History

On October 23 the Pet Shop Boys are presented with the World Arts Award 2003 by former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Hamburg “for their extraordinary dedication to art, their social engagement and their unique contribution to popular music as well as their overall patronage of the arts.” In his acceptance speech, Neil quotes Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Gorbachev’s daughter tells them afterwards that she used to play their music when she was growing up in the Kremlin.

On September 7 the Pet Shop Boys headline the Rock’n’Coke Festival in Turkey, wearing one-off glam outfits made especially for the occasion. 

On June 2 the Pet Shop Boys remix of Yoko Ono’s “Walking On Thin Ice” is released, along with remixes by Danny Tenaglia, Felix Da Housecat and FKEK . It reaches number one in the American Billboard Club Play chart. 

The Pet Shop Boys remix of “Hooked On Radiation”, a single by Atomizer (Fil OK and Johnny Slut, who run London’s premiere electroclash night Nag Nag Nag) is released in a limited edition of 500 copies on the Pet Shop Boys’ Olde English Vinyl label. It is subsequently re-released on International DJ Gigolo records. “That’s enough for me,” says Chris. “We’ve had a record on Bobby O’s label and one on Gigolo and that’s enough really.”

The Pet Shop Boys’ second Kiki Kokova record, a cover of Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You, Baby”, is also released as a limited edition of 500 copies on the Pet Shop Boys’ Lucky Kunst label. It is the second Kiki Kokova orgasm in an ongoing series. (Sam Taylor Wood sung the lyric four or five times but performed this latest orgasm only once. “We’re kind of used to it now,” says Neil.) 

On February 3 the Pet Shop Boys release the latest in their intermittent series of dance albums, Disco 3. It combines some more rhythmic mixes of songs on Release with a number of the more dance-oriented songs they have recorded but not yet released over the same period, and new versions of two of songs they recently recorded for their John Peel session which seemed in keeping: their 1983 song “If looks could kill” and their cover of “Try it (I’m in love with a married man)”. Its sleeve, a view of London and the Thames at night, was shot by Wolfgang Tillmans. 

On February 22 the Pet Shop Boys DJ in London at Arthur Baker’s Return To New York, at an event billed as a soundclash between them and New Order (represented by Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook). To New Order’s amusement, Neil and Chris don’t physically play the records themselves — they choose and sequence them, and their programmer Pete Gleadall operates the decks — but they feel fully validated in this approach when Arthur Baker tells them that this was exactly how Afrika Bambaataa used to do it. 

On October 2, the Pet Shop Boys record their first ever session for John Peel’s Radio One show, broadcast later this month, following an invitation offered when both they and John Peel were at the Es Sonar festival in Barcelona in the summer. As well as “London”, they decide to record some songs from the early Eighties which they have never recorded but always intended to: two of their earliest compositions (“If looks could kill” and “A powerful friend”) and a Bobby O song they have always liked, “Try it (I’m in love with a married man)”. 

On October 14 “London” is released as the third single from Release in Germany, and subsequently in some other European countries, though not in Britain. “It’s about two people deserting from the Russian army and coming to London,” says Neil. “They’re sort of good-natured, and they do just a little bit of crime every now and then when they need the money. I’m fascinated by how London is full of Russians, sometimes doing jobs other people won’t do.” The song was co-written with the Berlin-based producer Chris Zippel. Its video, shot by the renowned English photographer and filmmaker Martin Parr, intermingles footage dramatising the lyric, images of everyday London life and scenes of the Pet Shop Boys busking the song in various London locales. While filming, they are hassled by drunks in an underpass and approached politely by someone younger as they play next to the Millennium Bridge. “I just thought, as we were standing there with cameras on us and I was holding a guitar at the time,” says Neil, “that he was going to say, ‘oh, are you the Pet Shop Boys?’. In fact what he said was, ‘can you tell me where the Science Museum is, please?’ ” 

On July 15^th a new Pet Shop Boys single, “I get along” is released. “A lot of the songs on the album were inspired by things in newspapers at the time,” says Neil, “and this was the time when Peter Mandelson, who was then Northern Ireland secretary, was sacked from the government, or forced to resign, in fact, from the government. And I took the story of that and just turned it into a sort of love song, about the breakdown of a relationship. It’s sung from Tony Blair’s point of view: this person has finally had to go from his life because they’re too unreliable and they let you down. I always think you have the feeling that the person singing ‘I get along…’ can’t get along without the other person.” Typically, this sentiment is set to one of the Pet Shop Boys’ most uplifting tunes. Chris remembers that in the studio Neil wrote the verse then said it needed a chorus, so Chris said ‘Oh, it obviously needs a big Seventies terrace anthem type of thing going on’ ” and immediately played what would become the chorus. “A scarf-waver,” says Chris.