History

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”.

On February 4 Neil appears on the long-running BBC radio programme, Desert Island Discs, now in its 65^th 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 and DVD projector with a huge box of DVDs.

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 Justin Timberlake respectively. They do not attend.

On February 26 the Killers’ 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’.”

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.

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.

On October 23 Robbie Williams’ Rudebox 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.

On October 15 “Numb” is released as a single. The song was written by American songwriter Diane Warren 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 exit from major football tournaments … in this instance, the World Cup. The Pet Shop Boys’ new single edit was partly inspired by the way the BBC had edited the song.

On October 23 the live album Concrete is released. It documents a one-off concert at London’s Mermaid Theatre 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”), Rufus Wainwright (“Casanova in hell”) and Frances Barber (“Friendly Fire”). It features the BBC Concert Orchestra and a band led by Trevor Horn that included Anne Dudley, Steve Lipson and Lol Creme. Opera singer Sally Bradshaw also reprises her vocal from the original album version of “Left to my own devices”.

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 Channel 4 on May 24, and which included interviews with Robbie Williams, Jake Shears, Tim Rice-Oxley, Brandon Flowers, 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.