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 an outdoor festival in Turku, Finland.
They perform their Battleship Potemkin score in the gardens of the Royal Palace of La Granja, Segovia, Spain.
Neil records his lead vocal for ‘King of Rome.’
The Pet Shop Boys make their first-ever Taiwan concert appearance, performing at the Twinkle Rock Festival in Taipei.
Despite getting stuck in heavy traffic on their way to the show, Chris and Neil conclude their summer tour as the ‘special guests’ of Take That with a performance at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. Earlier in the day they had begun work on a new song, ‘A Face Like That.’
‘Vocal,’ with no fewer than eight remixes, is released today as both a CD single and a digital bundle.
A busy day at London’s RAK Studios working with Stuart Price on ‘Burning the Heather.’ Bernard Butler arrives at the studio in the afternoon to record guitar parts for the song. Along the way, the Boys bump into Noel Gallagher and spend some time chatting with him.