Neil Tennant

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the pet shop boy Neil Tennant. He is as untypical a pop star as you're likely to find, having hit stardom at the relatively late age of thirty and resolutely refusing to succumb to the populous packaging and promotion of a regular chart topper. West End Girls was the mould breaking single that catapulted the group to world stardom in the eighties. It sounded at the time like a classic one hit wonder.

Presenter0:53

More than twenty years later the duo has sold tens of millions of records and holds a significant place in pop history.

Presenter1:00

Since he was a child, he says he's always hated being taught what to do, and prefers to find out for himself. It's an independence of spirit that's allowed him to take creative risks and plow his own furrow in an industry famed for its disposable tendencies. Would it be fair to say, Neil, that you are known in pet shop boys' terms as the tall, less grumpy one?

Neil Tennant1:22

Um, maybe to the outside world, yes. I became a singer by accident. Um I only was the singer in the Petro Boys'Cause Chris wasn't gonna sing. Uh I remember when we when we first did the video for Western Girls, we just did what we normally did, which was I'd stride ahead and Chris walks slower than me, so and I'm slightly taller than Chris. Um so that kind of image was fixed by that I think.

Presenter1:45

When you were on Top of the Pops in those early days, I certainly remember Chris Chris Lowe, this is your partner in the Pet Shop Boys, on keyboards. Static. It appeared he was using only one finger. I don't know if he was. And there you were in your big black severe coat. I mean, it was very much against

Neil Tennant1:50

Yeah.

Neil Tennant1:56

There you were.

Presenter2:00

The trend at the time, which had been the sort of the big sound, the new romantic trend, boys in a lot of makeup and filly shirts.

Neil Tennant2:08

Yeah, we were trying to be ourselves was the idea. In the first half of the eighties, which was a great time for pop music when I I worked for a magazine called Smash It's it was very much a sort of party on and on toward the pops and it was great. Um but that phase it was coming to an end and we wanted to do something different, something that was more influenced by dance music. Our specific idea was to make dance music with kind of intelligent lyrics. In fact, if you look at the the footage now, Chris in fact is grooving quite a lot. It di I just I guess at the time it didn't really seem like that.

Presenter2:37

Yeah.

Presenter2:41

West End Girls was the big hit. Did did you think that it was going to be a big hit when you wrote it?

Neil Tennant2:47

I remember when we first recorded it in New York, playing it to.

Neil Tennant2:51

a close friend and he and he found me up and said, You know, that record could be number one and I said, Yeah, I know what you mean. I said, but it won't be though. But I know what you mean, it's sort of different, isn't it? But I mean, when you when when we first started writing Chris and I Together, we didn't really imagine we'd have success. We were just doing it'cause it was

Neil Tennant3:08

There was a thrill, you know, we s we did it for the fun of it.

Presenter3:11

This seems like a very good time then to ask you about your first record.

Neil Tennant3:14

Uh my first records is one of my first experiences of of music is we used to go on Sunday afternoons to my to my mother's um father's house, my grandfather, and he was very into um what you would now call hi-fi, or what even then you called hi-fi, and he had this big record player in a sort of like a mahogany case and

Presenter3:35

So those were stereograms, those huge things upholstered in fake wood.

Neil Tennant3:36

Yes, those huge things.

Neil Tennant3:39

And yes,'cause in those days record players were furniture, you know, and we just had a little portable um record player at that point. And the big uh you know, at the time, at th this period, everyone's parents had the soundtrack of the musical My Fair Lady. And I love the way that Rex Harrison talked and sung sort of simultaneously. And also I like the wits. It's a very, very witty musicalness, and the lyrics are really, really clever. And this is his first song, Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?

Speaker 34:08

Gone, keep her in her place.

Speaker 34:10

Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.

Speaker 34:14

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique.

Neil Tennant4:17

How to s

Speaker 34:22

If you spoke as she does sir instead of the way you do, why you might be selling flowers too.

Speaker 44:25

Why you my

Speaker 44:28

Bet your puzzle

Speaker 34:28

Your pardon? An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him. The moment he talks, he makes some other Englishman despise him.

Presenter4:37

Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins and Why Can't the English from the original sound track to My Fair Lady, and a fabulous key into your psyche and what it is about writing songs that you love. It's the it's the words and it's the lyrics and it's the the tightness that there is in that song.

Neil Tennant4:54

Yes, and the wit. Um it was cho choosing that record to play today, um, made me it never occurred to me before that that this sort of influences just seeped into my brain from listening to to something like that.

Presenter5:10

Have the words always come easy to you, I mean, were you a wordy little boy?

Neil Tennant5:15

I wasn't no, I wasn't the sort of boy that wrote poetry. I mean, I I I wrote it I wrote songs. Well, I got a guitar when I was twelve years old and I used to and I taught myself the guitar chords. And then I then I worked out how to play the guitar chords on the piano we had at home. And so I and I learnt a lot about chord changes from playing the Beatles music. And that's really and so I after a while I couldn't be bothered to play those songs, so I you know, I'd learn a new chord and I would write a song around it.

Neil Tennant5:40

But this is when I was like thirteen, fourteen.

Presenter5:42

I read that you wrote your first musical when you were nine. Is that right?

Neil Tennant5:45

Yes, but we made up the songs in our heads. Me and a girl at primary school decided we were going to do a musical. I mean, this would have been like 1963. Musicals were very hot in those days, you know. And so we wrote this musical called The Girl Who Pulled Tails, about a girl, a naughty girl who used to pull the tails of cats and how she got into trouble doing this. So it took a firm sort of moral tone. Yes, I think it did. It's a very hazy memory now. Can you remember any of the words? All I can remember is that the first song was called Has Anyone Seen My Cat? And it was a bit of Rex Harrisony. I can't really remember the words now. It was sort of Has Anyone Seen My Cat, the one with the long tail? I can't remember what went after that. There was only one performance in her back garden, and about two people came to see it and they got a bit bored halfway through, but we carried on and finished it. Did you feel the thrill of the performance as you were up there? No, I felt a slight disappointment that it wasn't quite good enough.

Presenter6:13

The can you

Presenter6:14

Redo.

Presenter6:19

And I think it's a

Presenter6:35

Did you feel the thrill of performance as you were up there?

Presenter6:41

So you were born in uh the mid fifties. You grew up on the outskirts of Newcastle?

Neil Tennant6:45

Yes, I was born in North Shields, which is uh was a sort of fishing port, still is a fishing port, um and then when I was, I don't know, six or seven, we moved to Gosforth, which is a suburb of Newcastle.

Presenter6:54

And you mentioned the piano at home. Was it was it a musical home? There was music around.

Neil Tennant6:58

Yes, there was always music from both sides of my family. And I was the end of that generation that grew up with the light programme, where you would have this mad combination of music playing. So you'd be used to hearing Frank Chaxfield and his orchestra playing Moon River or something. It and it would be followed y you know, by Jerry and the Pacemakers or or Cliff Richard or what have you. And um so there was that weird thing of easy listening and new pop music being played together.

Presenter7:26

Yeah.

Neil Tennant7:26

So your second record is

Presenter7:27

Uh

Neil Tennant7:27

My second record is for me the first pop record that really, really made me an obsessive pop fan. I mean at the time this record was so famous it was like a nursery rhyme. You'd hear children just singing it in the street. And it it's She Loves You.

Speaker 47:40

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves you, yeah.

Speaker 47:47

Yeah.

Speaker 47:52

Still think you've lost your love?

Speaker 47:55

Well I saw her yesterday, eh? It's you she's thinking of

Speaker 48:02

And she told me what to say hey She said she loves you, and you know that can

Presenter8:09

The Beatles and She Loves You from nineteen sixty three. You you mentioned listening to them on the radio. Did you watch them as well on T V?

Neil Tennant8:15

Yes, I remember we were allowed to stay up and watch them on Sunday night at the London Palladium. And on the television you could hear on the street outside the London Palladium you could hear crowds screaming. Um it was like under th the the London Palladium was under siege from Beatles fans. It's when Beatlemania, the it was the day Beetlemania started, and it was live on the television.

Presenter8:26

Uh

Presenter8:33

And it was it was a Catholic family. Was it was it a a happy family?

Neil Tennant8:37

Yes, it was. There was um I have two brothers and a sister.

Presenter8:41

What did your dad do?

Neil Tennant8:42

Uh my father was a sales rep and we used to like that'cause in the summer holidays we used to travel with him. So he'd be going down to Darlington from Newcastle and my brother Simon and I would sit in the back of the car and get driven to Darlington and wander round Darlington. We used to go out f to a sort of transport cafe or something for what I would now call lunch and um what would you have called I d I don't know. I must have called probably called it dinner then I think. It sounds all very signal.

Presenter9:04

Mm-hmm.

Neil Tennant9:05

Yeah.

Neil Tennant9:05

Yes, it was very secure. You know, you j it was just the way the world was. And we were Catholic and I was an altar boy and for, I don't know, from about the age of nine till I was about fifteen, or fourteen or fifteen, I think. And I used to go when I was at primary school, I used to go and serve at eight o'clock Mass. So at the age of nine I could me and the priest would do the whole Latin Mass in about in less than twenty minutes. And I used to like that because um you didn't have to go to school assembly when you got there. You'd take your breakfast in a little Tupperware box and while they were having the assembly I'd be having this little breakfast my mother would have made me. So you like the church?

Neil Tennant9:42

I've always been interested in religion and religions and systems of belief. But, um, I think when I was a teenager, you know, you start to question all of that.

Presenter9:53

Of course, one of your most famous records is It's a Sin.

Neil Tennant9:55

Yes, it is. When I was writing the lyrics, I.

Neil Tennant10:00

Sort of meant it sounded like a joke. I didn't really take it very seriously anyway.

Presenter10:04

And the gist of the song, for people who are not aware, is basically that

Neil Tennant10:06

Ye yes. I I guess it was it was just came from my subconscious that when we were at school you always seemed to be taught that everything was a sin. Everything you wanted to do was a sin. Um and so I put that in a song.

Presenter10:17

Did you feel, given that you were a good Catholic boy and given that you got this reaction once the song was released, did you feel any sort of residual guilt? Did you think I've given them a bad press and they don't deserve it, or did you think, well?

Neil Tennant10:26

No, well I didn't.

Presenter10:27

Uh

Neil Tennant10:28

Yeah.

Neil Tennant10:29

I mean, Itza Syn was also an early example of the Petrop Boys trying to bring a different kind of subject matter into pop music.

Presenter10:35

Did you enjoy royaling the Catholic Church?

Neil Tennant10:37

Watch that. I don't know if they were riled. I wouldn't have minded if I had, but I was just surprised that actually there was a sort of minor debate about it. We were on the cover of the Salvation Armies magazine, The War Cry, who thought it was wonderful that we brought Sin back into the public agenda. Tell us about your next record. The next record, I mean, I listened to classical music all in my adult life. I've listened to classical music as much as pop music. And the first classical music I can really remember affecting me was when I was at school, St Cuthbert's Grammar School in Newcastle. One day, we used to have the music lesson for some reason in the big hall where the assembly was held. And he said he was going to play this music. And it was Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Talas, which was a very English piece of music. And he put it on, and I just felt I'd never heard anything like this before. The richness of the harmony with this plaintive folk melody really hit me sort of physically. And I was just really, really moved by it.

Presenter12:33

Part of Vaughan Williams' Phantasia on a theme by Thomas Talis, played by The Sinfonia of London, conducted by Sir John Barbara Olliott. Um what about formal music tuition then? You you said that the first time you heard that Vaughan Williams it almost hit you physically when you were a young boy in school. Did you have any tuition?

Neil Tennant12:47

When

Neil Tennant12:48

Yes.

Neil Tennant12:51

No, we did we did music the first three years and then you dropped it, you know. But I learned t the cello. I was in the scho I played the cello for three years at school. But I one of the reasons I liked playing the cello is'cause you could go in the music room in the lunch break. And I used to go and play the piano actually in the music room so I didn't use the patches of the cello really.

Presenter13:08

And you were a bright boy when you passed your eleven plus and you got a scholarship.

Neil Tennant13:11

Yes, I was sort of relatively bright. The school I went to was a difficult school for me in a way because it was a very sort of sporty kind of school. You know, Newcastle's a great football place. I wasn't really interested in football. I mean, were you lonely in school? Were you isolated? No, no, I wasn't. I always had a couple of good friends. I liked the feeling of not belonging. It consolidated that feeling in me that I wasn't like the rest of them and that I was going to do something special with my life and I would do whatever I wanted and I would have no fear about it.

Neil Tennant13:45

Yeah.

Presenter13:45

Did you think this is a very interesting point and and sometimes comes up when you speak to people who've been very successful they say that as a a youngster, as a child even, they always knew something was going to happen.

Neil Tennant13:59

I always used to tell people when I was about sixteen, seventeen, that I was going to become a pop star and I would be really famous.

Presenter14:07

The difficulty with those sort of pronouncements, though, if you dare say them when you're sixteen or seventeen, is that people think you're snooty or you perceive yourself as superior and it makes people not like you.

Neil Tennant14:17

Um

Neil Tennant14:19

Yeah, when I was at school I was a bit snooty. But that that was a protection device, I think.

Neil Tennant14:25

And also I wasn't really that bothered about being liked. I was I all my friends I had a very tight group of friends from all around Newcastle and we met we used to go to the People's Theatre, which is this very big amateur theatre t uh company and that's where I formed my first group, which is a folk group called Dust. By that point I was writing songs really quite seriously from the age of sixteen. I I would say I was quite a serious songwriter at that point.

Presenter14:49

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Neil Tennant14:50

The next piece of music is by David Bowie.

Neil Tennant14:53

There was this sort of terrible period at the end of the sixties, beginning of the seventies, where the most popular music was progressive rock and I really hated that period. And then the Dark Ages ended, the beginning of 1972, when we were watching the Old Grey Whistle Test, and David Bowie came on. And he was so charismatic, and I just found him completely entrancing. But he was an amazing performer, and there was something very, very thrilling. And we used to go to the main record shop in Newcastle, and they had these stereo booths you could listen to classical music in. And we used to go after school and then say, go to classical bit and say, oh, yes, and they say, yes, you can go in there. And we say, oh, can we hear Hunky Dory by David Bowie, please? And they'd be really not. The opening of this song changes. It used to sound so amazing in this stereo booth on Marvelous Speakers. And I still think it's a brilliant song, this.

Speaker 415:46

Change your hills To change your hills

Neil Tennant15:50

J-

Speaker 415:52

You wanna be a richer man?

Speaker 415:55

Tit Change Hills Change Hills

Neil Tennant15:59

To change your health

Speaker 416:02

Just gonna have to be a different man. Time may change me, but I can't trace time.

Presenter16:12

David Bowie and Changes. How would Neil Tennant have looked then in those early, mid-seventies? What would he have been wearing?

Neil Tennant16:21

Um well and when that record came out I was at school but uh that year I left school and moved down to London to go to college. And I remember um I got a summer job. So I went for an interview at the British Museum and I was dressed head to foot in white. I had white Oxford by trousers which we wore in nineteen seventy three and a white shirt and a white tank top and on my feet I was wearing

Neil Tennant16:47

Sort of multicolour shoes, yellow and blue shoes with wedge heels, which were actually women's shoes. They were very thick soles.

Presenter16:55

What size were they then?

Neil Tennant16:56

They were like one size too small for me. I was suffering for and and I had my hair dyed red as a sort of David Bowie tribute. And that's quite a look.

Presenter17:00

You were suffering from the

Presenter17:09

Yeah, and no one said anything, and they gave me the job. Through all of this, though, in the back of your mind, still the plan to be a pop star?

Neil Tennant17:15

Yes, I at this point um was living in a little flat on the King's Road um and I was still writing songs uh and I played them to friends. Throughout the seventies I was doing that. And I was doing it for pleasure, uh but I thought I'd missed the boat really.

Presenter17:32

So you thought you thought it might never happen?

Neil Tennant17:34

Yeah.

Presenter17:34

But I nonetheless I carried on doing it. Had you at any point in this period actually tried to to launch yourself as a singer-songwriter and get out there and do it?

Neil Tennant17:42

Yes, when I came to London in nineteen seventy two I used to visit music publishers and it sort of seems impossible to imagine this now'cause people just wouldn't let you do this anymore. But I would go with my guitar and I would sit in front of their desk and play them three songs or and then play one on the piano in the office. I went to see Rocket Records when El Elton John um founded that in the early seventies.

Presenter18:04

And did these people ever give you any sort of encouragement, say, you know, you've got a bit of talent there, Neil, or frankly, you know, go off and work for Marvel Comics?

Neil Tennant18:10

Yes, they said, um I mean this is when I was a student actually still um they said that um you've got something but I think it's not quite developed yet. And actually they were right,'cause it would have been a catastrophe actually if I'd made a released a record in nineteen seventy four that would have done nothing by this song singer-songwriter called Neil Tennant, a rather wistful album of piano ballads. Um it would have been a catastrophe'cause it would have it would have just it killed me off probably creatively.

Presenter18:40

Tell me about your next record.

Neil Tennant18:42

In the eighties, I was sent by Smash Hits to America to launch the American version of Smash Hits, which was called StarHits.

Neil Tennant18:52

And this record is by Shannon, and it's just typical of the sound of the time. And what I really like about it is it has the inherent drama. I've always liked music, but it's got this hard street New York sound and it's got this keyboard line the ding ding ding ding ding ding ding which also became a pretty much a staple of the early petrol boy sound.

Speaker 419:15

My hands and soft ears my heart.

Speaker 419:22

Come on.

Presenter19:38

Shannon and Give Me Tonight. Let's talk about that infamous meeting then with Chris. You were living on the Kings Road and you went to what a little electrical shop on the Kings Road to try to

Neil Tennant19:49

Yes, Chris Lowe, it turned out, was studying architecture. He was working in architecture practice in Chelsea, just off the King's Road. And I lived in this little studio flat on the King's Road. So I went to the electrical store on the King's Road in Chelsea and Chris Lowe walked in and we started talking about music and I thought he was very funny and he lived round the corner. And I told him I wrote songs and I gave him my phone up and about a week later he phoned me up and we met in the pub over the road and we started writing songs literally immediately.

Presenter20:20

You said uh a little while ago that if you had had any early success, if any of those record companies that you'd knocked on the door of and sat across the desk from the executives playing your guitar had given you a record deal, it would have been a disaster. When you met Chris, did you feel that the the part of the jigsaw that you needed to put in place was then finished? Did you think this is I can make music with with this man, I can make music that will sell?

Neil Tennant20:44

Yes, I thought I would m be able to m we would be able to make music that was more relevant, that was different.

Neil Tennant20:54

And yes, I did feel that I had a second chance now with this. And so Chris and I for years, eighty two, eighty three, eighty four, would go into the studio two or three nights a week and we'd write a song. And, you know, in a period, being in 1983, we wrote West End Girls, It's a Sin, Rents, Love Comes Quickly, and other stuff. W um we were we were really getting somewhere.

Presenter21:21

Tell me about your next record.

Neil Tennant21:23

My next record is a totally different side of music, I think my favorite singers tend to be women.

Neil Tennant21:30

And in the early seventies we had in our flat in Tottenham we had a record called Billie Holiday The Lady Sings the Blues and it was someone who had knocked together a compilation of Billie Holiday to tie in with the film. And we used to play this record back to back with Ziggy Stardust and Transformed by Lou Reed and and Billie Holliday has this power to take a melody and a lyric and to totally make it

Neil Tennant21:56

into an an it s it sounds like an organic production of her. Uh it's difficult to think that someone actually sat down and wrote the song. And and it's also like it's like a voice that you can't pin down. It's like smoke or something. And it's the kind of music that enthralls me to this day, and it's Good Morning Heartache.

Speaker 422:15

Good morning, Hardy.

Speaker 422:18

Here we go again.

Speaker 422:21

Good morning, Hearty, you're the one who knew me well.

Speaker 422:28

Might as well get used to you hanging around.

Speaker 422:35

Good morning, Holly, sit down.

Presenter22:41

Billy Holiday and Good Morning Heartache. So Neil, how did you come to write West End Girls?

Neil Tennant22:47

Well, I was at my cousin's house one night and we'd watch some old James Cagney gangster movie. And as I got into bed and turned the light off, this line came into my head. And I sometimes you're better off dead, there's a gun in your hands that's pointing at your head. I think it came was inspired by the movie. And I thought, well, that's quite good. So I got up and wrote it down, and then I carried it on and wrote this whole rap piece, which I then recited to Chris. And then Chris and I wrote this other instrumental piece of music one day, very these big rich string chords and this dum dum dun dum bass line. And I realized when I got home that I could say the rap over it, but then when the music changed, you would sing the NOS ten tone, but and I thought, oh, that's good, isn't it? So it's a funny it's a record that wasn't deliberately written. It's a song that came together.

Presenter23:36

I described it in your introduction as a classic one hit wonder song. It was one of those songs at the time that sort of smacked everybody between the eyes, but you thought, Well, that'll be that then.

Neil Tennant23:46

I think our record company maybe thought we'd be a one a rec a one hit wonder. And obviously a difficult record to follow up because it's very unusual. But of course what Chris and I knew was that we had up our sleeve all these other songs like It's a Scene and what have you. And once you've had a big hit and then another big hit, and then you have another big hit, which is the next record, It's a Scene, you're sort of you feel a b slightly more secure, though you can never feel secure in proper music.

Presenter24:09

I'm thinking about that seventeen year old boy who said to his friend in a moment of uh blatant confidence, I'm going to be a pop star. When when you were on the stage at Top of the Pops, or when you were looking out at the crowds of people who knew all the lyrics to the song you'd written, how did that feel?

Neil Tennant24:25

Well, it's a funny feeling, because it's a slightly insecure feeling, because one thing that happened is that suddenly we became performers. I had very little performing experience of music. And so it was a funny feeling of insecurity and self-consciousness. And at the same time, excitement. I remember when Western Golds was number one, we were on top of the pops, and as the camera was panning over to us, Chris hissed at me, don't look triumphant. Because the 80s was a triumphalist kind of time. And we didn't want to be part of that. And so I didn't look triumphant. I don't know if I was going to anyway, but I certainly didn't after that.

Presenter25:02

Of course, importantly also we must remember, too, that you were thirty. Thirty is quite a strange age when I left suddenly become a person.

Neil Tennant25:08

No, when I left Smash Hits to be in a pop group at the age of thirty, or actually almost thirty-one in fact, I felt myself there was something slightly embarrassing about it, that it was a sort of ridiculous thing to do. But at the same time, I had a confidence in us. And I thought, well, at the very least, I'll get the gap year I've never had. And they wrote a funny sort of obituary about me in Smash Hits saying he'll be back in a year, you know. And I sort of think that was a joke, but also it was sort of serious as well. I sort of that is pretty much how I felt about it.

Presenter25:41

I mean, you've sold tens of millions of records. Have you made millions and millions of pounds?

Neil Tennant25:46

Yeah, but we've also spent a lot in our career, you know, on tours, making videos.

Neil Tennant25:52

You invest a little bit back in the career.

Presenter25:54

And what do you spend it on in in your real life, if I can call it that, your personal?

Neil Tennant25:57

In my real life, I have a ni very nice house in London and I have a a house in the country in the north east. Um I buy paintings.'Cause I'm not imagining Neil Tennant driving

Neil Tennant26:10

Swimming pool. Neil Tan doesn't drive. So

Presenter26:13

Uh

Neil Tennant26:13

Okay.

Presenter26:13

Yeah.

Neil Tennant26:13

That'll be that then. He'd be in a dialer cab, yeah.

Presenter26:19

What's the next

Neil Tennant26:19

Speaker.

Presenter26:19

Piece of music

Neil Tennant26:20

The next piece of music is by probably my favorite singer of all time, who we were very lucky enough to work with, Dusty Springfield. It's a great song called I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore.

Speaker 426:38

Cause the talk just never ends And the heartache soon begins The talk is so loud and the wall

Speaker 426:52

How much

Presenter26:57

Dusty Springfield and I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore from nineteen sixty nine and when when you worked with Dusty Springfield, that was towards the mid eighties, sort of eighty six.

Neil Tennant27:05

End of eighty six would be first.

Presenter27:07

And sh her career was was nowhere. She was

Neil Tennant27:09

All washed up. Yeah, it's funny it's not how we thought of her,'cause Dusty was to us and to a lot of people probably a legend. And when she came into the studio they finally tracked her down.

Presenter27:18

Wh where did they find her?

Neil Tennant27:19

She was in Los Angeles. When we actually met Dusty, she was living in the Pay by Day Hollywood Motel.

Neil Tennant27:26

She was really at Rockbottom, and it was just a s sublime moment hearing Dusty Springfield, seeing our music.

Presenter27:34

You also recorded with Liza Minelli?

Neil Tennant27:36

Yeah, we were asked to authorize Manelli by her record company. And that was a that was an amazing thing.

Presenter27:42

I mean, you choose you chose these these women with notable historical baggage. They were women who travel. They are women who are iconic survivors of the lives that they've led. They are two gay icons. Now I know that you you always bristle at any sort of

Neil Tennant27:58

I hate the phrase gay icon. Why?

Presenter28:01

Mm-hmm.

Neil Tennant28:02

'Cause I don't really believe in it. Um I don't really believe that people's musical taste is totally rooted in their sexuality, that's why. And also the gay icon thing always implies that to be gay is sort of there's something a bit tragic about it until you like tragic music.

Presenter28:19

And what about being out yourself?

Neil Tennant28:21

Yeah.

Neil Tennant28:22

It wasn't a big deal for me that. I mean, w when we were first pop stars I actually liked the fact that people will speculate about you. Um

Neil Tennant28:32

I've spent all my whole life trying not to be a stereotype. But people will think of you as gay. It's the first thing that you might think of about the pet shop boys. Gay.'Cause if someone is heterosexual, the first thing you think is, Oh, he's heterosexual. It's not, is it? You just assume their sexuality.

Presenter28:55

No, but the life that they they lead does indeed have an impact on how you interpret the work that they do. I mean if I'm you know I'm a married mother of two children and some of the questions I ask people think well of course she's asking that'cause she's a married mother of two children. That's her take on it. If you sing a song, somebody might think, Well, of course, you see, that is uniquely an experience that comes from the perspective of somebody who's from Newcastle and is gay.

Neil Tennant29:16

Yeah.

Neil Tennant29:17

Yes, I think the big difference, and you just uh hit on it there with your married mother of two thing, is not having children.

Neil Tennant29:25

I think not having children gives you a completely different way of life. I think that is. I've I've thought about it a lot and I've realized my friends who are gay and straight, um the ones I have a lot in common with probably don't have children.

Presenter29:40

Would you have liked to have had children?

Neil Tennant29:42

Yeah, I would um yeah, it's not too late. Um but uh I've you know, I've chosen not to, I suppose.

Presenter29:50

But not but not necessarily not to in the future.

Neil Tennant29:54

I probably have ruled it out now. I used to think about it quite a lot at one time. Yeah, no, it won't happen now, I don't think.

Presenter29:59

Does that make you sad?

Neil Tennant30:00

No, not really. No. That's just not what my life is.

Presenter30:06

What's your next, Eggwood?

Neil Tennant30:07

My next rabbit, throughout my life I've been always been interested in Russian history and in Russian music. When I was a kid I got given a book about the Russian Revolution and there's something about the country and the people and the history and the culture that is completely fascinating. This is one of my favourite pieces of Shostakovich. It's the symphony number five in D minor. And it's this is from the Opening Movement.

Presenter31:30

Part of the first movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. five in D minor, played by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. So, of course, we give you, Neil Tennant, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare. You're allowed to pick one book to take with you. What would it be?

Neil Tennant31:45

Um, well, it's going to be it is one book really, uh, but it's in many volumes. It's the Human Comedy, uh The Comedy Humane by Balzac.

Presenter31:53

Oh

Neil Tennant31:53

which is actually I can't remember how many books, it's about twenty five books, I think. You know, it's a fantastic picture of France in the Napoleonic period up to uh the mid nineteenth century. And it's the sort of thing you need a lot of time, but it's a lot of different fascinating stories. I know once you got to the end of it you could just start again.

Presenter32:11

Okay. Well it's sort of cheating, but we'll give you that. And what about your luxury?

Neil Tennant32:13

And

Neil Tennant32:15

My luxury is going to be a D V D projector and a huge box of D V D s. So I can sit on my desert island with a tie a sheet up to a pair of trees and sit there at night watching fabulous movies.

Presenter32:30

And of course you've chosen eight disks, but I'm going to ask you if if the waves were to wash onto the shore and threaten to take away your disks, which one would you run rapidly through the sands to sell?

Neil Tennant32:40

That's a difficult choice, but I think I'll keep Dusty.

Presenter32:44

Neil Tennant, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter32:55

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.