Neil Tennant Quotes

1. That was a brilliant thing, because if you were bi-curious - as many people are, without having to be completely homosexual - it was great, because when you released people from having to define themselves sexually, much more interesting things happened.  



2. We've been working on a new album, which is going to come out next spring, which is very different, a change of style for us - it's going to be almost like rock music.

3. I think it proves that being gay isn't a cultural choice, which means you've got to like Barbra Streisand records. You can be what you want to be.


4. They've pursed their own agendas, and they've done what they've wanted to do and not pursued traditional careers in the music industry. They've followed their own instincts, and they are in many ways maverick performers.

5. Loosely translated, Wotapalava means "what a fuss about nothing." The idea of the tour was to do a gay Lollapalooza. The title reflects our attitude on sexuality, which at the end of the day is a lot of fuss about nothing.

6. The first song is called "London". It's about two Russian soldiers who desert the Russian army and escape to London, where they indulge in a life of crime.

7. He also meets a young drug dealer called Mile End Lee, and finally his girlfriend discovers Dave having sex with Mile End in the club toilet.

8. We hope we are moving toward a world where sexual orientation is not an issue, because we hate the idea of a gay ghetto. I think that it's a real shame that people become restricted by their sexuality or define their whole lives by their sexuality.

9. The idea of gay with a capital G is a bit past itself. Gay seems, dare I say naff, a bit old-fashioned. 






10. It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.

11. When we did concerts, we wanted them to be theatrical events - collaborations with designers, choreographers, and directors - because we thought traditional rock concerts were boring.

12. She's a very charismatic character, and she holds the whole play together.

13. The idea of "gay" - it's a big subject. To me, it's like a '70s response to political repression; as political equality is achieved, the idea of "gay" should evaporate. I'm always very suspicious of gay communities or communities based on people's ethnic origins or what have you. 

14. At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.

15. We've been using rock drum samples, rock guitar samples, rye been playing the guitar, and rhythmically, the songs are more like rock. They're very, very melodic, and the songs are very beautiful.

16. We thought it would be great to see if you could put pop music back into musical theater.




17. For a while we were chasing a book by Graham Greene to do "Brighton Rock" as a musical. We didn't get the rights, so we decided to create something from scratch, with Jonathan. By that time, we were big fans of his work.

18. "Closer to Heaven" is about a boy who comes from Ireland, 'cause he's bored there and maybe he's running away from something.

19. I didn't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a mustache - that's what you had to do, and everyone did.

20. I'm always uneasy with messages. I think if there is a message, it's about taking control of your life. Not becoming a victim. Be true to yourself. In essence it's about love in the drug culture.

21. An issue I've had is: is it possible to be a pop star without selling sex? And ultimately I think to have mass selling pop music it is not possible to do it without selling sex. That's why I think we're not as successful as I think our music could be.

22. She's been a smack addict, she's had big success in Europe in the '70s, and she's lost everything. She's been rediscovered in the '80s, and as we meet her she's just about to sign a new recording contract.





23. We do politics through satire. I think when you get activist pop, that's the problem. I think there's only been one successful activist pop song, which is "Free Nelson Mandela", because I think it did a great pop thing - it made Nelson Mandela famous.

24. He comes to London and gets a job in a nightclub, a gay club, where he's known as Straight Dave by the bar staff - and no one believes he's as straight as he claims to be. He meets the daughter of the club manager, and he has an affair with her.

25. I think there's an element where people get very comfortable in their ghetto. Which is fair enough.




26. If not for hatred, I wouldn't be doing what I do now. I became a pop star because I hated football at school. I hated that whole attitude of being one of the crowd. Becoming a pop star was my revenge. Revenge for being bad at football. For not being athletic. For being mocked.

27. On my own lyrics, John Betjeman and T.S. Eliot are always quite a strong influence.





28. When I was I younger I didn't want to be gay. Not because I was scared of the sexual thing; I didn't want to be a clone. Now this was in the late '70s.

29. That's the thing about negative energy, about hatred. It can be positive. It throws into relief all the things you know you like. It tells you, by elimination, what you're about. Sometimes you can only define yourself by what you hate. Hatred becomes an inspiration; it makes you think: "What I'm doing now I totally believe in, and I don't care what other people say." Guided by hatred, you don't have to follow the herd.

30. In the '70s I used to like punk and new wave and I used to hate Fleetwood Mac - and over the years recently I've got to like Stevie Nicks's voice. I didn't appreciate her at the time. I still like the punk but I also like Fleetwood Mac. We like women with a lot of star quality.

31. I hate the way people all like the same things at the same time. I've never understood it. When people are told about Coke - "It's the real thing" - they should think: "No, it's a hideous soft drink that is fantastically unhealthy to drink, full of sugar that turns into glucose that turns into fat." They should look around America and think: "God, there are so many fat people here! Why? Because they all eat hamburgers and drink cola." And they should hate the people who represent that. They should hate Michael Jackson for trying to foist Pepsi onto them, to make them fat victims of their own society. They should hate more. Hate Pepsi, hate Coca-Cola, hate Michael Jackson. Hate George Bush. And think about the alternatives. That's another good thing about hatred. It makes you think about the alternatives. 

32. A lot of what used to be known as gay culture - broadly speaking, homoeroticism and being camp - has been brought into mainstream culture. I think we should be moving to an era where it's just sex.

33. Of course, these days it's more fashionable to be positive. I hate positivity. The problem with positivity is that it's an attitude that's decidedly about lying back, getting screwed, and accepting it. Happily. It's totally apolitical. It's very, very personal and one-on-one. It's not about changing society, it's about caring about yourself. In fact, it's totally about ignoring one's economic role in society, and so it works in favor of the system. Just look at work years of personal consciousness theories have given us: those icons of the status quo, George Bush and John Major.

34. We shouldn't feel restricted by our sexuality, and our sexuality doesn't have to be a cultural choice. That's an amazing variety of music within those five main performers.


35. It's totally ghetto, and it smacks to me of what they used to say in the British empire: "Divide and rule." I'm totally suspicious of it; I think we should be one community.

36. There's also a subplot about a guy who manages pop groups. Dave is a very ambitious boy, and he gets offered an audition but only wants to do it on his terms and conditions. He wants to maintain his integrity.

37. Positivity is fundamentally middle-class. It's about having the time, the space and the money to sort out where your head is at. Therapy is just another side of positivity. It's a leisure activity, a luxury for people who don't have any real cares. It's new age selfishness, the new way of saying that charity begins at home.

38. Because some people have sex with people of the same sex, an entire culture has been created, broadly speaking, out of oppression. Which in a rational world would not be an issue.

39. And positivity makes the world stay the same. Hatred is the force that moves society along, for better or for worse. People aren't driven by saying: "Oh wow, I'm at peace with myself." They're driven by their hatred of injustice, hatred of unfairness, of how power is used.

40. The big gay clubs like Heaven started having mixed nights in the late '80s.

41. To a certain extent, this tour is a celebration of individuality and that you can invent and reinvent yourself. You should have the power to be able to do that. Sexuality is a part of that. It should release you. It doesn't have to be an issue. It shouldn't box you in.



42. That's as true for pop music as it is for politics. I always feel the reason so much music comes out of Britain is because there's so much hatred. You see or hear something and grow envious. Whereas if your positive reaction is: "Wow, that's great," you just sit back and think how great it is and you don't do anything. You relax.

43. Since we started, Chris and I had theatrical ambitions.

44. Luckily, I've never been a very relaxed person. When I look at pop music, I immediately hate things. I look at singers who say they are taking two years off to work for charity when, in fact, they'll spend two years working on their album, and I hate them. Right now I really hate performers who make a big deal out of playing benefits and donating the proceeds from the sales of their records to charities. They could give plenty of money to charities and not tell anyone, but instead, they cash in on the fact. That's not charity, it's marketing. It's about selling albums under the guise of a moral imperative. They say they're trying to raise consciousness, as if being a celebrity gives them power and endows them with the answers to the world's problems. But really they just want to be seen as heroes. I think it's breathtakingly cynical and I hate it.

45. I think we've come a long way since then. The big thing that changed was when ecstasy came along in Britain.

46. Another thing I hate, and another inspiration for what the Pet Shop Boys do, is the way people misunderstand pop culture. It annoys me that after more than twenty-five years, Top of the Pops, Britain's most important pop-music TV program, changed the rules so that you have to sing live. Why? Because the people in control are the kind of conservatives who think that in the '60s, everything was much more talented than they are now. It's all about Rolling Stone rock culture, which is essentially a fear of the new. Rolling Stone's idea of a musician is Jerry Garcia, from the 60s. Look at all the "new" artists - Curtis Stigers, Michael Bolton, Lenny Kravitz - all of them living in the past. I think you have to live in the future. Or at least in the present.

47. We decided we didn't want to do a musical for TV because the idea of writing a musical that would be seen on television once seems insane.

48. The Pet Shop Boys have always hated most of the prevailing attitudes and tried to do the opposite. Our hatred of what other people do has always helped us redefine our actions. To hate a lot of things is tantamount to really caring about others. If you like everything, you deal with nothing. When people hear Chris and me talking, they're sometimes shocked by how negative we are. We're constantly critical of everything, including ourselves. But I come from a generation that liked its artists to say what was wrong with our lives. I retain the old-fashioned belief that pop music is meant to be a challenge to society as well as an affirmation of it. And so I consider it my duty to hate things.


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