On February 28 the Pet Shop Boys begin a short, four-concert Russian tour, visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg, inspired by their visit to St. Petersburg to see Brian Eno the previous summer. In Moscow they perform twice in one night, once in a large arena then later in the middle of an over-crowded nightclub. The local media ask them whether they speak Russian, “We’re very good at saying ‘nyet’,” they explain.
On April 13, Twentieth Century Blues: The Songs of Noel Coward is released. It is an album of Noel Coward songs covered by contemporary musicians, co-compiled by Neil, who has been working on it for the past eighteen months. He has loved Noel Coward’s music since he first heard it in about 1970. “I think as a songwriter he’s slightly underrated,” Neil says, “simply because his plays are so famous, and people forget.” The Pet Shop Boys do a version of “Sail Away”, and amongst the other interpreters are Elton John, Paul McCartney, Suede, Robbie Williams and the Divine Comedy. “We tried to choose artists,” Neil explains, “who somehow seem to be in the Noel Coward tradition of wit, theatrically and style.” To promote the album, Neil appeared along on TFI Friday where he sang along with a busker playing Pet Shop Boys songs on an acoustic guitar.
At the request of their former American record company, the Pet Shop Boys agreed to the release of ‘Essential Pet Shop Boys’, a compilation of early Pet Shop Boys songs recorded between 1985 — 1990, including a number of rare remixes, as part of a series of limited edition CDs by other artists.
At the behest of director Gus Van Sant, the Pet Shop Boys wrote a new song, with Tom Stephan, at extremely short notice for the soundtrack of Van Sant’s remake of ‘Psycho’. It is called “Screaming”. “It’s about an obsessive fan, written from the obsessive fan’s point of view,” Neil says. “Or actually just by someone obsessed with someone who doesn’t love them.”
Chris Heath interviews Neil and Chris for Smash Hits—one of their earliest major magazine interviews. Later the Boys watch the BPI Awards on TV, followed by dinner and a visit to a London dance club where they persuade the DJ to play an acetate of their new dance mix of ‘Love Comes Quickly.’
The Boys receive the ‘Best Single of 1986’ award from BPI for ‘West End Girls.’ After the show, Neil (but not Chris) poses for a backstage group photo with a number of major artists, including Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, and the Bangles, among others.
The Nightlife Tour performance this evening in Dortmund, Germany, is filmed for eventual release as Montage.
Neil and Chris finish their demo of ‘Girls Don’t Cry’ and record Neil’s vocals for ‘Fugitive.’
They complete their preliminary demo work for ‘Invisible.’
Chris and Neil are in Berlin, where they work in the studio on a new song titled ‘Former Children’ (later to be retitled ‘Gramophone’).
Quite unexpectedly, without any advance fanfare, the Pet Shop Boys release on YouTube a ‘home demo’ of a brand new song, ‘Living in the Past,’ inspired by the unveiling in Volgograd, Russia only a week before of a monument to Joseph Stalin.