You think you’re mad too unstable
Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant in a West end town
The former Smash Hits writer and his pal gave their song ‘West End Girls’ a second shot at success 30 years ago today. (yes. Thirty. Years. Ago.) kicking off a fabulous career on pop’s merry-go-round. With that wonderful opening couplet sung in Tennant’s distinctive nasal deadpanned way that either infuriates or beguiles. Like any writer Neil knew how to kick the doors down and grab the listener’s attention from the off. The simplistic backing creates a sinister and edgy atmosphere, that jazzy sax and feale backing vocal melding with the electronic bassline. Pop music at it’s very best.
And most importantly – you can’t hear any beards
I’ve been a long time believer that music (perhaps even life) should never feature beards of any kind. Beards and sandals. And cornflakes.
It’s an interesting story how it took more than one go to make West End Girls a hit with it starting out as a US club favourite nearly 2 years before it got to number 1 in in the UK in early 1986. The first time I saw PSB was, I think, when they performed the song on Wogan! 30 years? *gulp with old face*
Here’s the original version produced by New York producer Bobby Orlando:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSEVKAKicvM
Didn’t Neil arrange the original sessions by getting a Smash Hits job to interview someone he usually wouldn’t go anywhere near in the States and then meeting Bobby O when it was done?
Indeed, one Gordon Sumner
How have i never heard this version!! Cracking stuff Mr Bisto.
He also produced the original versions of the following:
West End Girls*
One More Chance*
A Man Could Get Arrested*
Pet Shop Boys*^
Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
Later Tonight
Two Divided by Zero
I Want a Lover
It’s a Sin
Rent
I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)
Here’s his Opportunities ‘demo’
And here’s his ‘It’s A Sin’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gL2RL4-WkQ
The Imperial Phase of Pet Shop Boys. When did it end?
I am assuming we are starting with West End Girls. I would say that the release of So Hard. It’s from a great album (Behaviour) and it’s a good song, but it was the first time I had thought that maybe they had just bashed something together. So, that Imperial Phase from memory:
Albums:
Please
Disco
Actually
Introspective
Songs of the Imperial Phase
West End Girls
Love Comes Quickly
Opportunities (re-release)
Suburbia
It’s a Sin
What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Rent
Heart
It Couldn’t Happen Here
Always on my Mind
Left to my Own Devices
It’s All Right
Two Divided by Zero
Paninaro
In the Night
Kings Cross
I’m Not Scared (both versions)
Losing My Mind – Liza Minelli
At this point we get Behaviour with its opening single So Hard, which was a dip in form. But then we get the perfect Being Boring that doesn’t do so well in the charts. The kids on the street had started to move on – but they still produce brilliant stuff. Last year’s Love is a Bourgeois Construct is 100% Pet Shop Boys – defiant, funny, clever and joyful. God bless them.
You’re about right there. Discography – their first ‘hits’ album came out in 1991 and it nicely wrapped up the purple patch. Funnily enough – heresy ahoy – Being Boring never did it for me (I get why it’s good, it just never resonated with me), whilst I loved So Hard because the lyrics seemed wonderfully sharp.
Whilst from 1990ish onwards they were on the wane, they did keep things up for a bit longer. I think they can be credited for introducing the tune of ‘Go West’ to football terraces, can they?
As for after that – Bilingual didn’t set the world on fire, but i do remember being a watcher of MTV and the videos from that were, at least, getting played, and they got to appear on The Brits (along with Mrs Bowie’s young lad) which was – I think – their last brush with what you’d (generously) call The Mainstream.
It’s been good all the time, mind. God bless them indeed.
Yes there is an argument for stretching the period to Discography because I think DJ Culture and the other new song on there (I forget that one – Domino Dancing?) were definitely signs of the formula getting a bit tired. But then Very was a masterpiece.
You remember when MTV used to show music videos? Wow, dat’s old geez.
Their Imperial Phase lasted til Behaviour \ Discography and then since then often great singles but so-so LPs although ‘Electric’ and ‘Yes’ are top listens and their two Bsides comps ‘Alternative’ and ‘Format’ are great.
‘So Hard” a dip in form? Nonsense! For me it’s PSB in exelsis – a barnstorming tune and wry-and-knowing-yet-melancholy lyrics, the elements running through their DNA. The couplet “We’ve both given up smoking ‘cos it’s fatal/So whose matches are those?” in particular is an exquisite mini-vignette of betrayal.
I would definitely extend the Imperial phase past ‘Introspective’. ‘Behaviour’ is an absolute masterpiece, and ‘Very’ is also a career highlight. Of their later albums, I would suggest ‘Fundamental’ as the strongest; and of course the B-sides collections ‘Alternative’ and ‘Format’ are absolute treasure troves of brilliant material.
This is the PSB tune that gets the most play at Little Towers. Utterly joyous.
Someone had to post this…
…reading the thread above takes me back to 1987 when I first moved to London and my roommate was just starting out in the music biz. He had a job at Sarm West studios and used to come home with megamixes of the latest PSB tracks that some of the engineers had put together from the apparently marathon sessions that led to Left to My Own Devices, What Have I Done to Deserve This and It’s A Sin although my memory might be a little hazy on the chronology. He used to roll in at 4 or 5 am and put headphones on me as I slept and blast the music into my ears, then he’d get our two female flatmates up to dance around the sitting room for ages – it was compulsory! even though the rest of us had work in the morning. Happy, happy memories. He was nutty as a fruitcake but with a great work ethic. I saw him picking up a Grammy earlier this year. Living the dream…
The Pet Shop Boys made U2 tolerable. That’s real brilliance that is.
I remember when that came out. U2’s biggest fan at my school, a nasty as fuck, bullying, homophobic bastard, took extreme umbrage. “THAT SHOULDNAE BE ALLOWED” I remember him yelling in actual outrage.
God bless you Neil Tennant.
Lets not forget this forgotten classic by them either:
…What?
Try this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wqfcwgT0Ds
Wouldn’t work as usual for me either BigJimBob when I tried to post it above…
Prompted by a comment on another thread I was browsing Ruth And Martin’s Album Club and was startled by the observation that none of the great British bands of the eighties made any great music in the nineties.
Crazy, right? Then I started listing them off: New Order, The Smiths, Orange Juice, Dexys, Redskins, The Pogues, The Mary Chain, The Human League, The Wonder Stuff, The Wedding Present, The Stone Roses… and the last quality records by Happy Mondays, The Cocteau Twins and The Associates were in 1990.
Of course there are exceptions – everyone needs a copy of Dusk by The The and Apple Venus by XTC, for instance(s) – but as a reliable rule of thumb it sure beats “i” before “e” except after “c”.
Or it would do if it wasn’t for the Pet Shop Boys: 2 and a half corkers in the 80s, then another 2 and a half corkers in the nineties. Chaps!
It’s a staggeringly good song, came on the car stereo when I was on holiday and just one of those songs that sends shivers down the spine and stops me in my tracks. Very few songs can do that. It’s just the atmosphere, and the combination of that Fairlight chord sequence and wonderful bassline, and Neil having the guts to speak/sing in his own voice.