Pet Shop Boys dazzle with electro-pop extravaganza

Interviewer: Jim Sullivan
From: The Boston Herald / 04.09.2009
Views: 81731

No group has bridged the electronic disco and pop worlds as effectively - and for as long - as the Pet Shop Boys.

The English duo of Neil Tennant, 55, and Chris Lowe, 49, formed in 1981 and hit the big time a few years later. This spring, they released their 10th studio album, “Yes.” Now the Boys have embarked on a U.S. tour, which stops at the House of Blues tonight. It’s a stylized, four-act show with four costumed dancer-singers that includes more than 20 songs from the Boys’ catalog - including “West End Girls,” “It’s a Sin,” “Being Boring” and “Love, etc.”

We spoke with Lowe, who writes most of the music and does the duoÂ’s programming (Tennant handles most of the lyrics and singing) by phone from London.

HERALD: When you first broke through, there was a feeling that your sound might prove to be ephemeral. Now Pet Shop Boys seem timeless. Any idea why?

CHRIS LOWE: (Laughs) Maybe people just love us. We like to think that itÂ’s the songs. What weÂ’ve always tried to do is write interesting songs that say things that donÂ’t normally appear in pop music, put them to contemporary dance beats and have an emotional content as well. And we set things to chord progressions that we like. WeÂ’ve never lost our fascination with pop, in all its forms - the arts, clothes, music, fashion. We still go clubbing, even though weÂ’re old. We never retired. We never went to a country and switched off. We always stayed in the center of things. We both live in London still. WeÂ’re still fascinated by life.

HERALD: YouÂ’ve created your own musical universe over the past quarter-century.

CHRIS LOWE: From the very beginning we wanted to create our own world. We didnÂ’t want to exist in anyone elseÂ’s. WeÂ’re obviously influenced heavily by electronic disco music of the Â’80s. I remember hearing Donna Summer in a club and I was completely knocked out. It was so new, so exciting. But thatÂ’s only an element of Pet Shop Boys. With the songwriting, weÂ’ve always stayed away from cliches and tried to present ourselves uniquely. One thing we love about pop is it changes. ItÂ’s not about the past. ItÂ’s about the next thing.

HERALD: You use synthesizers and computers, while shunning traditional rock instrumentation. On your 1992 tour, your backing musicians were hidden offstage.

CHRIS LOWE: We’d been told that to tour America you have to have a drummer. So our answer to that was, “Right, if that’s the case, we’re not going to have any musicians (onstage).” If someone tells us to do something, we’ll do the opposite. All the music was generated offstage and we put on a totally operatic performance. I don’t think anyone had actually done that. A lot of rock musicians can’t get their head around modern technology. Unless they can see someone playing guitar, they don’t know how it’s being made. There’s the whole thing about authenticity as well, that it’s not authentic unless someone’s standing in front of an amp with a guitar and there’s a drummer banging away. We didn’t make records with a drummer. So, it wouldn’t be authentic for the Pet Shop Boys to have a drummer. We were actually being authentic. Also, we wanted to put on a visually stunning show. We lost a fortune doing it. We got a review in New York saying the theater (we played) should be fumigated. I think they found the show quite offensive.

HERALD: For this tour, any musicians?

CHRIS LOWE: No. Well, IÂ’m playing. ItÂ’s almost like a DJ stand, if you like. We realized no one can actually see what IÂ’m doing, so I might as well not be doing anything, but I am actually playing. Offstage, we have our musical director and the usual computers. I think people would be disappointed to come to the Pet Shop Boys and not hear synthesizers and electronics. You donÂ’t want an acoustic set from the Pet Shop Boys.

HERALD: I don’t know anyone who mixes desperation and hope, melancholy and uplift, so well. “Yes” is mostly a positive album, but you do close with “Legacy,” where there are melting glaciers, failing governments and bawling hurricanes.

CHRIS LOWE: Well, you canÂ’t have it be happy all the way. I think we straddle optimism and pessimism. We always expect the worst, but we are optimistic as well. Although we like to say we do euphoric pop, itÂ’s always tinged with sadness. And I think reality is the combination of those two. We like banging beats and rhythms, but we like to put minor chords on top of it and thatÂ’s where the tension comes. ThereÂ’s a realism in what we do.

HERALD: You get called post-modern ironists a lot.

CHRIS LOWE: Oh, that’s one thing, actually, that does bug us - the irony tag. We have done ironic things, but you can’t dismiss everything we’ve done as ironic. There’s a lot more to it than that. Going back to “Legacy,” there’s no irony. There’s no irony in “Love, etc.” Sometimes people confuse winks with irony. The payoff line in “Love, etc.” is: “You don’t have to be beautiful - but it helps.” And it’s also true.

HERALD: You were one of the first bands to address gay life in song

CHRIS LOWE: Well, we’ve never hidden anything. There was never any pretense in what we do. We covered “Go West” by the Village People. We’ve never actually thought there was the need to be explicit about anything. We don’t like to be political and we don’t make political statements. Everything is in the music and you can get it if you want it. We’re just awkward bastards, really.

HERALD: PETA recently requested you change your name to the Rescue Shelter Boys, because of the “cramped, filthy conditions” that breeders keep animals in before selling them to pet stores.

CHRIS LOWE: We donÂ’t know how serious that was. We still donÂ’t know. But I think it was good because it drew attention to pet shops. ThatÂ’s why we highlighted it on our Web site. We thought it was a point worth making. IÂ’d never really given a thought to the welfare of the animals in pet shops. ItÂ’d be a good pseudonym to work with, for the more underground end of what we do.

HERALD: The name came about because you had friends working in pet shops, right?

CHRIS LOWE: They did exist. They were referred to as “the pet shop boys” and we needed a name. There were loads of boys groups - the Beach Boys, the Beastie Boys - and we thought Pet Shop Boys. Initially we thought, “No, it’s a bit silly, isn’t it?” But then we couldn’t think of anything better. Now, you just have to deal with the fact that you’re old and you’ve still got “Boys” in the title.

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