frogspot

Neil: I mean, if we hadn’t gone into the electrical shop on the Kings Road, we wouldn’t be sitting here now. The guy in the shop wasn’t behind the counter because he was making– he was welding my lead for me.

Jackie: Mmm! Right.

Neil: He was– and you could smell the welding in the shop! And, um, oh, I guess–

Chris: I probably said to him, “Oh, is that you?”

[Neil laughs]

Jackie: And what were you doing there, Chris?

Chris: What’s that called when you’ve got no intention of buying– you just go into the shop to waste everyone’s time?

Jackie: I believe they call it browsing, browsing.

Chris: What’s the point in the odds of me buying anything, I’ve got no–

Neil: I always thought you were buying a cassette–

Chris: I’ve got no money.

Neil: Oh. We talked to– Chris was chatty. I remember Chris was chatty.

Chris: Hard to believe, innit?

Jackie: Yeah!

Chris: Hard to believe, on my own, quite chatty.

Neil: I was pretty proud of the fact that I’d bought a synthesizer, this was the future of music, around– by 1981, and I knew nothing about it. And I discovered that Chris was a keyboard player, as well as being a trombone player… and we met up several days later, ‘cause we lived around the corner from each other, which was probably why we were also in the same shop. And, um, that was when we went back to my flat and started– Chris started fiddling around with the synthesizer, and, um–

Chris: Actually, there’s any number of places we could have met. Could have met in Café Picasso. I was in there every day.

Neil: We could have. The Chelsea Potter Pub?

Jackie: Perhaps it was always meant to be, you were always going to meet somewhere.

Chris: Food shop? That weird shop?

Neil: You always used to, on the King's Road at this time in Chelsea, bump into Bob Geldof and Paula Yates.

Chris: Yeah.

Jackie: And do you remember the first, um, record, or artist, that you both were like, “Oh, I love them too!” You had that moment?

Neil: Yeah, at the time there were two electronic duos in the charts: OMD, with their song, “Souvenir”, and Soft Cell, with their second single, “Bedsitter”, and we both liked those records.

[Plays part of “Souvenir”]

Chris: And I was living in a bedsit at the time and it was, well, it was horrible. So, I could really relate to that first entire Soft Cell album.

[“Bedsitter” plays]

Jackie: “Bedsitter” by Soft Cell, a song that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, our V.I.P guests on today’s conversation special, first bonded over when they met in 1981 before they became Pet Shop Boys. And do you remember the first impression you had, quietly in your own mind, for you Neil, when you heard Chris play, and for you Chris, when you heard Neil sing?

Chris: Neil played me a few of his early demos, presumably they were the ones that you’d–

Neil: Yeah, I’d recorded in a studio.

Chris: I thought they were quite good, actually. There was always a good bit in them, a sort of clever bit. So, I thought he’s obviously got a bit of– a bit of talent.

Neil: A bit of talent.

Chris: A bit of talent.

Neil: He needs– He needs a good keyboard player.