interviewsofrecordingartists.com
When Neil Tennant met Chris Lowe for the first time in August 1981, their chance meeting was the beginning of an artistic relationship which has now lasted two decades. As the Pet Shop Boys, the dynamic duo of pop and electronic dance music, Tennant and Lowe are today, credited with innovating the world of both pop and dance music on an international level. Best known for their international smash hit "West End Girls" in 1984, the duo is now venturing into various recording projects for future album releases.
In addition, Tennant currently is involved in producing a musical titled "Closer To Heaven" which recently opened in London. Neil Tennant is always controversial, never dull and constantly looking ahead of the curve to start the next episode in either the music, art or European dance club scene and now theater, Neil Tennant is, a man who is creating art for the New Millennium.
(Q)- Why do you personally feel so many people around the world relate to Pet Shop Boys music and especially their classic hit singles from the '80's?
Neil Tennant- I think there's various reasons. I mean, the major musical reasons, you write the melodies, you write the words and then you create the sounds. All three together then you write then rhythm. Technically, pop music also reminds you of when you where you were the moment when the first time you heard the song. So, technically, pop music is a really important thing because, it's the soundtrack to people's lives. And we like to be reminded of different moments in our lives. And also, classical pop music, just dates the way people look at their world and also people themselves, their age and the way they had fun back whenever they were younger. I can listen to a Beatles record and get the same feeling that I did when I was a kid on holiday.
(Q)- Do you feel in the early '80's, Pet Shop Boys were ahead of the curve and thus, their music has sustained popularity?
Neil Tennant- Yes. I think we came onto the scene at a stage where we started mixing pop music with dance music and rock music. So, we were the start of a new wave of music. One where we doing that and also the way we presented it was very different then other people who were the popular recording artists of the era, who were much more elaborate looking. We had this spacey minimalist style, which kind of prefigured everything that began to happen later on in the '90's. The mixture of dance music and pop music then, it was an obsession was about to begin, which I think still continues right through the '80's, the '90's into today. I think we were in those two areas ahead of the curve as you might say. Also, I will say we have our own timeless way of saying things that is sort of unique and all our own. When you hear a song like, "What Have I Done To Deserve This", it sounds like a Pet Shop Boys (song) title. And we still have that way of taking very normal, everyday speech and life and then put it against a big sort of musical background with a very strong dance beat. That's important. I think people see their lives reflected in that (songwriting process) but also it's in a very heightened kind of way. So it has a quality about it (the songs) that takes life and then kind of bends it. It's like a musical version of theater. It does more then represent an era, it heightens the emotion of it.
(Q)-What is your next studio album of original material about? Will there be more dance oriented music?
Neil Tennant- I've got a new album coming out next March which is a very different start for us. It is very melodic, sort of beautiful if I want to use a single word to define it. Sort of like The Pet Shop Boys meet Bob Dylan. There will be a lot of melodic sounds. It's very different sound from the Pet Shop Boys of the past era. It's not dance music.
(Q)- What have been your priorities outside of The Pet Shop Boys currently?
Neil Tennant- I just opened a musical in a theater in London called, "Closer To Heaven", which we've been working on. It's at a little theater in London and it's all set in a (night) club and it's different because, when you think of musicals now a days, you tend to think of big spectacles big productions, or they're based on a famous book. This is something that is different. It's a contemporary drama, set to contemporary music. We set it in a club because it's a very useful environment which lends itself well to a certain kind of music. It's interesting because it's unlike anything else that's going on in London (theatre) currently. It's getting positive as well as negative reactions. People either love it or hate it. It is a strong piece about a love story set against the drug culture of (night) clubbing which is very big right now in England right now, especially among some of the high profile people. No matter if people like it or not, clubbing has a very strong drug culture around it. And, some people just don't want to see that. Some people think it moralizes, they don't like the moralizing, I think it just shows you like it is.
(Q)- What do you mean?
Neil Tennant- The first part is very hedonistic and it's very fun and the second half of the show, everything goes horribly wrong. I think what is happening is that people(audiences and/or the critics) would be happier if the play just carried on with the hedonistic thing. People don't want to think about the drug taking that's going on in Britain right now.
(Q)-You mean around the (night) clubbing and dance scene throughout London?
Neil Tennant- Yes. There is a lot of denial in London right now about the drug taking going on in London and in England as well and it surrounds the clubbing scene. It's very difficult to criticize the drug taking thing that's going on right now. Actually it's become rather weird, because some people are actually saying that we've (the play) is moralizing. And, we're not moralizing, we're just saying that this is how it is and this is what happens. It's a formula, if you act a certain way, then people think it should be kept private.
(Q)- So even in the current era of London clubbing and even with the highly publicized celebrity clubbing scene, people are in denial about the consequences many individuals (celebrities or common folk) face from living a lifestyle of hedonistic excess in the trendy fashionable, expensive night clubs of London? As well as the illegal rave parties? There is still, among the whole clubbing scene which is in London and yet found throughout urban cities in England, a strong sense of denial as to how far gone the drug taking has become?
Neil Tennant- Yes I think so. Actually there's a key song in the musical and it's called, "In Denial". (he laughs). We live in a very strong drug taking culture and it's very difficult for people to face up to the fact that, a lot of dance music is drug culture. Which is there to orchestrate your ecstasy high, or whatever it is you take while you're in that dance scene and out clubbing. People (In those circles) don't necessarily ignore the reality of that either. Although, people don't like to ignore the fact that very often, dance culture is drug culture. Not, always, but very often it is. I think we often deny what a problem it is. I think there is a strong denial in England about the drug culture around clubbing. But the reality is all too often tolerated. And, that's what the musical tries to do. It tries to confront that reality. And, that doesn't sit well with quite a few people in England at this time.
(Q)- In your opinion are people today still too sex obsessed, in both in England as well as North America? If it be straight, gay, or lesbian?
Neil Tennant- Yes, I do think our society places too much emphasis on people's sexuality, whatever that may be. Especially in England. I think in the centuries to come, people will look back on this era as we do now on Oscar Wilde onward and say, 'Wasn't it insane that they did all of this and they created an order by which people were labeled as gay, straight bi, or whatever? And I think we're moving towards a situation where we can start to understand that.
(Q)- What is the point?
Neil Tennant- The point is, firstly society is more acceptable of gay people then it has been in the past few years. But at the same time, accepting and gay artists, also limits them. It assumes that, because of someone's sexuality, that they live a certain lifestyle and a certain way of life. The reason for that is because the gay issue came out of political reaction of the oppression of homosexuals through the laws and attitudes that society had originally erected and then a gay culture built up striving to get civil rights. And now a days it is assumed that, if people are gay (or lesbian) that their sexuality defines their life.
(Q)- To you, is there still in England (as well as the western world) still too much sexual stereotyping?
Neil Tennant- Yes. Of course there is.
(Q)- Is a personal goal of yours for there to be no longer stereotyping of gay and lesbian people, because of their sexuality?
Neil Tennant- Yes. We are moving beyond gay to a kind of situation where, as civil rights are achieved, we don't like the stereotypes that people are using to define themselves and their sexuality. Sexuality is only one part of our lives. You and I might not share sexuality but we might both like the next album by the same band. And that is what is the impetus. What would happen if you put together a lineup of out, gay artists to see if there'd be such a thing as 'gay' music. Because there isn't really. What you do get is, get a series of very strong individual performers and then compare their music and see if there is such a thing as 'gay' music. And the thing is, there isn't really, what you get is a series of very strong individual performers, possibly with a kind of 'outsider' quality about them. But they are not gay artists, they are artists who might be gay, who are playing their own music. That to me within that, there is a diversity and it to me, that diversity is a very important thing. This is about evaluating what it means to be gay and that maybe it doesn't mean as much as what some people think it does. The reason there has been such a fuss is that there are laws against being gay, there is violence, prejudice, hatred, then we could move into a situation, where it doesn't matter. But people make it into something by making it into something and then voicing and legislating their hatred. If we only get to the place where there are not laws against being gay (or lesbian). That is what created 'gay' in the first place. And, as we move beyond that, the gay thing will change and it will be a fuss about nothing. People will just live their lives and there won't be all of this time spent guessing about others sexuality. But, anyway whenever you do have problems of people who are against sexuality in the first place, they actually have problems with their own sexuality, or just with sexuality in the first place.
(Q)-What are your feelings about your own sexuality and the way it has affected the Pet Shop Boys and your career?
Neil Tennant- People recently have accused Pet Shop Boys and me in particular with having being, "To gay." And that irks me, because it's like this attitude of,'We don't care what you do, just don't frighten the horses.' But I think that you've got to express what you are as a person as well as who you are through being an artist as well. And I think that people saying that I'm, 'Too gay', in that respect, then, I think you've got a problem with people finding ways to express who they themselves are as well. Because in England (or the western world) no one is ever been accused with being too heterosexual as. You ought to be able to express yourself as an artist or a songwriter regardless of your sexuality.
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