Pet Shop Boys: 10 of the most acerbic moments

Tennant – born in 1954 in North Shields, near Newcastle upon Tyne – was an assistant editor at teen pop bible, Smash Hits, where he was noted for asking pop stars randomly bizarre questions. Like, for example: ‘Does your mother play golf?’

“I thought it was an interesting question as it revealed a lot about your family background,” he later said. “My mother did play golf, and was narked by the question. S he thought it was a dig at her.”

Lowe – born in Blackpool in 1959 – had studied architecture at Liverpool University before moving to London in 1981.

The pair formed The Pet Shop Boys and within a year had written a string of timeless songs: ‘Rent’, ‘Opportunities’, ‘It’s a Sin’, ‘Love Comes Quickly’ and ‘West End Girls’ – their first UK No 1 in January 1986.

They went to become one of the most successful duos in UK pop history – selling more than 50m records , and releasing 14 studio albums, four remix LPs, five soundtrack LPs and 70 singles.

When they won a Brit Award in 2009 for their contribution to British music, Lowe said: “I’ve always thought that music is about making people happy and having a good time. I think that’s because I come from Blackpool.”

1 Shag-o-ramas

The first nightclub Tennant loved was Chaguramas on Neal Street, in London. “It was a gay club – we used to pronounce it ‘Shag-o-ramas’ but it was spelt Chaguramas. It’s the name of a Spanish sheep or something.

“I was 18, coming down from Newcastle, and I used to go to Shag-o-ramas on a Saturday night with my friends. It was so expensive and we were so poor. Half a pint of lager was 50p. And 50p then must be eight pounds now. Inconceivably expensive. We’d maybe have one drink each.”

2 Catholic tastes

“When I look back upon my life, It’s always with a sense of shame, I’ve always been the one to blame, For everything I long to do”

– ‘It’s a Sin’

Tennant sings here one of the most moving opening verses ever written about the harm that religion does. It was the group’s second No 1, in June 1987.​

“At that time part of me was probably still a Catholic,” Tennant later said. “The thing that I always liked about Catholicism they got rid of. I liked the Latin and the incense and the music and plainsong. When I was eight years old I could sing the Latin mass in plainsong, because I was an altar boy.”

He added that his late parents became liberal Catholics.

“My mother once apparently asked my sister: ‘Is Neil one of them?’ – and of course they’d read I was gay in the newspapers. In our family it was because we never talked about sex, let alone being gay.

“But they went on this amazing journey where they quite liked the fact you were gay by the end, and they didn’t mind that my sister was divorced and remarried – whereas in the 1970s they would have been appalled, aghast beyond belief.

“They were still very Catholic. When we brought out ‘It’s a Sin’ it was quite interesting, because people took it really seriously. But the song was written in about 15 minutes and was intended as a camp joke. It wasn’t something I consciously took very seriously.

“Sometimes I wonder if there was more to it than I thought at the time. The local parish priest in Newcastle delivered a sermon on it, and reflected on how the church had changed from the promise of a ghastly hell to the message of love.”

​3 Elton, Gary – and Gandalf too

Tennant organised his pal Elton John’s stag party: Ian McKellen was Widow Twankey and Gary Barlow gave a rendition of ‘Relight My Fire’. Then at McKellen’s 60th birthday party he met Monica Lewinsky on the dancefloor.

He introduced himself.

“I know who you are!’’ she said. “I grew up in LA in the 1980s and we used to listen to you guys.’’

​4 Liza and Dusty – and Bowie too

The group’s collaborations were legendary: chief among them their work with Dusty Springfield on the 1987 epic ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’

They wrote four songs on her 1989 album, Reputation.

“Doing a whole album with Dusty would probably give you a nervous breakdown,” Tennant later admitted of Springfield, who was plagued by depression and self-doubt. “She recorded ‘Nothing Has Been Proved’ one syllable at a time. It took two days.”

The same year they worked with Liza Minelli, and in 1995, David Bowie asked them to remix ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ from his album Outside.

More than a remix with a disco feel, they created a new verse for the song, with cut-up lyrics from Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’: “Ground to Major, bye bye Tom/dead the circuit, countdown’s wrong/Planet Earth is control on?”

The Pet Shop Boys had brought back Bowie’s astronaut, who first appeared in ‘Space Oddity’ and then in ‘Ashes to Ashes’.

Bowie was concerned when they first mooted the idea, said Tennant.

“I said to Bowie: ‘It’s like Major Tom is in one of those Russian spaceships they can’t afford to bring down,’ And he said: ‘Oh wow, is that where he is?’”

There were also many notable creative link-ups down through the years. In 1992, they produced Boy George’s interpretation of ‘The Crying Game’ for Neil Jordan’s movie.

In 1994, they remixed Blur’s ‘Girls & Boys’ and it was better than the original. You’d say the same of their mix of Lady Gaga’s ‘Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)’.

They also remixed ‘ Think of a Number’ from Noel Gallagher’s new album Council Skies.

​5 Alan Bennett browns off Morrissey

In a 2005 interview with London’s Time Out magazine singer Morrissey was asked about his then neighbour, the playwright and author Alan Bennett. Was Bennett aware of his musical work before they met?

“In an early draft of his play The History Boys he used a line of ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ by The Smiths, which thrilled me. But he dropped the line just prior to publication – and replaced it with a Pet Shop Boys lyric, which infuriated me.”

Years later Morrissey seemed amused when asked if he felt any kinship with the Pet Shop Boys.

“I feel absolutely no kinship whatsoever with the Pet Shop Boys. Not this year or the next! They don’t leave any impression on me whatsoever.”

No interest at all? You’ve socialised with Neil Tennant...

“Well, Neil interests me, yes, in the sense that I find a brain like that working successfully in this medium far more interesting than, well, fill in your own blank, really. At least he’s an intelligent person.”

​6 Smoking is fatal; cheating isn’t...

They nailed infidelity perfectly on ‘So Hard’ in 1991: “I’m always hoping you’ll be faithful/ But you’re not, I suppose/ We’ve both given up smoking cause it’s fatal/ So whose matches are those?”

Promoting their 1999 album Nightlife, Tennant revealed he wasn’t in a relationship.

“You can tell that from the album. My last relationship was this guy from Spain, and our last album,” he said referring to 1996’s Bilingual, “was almost all in Spanish. Sometimes it can be that obvious.”

​7 Pulped?

​Chris Heath wrote two great books on the Pet Shop Boys – Literally in 1989, and two years later, Pet Shop Boys versus America. He wrote another one on the 1994 Discovery world tour that never saw the light of day.

Asked in 2013 why the book never materialised, Tennant appeared cagey: “Well, it was too much like the previous book. Also, there was too much stuff that couldn’t be printed. I think we’ll publish it posthumously.

“There’s another one too, from when we went to Russia. I don’t know where that manuscript is either. It’s not that the content is shocking – it’s just what we say about other pop stars.

“I’ll say to Chris Heath: ‘I’m sure I’d never say such a thing about Bono.’ He says: ‘Yes you did.’”

​8 Not Judgemental

In 2013 Tennant was asked to replace Simon Cowell as a judge on American Idol, the stateside equivalent of X Factor. The producers asked him to fly to LA to talk about the possibility.

“I didn’t want to fly to Los Angeles for a half hour interview. I said: ‘I’ll do a conference call.’ I was at my house in Durham, and my dog was barking all the way through it. Anyway, they were very nice. The man talking to me was French! You don’t expect that, do you?

“‘Neil!’ he says. ‘We love you! You’re so opinionated!’

“And I said I’d never seen American Idol but didn’t like the sound of it. ‘Well this is why we love you! You’re so opinionated!’

“And I said I’d probably just be really rude to everyone. ‘This is why we love you — you’re so opinionated!’

“Anyway, I got them to send me a DVD of the programme. I watched the first two minutes and just thought I can’t do this. I couldn’t do the bit where you come out, holding hands with the judges and just stand there.”

​Later, Tennant came to the conclusion that they wanted a “bitchy gay Englishman, and I think someone said: ‘Get that guy from the Pet Shop Boys.’

“My issue, as much as anything else, was that I don’t think it’s possible to be ‘Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys’ and ‘Neil Tennant, American Idol judge’.”

​9 Careless whispers

Tennant met George Michael was at the Olympic Closing ceremony in 2012.

He recalled: “We were in these Portakabin dressing rooms and the person next to us was playing music unbelievably loudly.

I said to our tour manager: ‘Can you go and ask him to turn that down, please?’

“And suddenly the door flings open and George, who we hadn’t seen since he’d been in jail, comes in and says: ‘Did you just tell me to turn my music down?’ I said: ‘Yes, I did.’

“And he says: ‘Give me a hug.’ And then he went back to his dressing room, put his stereo on and played ‘West End Girls’ – loudly.”

​10 What have U2 done to deserve this?

In 1991, The Pet Shop Boys made good of their promise to turn “a mythic rock song into a stomping disco record”. The mythic rock song was, of course, U2’s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ which they reinvented with a big camp blast of Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’.

When U2 heard it, they put out a statement. It read: “What have we done to deserve this?”

In 2009, Tennant was asked did they agonise over songs that way U2 appear to.

“Their album is produced by Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite! I can’t even work out how that all works! And then there’s the four of them!”

​Pet Shop Boys play the 3Arena on June 19