Pet Shop Boys Community

London is a great city.It is also connected to the Pet Shop Boys in many ways from Neil & Chris moving down from the North to, Neil & Chris meeting each other for the first time in the Kings Road, both of them living in the Capital & more importantly they have written so many songs reflecting this great city.
West End Girls
Kings Cross
The Theatre
The Survivors
London.....any more, please ?

Anyway i travel in & around London for work & the other day i was walking over Chelsea Bridge & just wondered was that the bridge Neil sings about in the song The Survivors ?
"Cross a windy bridge one winters night. Past Embankment Gardens...."
Also anyone know if the electronics shop Neil & Chris met in on the Kings Road is still there ?

Your London/Pet Shop Boys views please.

Actually wrote:London is a great city.It is also connected to the Pet Shop Boys in many ways from Neil & Chris moving down from the North to, Neil & Chris meeting each other for the first time in the Kings Road, both of them living in the Capital & more importantly they have written so many songs reflecting this great city.
West End Girls
Kings Cross
The Theatre
The Survivors
London.....any more, please ?

Anyway i travel in & around London for work & the other day i was walking over Chelsea Bridge & just wondered was that the bridge Neil sings about in the song The Survivors ?
"Cross a windy bridge one winters night. Past Embankment Gardens...."
Also anyone know if the electronics shop Neil & Chris met in on the Kings Road is still there ?

Your London/Pet Shop Boys views please.

In Up Against It there is a refernce to London (Back to Trafalgar...), The Resurrectionist (there are the names of bars and London bridges if I'm not mistaking).

The electrical shop is the 4th floor of Peter Jones in Sloane Square

The footsteps and street sounds at the beginning of West End Girls were recorded on London's Great Portland Street, in W1 off Oxford St.
I work there and every day hear that classic intro recreated (minus the instrumentation, obviously).

Bright Young Things mentions Berkeley Square which is in London!

In A man could get arrested, the line " A wave of broken bottles crashed across the city street, and someone got arrested for a breach of the peace" refers to an argument in Russell Square in which Neil and Chris were involved.
Someone threw a bottle at them which smashed just as the police turned up. Neil was arrested but later let off, Chris on the other hand ran off and left neil to take the rap !

Pretty sure those were the events, i can't remember where I read it though.

redsock wrote:In A man could get arrested, the line " A wave of broken bottles crashed across the city street, and someone got arrested for a breach of the peace" refers to an argument in Russell Square in which Neil and Chris were involved.
Someone threw a bottle at them which smashed just as the police turned up. Neil was arrested but later let off, Chris on the other hand ran off and left neil to take the rap !

Pretty sure those were the events, i can't remember where I read it though.

The booklet with Alternative..

Everytime I am on the Strand (which happens a bit as one of our agencies is based there) I am singing The Theatre to myself.

Two Devided By Zero in some way. Neil wrote the lyrics inspired by going to London by train.

Anyway i travel in & around London for work & the other day i was walking over Chelsea Bridge & just wondered was that the bridge Neil sings about in the song The Survivors ?
"Cross a windy bridge one winters night. Past Embankment Gardens..."





Just this minute realised it must be Waterloo bridge.

I seem to remember that the name of the "tragic" gay dive piano bar that was the setting/inspiration for "To Speak Is A Sin" and the melancholy of "Club/Queue"- anyway Neil named the place once, it's called something innocuous like "Piano Bar". But he credited this dive as a place that inspired a lot of songs from before "Please".

Shortly after reading Neil's naming the place, I noticed rewatching the video for West End girls that near the end, where Neil is looking off to the side and neon signs are floating past superimposed, it clearly said "Piano Bar". I'm almost certain this is intentional, that this is the bar he meant, and possibly yet another "signal" to other gay London habitues of the era. And area. Chelsea?

I've noticed there are some younger posters here lately- (which is great, has anyone else welcomed them?, just curious) and they might find it hard to believe that PSB actually had to "code" things then. It wasn't all right to be openly gay when PSB started, but they got it across in videos in ways that still surprise me by their subtlety.

[quote="Actually"]London is a great city.It is also connected to the Pet Shop Boys in many ways from Neil & Chris moving down from the North to, Neil & Chris meeting each other for the first time in the Kings Road, both of them living in the Capital & more importantly they have written so many songs reflecting this great city.
West End Girls
Kings Cross
The Theatre
The Survivors
London.....any more, please ?

Anyway i travel in & around London for work & the other day i was walking over Chelsea Bridge & just wondered was that the bridge Neil sings about in the song The Survivors ?
"Cross a windy bridge one winters night. Past Embankment Gardens...."
Also anyone know if the electronics shop Neil & Chris met in on the Kings Road is still there ?




I love London too...I've lived here since I was 19 years old. Funny you mention Chelsea bridge because I have family in South London and a few weeks ago we visited Battersea park. I said bye to them there and they went on their way while I crossed Chelsea bridge to get back to my side of London.
As for the electronic shop....it seems to be a 'cafe' or something now. Oh.....and I passed by the 'cafe picasso' which Neil sings about in 'The Ghost of myself'.

Well it's kinda weak .. but ... Dreaming of the Queen includes the line "visiting for tea" implies visiting Buckingham Palace.

Check out Wanyes website, he has a list of places mentioned in PSB songs.

The View from Your Balcony

The inspiration for this lovely song—a bonus track on the U.K. "Somewhere" CD single—was inspired, precisely as its title suggests, by a view from a balcony. Neil attended a party at the twentieth floor apartment of a friend who lived in Bermondsey in South London. Its balcony offered a marvelous view of the Thames River. Neil observed the irony of how this tower-block apartment, which at one time (specifically, he notes, back at the height of "punk rock") would only have been thought of as the home of someone who had been abused by "the system," nevertheless had a breathtaking panorama that could make it the envy of far wealthier, far more powerful people. Perhaps Neil is pointing out that there are many wonderful things in life that cannot be denied people simply because they aren't among the elite—and that, in fact, the elite (such as maybe Neil himself?) sometimes can find themselves envying others.

Deschanel wrote:I've noticed there are some younger posters here lately and they might find it hard to believe that PSB actually had to "code" things then. It wasn't all right to be openly gay when PSB started, but they got it across in videos in ways that still surprise me by their subtlety.

I'm not that young, but not aware of the 'codes' given in PSB videos. Can you give more examples?