History

On October 23 Robbie Williams’ Rudebox album is released. It includes two Pet Shop Boys productions, “She’s Madonna” and “We’re the Pet Shop Boys”, the former also co-written with them. This collaboration was sparked when Chris bumped into Robbie Williams a couple of years earlier and they discussed forming a supergroup: Robbie Williams, the Pet Shop Boys and a never-decided fourth person. Nonetheless they met up to write and record “She’s Madonna”, and Robbie Williams subsequently decided to cover My Robot Friend’s “We’re the Pet Shop Boys” by singing over the backing track from the Pet Shop Boys’ version of the song.

On October 15 “Numb” is released as a single. The song was written by American songwriter Diane Warren and was originally recorded as a potential single for PopArt. It had received some unexpected exposure a few months earlier when the BBC used it as the soundtrack to the from-triumph-to-heartbreak video montage traditionally broadcast after the England football team’s inevitable exit from major football tournaments … in this instance, the World Cup. The Pet Shop Boys’ new single edit was partly inspired by the way the BBC had edited the song.

On October 23 the live album Concrete is released. It documents a one-off concert at London’s Mermaid Theatre on May 8 (which had been broadcast by Radio 2 in an abridged form on May 27), and includes guest performances by Robbie Williams (“Jealousy”), Rufus Wainwright (“Casanova in hell”) and Frances Barber (“Friendly Fire”). It features the BBC Concert Orchestra and a band led by Trevor Horn that included Anne Dudley, Steve Lipson and Lol Creme. Opera singer Sally Bradshaw also reprises her vocal from the original album version of “Left to my own devices”.

On October 23 A Life In Pop is released. This DVD contains a longer version of the Pet Shop Boys documentary directed by George Scott that had first been broadcast on Channel 4 on May 24, and which included interviews with Robbie Williams, Jake Shears, Tim Rice-Oxley, Brandon Flowers, Trevor Horn, Frances Barber, Matt Lucas and David Walliams amongst others. “There’s a brilliant bit at the start where Chris comes out of the floor in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom playing ‘It’s a sin’ on the organ,” Neil notes. The DVD also includes videos for the previous five Pet Shop Boys singles and three memorable archive performances: at the 1988 Brits with Dusty Springfield, at the 1994 Brits with the miners, and their first-ever TV performance, playing the Bobby O version of “West End girls” on the Belgian show Hit Des Clubs.

On October 23 a compilation album, Pop! Justice: 100% Solid Pop Music, put together by the popjustice website, is released. It includes the previously-unreleased new version of “It’s a sin” which the Pet Shop Boys performed at their Barfly concert.

Catalogue, a lavish, large and meticulous Thames and Hudson book documenting the Pet Shop Boys’ visual history from 1984 to 2004, edited and written by Philip Hoare and Chris Heath, is published.

On December 31 the Pet Shop Boys are scheduled to appear outdoors beneath Edinburgh castle as the centrepiece of the city’s Hogmanay celebrations. That evening, due to poor weather and high winds, the concert is cancelled: “Portaloos were being blown down Princes street”. Some consolation was offered by the discovery that the orchestral opening of “Numb” could be heard accompanying the fireworks at Sydney’s New Year spectacular.

On June 17 they appear onstage for the finale of Yoko Ono’s performance at the Royal Festival Hall (part of the Patti Smith-curated Meltdown), performing with her their remix of “Walking On Thin Ice”. 

On July 2 they headline a concert in Red Square, Moscow, one of eight simultaneous Live 8 concerts around the world intended to put pressure on world leaders to provide debt relief and other measures for Africa at the following week’s G8 summit. The Pet Shop Boys are only approached the previous week at a party by Emma Freud. They perform after one day’s rehearsal with Mark Refoy, Dawne Adams, Pete Gleadall and, for the first time in five years, Sylvia Mason-James. One song from their performance, “Go West”, will subsequently appear on the Live 8 DVD in September. 

On September 5 their new score to Battleship Potemkin is released on CD on EMI Classics — as is usual with classical releases, on the sleeve the record is primarily credited to the composers: Tennant/ Lowe. Earlier in the month they have performed the score as in Trafalgar Square last year four times in Germany: in Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg.