LOS ANGELES

The pet Shop Boys were accompanied by journalist and friend Jon Savage. This is his account.
November 5th, 1990. The Arsenic Hall Show is shot in a large studio - much bigger than say, Top of the Pops - at the far North Western corner of what is a very big studio site, the old Paramount Pictures lot. This is on Melrose Avenue in what is called Old Hollywood - the area slightly south and east at Hollywood's current center - in which all the studios just built their production facilities in the twenties. In Britain Arsenio Hall is best known [or his role alongside Eddie Murphy in the film Coming To Amnesiac In America, hall is to Johnny Carson what Jonathan Ross is to Terry Wagon: the young. "hipper" pretender to the chat show throne. Broadcast five nights a week. All year round, The Arsenio Hall Show has regular ratings of between 20 and 25 million: not bad in a country of 280 million, It's a very useful show for the Pet Shop Boys to appear on, at this early stage in their American campaign.
Al about 6pm the show gets underway. Like any long standing program. 'Arsenio Hall" has its own in jokes and call signs: apart from the fact that he is black and mildly risqué. Hall's main trademark is leading the audience in a noise that is supposed to resemble a dog yelping. All the following events are interact with the weird sound of the 300 strong audience whooping like coyotes The Pet Shop Boys are sandwiched between interviews which Hall conducts with other TV stars, First on are Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker who play the married couple in LA Law and, yes, they're married in real life- The interview went according to script: you can imagine the questions and answers. And then, with their "synth pop sound", (Arsenio manages to sound quite enthusiastic). the Pet Shop Boys sing their first hit 'West End Girls".
Neil and Chris stand right at the back or the stage in front of a huge bank of video monitors playing a specially-edited sequence from their videos: the best bit is where Neil dissolves into the manhole in the first Opportunities" video. Neil is very much the Englishman in Hollywood, smartly dressed in a suit, while Chris is wearing his infamous, Michiko inflatable rubber jacket. Everything looks fantastic in the studio - smart and futuristic -which means it will probably look even better when we see it five hours later on transmission. It does.
During the time left for the ad break. The studio group - who if left to their own devices would be playing jazz/rock fusion - "vamp" on the bass line from "West End Girls", Arsenio interviews another TV star, this time Joan Chen from Twin Peaks, and manages to sound like a completely different person. And then, "back with their new smash single, are the Pet Shop Boys with 'So Hard"' Fired by Arsenio's enthusiasm, which, to the audience, seems to go beyond the call of duty, twenty or so hard-core PSB fans - a mixture of Asians whites and Latinos - Stan to go menial, a pleasurable state which they keep up for the whole performance. The TV backdrop is the same, the sound isn't quite as good. But the audience arc more fired up: some of them so much that, squealing, they perform death-defying feats of driving to chase the PSB limousine the tenor so miles to Neil and Chris' next Function.
This is a very relaxed interview at La's best dance radio station, Power 106. Everybody makes a lot of noise on air, munching tortilla chips and drinking from cans. Chris steals the show, when in answer to the pertinent question "Who is the bossiest out the Pet Shop Boys?", he retorts: "Who is the sexiest, you mean!".
November 6th. Really "breaking" America means that you have to stand around in stockrooms, like this one at Warehouse Records, on Sunset iii the center of Hollywood, smile a lot, and say this sort of thing to video cameras: "Hi, we're the Pet shop Boys and we'd like to say thanks to all the staff at Warehouse Records for selling our records this Christmas and New Year". There is good news: although "So Hard" is stalled at 72 in the singles charts. Behavior is straight in the LP charts at 77, a high placing for the first week, Security at the store is tight - everybody is talking about the recent. Infamous Depeche Mode signing where the crowd was so intense that the group had lobe rescued by helicopter but a crowd of about 250 is as orderly as it is varied. It's a cross section of the P513 core US audience: arty white synth pop fans, Asians, Latinos, a few gays. -They all bring different objects to be signed: tickets 10 Arsenjo Hall, copies of "So Hard", a huge Introspective store display. One fan brin~ almost every record the PSB's have made, including German 12" singles Neil and Chris can hardly remember. Although the rules" (not made by the PSB's) state that you can only have one object signed, Neil and Chris sign about 12 Of these rare items before the ran is bundled away by security guards 9pm.
Downtown LA is odd enough - a scaled down 'version of 1910's Manhattan transplanted 10 the West Coast, where it does not fit - but the Mayan Theater is beyond. According to Charles Moore's great architectural guide to LA, the Mayan Theater 'explodes with enthusiastic pre-Colombian exaggerations. The auditorium is overwhelming: flanking the stage are enormous fragments or primitive walk that are made of tremendous cut stones". On either side of the stage is an images of a distinctly cruel Mayan God. Looking down on the auditorium Impatiently.
Built in 1927, in the same flourish that created the infamous Grumman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the Mayan has seen hard times until recently reincarnated as a fashionable night club, a purpose for which its hallucinatory interior provides the perfect setting. There are ghosts here. On either side or the stage, male and female go-go dancers gyrate above a powerful white light: the railed off dance floor area in front of the stage is packed with the curious and the Fanatical.
The Pet Shop Bays have decided to play a concert here in Los Angeles 'for a laugh", and to create excitement about Behavior and next year's tour. It is the Pet Shop Boys' first full concert in the US. DJ Frankie Knuckles spins the brand new. David Morales mix of "So Hard", the minimal beat of which sounds fantastic in this cavernous temple. Suddenly. The Pet Shop Boys are on-stage: on The left, two female singers, two black dancers - Casper and Hugo from The 1989 tour - and on The right, back stage Dominic Clarke The computer programmer. Neil is stage center. Dressed in white Levies, a striped shirt, and a wasted. Almost hunting jacket. The Englishman abroad. On The right, Chris is wearing a coat spotted by Peter Andrea's and Steve Davison a trip to notorious Venice Beach- a huge baggy thing, with 'Fido Dido' designs all over it. With his super short haircut, it looks amazing. They launch into "Left To My Own Devices" and The very mixed audience erupts. The night is a big success.

BRUCE WEBER

The Pet Shop Boys first asked photographer and film maker Bruce Weber if he would make a video with them a couple of years ago when "Domino Dancing" was Corning out. They met him in New York whilst recording demos with Liza Minnelli. At the time he was keen, but too busy; he was working on his second documentary film, Let's Get Lost, (a Film about the late jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. His first film was about boxing, Broken Noses).
At the end of last year they bumped into his producer at Liza Minnelli's anniversary party and the producer reaffirmed that Bruce was interested. As we wrote Being Boring! we thought of Bruce Weber to make the video", remembers Neil "because we thought it would fit his style His work has this innocent quality and you also never know whether it's in the past or the present It has this timelessness." It was to be Bruce Weber's first video- They discussed some ideas over the phone.
Chris just said " I wanted it to he sexy - he laughed at that!' and Neil told him about the Zelda Fitzgerald quote that had inspired him It was filmed in one day at he beginning of October in a house in Long Island, just out side New York: Bruce Weber chose long Island because of its associations with Zelda and Scott F Fitzgerald. Bruce Weber had explained his idea of a wonderful party: he said be didn't want it to be street because he looked at MTV and everything was street and he thought it was corny He wanted it to be like this beautiful fantasy". When the Pet Shop Boys turned up they felt quite intimidated, all these beautiful people running around in towels.
(The cast were people Bruce Weber was friends with. Or knew the girlfriends or boyfriends of, or bad photographed before. They included Neneb Cherry's half-brother. Ex-TV presenter Eagle Eye, and Robert de Niro's daughter). Originally the video begun with everyone on the stairs with their eyes closed and Neil saying to the camera the Zelda Fitzgerald quote she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn't "need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted go do".
It turned out to be too complicated so the video eventually began with a handwritten message (written by one or Bruce Weber's friends) based on things Neil has said, reading I come from Newcastle in the North of England. We used to have lots of parties where everyone got dressed up. And on one party invitation was the quote "she was never bored because she Was never boring". The song is about growing up -the ideals that you have when you're young and how they turn out. The Pet Shop Boys" The video, of which Neil and Chris &e very proud, is, Neil observes, "in a way the video of the first verse or the song".
Literally talked to Bruce Weber about it.

What did you know about Pet shop Boys?
I'd listened to the music for a long time and I'd always loved it, because it always took me to another place. I think my images of them was that they were not just singers and songwriters hut had a kind of artful attitude about what they did. And I liked their charm and enthusiasm. I remember hearing "west End Girls" and I just loved that song so much. You know?

What had you deduced from their videos and photographs?
They were kind of my stenos. They always reflected to me a lot or the attitudes that were happening on the streets in England. I always feel that being on the street in London was a real inspirational place and they represented a lot of those feelings. You thought they need very English? Yes

What about them seen Like that ?
Oh... you know... (laughs)... they like black. What did you-a when you fin' met them? I thought they had to be great because they had that sensibility, and they were. You meet a lot or musicians and they're so chatty about themselves, and they weren't. They were really interested in what I thought Usually when you meet musicians to talk about a video they just care about what they think. What they're going to look like Exactly.

Why had you not done a video before?
Time and circumstance, and I also fell that I really wanted to fall in love with a song. Because t knew I was going to have to listen to it about a million times (laughs). I got the tape and I loved it; I had an immediate reaction to it. I thought it had a lot of musicales and a lot to say, I loved the lyrics and really felt that it was something I wanted to be part of.

Before you discussed it with them, what did you pick up that the song was about?
The feeling that times are different today, and that feeling of abandoned we can't have today because of the way the world is the whole sexual thing with AIDS, the feeling of different groups around the world trying to ban a lot of visual things. The world's really different from the times I think Neil and Chris are writing and singing about in the song. We talked about the lyrics and talked about (laughs) having a party, you know. r really wanted to show what the kind of panics were like that I used to go to- We found a house where the owner wasn't there much, and I think the man not being there gave a spirit of when I'd go to friends houses and we'd stay for two days. I wanted to give something like that back to a lot of kids who couldn't really do what I did when I was that age.

You'd got to parties like the one in the video?
Yeah! I used to have a lot of, you know, eccentric friends. And I was really inspired by the attitude of the way parties were in European films when I was growing up, he kind of things where people would stay for days. In American films they were always like a huge fraternity party but in French and Italian films... That sort of beautiful overindulgence? Right. And I really felt the song was about that loss of abandoned, and that fear of indulgence that is so prevalent now. We have to behave differently now. But we can't be afraid to look at things and to dream and he transported.

Why were there annual's there?
In certain films especially French films of Renoir - there was always a country animal brought as a pet. Like in he Bertolucci film where Dominique Sandra comes into the house on a horse. t always loved animals in houses, especially animals that don't really belong in houses. I kind of love the fantasy of it.

In the video are we Supposed to see Neil and Chris as fitting into the party, or are they observing It from the inside?
I always felt when I met then that they were like London kids on the street and I fell that no matter how old they are, or will be, they'll always have that wonderful child attitude about the way they see things. So it was really a little bit about the way I fell they see things. It was a little bit from their mind: "is the party really happening?" "who's upstairs in the bubble bath?" "who's in the bedroom?" "are the dancers really here?" "or are we sleeping on the staircases?

You tried to get Chris to dance, didn't you?
Yeah, And I saw him dance and he got real shy. It's kind or refreshing, because most musicians are desperate to be in every scene of their video. Also, a lot of rock Stan and pop stars do videos and never talk to the kids in them: they show up and are escorted in by a bodyguard and do a scene then go back to the trailer. Neil and Chris were banging out.

Is it frustrating 'making something a video -that is by its very nature a slave to the music?.
I think if I got a chance to do another I would talk to the people I was making it with and see if I could use the format of the music in a slightly different way. Maybe in the future people will say "come into the studio whilst we're recording this song", or even that a song might be written for a specify video. At the moment you are a slave to the music, but if you like the song that's airtight. And I really love the song.