Pet Shop Boys on ageism, pop survival and Australian tour plans
Pet Shop Boys say they’ve been frozen out of commercial radio with pop music the last bastion of ageism. But will they tour Australia soon?
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The Pet Shop Boys have broken one of their own rules on new album Hotspot.
You’ll hear an acoustic guitar on Burning the Heather, played by Suede’s Bernard Butler.
“There is a new Apple program where you can play a guitar that sounds really good just by programming the chords,” Pet Shop Boys’ singer Neil Tennant explains.
“But even we thought that was too much, having a programmed acoustic guitar. So we brought a real guitarist in. We broke our rule with Bernard Butler.”
Hotspot is the British electronic duo’s fourteenth album since their 1986 debut Please, home to their global No. 1 West End Girls.
Since then they’ve sold 100 million albums, released 55 singles, written soundtracks for musicals and ballets, collaborated with everyone from Liza Minnelli to David Bowie and became an unlikely touring act.
This year Tennant and bandmate Chris Lowe will embark on their first ever Greatest Hits tour.
“I suppose it’s a very Pet Shop Boys thing to do a Greatest Hits tour in the same year you’ve released a new album, and it’s a very Pet Shop Boys thing to have not really thought that through. But otherwise we’d have just turned into album/tour, album/tour act.
“We fancied doing something that summed everything up. Even though it’s a Greatest Hits tour we will be regarding Monkey Business from Hotspot as a greatest hit. It’ll hold its own.”
Hotspot is their third consecutive album to be produced by Stuart Price (Madonna, Kylie, the Killers).
“He sort of becomes the third member of Pet Shop Boys when we work with him,” Tennant says.
Tennant left his job as a journalist at pop magazine Smash Hits to commit to Pet Shop Boys full time. Sometimes his reviews came back to haunt him once he became a musician.
“Freddie Mercury famously told someone at EMI that he hated the Pet Shop Boys because I’d slagged off one of Queen’s records when I was at Smash Hits. And I did slag them off, to be fair. He hadn’t forgotten that.”
Always a writer at heart, Tennant, 65, admits he still devours reviews of Pet Shop Boys albums.
“I’m not one of those people who doesn’t see anything. I don’t really read comments on line anymore, it’s too maddening. But we’ve had some very nice reviews. It gives a positive aura around what’s going on. It’s nice to do something and not get slapped in the face.”
Unlike many bands who began in the 80s, the Pet Shop Boys have never had to hit the retro circuit and their new material is still well received.
“You might not be interested in us, or not like our music or my voice or those things, but I think we’ve maintained a very high standard of songwriting over the years,” Tennant says.
“I think people are cynical, in a world of streaming when there’s so much music sitting on your phone, and expect that you’re resting on your laurels. We don’t. From within the Pet Shop Boys it’s never been any different. It’s me and Chris, sitting in a room, writing songs together, with a lot of energy and still enjoying doing it, and laughing and having fun. It was like that in 1984. And it was like that making this new album.”
Robbie Williams, a Pet Shop Boys fanboy who the duo have collaborated with over the years, recently said he’s disillusioned with the music world now that streaming has killed off the singles chart for his demographic – “the middle aged” pop star.
Hotspot’s first single, Dreamland, was a collaboration with young UK synth act Years and Years. While it championed by the BBC’s Radio 2, who play older artists, it was deemed unsuitable for Radio 1, who play younger acts, including Years and Years. It missed the UK singles chart.
“If Dreamland had been a Years and Years single Radio 1 would have played it,” Tennant says. “But because Pet Shop Boys were on it, it couldn’t be played. Because Pet Shop Boys are too old. That’s just the way it is. Several times over the last 20 years the head of programming at Radio 1 has told our promotions guy this is a great record but we won’t be playing it. You just get used to the way it is.
“It is a fascinating thing that we totally accept that because someone has reached a certain age you will not play their record on the radio. It’s the only area where that is even allowed, isn’t it? I won’t use the word ageism, but it’s sort of amazing everyone just accepts that. Really, a record should be chosen on how good it is.
READ MORE:
ROBBIE WILLIAMS PLANS FOR A BIOPIC ON HIS LIFE
MICHAEL BUBLE WANTS TO GIVE TO AUSTRALIA
“Obviously pop is meant to be music for young people. And again, this is the only area where this assumption is made, but the assumption is that young people can only listen to records by young people. In other areas that would be regarded as unacceptable. In pop music, it’s deemed totally acceptable. One of the problems with social media in this rather narcissistic world we live in is that like only ever talks to like. Unless it’s to abuse them.
“Nowadays when everyone is so sensitive about acceptance and tolerance of everything, which is quite right, there’s just a little brickwall when it comes to age in music.”
Good news for local Pet Shop Boys fans – their Greatest Hits tour is likely to visit Australia early 2021.
“People have been trying to lure us back there for a few years, we’ve never quite understood our career in Australia,” Tennant says. “There is an offer, I think a tour will probably happen, it’s vaguely pencilled in for the end of your summer. It is about time, though.”
Hotspot (Kobalt) out now
PET SHOP BOYS: BONUS
What’s going to be in the Greatest Hits tour?
There’s a desire to show songs from different eras next to each other and that will stand up pretty equally. In a normal tour we ration the greatest hits. For instance a record we made years ago I’ve always quite liked is our cover of U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name going into Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. It makes me smile just talking about it. That’s coming out of mothballs for the tour. We haven’t done Rent for a while. Love Comes Quickly. Jealousy. Hits we did with other people – What Have I Done to Deserve This, Losing My Mind we did for Liza (Minnelli), Hello Spaceboy we did with David Bowie …
This year is the 35th anniversary of West End Girls. Next year is 40 years since you met Chris. Do you think you’ll do anything to mark these milestones?
We probably won’t do anything. We’re not anniversary types. One day we could release our cassette demos from the 80s. I thought the cassette was the worst format for music but when you’ve got your demos recorded on them they still work, they still play. Our first two albums are recorded on some digital format that was tres modern at the time and now there’s only two players in London that can play it. But the cassettes still play. If I dig those out, just like now, we were very prolific over a period of time. We’ve been very prolific over the last two years.
What’s on those early cassettes? Things we’ve never heard or different versions of songs we know?
Both. Something no one has ever heard is the first version of West End Girls with different music. it’s more punky, at the end I start shouting ‘Sometimes you’re better off dead’. It’s probably too embarrassing to release. One or two years ago I was listening to the cassette demos and I’ve always liked this song we wrote on at the time we wrote Rent. It’s called New Boy. I was at Smash Hits at the time. It’s about two girls on the phone in some suburban area, they see a new boy in town and are talking about him. It’s got a very strong melody, I’ve always remembered it. Anyway Chris and I finally finished it off after however many years and it’s the b-side of the next single. It was actually written the same day as Rent.
You played Glastonbury with Brandon Flowers from the Killers last year.
He phoned up last year and said he specifically wanted us to do Always On My Mind with him, as well as their song Human. Then he asked Johnny Marr to do (The Smiths’) This Charming Man. Brandon has this thing for 80s pop songs. Because of his age the first Pet Shop Boys album he knew was Release, which is an album not so beloved by PSB fans because it’s got guitars on it, although the guitars are played by Johnny Marr, Brandon loves that album. He’s come backstage to our concerts and asked why we didn’t play Birthday Boy, he think ‘That’s a no-brainer’.
Musicians making films are a thing now, but you released one, It Couldn’t Happen Here …
When we made a film in 1987 it didn’t start off as a film, it started off as a video album. Then it gained a narrative. When we started shooting it they said it was going to be released in a cinema so we had to shoot half an hour more. It became a 90 minute film. Chris and I just went along with it, it was a sort of disaster, but an interesting disaster. People have always asked us about it. Now the BFI, the British Film Institute have paid for a restoration and they’re releasing it because they find it a fascinating curiosity. It’s coming out on DVD and BluRay in June. It’ll probably get slammed all over again, it’s a very strange film.
