Neil plays in a group in Newcastle called Dust: Their most popular song is a preposterous affair he has written called “Can you hear the dawn break?”. They are heavily influenced by The Incredible String Band. “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”.
Chris Heath interviews Neil and Chris for Smash Hits—one of their earliest major magazine interviews. Later the Boys watch the BPI Awards on TV, followed by dinner and a visit to a London dance club where they persuade the DJ to play an acetate of their new dance mix of ‘Love Comes Quickly.’
The Boys receive the ‘Best Single of 1986’ award from BPI for ‘West End Girls.’ After the show, Neil (but not Chris) poses for a backstage group photo with a number of major artists, including Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, and the Bangles, among others.
The Nightlife Tour performance this evening in Dortmund, Germany, is filmed for eventual release as Montage.
Neil and Chris finish their demo of ‘Girls Don’t Cry’ and record Neil’s vocals for ‘Fugitive.’
They complete their preliminary demo work for ‘Invisible.’
Chris and Neil are in Berlin, where they work in the studio on a new song titled ‘Former Children’ (later to be retitled ‘Gramophone’).
Quite unexpectedly, without any advance fanfare, the Pet Shop Boys release on YouTube a ‘home demo’ of a brand new song, ‘Living in the Past,’ inspired by the unveiling in Volgograd, Russia only a week before of a monument to Joseph Stalin.