On August 19th, Neil and Chris meet by chance in an electronics shop on the Kings Road. Realizing they have a common interest in dance music, they begin to write together. Initially they call themselves West End; later they come up with the name Pet Shop Boys, a name derived from some friends who work in a pet shop in Ealing. “We thought it sounded like an English rap group”.
The Boys perform at the Equality Show at the London Palladium. (Months later, Chris will tell an interviewer that he was ‘excessively drunk’ at the time. ‘I wasn’t quite at the stage of throwing up in a bucket behind the monitors, but I was pretty close.’)
They’re in St. Louis, Missouri, for the first time. Perhaps indulging Chris’s interest in architecture, they play tourist at the St. Louis Arch. Then, in the evening, they perform their Fundamental show.
They perform at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia—one of only two Canadian dates on the Super Tour.