sign in sign up
<<
Home , Actually, Alex Kapranos, And One, A Red Letter Day, Beatmasters, Being Boring

PET SHOP BOYS CHRONOLOGY

1954 - July Neil Francis Tennant is born on July 10th in , Northumberland.

1959 - October Christopher Sean Lowe is born on October 4th in , Lancashire.

1970 - 1971 Neil plays in a group in Newcastle called Dust: Their most popular is a preposterous affair he has written called "Can you hear the dawn break?". They are heavily influenced by The Incredible String . "We were convinced we would become terribly famous. It was a very kind of stoned seventies but we used to think it was absolutely brilliant at the time".

1975 - July After completing a degree in history at the Polytechnic of North , Neil takes a job at Marvel Comics, anglicizing spellings and indicating where over-risque woman needed to be redrawn decently. While there he interviews comic fan , who politely points out that his tape recorder wasn't working. In 1977 he works at Macdonald Educational Publishing, later moving to ITV Books. In June 1982, he joins .

1976 - 1978 Chris plays in a seven-piece dance band wittily named One Under The Eight, who perform old-time popular favourites like "Hello Dolly", "La Bamba", and "Moon River".

1978 Chris goes to University to study architecture. During 1981 -1982 he spends a year gaining practical experience in a London architectural practice, designing a staircase in an industrial development in Milton Keynes. "It's not a remarkable staircase", he comments when visiting it in 1988, "It's just a functional staircase".

1981 - August On August 19th, Neil and Chris meet by chance in an electronics shop on the Kings Road. Realizing they have a common interest in , they begin to write together. Initially they call themselves West End; later they come up with the name , a name derived from some friends who work in a pet shop in . "We thought it sounded like an English rap group".

1983 - August Neil is sent to by Smash Hits to interview . By this time the Pet Shop Boys are obsessed by a stream of hi energy records made by New York producer , known as Bobby O'. " thought well, if I've got to go and see The Police play then I'm also going to have lunch with Bobby O'". Neil and Bobby O share a cheeseburger and carrot cake at a restaurant called The Apple Jack on August 19th (two years to the day since Neil and Chris met) and Bobby O', flatered by Neil's compliments, suggests making a record with the Pet Shop Boys.

1984 - April The first version of 'West End girls' is released. It is a club hit in and and a small hit in France and Belgium.

1984 - October They make their first ever stage appearance at in , and playing over tapes.

1985 - March They sign to Records after long negotiations with Bobby O', who relinquished his contractual rights over them in return for a substantial royalty on future .

1985 - April On April 5th, Neil leaves Smash Hits. In the next issue an 'obituary' is written, bidding him a sad adieu and predicting that in a of weeks Neil's pop duo, the Pet Shop Boys “will be down the dumper and he'll come crawling back on bended knees, ha ha ha”. "I spoke to my mum on the telephone and said how we'd signed with EMI and she said "But you're not going to give up your job, are you?" and I said, I did last week".

1985 - July On July 1st, the first version of 'Opportunities' is released. It reached #116 in the UK.

1985 - August They play a short set as part of the ICA Rock Week in London, Chris showing off his skills on the trombone. Neil and Chris are interviewed on stage by Max Headroom. They re-record 'West End girls' with producer the same month.

1985 - October 'West End girls' is released on October 28th and goes to #1 in the UK in January. It is subsequently #1 in USA, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, , and Norway, selling 1.5 million copies. "People endlessly ask us what it's like having a #1" says Neil at the time. "But what it feels like is vaguely nothing. It feels like having a cup of tea".

1986 - February On February 24th, '', which will remain one of their favourite , is released, reaching a disappointing #19 in the UK.

1986 - March On March 24th, their first LP 'Please' is released. "It's so people can go into the record shop and say can I have the Pet Shop Boys , please?".

1986 - April 'West End girls' reaches #1 in USA.

1986 - May On May 19th a new version of 'Opportunities' is released. "The point of that song is that the humour is black, it's like a joke. The impression is that the people in it are not going to make any money".

1986 - June The Pet Shop Boys announce, then cancel, a tour of and America; the cost of using a theatre designer and playing fairly small venues proves prohibitive.

1986 - September On September 22nd, a re-recorded version of 'Suburbia', a song inspired by the Penelope Spheeris film of the same name about a group of disenchanted rebellious youths in suburban Los Angeles, is released. "It's about a riot happening in some decaying suburb. It's just the description of the riot happening and then the aftermath". On the B-side is the first version of 'Paninaro', named after an Italian cult and featuring a quote they both liked that Chris had said on a TV show: "I don't like country and western, I don't like , I don't like ... I don't like much really, do I? But what I do like, I love passionately".

1986 - November On November 17th '', an LP of disco , is released.

1987 - February The Pet Shop Boys receive the Best Single award for 'West End girls' at the BPI Awards. "It's a bit like the school prize giving day, isn't it?", mutters Neil who turns up to receive the award from George. Chris stays at home and watches on TV. Meanwhile, they have been working on the next LP and considering, once more, whether to tour. "I can't see the point really", says Neil at the time. "I quite like the idea of being on the coach, having the meal beforehand, the party in the room afterwards, going in the swimming pool, signing the autographs in the lobby, and wrecking the mini- bar. The only thing I don't like the idea of is being on the stage and having to sing for rather a long time". He later dismisses this comment as flippant; it had been inspired by his happy memories of going on tour with for Smash Hits in the autumn of 1984.

1987 - May The Pet Shop Boys receive the Best International Hit award for 'West End girls' at the Awards. Vera Lynn performed at the lunch.

1987 - June On June 15th, 'It's a sin', a song that originally appeared on the demo Neil had in his pocket when he took Bobby O' out to lunch, is released. "It's about being brought up as a Catholic. When I went to school you were taught that everything was a sin". It reaches #1 and causes several notable rumpuses. accuses them of plagiarism (he later apologizes and pays damages to a charity at their request). A teacher at Neil's old school, St. Cuthbert's Grammar School, Newcastle, gets very steamed up about the picture Neil has seemingly painted of his education and castigates Neil in the press. The Salvation Army magazine, War Cry, put the Pet Shop Boys on the front page and note, approvingly, "It's interesting that someone's raised the concept of sin in our modern life again". Neil is also asked to appear with Cardinal Hume in a press advert for CAFOD; he politely declines the offer, explaining that he isn't a practising Catholic. The song's video, a sombre tale of guilt and punishment featuring the seven deadly sins, was the first time the Pet Shop Boys work with .

1987 - August On August 10th, 'What have I done to deserve this?', a duet with , is released. They had actually wanted to record the song with Dusty - Neil's favourite female - for 'Please' but had not been able to arrange it in time. "She sounds right because her voice has got that world- weary quality". On August 16th, the Pet Shop Boys appear on a Granada TV special, Love Me Tender, commemorating the tenth anniversary of 's death. They have been asked to perform an old song he had made famous so they sifted through some Elvis cassettes and decided to do both a house version of 'Baby Let's Play House' and ''. In , they only did the latter. At the time they had no plans whatsoever to release it.

1987 - September On September 7th, the 'Actually' LP is released. The title is simply a word they frequently say. "We were thinking of calling it Jollysight, actually", said Chris at the time "which was the name of a hotel we saw in Italy - so that, when people asked why, we could say because it's a jolly sight better than the last one..."

1987 - October On October 12th, 'Rent', a mercenary love song, is released.

1987 - November The Pet Shop Boys spend three weeks in Clacton and South London shooting 'It couldn't happen here'. What had originally been conceived as an hour-long video based around the 'Actually' LP, turns into a full-scale feature film to be released cinematically, directed by Jack Bond and co- starring Barbra Windsor, and . "We just do what we normally do in videos", explains Chris, "walk around, me a few paces behind Neil...". On November 30th, 'Always on my mind' is released as a single; it becomes the Christmas #1.

1988 - January 'I'm Not Scared', a song the Pet Shop Boys have written and produced for , is released as a single by her group Eighth Wonder, and is their first hit.

1988 - February At the BPI Awards, the Pet Shop Boys win the Best Group award. They also mime to 'What have I done to deserve this?' on stage with Dusty Springfield. Afterwards Neil comments, "It's kind of macho nowadays to prove you can cut it live, I quite like proving that we can't cut it live. We're a pop group, not a rock 'n' roll group".

1988 - March A different mix of 'Heart' is released as a single on March 21st and reaches #1 in the UK. "It's a real disco song - the idea of 'heartbeat' the beat of the record and the beat of your heart. It's actually pretty corny, to be honest, but I think the words are quite sweet and sincere". The video, shot in Yugoslavia, is a resetting of the Dracula story with Ian McKellen in the title role.

1988 - May For the second year running, the Pet Shop Boys win the Best International Hit award at the , this time for 'It's a sin'.

1988 - June Ian McKellen persuades the Pet Shop Boys to play live at an anti-Clause 28 benefit, Before The Act, at London's Piccadilly Theatre, performing 'It's a sin' and 'One more chance'. "A brilliant event", they say afterwards.

1988 - July 'It couldn't happen here' is released on July 8th to mixed reviews: it wins an award at the Houston film festival.

1988 - August The Pet Shop Boys win the Berolina award in Germany for 'Group of the Year'. The award is presented to them by Miss Venezuela.

1988 - September On September 12th, '' is released, a song they recorded that February in Miami with Expose producer, Lewis Martinee. They shoot a video in and appeared with a full Latin band on Wogan and .

1988 - October On October 10th, their new album '' is released. It is so called because "all the songs, although it's a dance album, are introspective". The title was chosen after considering and dismissing 'f', 'Dogmatic', 'Bounce' and 'Hello'. They explain that 'Introspective' sounds serious, like an art exhibition: "Nick Rhodes", says Chris at the time, "will be so jealous".

1988 - November On November 14th, '' is released: "an exaggerated autobiography". The second verse refers to a time when Neil's mother would worry about him because he'd wait in a corner of the back garden pretending to be a Roundhead soldier.

1989 - February On February 13th, '' is released as a single for Dusty Springfield, written by the Pet Shop Boys, produced by them and Julian Mendelsohn and taken from the film Scandal. They have actually written two songs for Dusty for the film - the other which the film-makers pass on because they think it sounds too contemporary, is called ''. Meanwhile they are busy producing - with Julian Mendelsohn - an album for .

1989 - June On June 26th, 'It's alright' is released. They originally heard the original version - by House artist Sterling Void - when one of them popped out during the recording of 'I get excited' (The B-side of 'Heart') and bought 'Acid Tracks: The House Sound Of Chicago Vol. 3' on CD and were both immediately impressed by this song. For a single they re-record it in a more poppy style and Neil adds a verse about the threat facing the world environment. "It's about the power of music. It's a bit cosmic really - it's saying that if people still make music then there's always going to be a good side to what people do so mankind is never going to be totally destructive. It's very sincere and there's something about the song that makes perfect sense. It has this beautiful line: 'I can hear it on a timeless wavelength, never dissipating and giving us strength'. I think that's true. Music is an inspiration to people and always has been an inspiration to people. Music represents the good side of mankind; music tends to be a good force rather than a bad force".

1989 - June On June 29th, the Pet Shop Boys begin their first tour, visiting Hong Kong, and Britain, playing 14 dates in all. The tour, a lavish theatrical spectacle is directed by film-maker Derek Jarman. He has specially shot several films to be back-projected, there are extravagant costumes and the cast includes dancers (Casper, Cooley, Hugo Huizar, Tracey Langran, Jill Robertson and Robia LaMorte), four singers (Mike Henry, Jay Henry, and ), an extra keyboard player (Dominic Clarke) and a percussionist (Danny Cummings). "They asked for a theatrical concert and that's what we're doing", says Derek Jarman. "I suppose some people think and theatre shouldn't mix but I think pop music is theatre and I don't see why it shouldn't be so. To my mind, there's two ways of doing it - you either just sit there and sing on a stool and do it the simple way or you go for it".

1989 - August The first single from the Pet Shop Boys' collaboration with Liza Minnelli, a hi-energy version of 's '', is released. It is her first hit single. The collaboration was the idea of an executive in the American branch of . Together they record an entire LP 'Results' (released in October). "I just put it completely in their hands, the ultimate trust", says Liza. "It's weird, because I've been working for 30 years and to find somebody who you like enough and trust enough and respect enough to say forget it, I'll do whatever you want is quite amazing"

1989 - November The Dusty Springfield single 'In private', written and co-produced by the Pet Shop Boys, is released on November 20th. "It's about someone having an affair with a politician and being found out", Neil explains, "the politician is saying different things in public and in private".

1989 - December '', the first single by Electronic, the group formed by New Order's and The Smith's guitarist , is released on December 4th. The words are co-written by Neil who also sings on the record and appears in the video. The collaboration came about after Neil sends a message through a mutual friend earlier in the year saying that he'd like to be involved. Both Neil and Chris also travel to to collaborate on another song called 'Patience Of A Saint'.

1990 - April The Pet Shop boys begin recording their new LP in with producer .

1990 - July Dusty Springfield's first LP since the Pet Shop Boys recorded 'What have I done to deserve this?' with her is released. It is called 'Reputation' half of the LP is a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys. "She's very much a pop singer", says Neil, "and her voice instinctively goes very well with our music". He explains that they also admire her melodramatic determination, "She looks at making records as like climbing a mountain, you have to grind yourself up, it's going to be quite a long journey".

1990 - August On August 4th, the Pet Shop Boys make their first public live appearance in America, guesting on two songs with Electronic at the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium. Electronic have been invited to play by the headline act Depeche Mode. They repeat the same performance the following night.

1990 - September On September 24th '' is released. It is about "two people living together; they are totally unfaithful to each other but they both pretend they are faithful and then catch each other out". The black and white video is shot in Newcastle and co-stars 's sister, Anna. A second twelve- inch mix is released featuring a virtual re-recording of both 'So Hard and the B-side 'It must be obvious' by the KLF.

1990 - October 'Behaviour', the Pet Shop Boys’ fifth LP, is released on October 22nd. It was recorded in Munich and co-produced by Harold Faltermeyer who they originally chose because they were interested in using old analog . On two songs, 'This must be the place I waited years to leave' and 'My October symphony', Johnny Marr plays guitar. Though at the time of release they don't consider it to reflect a substantial shift in mood, later they concede it has been. "It was more reflective and more musical- sounding, and also it probably didn't have irritatingly crass ideas in it, like our songs often do".

1990 - November In Los Angeles, at the Mayan Theatre on the night of November 6th, the Pet Shop Boys play their first American concert as the Pet Shop Boys using a collection of performers (Casper and Hugo Huizar dancing, Dominic Clarke playing keyboards and operating the computer equipment, and two backing singers) with whom they had appeared the previous day on the Arsenio Hall Show.

1990 - November The second single taken off 'Behaviour' is '' released on November 12th. The song is inspired by a party invitation from Neil's Newcastle days which quoted 's line "She was never bored, mainly because she was never boring". Its video was the first to be made by photographer and film-maker Bruce Weber, "I loved the lyrics", he explains "and really felt it was something I wanted to be part of... in it there's that times are different today, and the feeling of abandoness we can't have today because of the way the world is". It is shot in one day at a house in , near New York, with a cast that included a selection of Weber's beautiful friends, a horse and a chimpanzee on roller-skates. Though MTV in America, and several British TV shows refuse to show it because of the nudity included, it won 's Best Video Of The Year Award. On the same day, a book about the Pet Shop Boys, 'Pet Shop Boys Literally', written with their consent and based around their 1989 concerts is published. At a London bookshop on November 23rd they sign over 800 copies before the police have to break up the waiting crowd.

1990 - December 'Highlights', a video of eight songs from the 1991 tour, is finally released. An earlier plan to release footage of the entire show has had to be cancelled because Neil and Chris thought the footage disappointing.

1991 - March The plan is to release 'How can you expect to be taken seriously?', a sharp dig at "the aspirations and pomposities of pop stars" as the first Pet Shop Boys single of 1991. They drastically it in conjunction with British dance duo and film a video in which they parody a number of stars. Meanwhile they have recorded another track, initially to release much later in the year: a hi-energy version of 's 'Where Have No Name' segued with the standard 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You'. Eventually they resolve to release both songs as a double A-side on March 11th, and make a complementary video for 'Where the streets have no name (I can't take my eyes off you)'. "It worked as a concept: one song is about rock stars so to have a U2 song with it serves as a further comment". (Pressed for comment on this new , U2 issued the wry statement "What have we done to deserve this?"). The Pet Shop Boys second tour, 'Performance', also begins on March 11th in . After Japan it visits the USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, , Austria, , Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Holland and the and Eire. It is put together in conjunction with director David Alden and designer David Fielding, best known for their avant garde opera productions. "It's going to be more theatrical than the last tour", Neil announces. "We felt that with the last tour there were still elements of a rock concert that we'd like to get rid of". There are no musicians on stage, (though two, guitarists J.J. Belle and keyboard player Scott Davidson, do skulk in the wings), just three singers (Pamela Sheyne, Derek Green and Sylvia Mason-James) and ten dancers (Petee Aloysius, Trevor Henry, Craig Maguire, Catherine Malone, Mark Martin, Leon Maurice Jones, Suki Miles, Katie Puckrick, Sarah Toner and Noel Wallace) choreographed by Jacob Marley.

1991 - May The first album by Electronic, 'Electronic' including the collaboration with Neil and Chris, 'Patience of a saint', is finally released on May 27th.

1991 - May 'Jealousy', remodelled to include a real orchestra, is released on May 28th. It is a song that they had actually written nine years ago, in the spring of 1982, and is, quite simply about jealousy. "There's some good lines in there", observes Chris, "like 'you didn't phone when you said you would'. You know when you stay in and they say they're going to phone at eight o'clock and they don't all night and you go absolutely bonkers?" The twelve inch version contains a quote from Shakespeare's tragic study of jealousy, Othello. In the video, shot in a west London car showroom, the Pet Shop Boys stand by as a roomful of dining villains move from jealousy to violence.

1991 - June The third collection of Pet Shop Boys promotional videos, aptly titled 'Promotion', is released on June 3rd and includes videos for all their singles from 'Left to my own devices' to 'Jealousy'.

1991 - June In on June 17th the Pet Shop Boys play the final date of their tour.

1991 - August Neil and Chris are invited to take over ' mid-morning show on Radio One, Britain's national pop radio station, for a week. They choose all the records, principally dance music. Chris only swears on air once, and they are invited back to fill the same role in July 1992.

1991 - September The Pet Shop Boys launch their own Spaghetti with a single ' Must Have Sent You Back To Me', by a 21 year old Scottish singer, player and called Cicero. They had first met him when he came backstage at the Pet Shop Boys' concert in 1989.

1991 - October A single, 'DJ Culture', co-produced by British dance music duo Brothers In Rhythm, is released on October 14th. "It is about how facile and pretentious modern life is", Neil explains, "just as in DJ records everything is sampled to sound authentic, so in a lot of aspects of modern life - for instance in politics - it is almost as though attitudes are sampled. People pretend to sound concerned; everyone pretends that the Gulf War was a real war, and that President Bush or John Major are successful war leaders. In fact they sample the past - the Second World War, or a war movie - and the public also samples their response from wars in the past. The whole thing is sort of fake". In the video Neil and Chris appear in appropriate costumes: as soldiers and doctors; as a referee and a soccer player; as and his trial Judge.

1991 - October The Pet Shop Boys play a one off concert at the London Nightclub, Heaven, at a party after the premiere of Derek Jarman's latest film, 'Edward II' on October 15th. It is a deliberately untheatrical, straight-forward concert, for which they are backed by the three singers from this year's tour, J.J. Belle on guitar and Lawrence Cedar on keyboards. They are introduced by Derek Jarman, and supported by Cicero.

1991 - November 'Discography', a collection of the Pet Shop Boys' hit singles from 'West End girls' to the forthcoming 'Was it worth it?', is released on November 4th. Only six of the eighteen songs have previously appeared on an album in their single versions. At the same time a video compilation, 'Videography', is also released.

1991 - December 'Was It Worth It?' is released as a single on December 8th. "It's a reaffirmation of the worth of love" remarks Neil, "an 'I am what I am' sort of song". The video mixes footage from the Heaven concert with the Pet Shop Boys amongst a clubland crowd mostly recruited from the London event Kinky Gerlinky.

1992 - February On February 16th an hour-long film about the Pet Shop Boys is broadcast by the TV arts programme The Show.

1992 - May The Pet Shop Boys play a concert at the Hacienda Nightclub in Manchester on May 13th to coincide with an exhibition of Derek Jarman's paintings at Manchester City Art Gallery and with the Hacienda's tenth anniversary. They perform with J.J. Belle and Sylvia Mason-James. In rehearsals they decide they want to play a suitable cover version and - after tinkering with, then discarding ' 'Fool On The Hill' - choose the 's 1979 hit 'Go West'. The following month, on June 8th, the Pet Shop Boys performed with the same line-up at Roseland in New York, a benefit for Lifebeat, an organization for people in the music business with AIDS.

1992 - June Neil co-writes and sings on a new Electronic single ''. The title came to him when Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner's reminded him of 'Disenchantee', a song liked by French singer Mylene Farmer. "'Disappointed' is", he says, "sort of a love song, about not being disappointed".

1992 - September Eric Watson's film of the 1991 Performance tour - also titled 'Performance' - is released on video on September 28th. It has been delayed after a copyright wrangle with one of the owners of 'I Can't Take My Eyes Off You', and all traces of that song have been ruthlessly excised.

1992 - October On October 26th, the soundtrack to the Neil Jordan film '' is released on Spaghetti Records. Earlier in 1992 the Pet Shop Boys had been asked whether they would be interested in helping with songs for the film, at that time titled 'The Soldier's Wife'. After seeing, and loving, a rough edit, they agreed to release the soundtrack on their Spaghetti label, and to contribute songs produced by them and performed by Cicero and Carroll Thompson. At the last moment, it was suggested that they also produce a new version of Berry's 1964 single, 'The Crying Game', with singing. They had lunch with him, and a week later it was recorded. 'The Crying Game' subsequently became the film's theme tune. It is a British hit single in September 1992 and then, in the Spring of 1993, it became an American hit in the wake of the film's immense American success. "I'm as happy as a sandboy", Boy George will comment, and plans will be hatched for he and the Pet Shop Boys to work together again on his next LP.

1993 - June A single, 'Can you forgive her?', is released on June 1st. The song, which takes its title from a novel by , "is a sort of a short story. It starts with a man being awake in the night, and he can't get to sleep because he's been made a fool of by his girlfriend, who thinks he's not masculine enough. In the first verse he's embarrassed and annoyed at his girlfriend. In the second one he reveals that the girlfriend thinks he's a complete wimp, even in bed. Then in the third verse he goes back in time to his first sexual experience at school, and you realize that he's gay but can't face up to the fact". For the accompanying photographs and video, the Pet Shop Boys appear in orange body suits and dunces caps designed by David Fielding, who designed the 1991 Performance Tour. "We wanted to do something that is the opposite of what everyone else is doing", Neil explains, "Everyone else is being real, so we're being artificial".

1993 - July The Pet Shop Boys travel to for the opening of MTV , "We had to cut a log in half", explains Neil, "live on Russian television to officially open it".

1993 - September 'Go West' is released as a single on September 6th. It is the song they originally chose to cover at their Hacienda concert the previous year. "I was at home in my flat", recalls Chris, "playing, as I often do, The Village People's and I though 'Go West' would be a good song to play at a Derek Jarman event, a song about an idealistic, gay utopia. And I knew that the way Neil would sing it would make it sound hopeless; you've got these inspiring lyrics but it sounds like it's never going to be achieved". The video, which combines footage filmed in Moscow's with an oblique tribute to A Matter of Life And Death, finds them in a new set of costumes: Neil in blue, Chris in yellow, and both of them wearing blue-and- yellow domes on their heads.

1993 - September A new Pet Shop Boys album, 'Very', is released on September 27th. It is produced by the Pet Shop Boys, with additional production by Stephen Hague, and is mixed by Stephen Hague and Mike 'Spike' . "It is called Very", says Neil, "because it is Very Pet Shop Boys: It's very up, it's very hi- energy, it's very romantic, it's very sad, it's very pop, it's very danceable, and some of it is very funny...". At the same time as they recorded 'Very', the Pet Shop Boys also recorded six further songs which they describe as "non structured" and which appear as a limited edition accompanying 'Very'. This second album is titled 'Relentless', "because", Neil explains, "it is".

1993 - October On October 24th the Pet Shop Boys appear at the as part of The Equality Show, a benefit as part of Stonewall's campaign to equalize the age of consent for gay and heterosexual people in Britain. They are introduced on stage by Boy George and Janet Street-Porter, and perform four songs: 'Can you forgive her?', 'To speak is a sin', 'One in a million' (incorporating Culture Beat's 'Mr. Vain') and 'Go West'. For the final song they are joined by the London Gay Men's Choir.

1993 - November On November 4th, 'Pet Shop Boys versus America', a book detailing their 1991 tour, written by Chris Heath with photographs by Pennie Smith, is published.

1993 – November 'I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing' is released as a single on November 15th. The single version, remixed by the , is radically different to the album version: longer, more epic and more upbeat. In the accompanying videos they wear new costumes (pink and white for Chris, pink and black for Neil) and sixties wigs, and they do things they wouldn't normally do. "The song itself", says Neil, "is about a reserved Englishman falling in love and going bonkers. He decides he couldn't care less anymore, and throws caution to the wind. It's a funny song, but it's sincere. I'm so bored with people seeing us as ironic that I'm quite keen on being sincere at the moment".

1993 - December A video is released of all the films Derek Jarman has made as backdrops to live Pet Shop Boys performances, both for their 1989 tour and their 1993 Hacienda performance. It is called 'Projections'.

1994 - February On February 14th the Pet Shop Boys appear at the , performing 'Go West' dressed as miners, backed by a Welsh choir, an idea which they had originally conceived for the 1992 Royal Variety Show as a protest against a wave of coal pit closures.

1994 - April On April 4th 'Liberation' is released as a single. "The song", says Neil, "is trying to reconcile the idea in a relationship that you are liberated, because you feel fabulous because of the love, with the idea that you also feel constricted and obligated. It's one of my 'live for today' songs". In the video, the fourth of their computer enhanced collaborations with director Howard Greenhaugh, the Pet Shop Boys appear almost entirely as computer generated entities. During April a virtual reality ride based around the video tours Britain's major cities.

1994 - May On May 31st, a single '' (the artist's name, too, is nominally Absolutely Fabulous) is released. It features snippets of dialogue spoken by and , from the TV series Absolutely Fabulous, set to a Pet Shop Boys euro-disco backing track (Jennifer Saunders also went into the studio to add some further irreverent chatter, such as ", techno bloody techno" and "it's the bloody Pet Shop Boys sweetie"). "We had the idea because we liked the programme so much", says Neil. "We thought it would make a funny record, and we quite fancied meeting them". The record's profits are donated to the British Charity . "I know some people are horrified that we did a ", says Neil, "but it just seemed a way of dealing with it. It made it simple, because we did the record for fun, not as a major artistic statement".

1994 - June The first ever mix the Pet Shop Boys have done of another artist's record - Blur's 'Girls and Boys' - is released. (In Britain it appears on Blur's 'To The End' single; in some other countries it is released in it's own right). They did it because they thought it would be fun. "And", says Chris, "we thought it could be more of a dance track".

1994 - August 'Yesterday when I was mad' is released as a single on August 29th, in a new version remixed by the Pet Shop Boys and Julian Mendelsohn. "I started the words on the last tour", remembers Neil, "on the tour bus when I was in a bad mood, and it was just about the kind of things people say to you after the show. On tour it's very difficult to believe in anyone's sincerity. You get quite a lot of damning with faint praise, and it struck me it would be quite a funny idea for a song just to have lots of bitchy remarks which drive you mad. I don't think anyone's actually ever said to us 'you've made such a little go a very long way', but we do tend to get patronizing reviews. As for the competition winners, hotel rooms and arguing about dinner, see 'Pet Shop Boys versus America'.”

1994 - September On September 12th, the Pet Shop Boys released '', a mid-priced sequel to their 1986 dance album 'Disco'. Edited together by London DJ , it is a continuous mix of dance versions of their six most recent singles (including 'Absolutely Fabulous') and also incorporates 'So hard' and the celebrated B-side of 'Being boring', 'We all feel better in the dark'. "It's really good for driving to, and getting ready to go out to", says Chris.

1994 - October On October 26th the Pet Shop Boys begin their 1994 tour, 'Discovery', in . Over the next six weeks they play concerts in , Puerto Rico, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, and . The tour is inspired by a trip Chris made to Brazil in the summer, and by a July visit the Pet Shop Boys made to the Sound Factory in New York where they saw go-go dancers cavorting to the music, covered only by flimsy American flags, whilst live percussionists played along to the records. The performers include four dancers (Flavio Cecchetto, Mirelle Diax, Paulo Henrique and Nicole Nisiotis), two percussionists (Liliana Chachian and Oli Saville), an additional singer (Katie Kissoon) and their regular in-studio programmer, Pete Gleadall, who also plays guitar on 'Suburbia'. As well as a selection of Pet Shop Boys songs from throughout their career, they play Blur's 'Girls and Boys'. By the end of the tour there are four medleys: as well as 'Where the streets have no mame (I can't take my eyes off you)', 'One in a million' incorporates 'Mr. Vain', 'It's a sin' merges with Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' and 'Left to my own devices' contains an extract of the song which becomes the tour's unofficial theme: Corona's 'The Rhythm Of The Night'. "We're much more free spirited on this tour", Chris announces beforehand. "We do what we want. We party on down. It's not a totally choreographed, staged and rehearsed show. I suppose it is more rock 'n' roll in its attitude. You get to express yourself. And take your clothes off". The final date is in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on December 12th.

1995 - March On March 6th, 'Various', a collection of the Pet Shop Boys' most recent videos, is released.

1995 - July On July 31st, the Pet Shop Boys release 'Paninaro '95', a new version of the song they first recorded in 1986. It is based upon the new Chris performed on the 'Discovery' tour, and Chris' new, updated lyrics.

1995 - August On August 7th an album of Pet Shop Boys B-sides is released. It is called 'Alternative' (a last minute change from the title which had always been saved for this record: 'Besides'). It contains thirty songs in chronological order from 'In the night' to 'Some speculation', and the first copies of the CD and album have a hologram on the cover which shifts between two photographs, one of Neil, one of Chris, both in fencing masks. "They're some of our favourite songs", Neil explains, "and it just seemed like a nice idea to have them in one place". On the same day, 'Discovery', a video of the Pet Shop Boys performing live in , is released.

1995 - December On December 19th the Pet Shop Boys record a two hour radio programme, Merry Pet Shop Boys, for Radio One to broadcast on Christmas Eve. They play their favourite records from the previous year, beginning with Livin' Joy's 'Dreamer' and ending with the Sleaze Sisters with Vicki's 'Let's Whip It Up', and including songs by , Grace, The Original, The Passengers, , Gusto, , and two by Oasis. During the recording they drink champagne, and eat twiglets and crisps. Neil leaves once, and Chris explains to a Radio One producer why he likes the records that he likes: "It's like art. You like it because you like it. You don't know why. I I like any song with the word 'love' in it. I like any record with love in it because, as far as I'm concerned, right, love's the only thing that matters".

1996 - February '', a song produced by the Pet Shop Boys, is released on February 19th. The previous November Neil saw David Bowie perform at and, backstage, met him for the first time: "He was very friendly, and we were talking about his album 'Outside' and I said that the track I liked best was 'Hallo Spaceboy'. I asked him why it hadn't been released as a single and he said - jokingly I thought - "oh, you guys should remix it for a single". And then a week later he phoned me at home". The Pet Shop Boys effectively re-recorded the song, slowing it down, restructuring it to create a chorus, and using only a synthesizer line and some of David Bowie's vocals. There weren't enough words for a second verse so Neil made one up by cutting up the lyrics to David Bowie's ''. "Then we phoned him up and told him we'd done that", Neil recalls, "and I think he thought it was a bit cheeky, but then he came into the studio and he really liked it. When he hears the song he seems to smile. What I liked about it is that it restates his major themes of a) space and b) sexual confusion. They seem somehow appropriate again". On the day the single is released the Pet Shop Boys perform the song with David Bowie at the Brit Awards.

1996 - April 's new album, 'Wildest Dreams' - released on April 2nd - contains a song, 'Confidential', written and co-produced by the Pet Shop Boys. On April 22nd 'Before' is released as a single. "It's a love song", says Neil. "It's about someone I know. It's a song of encouragement".

1996 - August 'Se a vida é (That's the way life is)' is released as a single on August 12th. On December 12th, 1994, during the 'Discovery' tour, Neil bought some Brazilian CD's at a record shop in Sao Paulo. Playing one of them - 'Filhos Do Sol' by - back in London, he was struck by the part of the song 'Estrada Da Paixao' which went 'Se a vida é...' That became the basis of a new Pet Shop Boys song. "Having mistranslated the phrase as 'that's the way life is' it means something like 'if life is' in Brazilian Portuguese dialect - I was thinking what the lyric was going to be about", says Neil, "and a friend of mine at the time of writing this was very depressed about various things in his life, sitting around being miserable about the fact that his life is taking the wrong direction, and the lyric was trying to cheer him up. And it did, in fact. I thought about the line 'life is much more simple when you're young', a lot. Chris, of course maintains that life is more complicated when you're young, and I sort of agreed with him for a while and I thought of changing it, but what I meant is that you see life as either , you don't see the shading so much, so things appear totally depressing or totally wonderful". A video for the song was filmed much earlier in the year; a wet, sensual romp shot at Wet 'n' Wild theme park in Orlando, Florida, on January 21st. It is directed by Bruce Weber, only the second pop video he has ever made.

1996 - September On September 2nd, the Pet Shop Boys release their new album, 'Bilingual'. Written and recorded over the previous two years, it was initially planned as some kind of Latin record. Although there are many Latin moments on the finished album (rhythmically, linguistically and emotionally), as time passed this idea provided more an attitude and an orientation than a strict musical blueprint. "Another reason for doing the album like this", says Neil, "was as a reaction against . We like being part of Europe; we are a very international group and we like that fact".

1996 - November On November 11th, 'Single-bilingual' is released as a single. (It has a different title to the album version because Everything But The Girl have just released a single called 'Single'). "The narrator is a very glib Euro businessman, a glib Eurocrat who flies business class and likes all his privileges", says Neil. "He tries to pick up chicks at meet 'n' greets. Bet he's not really communicating, and he knows it. In actual fact he's a hopeless wreck. That's why it ends with a reprise of 'Discoteca'. He could be literally going to a club, but it's also saying he's a lost and frightened person". These themes are played out in superficially comic video filmed at Stansted airport. "That is", comments Chris, "what Neil is really like. It brings out Neil's true humour. He's not acting. Behind that sombre facade, that's what's there. Personality." To promote the single, the Pet Shop Boys make a rare semi- live TV appearance, performing two songs and being interviewed by on TFI Friday. During the interview Chris is given a straw donkey.

1996 - December A two-part radio documentary, About The Pet Shop Boys, is broadcast on BBC Radio One on December 8th & 15th. Made with their co-operation, it features them at home, in the , watching TV, eating meals, discussing business and so on. It also includes interviews with many of their collaborators over the years, and snatches of music from their first demos to new, unreleased songs. "I was having dinner round my brother's house when that was on", says Chris, "and I slid off the chair and ended up listening to it under the table in fashion, I was so embarrassed by it". Neil also appears onstage with Suede at the on December 15th. He sings 'Saturday Night' as a duet with , and then sings 'Rent' alone backed by the rest of Suede. Chris is in the audience. The tracks will later be released on the CD2 of Suede's 'Filmstar' single in July of '97.

1997 - March On March 17th, '' is released as a single. It was a song which began when the Pet Shop Boys were experimenting with taking the chord changes from famous pieces of classical music (in this case Beethoven's Song Of Joy) and putting them to a 4/4 beat, and it features the choir of the Choral Academy of Moscow. "It's about waiting for someone to tell you they love you", says Neil. The seven-inch version is a new mix, using elements from a Motiv 8 remix of the song, and the Pet Shop Boys are also particularly taken with the hypnotic 'Trouser Enthusiasts Autoerotic Decapitation mix'.

1997 - June On June 4th, the Pet Shop Boys begin a residency, 'Somewhere', at London's , staged in collaboration with the artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

1997 - June On June 27 the Pet Shop Boys play their first ever festival show, headlining the in Denmark. "We're playing fifteen hit singles and one obscure song." Neil tells the press beforehand. "We're not taking any chances," Chris explains. After a fairly triumphant reception, Chris says, "We didn't look too keen, did we? It's easy to get carried away at moments like that and do things you regret later." Two days later they play at another festival in Turku, Finland. During "Go West" a preposterously large ship comes up the river, alongside the stage, as though choreographed.

1997 - June On June 23 the Pet Shop Boys release a new single, a version of "Somewhere" from . "Because we like it," Neil explains.

1997 - July The Pet Shop Boys agree to headline Gay Pride, an all-day celebration on Common in London on July 5th. They perform 'Somewhere', 'It's a sin', and 'Go West' to a sea of people, as far as you can see, their arms in the air.

1997 - July A new version of 'Bilingual' is released on July 7th titled 'Bilingual Special Edition'. It features a bonus CD containing 7 remixed tracks, including the extended version of 'Somewhere' and a previously unavailable mix of 'The boy who couldn't keep his clothes on'.

1997 - August On August 16 the Pet Shop Boys headline the final night of the Stockholm Water Festival in Sweden. The stage is on a man-made island floating on water, which sways noticeable as they perform.

1997 - September On September 14 the Pet Shop Boys appear on the TV programme 'An Audience With ' performing with Elton John an arrangement of theirs which melds together two of his songs, "Believe" and "Song For Guy".

1997 - October On October 26 the Pet Shop Boys headline Stonewall's Equality Show at London's , having agreed to do so at the last minute. Before finishing with a hastily arranged version of Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual", they played a medley which included "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" (from The Sound Of Music), "Being boring", "Climb Every Mountain" (also from The Sound Of Music) and "Go West", "It was our greatest moment," Chris declares. "Our finest hour."

1997 - November On November 24 a longform video, Somewhere: Pet Shop Boys in Concert, is released. Directed by Annie Griffin, it comprises of a half-hour documentary about the staging of the Somewhere show followed by a film of most of the show itself.

1997 - December For their Fan Club, the Pet Shop Boys record a Christmas song, "It doesn't often snow at Christmas" and send it in silver bubble-wrap casing as their Christmas card. "Originally I was trying to do this pretentious Christmas-y music thing," Neil says, "but then I said, 'maybe we should do something really corny..." Though not released commercially it is played several times on Radio One before Christmas.

1998 - February On February 28 the Pet Shop Boys begin a short, four-concert Russian tour, visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg, inspired by their visit to St. Petersburg to see Brian Eno the previous summer. In Moscow they perform twice in one night, once in a large arena then later in the middle of an over-crowded nightclub. The local media ask them whether they speak Russian, "We're very good at saying 'nyet'," they explain.

1998 - April On April 13, Twentieth Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward is released. It is an album of Noel Coward songs covered by contemporary musicians, co-compiled by Neil, who has been working on it for the past eighteen months. He has loved Noel Coward's music since he first heard it in about 1970. "I think as a songwriter he's slightly underrated," Neil says, "simply because his plays are so famous, and people forget." The Pet Shop Boys do a version of "Sail Away", and amongst the other interpreters are Elton John, Paul McCartney, Suede, and the Comedy. "We tried to choose artists," Neil explains, "who somehow seem to be in the Noel Coward tradition of wit, theatrically and style." To promote the album, Neil appeared along on TFI Friday where he sang along with a busker playing Pet Shop Boys songs on an acoustic guitar.

1998 - June At the request of their former American record , the Pet Shop Boys agreed to the release of 'Essential Pet Shop Boys', a compilation of early Pet Shop Boys songs recorded between 1985 - 1990, including a number of rare remixes, as part of a series of limited edition CDs by other artists.

1998 - November At the behest of director Gus Van Sant, the Pet Shop Boys wrote a new song, with , at extremely short notice for the soundtrack of Van Sant's remake of ''. It is called "Screaming". "It's about an obsessive fan, written from the obsessive fan's point of view," Neil says. "Or actually just by someone obsessed with someone who doesn't love them."

1999 - July On July 19, the Pet Shop Boys release a new single, "I don't know what you want but I can't give it anymore", recorded in New York that March and co- produced by . "It's about the end of a relationship between two people," says Neil, "Where they are no longer communicating. They don't understand each other." Chris offers his own, perhaps not entirely accurate, interpretation. "It's about someone being a bit demanding," he suggests. "Not doing the washing up and stuff." In its video they are seen being transformed into their new look, developed with the theatre designer Ian McNeil, whose work they have admired on productions of An Inspector Calls and Machinale. They have decided that as the songs on their new album were less personal - "the lyrics are not necessarily reflections of me, ," Neil says - they will now appear less naturalistic. This new appearance is partly inspired by a picture they saw in a magazine of Japanese men wearing samurai trousers. "We didn't want the look to be just fashion, we wanted something that had an element of ritual in it," they explain. "We just talked through ideas and we came up with a slightly samurai based look. I like the way it has a slightly ceremonial look about it. It makes you feel very different when you're wearing it, and sometimes when you're performing its good to feel bigger, or different, then yourself. And, also, it makes people look at you."

1999 – August On the morning of August 11 a small area in South-West experiences the first total solar eclipse over the British mainland for over 70 years. The Pet Shop Boys travel to Cornwall to perform at a Radio One roadshow; it is cloudy. More significantly, they have also written a new piece of music, an instrumental called ‘Casting a shadow’ over which Neil has sung 36 tracks of wordless choir vocals, to be broadcast on Radio One during the actual eclipse itself. After a 40 second introduction the music then changes to offer an appropriate accompaniment of the two minutes two seconds of totality.

1999 – August On August 28 the Pet Shop Boys are the only group on the bill at the huge dance music festival , an all-day and all-night event which takes place on a site near Liverpool. Their set is modelled on a Victorian drawing room (an idea inspired by the room in the “I don’t know what you want…” video) and there are also two TVs on stage, one of which is showing Spartacus, the other The Elephant Man. Les Childs dances along in a frock. Many of the songs have been rearranged in more stretched-out and percussive versions just for this one concert.

1999- September On September 27, the Pet Shop Boys release a new single, “ boy”, a song written during a recording session in New York with DJ and producer David Morales, who suggested they do a big disco anthem like the Village People. “I said, ‘oh, alright then, we’ll call it “”’,” Neil recalls. “The song is just about a teenager living in of New York – or Queens or Westchester or somewhere like that. He’s at home, and he’s had exams at school, and it’s Saturday morning and he’s playing his records, his records. And he goes into New York. He wants to get out of doing homework and being at home, and to go out and hang around Times Square and the centre of New York and look at all the girls on the street and look in the shop windows. And then, when dusk starts to fall, you can feel the pace of the city change. It’s a song about how fab New York is.” Its video, shot in London and New York, shows the boy in question set against various memorable New York eras: sailors returning home in the late Forties, the West Side Story Fifties, the Studio 54 late Seventies and the early Eighties.

1999 - October On October 11, the Pet Shop Boys release their new album, Nightlife, which includes twelve new songs. The songs are variously produced by Craig Armstrong, Rollo, David Morales and the Pet Shop Boys themselves. On one song, "In denial", Neil duets with . "In terms of its theme, the album reminds me in some ways of one of those from the Fifties like In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning." Neil says. "It's sort of modern pop-dance version of one of those, really, where a lot of the songs are about relationships, or waiting for your lover to come and see you, or wondering why something went wrong and a lot of it seems to happen at night, when people's perceptions of life are different. In the middle of the night things seem more exaggerated - something bad seems worse, something good seems better. The album begins with 'For your own good', and in that song, it's not really Neil Tennant singing it but a woman whose lover is out getting wrecked every night. She's at home, waiting for her loved one to come and see her. On the final song, 'Footsteps', the lover hasn't returned. He obviously did go clubbing. Again. The woman is at home, waiting, and the guy is in the club. And the record is on both sides. It understands both points of view."

1999- October On October 20 the Nightlife tour, during which the Pet Shop Boys will visit America, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and France, opens in Miami at the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. The remarkable and innovative stage set and design is by the celebrated architect , who they have asked to design a show with modular structure that could fit in venues of different sizes; the costumes are by Ian MacNeil; the lighting design is by Marc Brickman. Onstage they have four male backing singers and Sylvia Mason-James, and on “What have I done to deserve this?” Neil is joined by the disembodied voice of Dusty Springfield whose image is projected onto the back of the stage. For the first half of the show they wear their longer wigs; for the second half, short ones.

2000 – January On January 4 the Pet Shop Boys release a new single, “You only tell me you love me when you’re drunk”. “I think it’s a sentiment a lot of people can relate to,” says Neil. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think sometimes it only occurs to some people to say that when their guard is down, when they’re drunk. It was inspired by something in my life years ago. Parts of my brain are normally looking for song ideas at any given time and will pluck things out of an emotional turmoil and sort them away, and this is an of that. In the song, the person singing is wondering whether the other person is really in love with them. In the song, as in life, the answer is left hanging.” One of the CD bonus tracks, “Lies”, features a rare vocal.

2000 – February On February 12 the Nightlife tour ends in Mannheim, Germany.

2000 – February At the request of their Japanese record company, the Pet Shop Boys release Mini Pet Shop Boys, an eight track CD which included “Closer to Heaven”, a remix of “New York City boy” and six songs released elsewhere as bonus tracks on CD singles.

2000 – April On April 29 the Pet Shop Boys appear at an anti-hate crimes benefit concert called Equality Rocks in Washington DC, USA, on a bill including , Garth Brooks, k d lang, , Ellen Degeneres and Melissa Etheridge. Melissa Etheridge joined the Pet Shop Boys onstage to sing the Dusty Springfield part in “What have I done to deserve this?” and the Pet Shop Boys also played a cover of an old disco tune by Modern Rocketry called “Homosexuality”.

2000 – May On May 25, at the Ivor Novello awards in London, the Pet Shop Boys receive the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Elton John presents the award. “Neil and Chris’s songs I think are incredibly underrated,” he says. “The ability to write great personal lyrics with great melodies is a very hard task.”

2000 – May The Pet Shop Boys’ first musical, Closer to Heaven, a collaboration with playwright Jonathan Harvey, is privately workshopped for three weeks in London. The results are encouraging but over the next few months the musical’s plot and structure is radically reworked; Neil and Chris write a number of new songs.

2000 – June On June 1, in Jerusalem, Israel, the Pet Shop Boys summer tour begins. It will take them through parts of the former (, , Latvia and the Ukraine), to Japan, and back to Europe where they are due to play at various summer festivals. They have kept some elements from the Nightlife tour, but have a new set more suitable to festival appearances, with a giant screen behind them which shows a mixture of newly-commissioned and old footage. Onstage, Neil dances for the first time. “Though nobody seems to have noticed,” he says.

2000 – June On June 24 the Pet Shop Boys perform for the first time at the in England. sets while they are onstage, and Catatonia’s takes the part of Dusty Springfield in “What have I done to deserve this?”. It is considered one of the festival’s landmark triumphs.

2000 – July On July 21 the Pet Shop Boys tour finishes at the Dr Music festival near Oviedo in North-West Spain where they follow onstage. Earlier that month they have refused to perform at the Roskilde festival, despite pressure to do so, after nine people in the audience die the night before during Pearl Jam’s set.

2001 – May On May 31 the Pet Shop Boys’ first musical, Closer to Heaven, opens at the in London. (Preview performances have been running since May 15.) They had first mentioned their ambition to write stage musicals in a Smash Hits interview in 1986, and had been considering it seriously for the past decade. “We wanted to write something that wasn’t Les Mis or Rent,” says Chris. “A play about contemporary life with contemporary music that was not long and boring.” In 1996 they had started writing what became Closer to Heaven with Jonathan Harvey, learning as they went. “The closer we got to finishing,” says Chris, “the more we realised how important it is that there are no extraneous, meaningless bits. Even though it’s a song, the lyrics are also dialogue.” Closer to Heaven is set in a nightclub – “we know about ,” says Neil - and revolves around the stories of a young Irishman, Straight Dave, apparently cocky but struggling with his sexuality and his dreams of being a pop star, and of a nightclub hostess Billie Trix whose years of great beauty and success have long passed. “We haven't set out to do a big West End musical,” says Neil. “It's an attempt to do something new.” There is some early validation from Elton John who, after the opening night, tells the Evening Standard that “the comfortable world of the West End musical has been blown apart.”

2001 – June On June 6 the Pet Shop Boys release deluxe new versions of their first six albums: Please, Actually, Introspective, Behaviour, Very and Bilingual. All the music on them has been remastered (a fairly long process in itself, overseen largely by Neil) and each is reissued with an extra Further Listening CD of all the relevant other music recorded by the Pet Shop Boys in the same period, including a number of previously-unreleased recordings. Each now comes in a cardboard slipcase with a new 36 page booklet in which the Pet Shop Boys discuss in detail every single song.

2001 – October On October 6, the Closer to Heaven cast album is released, containing fifteen songs written by the Pet Shop Boys and, aside from two instrumentals, sung by the original Closer to Heaven cast. (Only three of the songs have previously been recorded by the Pet Shop Boys, all in very different versions.) The album is produced by Stephen Hague and the Pet Shop Boys. It does not include, however, the rarest of all Pet Shop Boys and Closer to Heaven-associated releases, a CD single only available in the theatre foyer by the character Billie Trix (played by ), combining her original 1971 hit “Run Girl Run” with her 1981 re-recording of the same song.

2001 – October On October 13, after playing for nearly months to considerable acclaim, the curtain closes for the last time on Closer to Heaven’s London run.

2001 – November On November 12 Montage, a DVD based around the Nightlife tour, is released. Instead of a straightforward document of the tour, the DVD intertwines and interweaves footage shot in Dortmund, New York and Atlanta and web cast footage with background footage from both the Nightlife and summer 2000 tours.

2001 – December During some recording with New York dance music producer in May 2000, he persuaded Neil, who was initially reluctant, to record a vocal over a new version of Raze’s house anthem “”. “One of your best vocal performances for a long time,” comments Chris. In December 2001 the result is released in America under the name: Peter Rauhofer + Pet Shop Boys = The Collaboration.

2002 – February On February 6 the Pet Shop Boys begin a brief tour of English colleges. “We’d never done it before so I thought it would be a laugh,” says Chris. “The original idea was based on Paul McCartney and Wings just upping off and playing universities during the lunch break and stuff. It just seemed like a nice way to play lots of songs off the new album. And also to get a band together.” Neil plays guitar, Chris plays keyboards are there are two other guitarists and a percussionist onstage. “It was really good having a band – noisy,” says Chris. “It was quite interesting because the Pet Shop Boys have never presented themselves as being musicians before on stage, with the exception of when we played at the ICA in 1984,” says Neil. “We’ve always presented ourselves within a visual context on stage, which has been what we’ve become well-known for, and all of a sudden we thought it would be quite interesting to present ourselves as musicians.” At one concert, in Middlesborough, they encore with a version of ’ “Do Anything You Wanna Do”. The tour is completed by a one-off date in Cologne, Germany, on February 16.

2002 – March On March 16 the Pet Shop Boys record a live concert for BBC Radio 2 at the BBC Radio Theatre in London, with their live band, playing a shortened version of their college tour set.

2002 - March On March 18 a new Pet Shop Boys single, “Home and dry”, is released. “I liked the fact that it was a massive departure from anything we’d done before,” says Chris. The song, says Neil, is “about someone missing their lover who’s away. It’s also about fear of flying. About knowing that someone’s flying across the Atlantic at night. I always think it’s a very lonely place to be: flying across the Atlantic at night.” The song is accompanied by a somewhat unusual and controversial video made by the photographer and Turner Prize-winning artists in which a little footage of the Pet Shop Boys performing the song is combined with shots of mice running around beneath the rails at Tottenham Court Road tube station in London.

2002 – April On April 1 a new Pet Shop Boys album, Release, is released. When they had began working on the album back in 2000, the Pet Shop Boys’ vague plan was to make a -influenced album, and to this end they even met with one of Dr Dre’s collaborators, but as they wrote songs over the following year they realised it was becoming something very different: a record full of emotional songs, with more guitars and fewer dance influences then ever before. “It was very liberating,” says Chris. “It gave us a lot more freedom to experiment.” They decided to produce the record themselves (with the exception of “London” which, perversely, was recorded in with German producer Chris Zippel) in their studio in the North-East of England, which had its own influence on the record. “Up there, we didn’t really feel like we were in the middle of some kind of scene,” says Neil. “It is quite a barren landscape, quite bleak, and that is reflected in the type of music we were writing and the way it sounds.” Johnny Marr joined them in the studio when the recording was nearly finished, replaying some of Neil’s guitar parts and adding some of his own. The album title was suggested by Wolfgang Tillmans. “I think it works, because there is a sense of emotional release,” says Neil. “And it is the Pet Shop Boys new release.”

2002 - May On May 14, the Pet Shop Boys begin a three-month tour across America, Europe and the Far East at the Jackie Gleason Theater in Miami. The new show is an expanded version of the one they premiered during their university tour earlier in the year. As well as a wide selection of their own songs, old and new, they also rehearse a version of 's "Philadelphia", which they had previously performed on the TV show Re:covered in March, but they only play it once, in Washington.

2002 – July On July 15th a new Pet Shop Boys single, “I get along” is released. “A lot of the songs on the album were inspired by things in newspapers at the time,” says Neil, “and this was the time when Peter Mandelson, who was then Northern Ireland secretary, was sacked from the government, or forced to resign, in fact, from the government. And I took the story of that and just turned it into a sort of love song, about the breakdown of a relationship. It’s sung from ’s point of view: this person has finally had to go from his life because they’re too unreliable and they down. I always think you have the feeling that the person singing ‘I get along…’ can’t get along without the other person.” Typically, this sentiment is set to one of the Pet Shop Boys’ most uplifting tunes. Chris remembers that in the studio Neil wrote the verse then said it needed a chorus, so Chris said ‘Oh, it obviously needs a big Seventies terrace anthem type of thing going on’” and immediately played what would become the chorus. “A scarf-waver,” says Chris.

2002 - October On October 2, the Pet Shop Boys record their first ever session for 's Radio One show, broadcast later this month, following an invitation offered when both they and John Peel were at the Es Sonar festival in Barcelona in the summer. As well as "London", they decide to record some songs from the early Eighties which they have never recorded but always intended to: two of their earliest compositions ("If looks could kill" and "A powerful friend") and a Bobby O song they have always liked, "Try it (I'm in love with a married man)".

2002 - October On October 14 "London" is released as the third single from Release in Germany, and subsequently in some other European countries, though not in Britain. "It's about two people deserting from the Russian army and coming to London," says Neil. "They're sort of good-natured, and they do just of crime every now and then when they need the money. I'm fascinated by how London is full of Russians, sometimes doing jobs other people won't do." The song was co-written with the Berlin-based producer Chris Zippel. Its video, shot by the renowned English photographer and filmmaker , intermingles footage dramatising the lyric, images of everyday London life and scenes of the Pet Shop Boys busking the song in various London locales. While filming, they are hassled by drunks in an underpass and approached politely by someone younger as they play next to the Millennium Bridge. "I just thought, as we were standing there with cameras on us and I was holding a guitar at the time," says Neil, "that he was going to say, 'oh, are you the Pet Shop Boys?'. In fact what he said was, 'can you tell me where the Science Museum is, please?'"

2003 - February On February 3 the Pet Shop Boys release the latest in their intermittent series of dance albums, . It combines some more rhythmic mixes of songs on Release with a number of the more dance-oriented songs they have recorded but not yet released over the same period, and new versions of two of songs they recently recorded for their John Peel session which seemed in keeping: their 1983 song "If looks could kill" and their cover of "Try it (I'm in love with a married man)". Its sleeve, a view of London and the Thames at night, was shot by Wolfgang Tillmans.

2003 - February On February 22 the Pet Shop Boys DJ in London at 's Return To New York, at an event billed as a between them and New Order (represented by Bernard Sumner and ). To New Order's amusement, Neil and Chris don't physically play the records themselves - they choose and sequence them, and their programmer Pete Gleadall operates the decks - but they feel fully validated in this approach when Arthur Baker tells them that this was exactly how Afrika Bambaataa used to do it.

2003 - March The Pet Shop Boys remix of "Hooked On Radiation", a single by Atomizer (Fil OK and Johnny Slut, who run London's premiere night Nag Nag Nag) is released in a limited edition of 500 copies on the Pet Shop Boys' Olde English Vinyl label. It is subsequently re-released on International DJ Gigolo records. "That's enough for me," says Chris. "We've had a record on Bobby O's label and one on Gigolo and that's enough really."

2003 - March The Pet Shop Boys' second Kiki Kokova record, a cover of 's "Love To Love You, Baby", is also released as a limited edition of 500 copies on the Pet Shop Boys' Lucky Kunst label. It is the second Kiki Kokova orgasm in an ongoing series. (Sam Taylor Wood sung the lyric four or five times but performed this latest orgasm only once. "We're kind of used to it now," says Neil.)

2003 - June On June 2 the Pet Shop Boys remix of 's "" is released, along with remixes by Danny Tenaglia, and FKEK . It reaches number one in the American Billboard Club Play chart.

2003 - September On September 7 the Pet Shop Boys headline the Rock'n'Coke Festival in Turkey, wearing one-off glam outfits made especially for the occasion.

2003 - October On October 23 the Pet Shop Boys are presented with the World Arts Award 2003 by former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, in "for their extraordinary dedication to art, their social engagement and their unique contribution to as well as their overall patronage of the arts." In his acceptance speech, Neil quotes : "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Gorbachev’s daughter tells them afterwards that she used to play their music when she was growing up in the Kremlin.

2003 - November On November 17 the Pet Shop Boys release a new single, "Miracles". It is a song written with English dance producer and his associate Dan Fresh. "We had this idea of a kind of record to make, which was to get a hip hop producer but then to use electro-clash sounds with them," says Neil. "It's a love song. It's about how, when you're in love with someone, they have a kind of magic and they seem to transform everything: 'Thunder is silent before you...roses bloom more to adore you'." One of the extra tracks on the CD is called "We're the Pet Shop Boys", a song recently written and recorded by the New York artist My Robot Friend which the Pet Shop Boys like enough to cover.

2003 - November On November 24, PopArt: The Hits is released. It includes all of the Pet Shop Boys hit singles over two CDs, including the just-released "Miracles" and one further new song, "Flamboyant". They liked the title PopArt because, says Neil, "I think it explains what we are. We're pop music..." "...with some art pretensions," chips in Chris. "With art influences," suggests Neil. On the sleeve, the word "Pop" takes its orange pattern from the "Can you forgive her?" pointy hats and the word "Art" its grey stripes from Chris's "Suburbia" sunglasses. "So you have the Eighties and Nineties," says Neil. Initial copies include a third CD of some of the Pet Shop Boys' favourite dance remixes of their songs, including mixes by , Sasha, Rollo, , , Peter Rauhoffer and David Morales. A companion PopArt DVD is released on the same day.

2004 – November On November 24 they perform live on the radio for the first time in the London studios of XFM, playing “Rent”, “Opportunities”, “Flamboyant” (for the first time) and “West End girls” (in its original Bobby O arrangement).

2004 - March On March 6, the Pet Shop Boys perform a one-off concert at Barfly, the tiny Camden venue in an upstairs room of a pub, as part of a series of concerts to raise money for Warchild, performing live in front of an audience as a duo for the first time in twenty years. The set begins with three songs they have never played before in concert: “Try it (I’m in love with a married man)”, “Tonight is forever” and “We’re the Pet Shop Boys”. (Also making their first appearances are “In private” and “Nervously”.)

2004 - March On March 29 “Flamboyant”, the other new song on PopArt, is released as a single, in a remixed version on which they worked with ’s . One of the single remixes is by The , commissioned in the earliest days of their growing celebrity after the Pet Shop Boys heard their version of ’s “Comfortably Numb” in a Hoxton nightclub. ( later explains that he has tried to make this remix “like ‘Station To Station’ by David Bowie”.) Another mix is by DJ Hell who also does a new “West End girls” remix which he is allowed to semi-officially release himself as a one-sided twelve0inch single in Europe under the name Paid Show Boys.

2004 – May A character in Alan Bennett’s latest play, The History Boys, set in a school in the , which opens in London to widespread acclaim, quotes, with the Pet Shop Boys’ permission, from “It’s a sin”. They were flattered. “Thoroughly good play,” says Chris. “Highly recommended.”

2004 - May On May 31 the Pet Shop Boys occasional Olde English label releases ’ single, “Jack and Jill party”, written and produced by the Pet Shop Boys with additional lyrics by Dead Or Alive’s Pete Burns. The song had originally been written before PopArt’s release, using for its title a term Neil saw in a book of gay slang he’d been given: “a party attended by gays and lesbians”. When Neil bumped into Pete Burns at the club night Nag Nag Nag, he mentioned they had a song that might be suitable for him. Even though it was only available through the Pet Shop Bys’ website, it reached No 75 in the chart.

2004 – June The Pet Shop Boys 2004 summer tour of festivals begins at the Storsjoyran festival in Ostersund, Sweden, in a new production designed by Ian McNeil and accompanied onstage by guitarists Mark Refoy and Bic Hayes, and percussionist Dawne Adams. The last of ten dates was at the TIM Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on November 7.

2004 – July On July 10 Neil celebrates his fiftieth birthday with a Warholian party billed as “A happening at the ‘Factory’.”

2004 – July On July 26 the single, “Mein Teil”, about the German cannibal who shared a meal of the sautéed penis of his willing victim before killing him, is released. It includes two mixes by the Pet Shop Boys.

2004 - September On the evening of September 12th the Pet Shop Boys’ new score to Einsenstein’s classic 1925 Russian is premiered in light drizzle at London’s in front of an estimated audience of 20,000. (They had been approached with this idea in April 2003 by Philip Dodd, the director of the ICA.) The Pet Shop Boys perform behind gauze with the Dresdner Sinfoniker, conducted by , playing orchestrations by who first came to their attention with his orchestral album of works by Rammstein, Mein Herz Brennt; above the performers the movie is projected on a giant screen. is preceded by a provocative spectacle masterminded by, and rant from, Simon McBurney. They encore with one of the score’s vocal songs, “No time for tears”

2004 - September On September 27 the Pet Shop Boys film of their 1991 tour Performance is released on DVD, including an audio commentary from Neil, Chris and Chris Heath and, for the first time, the full version of “Where the streets have no name (I can’t take my eyes off you)”.

2004 – October On October 4, Chris’s birthday, the Pet Shop Boys receive the Inspiration Award at the , presented to them by Bernard Sumner. They are also joined on their table by Johnny Marr. As walks through the crowd to receive a U2 award, he gives Neil a kiss.

2004 - November On November 11 the Pet Shop Boys perform at Wembley Arena as part of the ’s Trust concert Produced By , featuring most of the notable artists Trevor Horn has worked with over the years, including , Dollar, Yes, , Tatu, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They play the two songs they recorded with Trevor Horn in the Eighties, “Left to my own devices” and “It’s alright”. Both songs also appear in their studio single versions on the double CD Produced By Trevor Horn.

2005 January Results, the album the Pet Shop Boys produced for Liza Minnelli in 1989, is re-released in a deluxe CD and DVD package, including remixes and videos.

2005 – February On February 17 the Pet Shop Boys present New Order with the Godlike Genius Award at the NME Awards. (Neil’s part of the speech was 163 words long, Chris’s was two: “…New Order”.) In an earlier speech, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos thanks “the great groups” who have inspired them, “some of whom are here today – Oasis, New Order, the Pet Shop Boys…”

2005 – April On April 25 a double CD is released in the Back To Mine series with one CD of music chosen and sequenced by Chris, the other by Neil. Chris declares that his choices (mostly a mixture of eighties and contemporary songs, ranging from rare hi energy obscurities to Queen’s “The Show Must Go On”) are “for everybody who has been discriminated or dispossessed by society” and Neil explains his selections (from Elgar to Etienne Daho) as “a sequence of music that would be very, very late night and primary instrumental, and that tried to mix together , classic music and pop music in a sort of seamless way…it’d be quite good to seduce someone to”. (The only artist to appear on both discs is Dusty Springfield, with “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love” and “Goin’ Back” respectively).

2005 – May Kylie Minogue’s latest tour, , includes the duet which first appeared on Nightlife, “In denial”; during the shows she uses the original Pet Shop Boys arrangement and duetted with Neil’s previously-recorded voice.

2005 – May At the Ivor Novello awards “West End girls” wins a vote of radio listeners as best song of the decade from 1985 to 1995, beating a shortlist of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, ’s “Creep”, ’s Unfinished Sympathy” and Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love”.

2005 – June On June 17 they appear onstage for the finale of Yoko Ono’s performance at the (part of the -curated Meltdown), performing with her their remix of “Walking On Thin Ice”.

2005 - July On July 2 they headline a concert in Red Square, Moscow, one of eight simultaneous concerts around the world intended to put pressure on world leaders to provide debt relief and other measures for Africa at the following week’s G8 summit. The Pet Shop Boys are only approached the previous week at a party by Emma Freud. They perform after one day’s rehearsal with Mark Refoy, Dawne Adams, Pete Gleadall and, for the first time in five years, Sylvia Mason-James. One song from their performance, “Go West”, will subsequently appear on the Live 8 DVD in September.

2005 – September On September 5 their new score to Battleship Potemkin is released on CD on EMI Classics – as is usual with classical releases, on the sleeve the record is primarily credited to the composers: Tennant/ Lowe. Earlier in the month they have performed the score as in Trafalgar Square last year four times in Germany: in Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg.

2005 – December On December 19 they appear onstage at the nightclub Two Too Much, performing two songs at the London stag night for Elton John and David Furnish: “It’s a sin” and “I will survive” – joined on the latter by Scissor Sisters’ singer Jake Shears. Later in the week they attend the couple’s wedding celebration.

2006 – February On February 20 “Sorry”, the second single from ’s Confessions From The Dancefloor album, is released. It contains a remix by the Pet Shop Boys, “Sorry (PSB Maxi-Mix)”, in which Neil’s voice intermingles with Madonna’s, and reaches number one in the British charts. That same month, Neil presents Madonna with her Best International Female Solo Artist award at the Brit awards. In her acceptance speech she declares: “It’s ironic because even though I’m an American recording artist, it is British recording artists who have influenced my work the most., from David Bowie to , Portishead to Radiohead, the Pet Shop boys to …”

2006 – May On May 8 “I’m with stupid”, a song “about Bush and Blair, comparing them to somebody with an apparently stupid partner”, is released as a single. “The main point, though,” Neil explains, “is the line ‘Is stupid really stupid? Or a different kind of smart?” The video features actor-comedians and , longtime Pet Shop Boys fans most famous for the BBC comedy series , playing the Pet Shop Boys in a low-rent musical after having kidnapped their inspiration.

2006 - May On May 22 they release a new album, Fundamental, produced by Trevor Horn. “We had the title before we ever started making the album. It originally comes from the endless discussions of fundamentalism that we live through at the moment. As ever with an issue like that, we related it to what we do, and we wanted to make an album that was very electro, that was fundamentally Pet Shop Boys….The idea behind the lyrics was to take contemporary events and put them into songs that are apparently about interpersonal relationships.” On the same day a special edition is released including the bonus album, Fundamentalism, including more electronic mixes of songs from Fundamental, a new version of “In private” on which Neil duets with Elton John, and a brand new song, “Fugitive”.

2006 – June On June 15 the Fundamental tour begins at the Skein Sommerfestival in Norway. The innovative show, designed by who designed the musical Closer to Heaven, is centred around a giant cube which can be unfolded, and inhabited, in a multitude of ways.

2006 - July On July 24 “Minimal” is released as a single: “The words of the song are simply about minimalism”. Its video is the closest to a straight performance video the Pet Shop Boys have ever made.

2006 – September On September 18 Chris returns to his old school, the Arnold School in Blackpool, to be shown round the school and open some curtains to reveal a plaque to mark the opening of their new music facility, the Lawrence Centre.

2006 – October On October 15 “Numb” is released as a single. The song was written by American songwriter and was originally recorded as a potential single for PopArt. It had received some unexpected exposure a few months earlier when the BBC used it as the soundtrack to the from-triumph-to-heartbreak video montage traditionally broadcast after the England football team’s inevitable from major football tournaments – in this instance, the World Cup. The Pet Shop Boys’ new single edit was partly inspired the BBC had edited the song.

2006 - October On October 23 the live album Concrete is released. It documents a one-off concert at London’s on May 8 (which had been broadcast by Radio 2 in an abridged form on May 27), and includes guest performances by Robbie Williams (“Jealousy”), (“ in love”) and Frances Barber (“Friendly Fire”). It features the BBC Concert Orchestra and a band led by Trevor Horn that included , Steve Lipson and Lol Creme. Opera singer Sally Bradshaw also reprises her vocal from the original album version of “Left to my own devices”.

2006 – October On October 23 A Life In Pop is released. This DVD contains a longer version of the Pet Shop Boys documentary directed by George Scott that had first been broadcast on on May 24, and which included interviews with Robbie Williams, Jake Shears, Tim Rice-Oxley, , Trevor Horn, Frances Barber, Matt Lucas and David Walliams amongst others. “There’s a brilliant bit at the start where Chris comes out of the floor in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom playing ‘It’s a sin’ on the organ,” Neil notes. The DVD also includes videos for the previous five Pet Shop Boys singles and three memorable archive performances: at the 1988 Brits with Dusty Springfield, at the 1994 Brits with the miners, and their first-ever TV performance, playing the Bobby O version of “West End girls” on the Belgian show Hit Des Clubs.

2006 – October On October 23 Robbie Williams’ album is released. It includes two Pet Shop Boys productions, “She’s Madonna” and “We’re the Pet Shop Boys”, the former also co-written with them. This collaboration was sparked when Chris bumped into Robbie Williams a couple of years earlier and they discussed forming a supergroup: Robbie Williams, the Pet Shop Boys and a never-decided fourth person. Nonetheless they met up to write and record “She’s Madonna”, and Robbie Williams subsequently decided to cover My Robot Friend’s “We’re the Pet Shop Boys” by singing over the backing track from the Pet Shop Boys’ version of the song.

2006 – October On October 23 a , Pop! Justice: 100% Solid Pop Music, put together by the website, is released. It includes the previously-unreleased new version of “It’s a sin” which the Pet Shop Boys performed at their Barfly concert.

2006 – October Catalogue, a lavish, large and meticulous Thames and Hudson book documenting the Pet Shop Boys’ visual history from 1984 to 2004, edited and written by Philip Hoare and Chris Heath, is published.

2006 – December On December 31 the Pet Shop Boys are scheduled to appear outdoors beneath Edinburgh castle as the centrepiece of the city’s Hogmanay celebrations. That evening, due to poor weather and high winds, the concert is cancelled: “Portaloos were being blown down Princes street”. Some consolation was offered by the discovery that the orchestral opening of “Numb” could be heard accompanying the fireworks at Sydney’s New Year spectacular.

2007 – February On February 4 Neil appears on the long-running BBC radio programme, Desert Island Discs, now in its 65th year. His record choices are Rex Harrison’s “Why Can’t The English Teach Their Children How To Speak?”, the Beatles’ “She Loves You”, Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis”, David Bowie’s “Changes”, Shannon’s “Give Me Tonight”, Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache”, Dusty Springfield’s “I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore”, and Shostakovich’s “Symphony No 5 in D Minor”. His book choice was Balzac’s The Human Comedy, and his one luxury a DVD projector with a huge box of .

2007 – February On February 11 the Grammy awards are held. The Pet Shop Boys are nominated in two categories – as Best Electronic/Dance Album for Fundamental and as Best Electronic. /Dance track for “I’m with stupid” – but lose to Madonna and respectively. They do not attend.

2007 – February On February 17 Neil appears onstage with the Scissor Sisters at Koko in London at an event in support of the charity Body and Soul. He sings on the Pet Shop Boys’ “Love comes quickly” and the Scissor Sisters’ “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”.

2007 – February On February 26 ’ single, “Read My Mind”, is released. It contains a remix, “Read My Mind (Pet Shop Boys Stars Are Blazing Mix)”, on which they replay everything but the guitars and vocals, and on which both Chris and Neil’s voices can be heard. It is their favourite song on the second Killers album. A few months earlier, Neil had publicly queried the wisdom of Brandon Flowers’ newly-grown moustache and what it might signify. “When he was first asked about that in an interview before the album came out he said, ‘Well, I think Neil’s really going to like “Read My Mind” because we’re still writing pop songs’. And as soon as I heard the album I thought, ‘Oh, he’s right – I do like that’.”

2007 – March On March 6 “She’s Madonna”, credited to Robbie Williams with Pet Shop Boys, is released as a single.

2007 – May On May 14 , a DVD of the Fundamental tour, directed by David Barnard and filmed in Mexico City on November 14, 2006, is released. They chose Mexico to film as audiences had seemed so good on their previous visits: “Also, to us it seems almost slightly incongruous: ‘Pet Shop Boys in Mexico City’.” The DVD is also accompanied by a CD of the concert.

2007 – May On May 14 Rufus Wainwright’s album is released. Neil is the album’s executive producer and appears on four of the songs.

2007 – August At the Edinburgh festival an Australian musical theatre piece, Seriously, which structures a loose narrative out of an eclectic sequence of Pet Shop Boys songs has its first British performances. The Pet Shop Boys attend: “Very moving”.

2007 – October On October 8 the album is released. Reversing the Disco series’ more usual practice, this album principally consists of mixes that the Pet Shop Boys have done for other artists: The Killers, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Madonna and Atomizer. Also included are two of their own mixes of Pet Shop Boys songs, including a radically new version of “Integral”. A video is made of “Integral” though the song is not released as a conventional single.

2007 – November On November 1 they appear at a War Child benefit at the in London, a concert arranged by Keane. They perform four songs: “Rent”, “West End girls”, “Integral” and “Being boring”.

2007 – November On November 25 the very final date of the Fundamental tour takes place, well over a year after the tour started, at the Sala Palatului in , Romania. The very final song is a special performance of “Being boring”, with an accompanying photo tribute, in honour of their friend Dainton Connell who died in a Moscow car accident several weeks earlier on October 5.

2007 – December The 53rd issue of the limited edition art magazine Visionaire is published. This issue, entitled SOUND, contains one hundred exclusive audio pieces over five discs in an elaborate sculptural package. The Pet Shop Boys’ contribution is, as commissioned, a song exactly one minute long. It is called “Transfer”.

2008 – May On May 2 the Pet Shop Boys appear at Heaven nightclub in London, playing a four song set as part of Can You Bear It?, a benefit for Dainton Connell’s family. For the final song they are joined by and Carl from Madness, in rambunctious high spirits, to perform a dance version of Madness’s “My Girl”: “It was a very emotional night”.

2008 – October On October 27 a Pet Shop Boys-produced single by the British artist Sam Taylor- Wood, “I’m in love with a German film star”, is released on the cult German dance label Kompakt. It is the Pet Shop Boys’ third collaboration with Sam Taylor-Wood though the previous one was released under the pseudonym Kiki Kokova. The song is an electronic reinterpretation of the 1981 single by the Passions, a suggestion of Neil’s.

2008 – December This year’s annual Christmas single from the Killers – “Joseph (Better You Than Me)” – is originally planned as a collaboration between The Killers and Elton John. Neil gets involved after Brandon Flowers asks for help with the lyric; in the end Neil’s short section of guide vocal for the lyric he contributes will remain in the final song when it is made available for download.

2009 – January On January 12 the single, “”, is released and reaches the top ten. It is a song co-written by the Pet Shop Boys and Girls Aloud’s regular producers, , the British production team led by , and was originally written in sessions for the next Pet Shop Boys album. When Chris expressed reservations about the song – “I didn’t think it was breaking new ground for us” – Brian Higgins asked whether he could record it with Girls Aloud, an idea they eagerly encouraged. “Thrilled to pieces by that,” says Chris.

2009 – February On February 17 a short orchestral piece written by the Pet Shop Boys called “Particle” was performed by the BBC concert orchestra at the in London as part of a project called Music And Chance in which twelve contemporary composers contributed to a single composite work by writing pieces after being allowed to hear beforehand the final 30 seconds of the previous composition.

2009 – February On February 18 the Pet Shop Boys are given the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Brit awards, and invited to perform at the close of the ceremony. “I think we’re really accepting this award on behalf of pop music, more than anything,” says Chris beforehand. “A very underrated form of music.” They perform a 12-minute medley of songs in front of two giant silhouettes of their heads. To sing the Dusty Springfield part in “What have I done to deserve this?” they have invited a new singer who has only recently had her first big hit, . “What I liked was that she wasn’t doing an imitation of Dusty, she was doing her own thing,” says Neil. “She had designed and had made a porcelain outfit which was actually a teapot,” says Chris. “That’s why one arm was out when she stood.” During “It’s a sin” they are joined by the Killers’ Brandon Flowers who also presents them with their award beforehand and makes a heartfelt speech about the day he bought a cassette of Discography when he was 13. “Few have held on to the fire or the ability to remain relevant, to stick around,” he says. “It’s very admirable. They’ve got taste and they can write one hell of a pop song.”

2009 – March On March 16 the single “Love etc.” is released. It is written with, and produced by, Xenomania, and was planned as the first single from early on in the sessions for the new Pet Shop Boys album: “I think it somehow manages to sound like typical Pet Shop Boys without sounding like any record we’ve ever made before. It’s a post-lifestyle anthem. I think it’s quite appropriate for the time. What the credit crunch seems to reveal is: if you take the shopping out of society then precisely what is left? The song is saying life isn’t just about wealth and shopping.”

2009 – March On March 23 the album Yes is released. Unlike their previous album, when the Pet Shop Boys first started writing songs for what would become Yes they had no fixed scheme either sonically or in terms of subject matter. “We ended up writing a group of really poppy songs,” says Neil, “and therefore we decided we would approach the producers Xenomania because they seemed to us like the most interesting and imaginative pop producers at the moment.” Three of the eleven songs on the final album would also be written with Xenomania: “It’s an interesting process. It stretches you and brings new things into your vocabulary.” Johnny Marr - “the Carlos Alomar of the Pet Shop Boys” – returns to play guitar and also the harmonica, the instrument’s first appearance on a Pet Shop Boys record. “We can’t seem to remember how we came up with the title Yes,” says Neil. “Our official story is that we may have taken it from the famous Yoko Ono exhibition in 1967 where you had to climb up a step ladder – as famously did - pick up a magnifying glass, look at a tiny word written on the ceiling, and the word was ‘yes’. I think it partly came from that.” (Chris adds: “We thought No was a bit negative.”)

2009 – March Also released on March 23 is an expanded version of the new Pet Shop Boys album, titledYes etc. The second CD includes one new song, “This used to be the future”, which had only been removed from Yes’s running order at the last moment, a song which features a vocal part from ’s Phil Oakey who travelled down to Xenomania’s studio for day. “I like him,” notes Neil. “He’s a very pessimistic person.” Phil Oakey’s appearance seemed particularly apposite as the rest of the album is partially inspired by the Human League’s , which largely consisted of sparser, atmospheric, more danceable revisions of songs from their album Dare. In a similar spirit, for the rest of Yes etc. Xenomania and Pet Shop Boys revisited songs from Yes. “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” notes Chris.

2009 – March Also released is a deluxe vinyl box set version of Yes in a limited edition of three hundred. Each song has its own twelve-inch single with an instrumental version on the b-side. These instrumentals are available nowhere else, aside from the instrumental version of the album’s final track “Legacy” which, when the Chinese authorities objected to the song’s lyrics (in particular “governments fall” and “they’re raising an army in the north”), was substituted in its place by the Pet Shop Boys on the Chinese editions of on the Chinese editions of Yes, its wordlessness intended as an oblique but deliberate retort to such censorship.

2009 – June On June 1 the single “Did you see me coming?” is released. “It’s a very positive love song,” says Neil. “When we wrote it, I was worried the title sounded obscene. It wasn’t meant to. My mother used to say, “they must have seen you coming” if you’d been overcharged for something. It came from that.” On its release, the abundance of remixes (including an epic one by the Pet Shop Boys themselves which includes a whole new part of the song structured as a personal ad) and extra songs in the various single formats prods the website Pop Justice to note: “Just to be clear on this, what we have here is a single package that includes Pet Shop Boys, , Xenomania AND , a sort of high octane pop supergroup for the post-physical post-single post-actually-making-money-from-single-releases music landscape.”

2009 – June On June 10 a new Pet Shop Boys tour, Pandemonium, had its premiere at the St Petersburg Ice Palace in Russia. The show is designed by Es Devlin. “There are elements of chaos in it where the whole thing literally falls down,” says Neil. “Lots of cubes,” says Chris. “Es likes cubes, I think. But also the Yes album sleeve is made of squares.” The show is split into four, unannounced sections, the last three of which are New York, Ballad and Celebration. The first section is nameless.

2009 – October On October 2, “Beautiful people” was released as a limited edition single, only in Germany. “Funnily enough the lyric is the same message as ‘Love etc.’ but from a totally different perspective,” says Neil. “‘Love etc.’ is saying being rich and famous is not going to make you happy. ‘Beautiful people”’ is somebody wishing they’re rich and famous. It’s one of those songs where I imagine it’s a woman singing it. I imagine she’s standing by the bus stop in the rain in London – I actually specifically have a bus stop for this, on Green Park near the Ritz, where there’s a newsstand behind – and she looks at the newsstand, and it’s pouring with rain and she’s waiting for the bloody bus and there’s a traffic jam and she’s got her shopping – and she sees all these Hello! magazines and Heat, and she thinks ‘I want to live like beautiful people’. She’s thinking all this, then she’s going to get the bus, go home and make dinner.”

2009 - November On November 4 a new Pet Shop Boys compilation, Pet Shop Boys Party, is released only in Brazil, at the request of a local record company, largely collecting together songs that had become popular through their use in Brazilian soap operas, most recently “King of Rome”.

2009 – November On November 9 a new album, The Performance, is released by the Welsh singing legend , the album taking its title from “The performance of my life”, the previously- unreleased Pet Shop Boys song she sings on it. They have been asked to contribute by the album’s producer, film composer . “It was written from the perspective of a diva,” says Neil. “Someone whose life is their performance and whose performance is their life. A female diva looking back on her life. I had the idea for the lyric and Chris started writing a piece of music for it.” In an interview coinciding with the album’s release Shirley Bassey explains that the song “got right into my head and made me sob and not many songs do that. Now I feel I don’t need to write a book – the record is my autobiography”.

2009 – December On December 14 a new Pet Shop Boys EP, Christmas, is released. It includes a new version of their 1997 Christmas song, “It doesn’t often snow at Christmas”; a new version of the Yes song “All over the world” with an orchestra on it; a version of a medley that has been a highlight of the Pandemonium shows, combining “Se a vida e” with ’s “”; and two mixes of their version of Madness’s “My girl”.

2010 – February On February 15 Pandemonium, a DVD and CD of the Pandemonium tour, is released. It was filmed and recorded at Arena in London on December 21, 2009. The film is directed by David Barnard. The CD version, which includes fewer songs, has been specially mixed for this release by Stuart Price.

2010 – April On April 17, as part of the annual music business event known as Record Store Day, the Pet Shop Boys release a seven-inch single in an edition of 1000 copies. On one side is the demo of a song they gave to , “Love life”, and on other is the 2003 recording, “A powerful friend”.

2010 – June On June 26 the Pet Shop Boys appeared at the Glastonbury festival to great acclaim. “It was one of those people-as-far-back-as-you-can-see audiences,” says Neil.

2010 – October On October 24 a new Pet Shop Boys single, the rousing dance anthem “Together”, is released, produced and written with who was previously part of the team at Xenomania. “I was imagining, really, that there are two people about to have sex for the first time,” says Neil. “But it’s very revolutionary: ‘together I’ll cry with you, together I’ll die with you, together we’ll go all the way…’” It could be anything about two people. It could be Chris and I at the beginning of our writing career together, thinking we could go all the way with this. It wasn’t written as that, but it definitely could be that as well.” Its video, a drama with an Eastern European dance-off between classical and modern dance styles at its centre, is shot in Estonia. Amongst the extra tracks on the single is a cover of ’s “”, a traditional song of celebration at Chris’s hometown football team, Blackpool.

2010 – November On November 1 a new Pet Shop Boys hits compilation, Ultimate, is released. Intended as a straightforward mass market single CD collection of their most popular songs, it is also released in a version with a bonus DVD including 27 Pet Shop Boys performances at the BBC from the past 25 years, most of them filmed for Top Of The Pops, as well as their triumphant performance in the summer of 2010 at Glastonbury festival.

2010 – November On November 25 a children’s play based on a book by the author David Almond, My Dad’s A Birdman, opened at the theatre in London. It includes three songs written by Neil and Chris (two incorporating lyrics from ) and some other instrumental music. “I loved it,” says Chris. “The place was full of children all chatting away. There’s a great bit where one of the cast goes, ‘Do you think he’ll fly?’ and all the children go, ‘No.’ It was really funny.”

2011 - March On March 14 a double-CD of the music from the ballet The Most Incredible Thing is released under the name Tennant/Lowe. It contains the full performance score of the ballet with orchestrations by Sven Helbig.

2011 – March On March 17 the ballet The Most Incredible Thing has its first public performance at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. Its genesis can be traced back to a week in where, by chance, two initially unrelated events took place. Ivan Putrov, a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet whom the Pet Shop Boys had got to know through Sam Taylor-Wood, called Neil to ask whether they would write a piece for him to dance to. Two days later, before Neil had even had a chance to ask Chris, Chris called to say that he’d just read a story in a new translation of ’s tales that he thought would make a great ballet: “The Most Incredible Thing”. This eventually led to the Sadler’s Wells production, choreographed by Javier de Frutos and starring Ivan Putrov, Clemmie Sveaas and Aaron Sillis. All ten performances sell out.

2011 – May On May 27 the Pet Shop Boys appear at the , joining at their invitation as “special guests” on their first reunion concerts as a five-piece on what will be the biggest British tour ever – 29 British stadium shows – followed by a short European leg. “45 minutes of intensity,” says Chris.

2011 – December On December 31 the Pet Shop Boys appear at a New Year’s Eve concert on an island in Sydney Harbour.

2012 – February On February 6 a new Pet Shop Boys album, Format, is released, a collection of b-sides and bonus tracks from the years 1996 to 2009. (As such, it is a sequel to Alternative.) Chris noticed the word that became its title on the side of a large industrial shed somewhere in Scandinavia; the album does, of course, gather together songs that were released on the various ever-changing single formats over these years. “If you compare it with Alternative, I think the quality is as high, if not higher sometimes,” says Neil.

2012 - March On March 25 a revised version of the ballet The Most Incredible Thing begins its second run at Sadler’s Wells before two performances in Austria.

2012 – April A previously unreleased Pet Shop Boys song, “Listening”, appears on the album Out Of My Hands, by the former A-ha singer , after they had been approached and asked to contribute to his record. “When we wrote it we didn’t think it was very Pet Shop Boys, although we liked it,” says Neil. “So we sent it to him.”

2012 – June On June 6, a video for a new song, “Invisible”, appears on the official Pet Shop Boys website and many other websites. “We just wanted to surprise people with a new song that gives them a taste of our new album and a video which really illustrates the song,” says Neil. The video is by Los Angeles-based artist, Brian Bress and a version of it, with no sound, was originally shown at his show in a Los Angeles gallery earlier in the year.

2012 – September On September 10, a new Pet Shop Boys album, Elysium, is released. It has been recorded in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year and is produced with Andrew Dawson whose work the Pet Shop Boys first noticed on ’s album 808s and Heartbreak. “I think some people thought when we were going to Los Angeles to work with Andrew Dawson that we were going to record a hip hop album,” says Neil, “but it’s still very much a Pet Shop Boys album. It’s got a lot of depth, that’s what I think about it. It’s got a lot of truth. It’s really about negotiating life at our age.”