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”.
The exact publication date seems lost, but sometime this month (though it’s dated the following month, February) the debut issue of Star Hits, the U.S. spinoff from the U.K. Smash Hits, appears on the newstands. It includes an interview, conducted the preceding November, by pre-stardom Neil Tennant with new-stardom Madonna, who at the time of their meeting had only one major hit single to her credit, ‘Holiday.’ (By the time of publication, she’d earned one more, ‘Lucky Star.’)
Billboard magazine runs a brief article that announces the upcoming new Pet Shop Boys album (Release) but points out that they don’t yet have a U.S. distribution label for it.
Neil is interviewed (over the phone) by Nicki Chapman on BBC Radio 2 this morning, during which he briefly discusses their upcoming album Hotspot and premiers their new single, ‘Monkey Business.’