50 years ago today, I went with my friend Eric Watson to see a gig by a new rock group called the Sex Pistols at the Nashville pub in West Kensington. The Pistols were impressive — they reminded me a little of The Ramones whose first album I had heard — but then a member of the audience was beaten up by one of the group’s friends in a horrifying incident. Eric and I left the gig stunned and I wrote a letter to the NME about it. To my surprise, the NME printed my letter as a little news piece with a photo by Joe Stevens. Later in 1976, the Pistols achieved notoriety in a controversial TV interview. A series of brilliant and subversive singles and an album followed which resonate to this day. Neil x
We have additional information about the making of the “A man from the future” album.
Recent Pet Texts
Pet Shop Boys and Andrew Hodges’ listening and conversation event for “A man from the future” at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester is now sold out. The conversation will also be filmed and made available to watch online shortly afterwards, with further details to be revealed here in due course.
On this day 30 years ago, Pet Shop Boys released their sixth studio album, “Bilingual”. This was taken in 1996 by Andy Earl during a publicity session for “Single-bilingual”.
We enjoyed our visit to Bletchley Park with Andrew Hodges last week to film a piece about “A man from the future” and Alan Turing for BBC News. There will be further news about this project in a couple of days. Neil and Chris xx
Photo: Charlie Coletta
- It was our last concert of the summer tour last night in Esbjerg, Denmark. Wet and windy but still fun! Thanks to everyone who came to one or more of the shows! See you in 2027. xx
Photo credit: Morten Rygaard
Esbjerg. Suset Festival tonight. Last show of the summer!
The Tracey Emin sculpture by the Munch Museum on a beautiful day in Oslo.
Morning coffee in Oslo.
Pet Shop Boys’ “Se a vida é (That’s the way life is)” was released as a single on this day 30 years ago. A video for the song was filmed at the Wet ‘n’ Wild theme park in Orlando, Florida, directed by photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber who also made the videos for “Being boring” and “I get along”.