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 Pet Shop Boys’ first single—the original ‘Bobby O’ version of ‘West End Girls’—is released.
‘Heart’ hits #1 in the U.K.
The Boys bring their Performance tour show to Radio City Music Hall in New York City. (A reviewer for the New York Post so detests it that he would go on to suggest, infamously, that Radio City Music Hall needed be ‘fumigated’ as a result.)
The Boys are traveling by Winnebago between their southwestern U.S. venues on the current leg of their Electric Tour. Today, in transit from the San Francisco Bay area to southern California, they stop and spend the night at San Simeon, site of the famed Hearst Castle.