cribbed his stage name while flicking through Smash Hits).

After 25 years in the business, they’re still merging pop and art seamlessly, and making wilfully clever music that constantly seems to be justifying its existence. The duo’s latest album, Yes, narrowly avoided reaching number one due to a record label bungle and saw the pair produced by Xenomania, the Kent-based, genre-splicing hit factory that has furnished Girls Aloud with 19 top ten hits.

In many ways, it was an odd team-up. It’s not merely the group’s age – although with Tennant born in 1954 and Lowe in 1959 they are, by a long chalk, the pop powerhouse’s oldest clients.

It’s more to do with sensibility. Xenomania usually deal with manufactured acts; whereas Ver Pets have perennially veered off on esoteric tangents. Try as you might, you can’t picture Cheryl Cole et al penning a ribald musical concerning ketamine use on the gay scene (2001’s Closer To Heaven) or writing a film score for Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

Even Mini Viva’s most devout supporter, meanwhile, might consider devising a ballet based on a Hans Christian Andersen story (the Pets’ next project) to be slightly beyond the scope of the perky teens’ abilities.

And so, when the collaboration occurred, egos had to be left with the coat check. Indeed, Brian Higgins – Xenomania’s head honcho – blithely informed the vernerable band that they ‘hadn’t made a good record since 1987’.

“He says good things like that,” laughs Tennant, mid-way through the third leg of their world tour, that started in Russia in June.

“You see, we can take a dose of tough love. Brian Higgins operates the highest possible level of pop competition, where you’ve got to get the number one record in the country. Chris and I like to operate in the area of pop competition, but we’re also quite likely to ignore it. So when we’re writing Battleship Potemkin, we’re not really thinking of the charts.

Collaboration

“But he’s very good because he makes you focus: and I think what he meant was our focus had not been on having hit records. Although even that wasn’t true because Go West was actually the second best-selling single of our entire career and that was in 1993.”

Higgins’ D-day cut off point is, naturally, diametrically opposed to the large swatches of the internet fanatics arguing that 1990’s Being Boring (a lament to the passing of time and a dignified and beautiful tribute to all those who died in the Aids holocaust of the 1980s) is the greatest song ever written.

Still, the collaboration proved a canny move and resulted not only in Yes, but also a single penned for Girls Aloud, The Loving Kind, a wistfully elegant portrait of a waning relationship.

“It’s a very ambitious and underrated pop record,” says Tennant.

Added to that, Tennant – who’s meeting Higgins and his partner-in-rhyme Miranda Cooper – for dinner directly after this interview expresses interest in writing material for Xenomania’s new signing, Alex Gardner. To “end the year on a high”, the Pet Shop Boys have unleashed a five-track Christmas EP, featuring a dance cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, which incorporates elements from Domino Dancing.

“When Viva La Vida came out, Chris and I thought it sounded a bit like us,” explains Tennant. “I’m not suggesting they were trying to sound like us, but it’s a four-on-the-floor, very up song. And we immediately thought you could do a great electronic dance version of that; in fact, we asked to do a mix of it for Coldplay.”

On Sunday, they bring the Pandemonium extravaganza to the MEN Arena; the staging ‘is an unusual concept’ hinged upon 450 cardboard boxes, which are assembled into different formations and act as projection screens for films. Considering that their gigs have since become spectacles of design and choreography, it’s strange to countenance that in the Eighties, they operated a no-touring policy.

“Well, when Chris and I started we didn’t consider ourselves to be a live band,” remembers Tennant. “Nonetheless, we had very strong ideas of what we wanted to do. Having been deputy editor of Smash Hits, I went to a lot of gigs and felt strongly there’s a different way of doing them.

"So when we finally toured in 1989, we did a very theatrical multi-media show directed by Derek Jarman. And he made films for us. And we had amazing dancers from Los Angeles. Actually, the choreographer of that tour was the man who taught Michael Jackson to breakdance...”

Since then, they’ve worked with artists and organisations as diverse as the International Opera and architect Zaha Hadid. What’s apparent is a refusal to compromise or succumb to the vagrancies of fashion: their attitude is ‘build it and they will come’.

'Pop with integrity'

Talking about the track, Legacy – which continues the Pet Shop Boys’ documentation of social history that started with the Thatcher-baiting Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) – Tennant notes that he “was trying to sum up the end of the Blair era in Britain. And that’s quite an ambitious thing to do. And maybe pop music isn’t the place to do it. Maybe we should be writing an opera or something, but I don’t want to write an opera.

“Chris and I are great ones for swimming against the tide and doing things the difficult way,” he continues. “So in the middle of Britpop, we didn’t make a Britpop record. We made a Latin-inspired record, Bilingual,

which I happen to think is one of our best. Being in opposition to most things is one of our driving forces really. We’re most comfortable in an uncomfortable climate.”

Yet as the decade draws to a close, the musical weather-vane has shifted, concedes Tennant, towards the Pet Shop Boys: young bucks such as Frankmusik have absorbed the idea that synth-pop can be sly, subversive and arty. As ever, Tennant is too experienced to cling to media cliché.

“I’m not totally convinced,” he disclaims. “Can you honestly say The X Factor is making interesting, good pop records? The kind of pop music I rate is what we call pop with integrity – so Dare by the Human League would be the apotheosis of that. When I hear Leona Lewis, I don’t have the impression they’re trying to do something new. And to me, pop music is meant to be new. Actually, I have no issue with JLS – I think they’re really good pop stars.

“Part of me can look at pop music as a former deputy editor of Smash Hits: would you put them on the cover? I still have that perspective. You could put Lady GaGa there but I don’t know who else you could do that with.”

“La Roux? They’re too retro for my tastes. People always assume that we love the Eighties,” he sighs. “But actually, we get a bit bored of it all.”

It’s not the only misconception about the pair, enshrined in the public image as, to quote Smash Hits, Mr Posh and Mr Grumpy, but it’s probably the most recurrent. “Obviously our most intensive period of success was in 1987 and 1988 so inevitably that’s going to happen. But what’s interesting is what you do after that Imperial Phase.

“Chris and I, we’ve always had a lot of creative energy for what we do, and really enjoy it, and have taken an audience with us along the way.”

He pauses, before adding with a triumphant flourish. “There’s not many people can say that.” 

Pet Shop Boys play the MEN Arena on December 20, 2009.