History

‘It couldn’t happen here’ is released on July 8^th to mixed reviews: it wins an award at the Houston film festival.

Ian McKellen persuades the Pet Shop Boys to play live at an anti-Clause 28 benefit, Before The Act, at London’s Piccadilly Theatre, performing ‘It’s a sin’ and ‘One more chance’. “A brilliant event”, they say afterwards.

For the second year running, the Pet Shop Boys win the Best International Hit award at the Ivor Novello Awards, this time for ‘It’s a sin’.

A different mix of ‘Heart’ is released as a single on March 21^st and reaches #1 in the UK. “It’s a real disco song — the idea of ‘heartbeat’ the beat of the record and the beat of your heart. It’s actually pretty corny, to be honest, but I think the words are quite sweet and sincere”. The video, shot in Yugoslavia, is a resetting of the Dracula story with Ian McKellen in the title role.

At the BPI Awards, the Pet Shop Boys win the Best Group award. They also mime to ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ on stage with Dusty Springfield. Afterwards Neil comments, “It’s kind of macho nowadays to prove you can cut it live, I quite like proving that we can’t cut it live. We’re a pop group, not a rock ’n’ roll group”.

‘I’m Not Scared’, a song the Pet Shop Boys have written and produced for Patsy Kensit, is released as a single by her group Eighth Wonder, and is their first hit.

The Pet Shop Boys spend three weeks in Clacton and South London shooting ‘It couldn’t happen here’. What had originally been conceived as an hour-long video based around the ‘Actually’ LP, turns into a full-scale feature film to be released cinematically, directed by Jack Bond and co-starring Barbra Windsor, Joss Ackland and Gareth Hunt. “We just do what we normally do in videos”, explains Chris, “walk around, me a few paces behind Neil…”. On November 30^th, ‘Always on my mind’ is released as a single; it becomes the Christmas #1.

On June 15^th, ‘It’s a sin’, a song that originally appeared on the demo Neil had in his pocket when he took Bobby O’ out to lunch, is released. “It’s about being brought up as a Catholic. When I went to school you were taught that everything was a sin”. It reaches #1 and causes several notable rumpuses. Jonathan King accuses them of plagiarism (he later apologizes and pays damages to a charity at their request). A teacher at Neil’s old school, St. Cuthbert’s Grammar School, Newcastle, gets very steamed up about the picture Neil has seemingly painted of his education and castigates Neil in the press. The Salvation Army magazine, War Cry, put the Pet Shop Boys on the front page and note, approvingly, “It’s interesting that someone’s raised the concept of sin in our modern life again”. Neil is also asked to appear with Cardinal Hume in a press advert for CAFOD; he politely declines the offer, explaining that he isn’t a practising Catholic. The song’s video, a sombre tale of guilt and punishment featuring the seven deadly sins, was the first time the Pet Shop Boys work with Derek Jarman.

On August 10^th, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’, a duet with Dusty Springfield, is released. They had actually wanted to record the song with Dusty — Neil’s favourite female singer — for ‘Please’ but had not been able to arrange it in time. “She sounds right because her voice has got that world-weary quality”. On August 16^th, the Pet Shop Boys appear on a Granada TV special, Love Me Tender, commemorating the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. They have been asked to perform an old song he had made famous so they sifted through some Elvis cassettes and decided to do both a house version of ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ and ‘Always On My Mind’. In the end, they only did the latter. At the time they had no plans whatsoever to release it.

On September 7^th, the ‘Actually’ LP is released. The title is simply a word they frequently say. “We were thinking of calling it Jollysight, actually”, said Chris at the time “which was the name of a hotel we saw in Italy — so that, when people asked why, we could say because it’s a jolly sight better than the last one…”