My Favorite Artists
Other Than the Pet Shop Boys

Of course, I listen to a lot of music other than the Pet Shop Boys. Excepting them, here's my list of favorites, in alphabetical order, with brief explanations of why I like each as well as my favorite album * and songs. I also note any interesting "PSB connections" that I'm aware of with each artist.

* = This page's "footnotes": click on them for pop-up elaborations and digressions.

Incidentally, just because I don't list an artist here doesn't mean that I don't like them. I sometimes get emails from site visitors who, after viewing this page, ask me, "How come you don't like…?" (New Order and the Smiths are frequent objects of this question.) The fact is that I do "like" many artists not listed here. It's just that they're not among my "favorites"—those whom I like especially. But I have to limit the number that I list here; otherwise the designation "favorite" would be meaningless.

The purest pop of the seventies, although they did some of their finest work in the early eighties. Benny and Björn wrote better songs in their second language than most songsmiths can compose in their native tongues. And as a group they reportedly turned down an offer of a billion dollars—that's a thousand-million to our British friends—for a one-off reunion tour back in the 1990s. Now, how cool is that?

Favorite album: Super Trouper (1980)

Favorite songs:

• "Lay All Your Love on Me" (1980)
  Like a Lutheran chorale set to a dance beat, and I do mean that as a compliment.
  
  
• "One of Us" (1982)
  One of the most beautiful choruses in pop music history, and so sad it makes you want to cry. When, at the very beginning, that choral melody fades in—a lone, wordless female voice singing to mandolin and accordion accompaniment—it sounds as though it's coming from another dimension, where self-destructed dreams are memorialized for eternity: forever longing, forever in regret.
  
  
• "Under Attack" (1982)
  If only all assaults could be as bouncy and positive as this one.

Recommended DVD: The Definitive Collection (2002)

PSB connections:

• Although he and Chris are professed admirers of Abba's music, Neil once said of Erasure's Abba-esque EP, "We would never have done that."
• Several reviewers have pointed out the thematic, structural, and even stylistic similarities between PSB's "The Way It Used to Be" and Abba's late "post-marital" songs like "The Winner Takes It All" and "When All Is Said and Done."
• In late May 2009, in response to a Popjustice Twitter listing his three favorite Abba songs, Chris twittered back a message that suggested his own two faves were "The Winner Takes It All" and "The Name of the Game."

Despite the fact that he very nearly destroyed himself and never completely fulfilled his promise, who but Brian Wilson has left such a remarkable legacy—so much fantastic music—without having fulfilled his promise? His influence as a songwriter and producer is all over the place in music of the last forty-odd years. And if there were any educated doubts of his genius, Brian's 2004 re-creation of his legendary aborted Smile album as well as his superb 2008 album of brand-new music, That Lucky Old Sun, offer definitive proof. Oh, yeah, he and his brothers, cousin, and friends could really sing, too. In fact, when in "Add Some Music to Your Day" they harmonize "Music is in my soul!" you can damn well believe them.

Favorite album (BB): Sunflower (1970)
Favorite album (BW): Smile (2004)

Favorite songs:

• "God Only Knows" (1966)
  Brian's melody and arrangement + brother Carl's lead vocal = perfection. Paul McCartney may have been exaggerating when he called this the greatest song ever written, but maybe not by much.
  
  
• "Heroes and Villains" (1967)
  Jimi Hendrix once referred to the Beach Boys as "a psychedelic barbershop quartet." Actually, "quintet"—or even "sextet" by this time—would have been more accurate. But I don't think Jimi was being literal. Regardless, he was surely thinking of this masterpiece, with its ridiculously complex harmonic vocal interplay, when he said that.
  
  
• "This Whole World" (1970)
  Brian's sense of tonality can be shocking. It's challenging enough trying to figure out the key(s) of the aforementioned "God Only Knows." But this one takes the cake. Here he and his Boys adopt and discard keys, one line after the other, with greater ease than a cold sufferer going through Kleenex. Yet it all sounds perfectly natural.

And since Brian the solo artist (if you can truly call anyone with such a large and highly proficient backing band a "solo artist") is enjoying a late-stage career quite distinct from that of the Beach Boys, I'm going to grant him, uniquely among all the artists listed here, a fourth "favorite"—

• "Midnight's Another Day" (2008)
  The best song Brian has written—or, as is usually the case, co-written, since he has always worked best with collaborators—in more than 30 years: beautiful, emotionally naked, sorrowful yet positive at the same time, and blessed with a stunning arrangement.

Recommended DVD (BB): Endless Harmony (2000)
Recommended DVD (BW): Smile (2004)

PSB connections:

• They're both "Boys" bands, after all.
• Neil has cited the BB classic Pet Sounds as one of his favorite albums. (Hmmm… Pet Sounds—Pet Shop Boys.)
• Both groups have repurposed music they had originally intended for a James Bond film. In the case of the Beach Boys, it was the title track from Pet Sounds, an instrumental initially titled "Run, James, Run," whereas for the Pet Shop Boys it was an early version of the basic instrumental track of "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave."
• Now a solo artist, Brian Wilson has recorded for Sanctuary Records and for Rhino Records, both of which have served as U.S. labels for the Pet Shop Boys as well. And now he's back on his old label from the sixties, Capitol Records, a U.S. subsidiary of the Boys' longtime recording home, EMI.
• In April 2009 Neil said to CNN interviewer Elizabeth Landau, "In the '80s I never sang any harmonies on records. Now I do loads of harmonies. I'm turning into Brian Wilson!"
• In an interview with Rob Fitzpatrick in the April 2009 issue of The Word, Neil said of one of the Beach Boys' classics, "'Good Vibrations' is surrounded by genius, it sounds like it just arrived like that."
• Mid-song in "Why Don't We Live Together?" the Pet Shop Boys echo (intentionally or otherwise) the unforgettably anti-romantic opening words of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows": "I may not always love you." But whereas the earlier song immediately romanticized it with the very next lines ("But as long as there are stars above you/You never need to doubt it/I'll make you so sure about it"), Neil and Chris follow up with the equally anti-romantic "You may not care."
• A special Pet Shop Boys greatest-hits package titled Party was released exclusively in Brazil for the 2009 holiday season. More than forty years earlier, during the 1965 holiday season, the Beach Boys also released an album titled Party, although it was by no means a greatest-hits collection. Rather, it was an in-studio attempt to mimic the sound and atmosphere of a party, complete with "spontaneous" music by the Beach Boys.
• The Fauré Quartett's 2009 album Popsongs features "classical" renditions of both the Beach Boys' "Our Prayer" and the Pet Shop Boys' "Dreaming of the Queen." (As you will soon see, two other artists among my favorites have the same "PSB connection.")
• An unreleased demo version of the Pet Shop Boys' "Forever in Love" contains a brief sample borrowed from the Beach Boys' and the Fat Boys' collaborative 1987 hit cover of the rock and roll classic "Wipeout!" It's someone shouting "Wipeout!" in a very silly voice, appearing near the beginning of the BB/FB track and about halfway through the PSB demo.

If for no other reason (but there are many), Lennon-McCartney were the greatest songwriting team in rock music history, and among the three or four greatest of pop music history overall. What's more, during their "middle period" (1966-67), they reshaped the musical landscape—redefined the very language of popular music—in a way that few artists before and none since have matched.

Favorite album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Favorite songs:

• "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967)
  A revolution in popular music unfolding before our eyes—or, in this case, our ears.
  
  
• "Penny Lane" (1967)
  The flipside of that revolution, both literally and figuratively. As another writer has put it (and I paraphrase), one song tears down a world, while the other builds it up again.
  
  
• "A Day in the Life" (1967)
  The final shot in that revolution—the sound of our world changing.

Recommended DVD: Anthology (1995)

PSB connections:

• Several PSB tracks include overt references to Beatles songs or other strong connections to the Beatles.
• The Beatles (aka "the White Album") was the first album Neil ever bought.
• Chris has said that the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night was the first film that he ever saw and that he was a big fan in his pre-teen years.
• Neil taught himself to play guitar studying Beatles songbooks.
• Neil worked with Paul McCartney on the Twentieth-Century Blues project.
• Neil has credited John Lennon ("Strawberry Fields Forever," in particular) as a major influence on his style as a lyricist.
• The Boys remixed "Walking on Thin Ice" for Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono (and performed it live on stage with her in June 2005).
• Neil and Chris had once seriously considered performing a cover version of the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill" but, after rehearsals, decided against it.
• The Beatles' "She Loves You" was selected by Neil as one of his Desert Island Discs when he appeared on that famous BBC radio show in February 2007.
• Chris has noted that the Boys' 2002 "University Tour" was inspired by the fact that the first Paul McCartney and Wings tour was of U.K. universities.
• The album title Yes was partly inspired by an artwork that Yoko had created in the 1960s, in which one had to climb a ladder to read the tiny inscription "Yes!" on the ceiling. (The "pre-Yoko" John was rather impressed by this piece, which thereby played a role in bringing John and Yoko together.)
• In an interview with the Boys in the German edition of Rolling Stone in March 2009, Neil speculates rather facetiously whether, if they were to break up, they would end up writing bitter songs about each other, just as Lennon and McCartney did. Neil refers to Lennon's especially nasty song about McCartney, "How Do You Sleep?" (specifically the blatantly false but nevertheless brilliant double-entendre "The only thing you done was yesterday") in words that the article translates as "richtige Scheiße." I believe would best translate back, at least idiomatically, as "righteous shit."
• The working title of the Pet Shop Boys' 1987 feature film It Couldn't Happen Here was reportedly A Hard Day's Shopping—clearly an ironic and perhaps even self-deprecating nod to the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964).
• Stella McCartney, mentioned in the lyrics of the PSB/Robbie Williams collaboration "She's Madonna," is of course the daughter of Sir Paul McCartney.
• Parlophone is/was the U.K. record label of both the Pet Shop Boys and several of my other favorite artists, including the Beatles. And seeing as how Parlophone is a subsidary of EMI, the Pet Shop Boys also share with the Beatles and several other artists listed here the fact that they've recorded at the EMI-owned Abbey Road Studios. In fact, Neil once told an interviewer how "very exciting" he felt it was to be able to record at Abbey Road, partly because the Beatles used to record there as well. Abbey Road is of course the title of the final studio album recorded by the Beatles, and Abbey Road Demos is the title given to one of the earliest and most famous PSB bootlegs.
• The Boys were among the artists who in late 1999 "personalized" copies of the sleeve of the re-issued John Lennon single "Imagine" to raise money for charity. Neil and Chris added a speech bubble to a photo of Lennon, saying "Cliff is over if you want it"—a parody of his famous "War is over if you want it" slogan that refers to Cliff Richard's "The Millennium Prayer" having recently been the #1 single on the UK charts. The personalized sleeves were then auctioned off to the highest bidder. (No word on who bid highest for the PSB contribution.)
• On Christmas Eve 2009, Neil shared with Bernadette McNulty of the Telegraph his personal choice of a "Christmas playlist." Three of the ten songs were Beatles-related in one way or another: "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)," a rarity released by the Beatles in 1967 exclusively to their official fan club members; "All I Want for Christmas Is a Beatle" by Dora Bryan, a novelty song released during early U.K. Beatlemania in 1963; and John and Yoko's latter-day holiday classic "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)."
• Apparently some copies (no one's sure how many, but very few) of Disc 2 of the 1986-87 CD reissue of John Lennon/Yoko Ono 1972 album Some Time in New York City were mistakenly pressed with the PSB album Please rather than the "Live Jam" it's supposed to have. The Lennon release was on Capitol/Parlophone, a subsidiary of the Boys' label, EMI. So the two CDs were probably pressed at the same facility, thereby enabling the blunder. An anomalous, rare, quite collectible—and quite valuable—error.

Talk about great songwriters! How deep was their well of inspiration? And while I'm no huge fan of Barry's singing (he's a little too "breathy" for my taste, and I think he overuses his falsetto), Robin is perhaps the most underrated vocalist in rock/pop music history. I'm also impressed by the way that they were repeatedly able to re-emerge, phoenix-like, from setbacks and changes in fashion that would have hurled lesser talents into permanent "Whatever became of…?" status. Understandably, however, it appears that Maurice's untimely death in 2003 has forced the "Bee Gees" moniker forever into retirement.

Favorite album: Main Course (1975)

Favorite songs:

• "Nights on Broadway" (1975)
  If the previous single "Jive Talking" had shown the world that there was more to the Gibbs than lush (if soulful) Edwardian romanticism, this one proved it was no fluke. And it did so with a musical muscularity lacking in its predecessor.
  
  
• "Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)" (1975)
  A gorgeous statement of the fear that comes with realizing that, in opening yourself up to love, you also open yourself up to a world of hurt.
  
  
• "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1993)
  And here, nearly two decades later, is that very hurt given even more gorgeous expression. You can't help but be moved when Robin takes over the lead vocal in the chorus.

Recommended DVD: One Night Only (1997)

PSB connections:

• Chris has said that the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album, dominated by the Bee Gees, was a major influence on him, inspiring his love of dance music. He reiterated this fact (specifically citing the song "Night Fever") during the week of April 13, 2009, on BBC Radio 2's Tracks of My Years, a weekly feature that asks artists to choose songs that "changed their life." And when asked by Johnny Marr in an interview, "What band would you like to have been in for a day?" Chris replied, "…the Bee Gees when they were doing Saturday Night Fever in Miami."
• Blue Weaver, a keyboardist who spent much of the seventies working with the Bee Gees, also worked with the Boys on their first album, Please.
• The PSB song "Nightlife" is generally recognized as something of an homage to the Brothers Gibb.
• Influences can go both ways: the Bees Gees publicly acknowledged that their 1993 track "Fallen Angel" was heavily influenced by PSB.
• Neil affirmed that his own longstanding fondness for the Bee Gees ("I've always loved the Bee Gees' music…. they've always been songwriters that we really admired") had inspired him in his graphic-arts contribution to the 1997 WarChild charity exhibition at London's Saatchi Gallery: he designed a "Flashing Light-Box Model of Dance Floor from Saturday Night Fever." He has conceded, however, that it was originally Chris's idea—"a brilliant idea," as Neil put it—though it was Mr. Tennant who carried it out.
• During an interview with Neil and Chris that aired on The BRITs Hit 30 in January 2010, they revealed that the Bee Gees had asked them at one point to produce one of their albums. But the Boys turned the Brothers Gibb down on account of being, as Neil put it, "overawed" at the prospect.

Personally, I'm not very fond of his early "glam phase," though I'll admit that it was revolutionary and produced some true classics. But it's "middle-period" Bowie that I enjoy the most—his recordings from Young Americans through Scary Monsters, especially the brilliant Station to Station.

Favorite album: Station to Station (1976)

Favorite songs:

• "TVC 15" (1976)
  I don't know what the hell it's about, but I don't have to. I love the propulsive chorus!
  
  
• "'Heroes'" (1977)
  Love endures even in the face of technology-driven totalitarian repression.
  
  
• "Ashes to Ashes" (1980)
  Bowie confronts his demons and emerges with one of his most imaginative tracks in a career characterized by imagination.

Recommended DVD: Best of Bowie (2002)

PSB connections:

• Longtime avowed Bowie fans, the Boys remixed and performed on the single version (and appear in the video) of his song "Hallo Spaceboy."
• Turnabout is fair play, so the Boys asked Bowie to remix "I Get Along," but he declined on account of his hectic schedule at the time.
• The Thin White Duke served as the inspiration for the PSB song "Friendly Fire."
• In February 2007, Neil chose Bowie's "Changes" as one of his Desert Island Discs.
• A lengthy interview with Neil specifically on the subject of Bowie's music and career—including his influence on the Pet Shop Boys—appears in the January 2007 issue of Record Collector. Neil notes, "David Bowie transformed the way I felt about music," and reveals that whenever he and Chris perform their song "Sexy Northerner" live he has to restrain himself from impersonating Bowie vocally.
• Neil has also said that he was "channelling David Bowie" for part of the song "All Over the World"—specifically the line "It's something… that look in your eyes tonight," which has, in Neil's words, a "Bowie-like verse melody."
• Bowie was involved in the same Threepenny Opera anniversary project that led to Neil and Chris recording "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"
• Neil invited Bowie to take part in his Twentieth-Century Blues Noël Coward tribute project, but he declined.
• Bowie's unforgettable (and, at the time, almost unbelievable) 1977 duet with Bing Crosby, the medley "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy," was one of the tracks chosen by Neil for his "Christmas playlist," as told to Bernanette McNulty of the Telegraph on Christmas Eve 2009.
• Johnny Marr has described himself as "the Carlos Alomar of the Pet Shop Boys"—a metaphor that means absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn't recognize the name of David Bowie's perennial guitarist. Alomar has appeared in a supporting role on Bowie's albums more often than any other single musician.
• Both Bowie and the Boys have released special free promo albums through the U.K. Mail on Sunday newspaper. PSB of course did it on March 8, 2009 with their album Pet Shop Boys Story - 25 Years of Hits. But Bowie did it the previous year, on June 29, 2008, with iSelectBowie.
• The Pet Shop Boys wrote but decided against releasing a tribute to the cartoon/action figure Action Man, tentatively titled "If Anyone Can, the Action Man Can." (They ended up repurposing part of its music for "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More.") David Bowie, however, had no such qualms about his own Action Man reference in "Ashes to Ashes," namely "Got a message from the Actcion Man: 'I'm happy, hope you're happy, too.'" (Maybe it's just the difference between a mere reference to him as opposed to an entire song.)

If I had to declare anyone to be the most original talent on this list, it would have to be Kate Bush. Hounds of Love is quite possibly the best art-rock album ever made. And though it's from a somewhat weaker album, "The Sensual World" never fails to send shivers up and down my spine. Besides, any woman who has the audacity to write a song about her desire to know what a male orgasm feels like ("Running Up That Hill") and to sing a duet with a bird—based on the bird's song, not hers ("Aerial Tal")—is pretty darn impressive in my book.

Favorite album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Favorite songs:

• "Running Up That Hill" (1985)
  A woman wants to know what it feels like to be a man—in every way. And that involves a man knowing what it feels like to be a woman.
  
  
• "Cloudbusting" (1985)
  A boy whose scientist father was spirited away by the government, never to be seen again, becomes the man who leads the revolt against that government. An epic in just over five minutes.
  
  
• "The Sensual World" (1989)
  Inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses but refused permission to quote it verbatim, Kate sets her adaptation of Molly Bloom's soliloquy to music. Ummmm—yes.

Recommended DVD: None—I'm still waiting for a DVD video collection! (OK, I know there are bootlegs, but I'm not counting them here.)

PSB connections:

• Neil met Kate at the Grosvenor House hotel at the 1987 BPI Awards. "She wasn't particularly friendly, I'm afraid," says Neil, "but she wasn't unfriendly. Shy, I think." Both Boys ran into her again at an EMI conference in 1993.
• Kate is one of several artists in this list who share with the Pet Shop Boys their active support for the UK charity War Child, which is devoted to helping the victims of war.
• Both Kate and the Pet Shop Boys have employed the services of the Balanescu String Quartet: the Boys on "My October Symphony" and Kate the preceding year on "Reaching Out" from her album The Sensual World.
• In May 2007 DJ Magnet did an ingenious mashup of PSB's "Love Comes Quickly" with Placebo's cover of "Running Up That Hill" (in the process incorporating a snippet of Kate's original) titled "Love Comes Running Up That Hill Quickly."

Between Karen's exquisite voice and Richard's equally exquisite arrangements (and, in some cases, his excellent songwriting), they were able to transform some of the most doleful songs ever written into timeless pop classics. With their masterpiece, "Goodbye to Love," they virtually invented the power ballad. Please don't hold that against them. Unfairly and sometimes cruelly maligned by the rock mainstream in their own time, it wasn't until after Karen's premature death that it was generally acknowledged what an absolute gem we had in her.

Favorite album: A Song for You (1972)

Favorite songs:

• "Goodbye to Love" (1972)
  Yes, a masterpiece: an almost suicidal lyric ("No one ever cared if I should live or die") set to a lovely melody and arrangement, the latter of which was, in its own humble way, revolutionary. In light of what followed, it's downright chilling.
  
  
• "Only Yesterday" (1975)
  How's this for a prophetic line? – "In my own time nobody knew the pain I was going through." Prophecy aside, this is quite possibly Richard's greatest songwriting achievement, and another astounding musical arrangement.
  
  
• "I Need to Be in Love" (1976)
  By her own admission, Karen's personal favorite—an aching ode to loneliness. There are those chills again.

Recommended DVD: Close to You – Remembering the Carpenters (1997)

PSB connections:

• In the same year, 1987, the Pet Shop Boys and Richard Carpenter both released collaborations with Dusty Springfield—the Boys, of course, on "What Have I Done to Deserve This?," and Richard on the song "Something in Your Eyes" from his solo album Time.

No one has made utter despair sound so appealing. And even when they're not despairing, as in the magnificent "Enjoy the Silence," they sound as though they are, which is tougher than you might think. I don't much like watching them perform—something about Dave Gahan's stage presence rubs me the wrong way—but I do love listening to them.

Favorite album: Violator (1990)

Favorite songs:

• "Never Let Me Down Again" (1987)
  This is what happens when you open the factory doors to young men with synths, samplers, and quasi-gothic, quasi-homoerotic sensibilities.
  
  
• "Enjoy the Silence" (1990)
  As I said, magnificent. "All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is here in my arms." I've never heard being in love described more succinctly.
  
  
• "World in My Eyes" (1990)
  It would be completely solipsistic if they weren't trying to share their vision. Those backwards effects summarize it perfectly: the sound of the universe being sucked into the black hole of one's mind.

Recommended DVD: Videos 86>98+ (2002)

PSB connections:

• In the November 8, 1984 issue of Smash Hits, journalist Neil Tennant reviewed the DM single "Blasphemous Rumours," describing it as "a routine slab of gloom in which God is given a severe ticking off."
• Years later, after having himself become a famous musician, Neil noted that "Enjoy the Silence" was an influence on PSB during the recording of Behaviour, particularly on the song "The End of the World." In fact, the entire album Violator proved a spur to our heroes. Neil has been quoted as saying, "We were listening to Violator by Depeche Mode, which was a very good album, and we were deeply jealous of it," to which Chris reportedly added, "They had raised the stakes."
• As with the Bee Gees, influences go both ways—and in this case in the same song. Reportedly it was the Pet Shop Boys' influence that inspired DM to give "Enjoy the Silence" a strong dance beat. (It seems they originally considered it more of a ballad.)
• Neil and Chris, performing with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr as Electronic, served as the Mode's opening act for a pair of concert dates in Los Angeles in August 1990.
• Both Neil and DM's Martin Gore appeared in the 2009 TV documentary Synth Britannia.
• PSB and DM both headlined the mid-October 2009 Personal Festival in Argentina.

Neil Hannon—who is The Divine Comedy—has established a place for himself in the post-1990 pop music world as perhaps its single foremost practitioner of the art song. His work is breathtakingly imaginative, and while this native of Northern Ireland sometimes flirts daringly with the rococo and the twee, the fact that he nearly always manages to avoid such pitfalls renders his heavily orchestrated achievements all the more impressive. As he walks his musical tightrope between the comic and the tragic, he has become an Irish/U.K. national treasure. Thank goodness the rest of the world can enjoy the treasure as well.

Favorite album: Victory for the Comic Muse (2006)

Favorite songs:

• "The Frog Princess" (1996)
  In which Mr. Hannon uses a fairy tale as a metaphor for a relationship with a young woman who would've been far better off left alone.
  
  
• "Our Mutual Friend" (2004)
  A one-night love triangle set to chamber music with a relentless, driving beat. I'm there with you, buddy.
  
  
• "A Lady of a Certain Age" (2006)
  Sad, languid, rich, and decadent. It may not be the perfect description, but it's something like Oscar Wilde magically transported to the 21st century.

Recommended DVD: So far the only full-length DVD is Live at the London Palladium (2004), available from the U.K. in PAL format. I haven't seen it yet, but hope to soon.

PSB connections:

• The Pet Shop Boys and Neil Hannon are professed admirers of each other's music. Neil Tennant reportedly once referred to Hannon as "unbelievably talented but, unfortunately, an unrecognized genius."
• In August 2009 Neil Hannon talked to The Guardian about music that inspires him. "If you want it intellectual and soulful," he said, "you can look to the Pet Shop Boys."
• The Divine Comedy (Hannon plus support musicians) performed "West End Girls" during their 2002 tour.
• Hannon contributed "I've Been to a Marvelous Party" to Tennant's Twentieth-Century Blues Noël Coward tribute project.
• The two Neils—Hannon and Tennant—sang backup together on Robbie Williams's "No Regrets."
• The Divine Comedy is the second of three artists in this list—see the Beach Boys, above, for the first—who share with the Pet Shop Boys the distinction of having been covered ("Our Mutual Friend") by the Fauré Quartett on their 2009 album Popsongs.
• As reported in Issue 17 of Literally, both the Boys and Neil Hannon appeared on the November 1, 1996 episode of the U.K. TV show TFI Friday. PSB performed "Single" and "Se A Vida É," while Hannon performed "The Frog Princess." At one point backstage, Neil and Chris spoke to each other about Hannon:

  Chris: "He's the new you. He's the new, updated, better-looking version of you."

  Neil: "Is he not the new Jarvis [Cocker]? He used to write me letters, Neil Hannon [before he became famous]. He's the son of a bishop."

• Like PSB and the Beatles, the Divine Comedy's U.K record label is Parlophone.

As a former nerd—at least I hope it's "former"—I have to admire anyone who made über-geekiness look and sound so cool. Yes, even more than Devo. No, not as much as Elvis Costello, but, then again, I personally don't much care for most of Costello's music. Besides, anyone who can pull off the techno-Cajun hybrid of "I Love You, Goodbye" has my undying respect.

Favorite album: Astronauts and Heretics (1992)

Favorite songs:

• "She Blinded Me with Science" (1983)
  It's just plain fun, and don't you deny it.
  
  
• "Hyperactive" (1984)
  Play that funky music, white boy.
  
  
• "I Love You, Goodbye" (1992)
  A synth maven ventures down to the Louisiana bayou and falls in love with the local music. That's not what the lyric is about, but it is what the music tells me.

Recommended DVD: His first (as far as I know) has recently been released, The Sole Inhabitant (2007), but I have yet to see it myself.

PSB connections:

• An "eighties star" who continued to make terrific music into the nineties but was by that time essentially ignored by U.S. radio, where he couldn't buy airplay time except for the occasional "oldie"—almost invariably his first and biggest hit ("She Blinded Me with Science"). Sound familiar?

Because Andy Bell is so "out" (not to mention a great singer) and because Vince Clarke is the most inventive synth player ever. He's certainly not the instrument's greatest virtuoso—you'd have to look along the lines of Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, or even Wendy Carlos for that—but no other synthesist is as imaginative and emotionally evocative.

Favorite album: I Say I Say I Say (1994)

Favorite songs:

• "A Little Respect" (1988)
  I just love the sheer energy of this one. You know, I used to be able to hit that high note myself. Used to. Honest.
  
  
• "Blue Savannah" (1989)
  A soaring melody and one of Vince's loveliest arrangements. Programmed or not, those are wondrous keyboard runs.
  
  
• "In My Arms" (1997)
  Reportedly Andy's apology to his lover for straying, this is one of Erasure's last great gasps before bounding into (in my opinion) comparative mediocrity.

Recommended DVD: Hits! The Videos (2003)

PSB connections:

• They're contemporaneous synthpop-songwriting duos with openly gay lead singers.
• There's a widespread perception of an intense rivalry between the two groups, but this seems largely a product of fandom's collective imagination—or, at most, a holdover, no longer applicable, from their earliest days. Clarke has described himself as a PSB fan and has referred to Chris and Neil as "great composers," while Andy has said, "I've always been a fan of PSB's music and would love to sing on one of their disco tracks." Andy has also described Erasure as "the poor man's Pet Shop Boys," which he clarified by adding that Erasure's roots were more "working class."
• On a more concrete level, Stephen Hague, who has often worked with the Boys and produced Very, also produced Erasure's album The Innocents. In fact, Erasure and PSB have shared numerous other producers, engineers, and remixers, among them David Jacob, Phil Harding, Mark Stent, Shep Pettibone, and Bob Kraushaar.
• In the documentary Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop, comedian Matt Lucas jokes that PSB are "almost as good as Erasure."
• Like Martin Gore (noted above under Depeche Mode), Vince appeared in the 2009 TV documentary Synth Britannia, in which Neil also appeared.

With this much songwriting, vocal, and production talent, plus more inner turmoil than Mount Etna, this band might be described as a Beach Boys for the seventies—only the Beach Boys were still around then, if past their prime. Lindsay worshiped at the altar of Brian, and small wonder Christine hooked up with Dennis for a while: they were naturals. Meanwhile, Stevie's witch fixation, once somewhat annoying, has grown quainter with time. I mean, you gotta love such charming oddballism. Besides, anyone who can write a song as deeply anguished as "Silver Springs" can be forgiven almost anything.

Favorite album: Tusk (1979)

Favorite songs:

• "Go Your Own Way" (1977)
  Great pop born of heartache. The power behind this, Lindsay's side of the story of his breakup with Stevie, is awe-inspiring.
  
  
• "Silver Springs" (1977)
  And here it is from Stevie's vantage point. They're both angry, but Stevie's anger has a more mournful edge. Another literal and figurative flipside, this is one of rock's greatest double-sided singles.
  
  
• "Sara" (1979)
  A marvelous, meandering mixture of imagery and textures: a musical tapestry of the finest weave.

Recommended DVD: The Dance (1997)

PSB connections:

• Chris has said that when they recorded "Home and Dry," they initially thought that "it sounded a bit too much like Fleetwood Mac or something," but they decided to stick with it because it was like nothing they had ever done before.
• On at least six separate occasions (including a November 2006 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle; on May 25, 2009, when the Boys hosted the BBC Radio 2 show Wired; and during their June 1, 2009 appearance on the BBC Breakfast TV show), Neil and/or Chris have said that they would like to work with Stevie Nicks. As Neil put it in the Chronicle interview, "I recently heard her song 'Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?' and her husky vocals really impressed me. So if you're reading this, Stevie, give us a call." Unfortunately, she probably won't read that here or anywhere else online: Stevie is reportedly something of a technophobe who doesn't even own a computer or other device for accessing the Internet.
• In a December 2009 TV interview with Alan Titchmarsh, Neil said that he "used to hate Fleetwood Mac" back in the 1970s, but he seemed to suggest that his feelings about them are now much more positive. In the same interview he also restated (agan) his and Chris's desire to work with Stevie Nicks.

I debated with myself for a long time about adding the former lead singer of Genesis to my list. I must confess that I actually like only about half of his solo work. But I also have to confess that the songs I like, I really like! When he hits it, he hits it dead on, creating some of the greatest art-rock tracks ever recorded. He's endlessly fascinating, extremely influential, a remarkable showman, and the possessor of a delightfully disturbing sense of humor—OK, he makes the cut.

Favorite album: So (1986)

Favorite songs:

• "Solsbury Hill" (1977)
  Gabriel tells us why he left Genesis, effectively employing a musical style that would have been entirely out of place on Genesis albums of the period.
  
  
• "Shock the Monkey" (1982)
  PETA has nothing to worry about in this wonderful blend of quasi-African stylings with western pop: the monkey's a metaphor for human beings in general, and Peter himself in particular.
  
  
• "Red Rain" (1986)
  You can almost feel the terror in this apocalyptic nightmare set to music.

Recommended DVD: Secret World Live (1994)

PSB connections:

• Both Peter and the Boys were recipients of 1987 Brits Awards: Gabriel as Best Male Solo Artist and PSB as performers of the Single of the Year, "West End Girls."
• Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood" is covered by the Fauré Quartett on their 2009 album Popsongs, making him the third artist in this list (along with the Beach Boys and the Divine Comedy) who shares that honor with the Pet Shop Boys.
• Gabriel's 2010 album of covers, Scratch My Back, includes Neil Young's "Philadelphia," which has also been covered—though not yet officially released—by the Pet Shop Boys.

Speak of the devil. Great music, great lyrics, great instrumental prowess—in short, they're great. Unlike many, I like both the "Gabriel era" and the "Collins era" primarily because the chief common denominator, at least as far as I'm concerned, is Tony Banks, the finest songwriter and the most tasteful keyboardist of prog rock.

Favorite album: A Trick of the Tail (1976)

Favorite songs:

• "Firth of Fifth" (1973)
  Tony's hands are all over this one, from his best piano solo to his T.S. Eliot-esque lyrics. But the real star is Steve Hackett's incredibly melodic extended guitar solo. Breathtaking. (I shouldn't overlook their post-Hackett live ringer Daryl Steurmer, who does an incredible job with it, too.)
  
  
• "Squonk" (1976)
  In a song about a creature native to obscure rural Pennsylvania folk tales, Genesis pretends to be Led Zeppelin and does them all proud.
  
  
• "Heathaze" (1980)
  A friend once told me that Genesis wrote "hymns," and here's a prime example. Banks uses Fisher King mythology to express deep spiritual despair. Now, I don't grasp the precise cause of that despair, but I don't have to in order to feel it. And Collins nails that chorus!

Recommended DVD: When in Rome 2007 (2008) - Yes, they still have what it takes. If nothing else, their awe-inspiring medley of "In the Cage," "The Cinema Show," "Duke's Travels," and "Afterglow" makes this essential viewing.

PSB connections:

• The two bands have connections—albeit very different ones—with British songwriter/producer Jonathan King, who discovered, named, and gave Genesis their professional start back in the late 1960s. Two decades later the Pet Shop Boys would successfully sue King for his allegations that they had cribbed "It's a Sin" from Cat Stevens's "Wild World."
• During his stint with Smash Hits, Neil conducted an interview in Philadelphia with the members of Genesis. Afterward Genesis bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford drove Neil for his first-ever visit to New York City.
• Both bands boast a "domino" song: of course, the Boys' "Domino Dancing," and Genesis's "Domino"—a deeply moving epic that describes a nuclear holocaust in terms of one of the millions (if not billions) of small, personal tragedies it would entail.
• Tony Banks (who would sometimes sing backup with Genesis but only rarely would sing lead even on his own solo material) has described his singing voice as "a cross between Al Stewart and Neil Tennant" (Genesis: Chapter & Verse, 2007)—which, at least from this observer's perspective, doesn't leave a lot of room for maneuvering. But that's a moot point since, for what it's worth, I really don't agree anyway.

A grossly underrated guy—a terrific songwriter. Some of his least-known songs (such as "The Other Me") are among his best, and while nearly all of his albums are excellent, his ambitious song cycle Blaze of Glory particularly stands out. It's a crime that this remarkable album is out of print, at least in the United States.

Favorite album: Blaze of Glory (1989)

Favorite songs:

• "Breaking Us in Two" (1982)
  The finest melody Joe ever wrote and is likely ever to write, and that's in a career full of great melodies. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been listening to a lot of early Steely Dan when he composed and/or arranged this.
  
  
• "Real Men" (1982)
  A superb examination of what it means to be a man in an age where the very fact that you need to ask such a question speaks volumes.
  
  
• "The Other Me" (1991)
  As I wrote years ago in Rock on the Wild Side, "one of the most profoundly sad songs I know." It's the agony of being torn between two people, both of whom you love and neither of whom you want to hurt. And you can dismiss this if you like, but I'm of the mind that Joe's narrative personna here is bisexual, singing about the woman he loves to the man he also loves—which makes it all the more gut-wrenching as far as I'm concerned.

Recommended DVD: Live in Tokyo (1989)

PSB connections:

• The Seven Deadly Sins (Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Anger, Envy, and Pride) have been a mutual concern. The Boys featured them (via fleeting personifications) in their video for "It's a Sin," while Jackson made them the focus of his 1997 album Heaven and Hell, with a separate song devoted to each of the seven.
• Jackson makes passing reference to PSB in his autobiography A Cure for Gravity: "Up close, there might appear to be a million worlds of difference between, say, Aerosmith and the Pet Shop Boys. Zoom out, and they're both pop groups. Zoom out further, and it's all just music." Not exactly a profound observation, Joe, but I still love ya.

Are you now beginning to grasp how important songwriting skills are to me? Despite the occasional lapse in taste, Long Island's finest is a great songwriter (with a penchant for unexpected harmonic progressions that rivals Brian Wilson) as well as a damn good singer. He's also something of a musical chameleon, readily able to mimic the songwriting and vocal mannerisms of other artists. Take, for instance, "Uptown Girl," an uncanny channeling of the sound and spirit some other favorites of mine, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (see below).

Favorite album: The Nylon Curtain (1982)

Favorite songs:

• "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (1976)
  Billy does Phil Spector in one of his greatest melodies. His vocal performance here is fantastic.
  
  
• "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" (1977)
  Tales of nostalgia and regret in two terrific songs rolled into one.
  
  
• "All About Soul" (1993)
  He doesn't just love the woman: he admires her. The old fighter shows he still has what it takes in one of his final bouts before hanging up his gloves.

Recommended DVD: The Essential Video Collection (2001)

PSB connections:

• Like the Pet Shop Boys, Billy wrote and recorded a song titled "Shameless." (Of course, the hyperlink takes you to info about the PSB song, not Billy's. Billy's "Shameless" subsequently became a major country hit for Garth Brooks.)
• Billy was born in the Bronx—some sources report his birthplace as the nearby NYC suburb of Hicksville, but he says it was the Bronx, and I'll go with what he says—so that makes him an authentic "New York City Boy."

OK, so his work since around 1990 has largely been schmaltz. But it's been really good schmaltz. And back in the seventies, when he was in his prime, Elton was a nonstop hit machine—and a composer of terrific songs—who made rock fun again. Though the unlikeliest of pop stars, he fully deserves to be precisely what he is: the third most successful artist in rock history (at least based on hit singles in the U.S.), behind only Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

Favorite album: Honky Château (1972)

Favorite songs:

• "Where to Now, St. Peter?" (1971)
  One of early Elton's finest moments, milking a typically vague but just as typically effective Taupin lyric for all of its emotional worth.
  
  
• "Philadelphia Freedom" (1975)
  In one of his biggest and best hits, Captain Fantastic kills three birds with one stone, paying simultaneous tribute to Thom Bell/Gamble & Huff Philadelphia soul, the U.S. bicentennial, and Billie Jean King's tennis team. Covers a lot of territory, doesn't it?
  
  
• "I Feel Like a Bullet in the Gun of Robert Ford" (1975)
  The most outrageous extended metaphor in pop music history. Bernie casts Elton in the role of an Old West farm boy breaking up with his girl. Or is that just part of the extended metaphor? Whatever the case, Elton charges it with one of his best vocals.

Recommended DVD: Elton 60 - Live at Madison Square Garden (2007)

PSB connections:

• Elton and the Boys are personal friends.
• Neil co-wrote and "co-sang" with Elton and Brandon Flowers the Killers' 2008 Christmas song "Joseph, Better You Than Me."
• The Pet Shop Boys and Elton also collaborated on a 2005 cover of "Alone Again, Naturally."
• They performed "Believe/Song for Guy" together on the 1997 U.K. TV special An Audience with Elton John.
• Elton participated in Neil's Twentieth-Century Blues project.
• Elton introduced PSB as his "favorite English band" on the episode of TFI Friday where they performed "It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas."
• That same song was included on Elton's 2005 holiday compilation Elton John's Christmas Party. In the CD's liner notes, Elton writes of Neil and Chris, "Not only are they two of my best friends, but they constantly write some of the best albums to come out of the United Kingdom and I love them dearly."
• Neil attended Elton's 50th-birthday costume party in 1997, resplendently uniformed as a dragoon.
• The Boys performed at the big "pre-nuptial" bash for Elton and his partner David Furnish in late 2005.
• Elton, when presenting PSB with the 2000 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, stated that their song "A Red Letter Day" had inspired him to continue making music at a time when he had felt like giving up on it.
• They remade "In Private" (originally written and produced by PSB for Dusty Springfield) as a duet between PSB and Elton.
• Neil interviewed Elton in a 1998 issue of Interview magazine.
• Neil unsuccessfully auditioned for Elton's Rocket Records label way back in the early 1970s, years before there even were "Pet Shop Boys."
• The Boys have an Elton John pinball machine in their studio office.
• On behalf of PSB, their "house graphic artist" Mark Farrow designed a special full-page message reading "Love, Neil and Chris"—rendered in a style echoing their "Yes era" graphics—for the official program for the 11^th annual Elton John Aids Foundation White Tie and Tiara Ball, held in late June 2009 at the Windsor home of EJ and his hubby David Furnish.
• Finally, an especially unfortunate connection: Elton generated a good deal of controversy in 1999 when he performed a live version of "It's a Sin" (using the original PSB backing track, with their permission) at a Royal Albert Hall benefit for a gay rights organization accompanied by a group of dancers wearing boy scout uniforms—who then proceeded to strip them off to very skimpy shorts. Elton had apparently wanted to perform the song with Neil and Chris themselves, but they had another commitment that evening and had to bow out. One can only imagine, however, what they felt about the ensuing furor in the press—aside perhaps from being grateful that they weren't actually there in person to witness and perhaps even actively participate in the performance that caused the furor in the first place.

Quirky, jazzy, wildly inventive music from a woman who gives every impression of having lived the lowdown she writes and sings about. I think her first four albums—Rickie Lee Jones, Pirates, Girl at Her Volcano (actually an EP), and The Magazine—are her best. She seems, however, to have at least partially burned out after that. The enduring curse of the "Best New Artist" Grammy, I suppose. But, oh, what wonderful albums those first ones are!

Favorite album: Rickie Lee Jones (1979)

Favorite songs:

• "Last Chance Texaco" (1979)
  Another extended metaphor, cleverly using a remote gas station to symbolize a desperate final bid at love.
  
  
• "Living It Up" (1981)
  Rickie's best lyric, best melody, and best arrangement all in one package. And her half-ecstatic/half-tortured scat-singing near the end speaks volumes without employing a single intelligible word. Recordings don't come much better than this.
  
  
• "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking" (1981)
  You don't often hear musicians having his much fun in the studio—at least not while also creating such superb music. More great scat-singing in the middle eight (actually, a "middle sixteen" since she doubles it).

Recommended DVD: Live at the Wiltern Theatre (1992) is about all that's out there.

PSB connections:

• Jon Pollak, who was the lighting designer for the Boys' Somewhere shows at the Savoy Theatre in 1997, also designed the lighting for a Rickie Lee Jones tour in the late 1980s. (Hey, it's the only thing I could come up with!)

What can you say about her that hasn't already been said? The woman's as smart as they come: she knows her strengths and, even more importantly, she knows her weaknesses and how to work around them. If it's amazing that Elton is the third most successful artist in rock history, it's even more remarkable that she's #4. But just get a load of the singles catalog on that girl! And anyone who doubts her artistic chops should, if nothing else, remember "Live to Tell," one of the most poignant, emotionally devastating ballads of the 1980s.

Favorite album: Ray of Light (1998)

Favorite songs:

• "Vogue" (1990)
  It was originally intended as a throwaway, but it turned into one of Madonna's signature tunes: a classic house vibe made palatable for the masses, and pop art of the highest order. One of the all-time great music videos, too. Absolutely iconic.
  
  
• "Deeper and Deeper" (1992)
  A near rewrite of "Vogue," except now in a minor key. But what a sublime, scary difference that minor key makes! A marvelous expression of the mixed emotions that can grip you when you realize just how much in love you can be, how vulnerable that makes you, and how extremely insecure it can leave you about everything, including the verities taught by your parents.
  
  
• "Music" (2000)
  One of those tracks that are even better on your car radio than on your home stereo. Managing simultaneously to sound both retro and futuristic, Madonna asks a DJ for a leg up on getting down. But I really don't think she needs his or anyone else's permission to boogie-woogie.

Recommended DVD: The Confessions Tour - Live from London (2007)

PSB connections:

• Madonna was among the artists interviewed by Neil back in his days with Smash Hits. (His interview actually appeared in its U.S. sister publication Star Hits.) In fact, Neil conducted Madonna's first U.K. interview, before she became really famous.
• In 1986, after the Boys hit it big, they attended her birthday party at London's Groucho Club, where she asked them to be the opening act on her next tour. They politely declined.
• Still later, Neil and Chris considered offering their song "Heart" to Maddie but, by their own admission, they chickened out.
• They allude to her in "DJ Culture" (she's the "she" in "she after Sean") and mention her by name in their unreleased track "Tall Thin Men."
• Interestingly, although Neil has confirmed that he is indeed a Madonna fan, he once said that the only album of hers that he actually likes is her first. Then again, in the December 1992 issue of the PSB Fan Club publication Literally, he stated that he was enjoying her album Erotica at the time.
• Stuart Price, the producer of Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor, noted that at one point while they were working on the song "Jump"—which is built around the classic "West End Girls" chord progression—she cried out, "Pet Shop Boys! I fucking love them!"
• Speaking of Stuart Price, it was surely his production work on Madonna's Confessions album as well as his service as musical director for her subsequent Confessions Tour—replete with his trademark mashups—that led to the Boys tapping him to produce their 2009 Brits hits medley and then their own mashup-laden Pandemonium Tour.
• Of course, our heroes did a remix of "Sorry," the second single from Confessions on a Dance Floor. Madonna was so fond of their mix that she used it—including Neil's recorded vocals—in her performance of the song during her Confessions Tour.
• When Neil presented Madonna with a Brits Award in February 2006, she thanked various British artists, including the Pet Shop Boys, for their influence on her music. Before the show, Neil and Madonna even did a radio interview together, during which they performed a brief a cappella duet of "Sorry" (lasting only a few seconds), with Neil reprising his "Please forgive me" part.
• Chris and Neil collaborated with Robbie Williams on the song "She's Madonna" for Robbie's album Rudebox.
• Angie Becker, the Pet Shop Boy's manager starting in 2009, had co-managed Madonna for several years beginning in 2004.
• Representatives for Madonna contacted Neil and Chris in 2007 asking whether they might have something "lying around" that would be good for her to record. But before the Boys could actually offer anything, Madonna's people phoned back to politely withdraw the request since Madge had decided to "go R&B" for her next album—which turned out to be 2008's Hard Candy.
• The May 2008 issue of Q Magazine contained an article in which various artists (including Elvis Costello, Michael Stipe, Shirley Bassey, Johnny Marr, and Debbie Harry, among others) were asked to pose questions to Madonna, which she then answered. Neil was among those others. He even got away with two questions: "When was the last time you used public transport?" and "When was your last hangover?" Her responses: "On the [London] subway … shooting my 'Hung Up' video [in 2006]" and "Probably after my birthday.… I had a Gypsy-inspired theme party at my house in the countryside. What was I drinking? What wasn't I drinking!"
• In the audio commentary track of the Pandemonium live DVD, the Boys and set designer Es Devlin compare the part where Chris briefly dances onstage with the support singers/dancers during the song "Why Don't We Live Together?" to apparently similar moves made by Madonna in her performance of her 1985 hit "Dress You Up" on Madonna Live - The Virgin Tour. Remarkably, Chris had said more than 20 years earlier—as revealed in Robin Mackintosh's 1988 book Pet Shop Boys Special (page 58)—that among his ambitions was to do a dance routine onstage similar to that performed by Madonna for "Dress You Up." How's that for a long-term vision?
  

Snicker if you want, but we're all allowed at least one guilty pleasure. Not only were they at their peak the tightest harmony vocal ensemble in the biz, but they could swing their asses off when they wanted to. And while they're all excellent singers, top chops go to the incredible Janis Siegel, a virtuoso in both the pop and jazz idioms—and there's only a handful of vocalists you can truthfully say that about.

Favorite album: Extensions (1979)

Favorite songs:

• "Birdland" (1979)
  The Transfer enlisted jazz legend Jon Hendricks to help them turn this Weather Report fusion instrumental into a vocalese classic. So unexpected, and so, so fine.
  
  
• "Until I Met You (Corner Pocket)" (1981)
  Vocalese again, but this time they dig deeper into jazz history, to Count Basie. And the result is every bit as thrilling as "Birdland."
  
  
• "Sassy" (1991)
  Just to show they don't have to do vocalese to hit their stride, Janis and the gang came up with this contemporary jazz-pop original that pays tribute to the divine Sarah Vaughan. They do her justice.

Recommended DVD: Vocalese Live (1986)

PSB connections:

• The Manhattan Transfer's biggest U.S. hit was their 1981 remake of the doo-wop classic "The Boy from New York City." And, of course, we all know about the Pet Shop Boys' "New York City Boy.
• This one's a stretch, but since there are so few connections PSB/MT connections to begin with, I won't resist. The PSB track "Happiness Is an Option" is based partly on the classical composition "Vocalise" by Sergey Rachmaninoff. And the Transfer is renowned as the greatest contemporary exponents of the "vocalese" singing technique. I told you it was a stretch.

He's an acquired taste, but I've definitely acquired it. The terms "alternative" and "indie" were made for artists like Stephin Merritt, whose hangdog baritone, stark arrangements, and deceptively simple musical structures can make for a challenging aural experience. But once you tap into his aesthetic, you're rewarded with some of the greatest songs of modern pop. A master of mixed emotions, he's by turns forlornly romantic, charmingly lewd, poignantly seductive, jadedly frustrated, and comically caustic. Recording both solo and with collaborators under a bewildering array of identities—the Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, the Sixths, and the Gothic Archies, not to mention his own name—it all boils down to a highly accomplished songwriter carving a unique niche for himself in contemporary music.

Favorite album: 69 Love Songs (1999)

Favorite songs:

• "Busby Berkeley Dreams" (1999)
  "Do you think it's dangerous to have Busby Berkeley dreams?" Yes, I do. But when danger is this lovely and evocative, it just might be worth it.
  
  
• "Papa Was a Rodeo" (1999)
  Before Brokeback Mountain, Merritt and company told this delightful tale of a couple of cowboys who can't settle down but also can't help falling in love—and staying in love for more than a half-century.
  
  
• "The Night You Can't Remember" (1999)
  Ingenious wordplay reminiscent of greats like Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin. Yet I doubt they would ever have written a song quite like this: "The night you can't remember—the night I can't forget."

Recommended DVD: None that I'm aware of.

PSB connections:

• In a 1998 interview, Gail O'Hara (cofounder of Chickfactor magazine) asked Merritt, "Who is the best lyricist in an electropop group?" He cited three: "Me. Neil Tennant. Gary Numan's lyrics are underrated."
• Merritt's most prolific band, the Magnetic Fields, was slated to take part in the Pet Shop Boys' ill-fated 2001 touring "gay music" summer festival "Wotapalava."
• On a somewhat more esoteric note, both Stephin and the Boys have shown a recurring concern with vampires—metaphorical if not literal. Merritt's songs "I Have the Moon," "Crowd of Drifters," and (obviously) "I Am a Vampire," among others, are about the undead, while a Future Bible Heroes album title, Eternal Youth, refers to that particular vampiric trait. As for PSB, there's of course "Vampires," a passing reference in their demo of "A Little Black Dress," and the "Heart" video starring Ian McKellen as a bloodsucker clearly based on Count Dracula. Curiously, however, Neil professed that he's "not remotely interested in Dracula" during a 2007 visit to Romania.

Are there any artists whom you really don't want to like, but you do? I have several, but George Michael is the biggest and best of the bunch—the one I like the most, despite myself. It's difficult to say why I don't want to like him. Maybe I just can't get those horrible "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and "I Want Your Sex" videos out of my head. Or perhaps because the title "I Want Your Sex" itself sounds like a line from a bad paperback sexploitation potboiler of the 1950s. Or maybe even because, in my opinion, Wham's "Last Christmas" just might be the second-worst Christmas song ever. But I know precisely why I do like Mr. Michael: he's a truly great singer and has flashes of undeniable brilliance as a songwriter.

Favorite album: Faith (1987)

Favorite songs:

• "Freedom" (aka "Freedom '90") (1990)
  The foot-tappin' biography of a pop star in 6½ minutes flat—that and the opening salvo in his coming-out process. You want more? It's got an unforgettable piano hook and one of the best descriptions of fame in the canon of popular music: "It looks like the road to heaven, but it feels like the road to hell." You tell 'em, George.
  
  
• "You Have Been Loved" (1996)
  I can't think of another song that so effectively expresses the almost unbearable anguish and guilt over surviving the death of a lover. I just wish I knew how he can sing it without bursting into tears.
  
  
• "Amazing" (2004)
  Yet, even after that, one can find happiness again. And this is one of George's happiest songs.

Recommended DVD: Live in London (2009) - The concert's terrific—despite the fact that George is clearly uncomfortable enough with his songs' highest notes these days that he almost invariably cedes them to his backup singers and/or the audience—and the stage setup is absolutely fantastic. (It must have cost a fortune!) But I'm especially fond of the accompanying "backstage" documentary, where George comes across as a very ordinary and very likeable guy. In fact, he seems so downright familiar that I found myself thinking, "Gee, I know guys just like that"—except of course none of them is a surpassingly talented multi-millionaire with a British accent.

PSB connections:

• Social acquaintances (who once enjoyed, as Neil put it, a "riotous" time together on an airplane), George Michael visited the Boys in the studio while they were recording Bilingual, and he was especially intrigued by the song "It Always Comes as a Surprise." It's likely that it proved an influence on him during his recording around the same time of his album Older, which included a number of tracks with a similarly "bossa nova-ish" feel.
• George has listed PSB among his own favorite artists and "Hit Music" as one of his favorite songs of theirs, although in 2007 he instead chose "Being Boring" as one of his Desert Island Discs.
• Chris and Neil were sufficiently impressed by Chris Porter's and, more significantly, Pete Gleadall's previous work with George Michael to work with them as well.
• George invited the Boys to be his opening act at his 2007 Wembly Arena concert, but they politely declined.
• The PSB song "Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend"—or at least its title—was inspired in part by a photo in a tabloid paper of George on the arm of an attractive young woman.
• During his tenure at Smash Hits, Neil interviewed George Michael and Andrew Ridgely back when they were collectively known as Wham!
• Chris and Neil were among the celebrity guests who attended George's lavish 1970s-themed party celebrating his 30^th birthday on June 26, 1993.

Hands down, the greatest standalone (words and music) female songwriter in rock/pop music history. And sometimes I'm tempted not even to use the qualifier "female" there. Her songs have more layers than the earth's crust, and are about as deep.

Favorite album: Court and Spark (1974)

Favorite songs:

• "A Case of You" (1971)
  A double metaphor (a case of liquor and a case of disease) that brilliantly expresses both the positive and negative aspects of love. That's a dulcimer she's playing, by the way, and I have a thing for dulcimers.
  
  
• "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" (1975)
  There aren't many other women who can turn such a scathingly critical eye toward fellow members of their sex and get away with it. Joni uses the heroine of Gone with the Wind as an archetype for a woman who may gain the world but lose her soul.
  
  
• "Amelia" (1976)
  An astounding song in which the repeated refrain "It was just a false alarm" becomes a cry of simultaneous anguish and relief over the realization of having narrowly escaped becoming as lost—spiritually and emotionally, if not physically—as the doomed aviatrix of the title, the martyred patron saint of pioneering women.

Recommended DVD: Woman of Heart and Mind - A Life Story (2003)

PSB connections:

• Neil has listed Mitchell's Hejira (on which one of my faves, "Amelia," appears) as among his own favorite albums, describing its "Coyote" as "the song I like most from that period."
• The same album, Hejira, includes a song titled "A Strange Boy," whereas Neil and Chris wrote a song titled "Boy Strange," both of which concern troubled relationships with—well, strange boys.
• In the June 2005 issue of the U.K. magazine Word, Neil said of Joni, "We met her once, in a hotel in L.A. when the Oscars were on.… She was very sexy! I told her I loved her records and her reply was, 'I love your videos.' I'm sure she meant to be nice but I thought, 'Agh! You bitch….'"

The favorites of my teenage years, just the thing for a sensitive, somewhat brainy little nerd like me. Yeah, the "mystical" stuff sounds like drivel to me now, but much of the rest has stood the test of time—and, regardless, they'll always claim a warm spot in my heart. Whatever else you might say, when Justin Hayward was good, he was very good: such songs as "The Actor," "Lovely to See You," "Question," "It's Up to You," and "The Story in Your Eyes" are superb by any reasonable standards. And it wasn't all Hayward's show, either; the other guys were pretty decent songwriters, too. My pet peeve: they deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it's simply rockist snobbery that they aren't—the same rockist snobbery, not so incidentally, that will probably keep PSB out as well. Then again, I suspect the Pet Shop Boys (who have repeatedly expressed their utter contempt for the very concept of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) have a better chance of making it than the Moody Blues; rock critics tend actually to like the Pet Shop Boys.

Favorite album: A Question of Balance (1970)

Favorite songs:

• "Lovely to See You" (1969)
  And just as lovely to listen to—a first-rate study in the creative use of guitar feedback.
  
  
• "Dawning Is the Day" (1970)
  One of Hayward's lesser-known songs, yet its gliding melody and powerful arrangement place it among his best. He also gets to show off his acoustic guitar prowess; those classically styled runs are amazing.
  
  
• "New Horizons" (1972)
  Following the death of his father, Hayward wrote this musical eulogy to express his own determination to forge ahead. His beautifully melodic electric guitar solo is nothing less than a cry of grief.

Recommended DVD: A Night at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (1992)

PSB connections:

• According to Michael Cowton's 1991 book Pet Shop Boys: Introspective (p. 5), Neil in his pre-fame days enjoyed doing parodies of various popular artists, including the Moody Blues.
• While I admit that it's not exactly the passing of the torch, the Moodies had their last U.S. Top 10 hit, "Your Wildest Dreams," in the same year (1986) that the Pet Shop Boys had their first, "West End Girls."

Quite possibly the most curmudgeonly of all songwriters, with an incredible ear for melody and arrangements as well as a nasty satiric streak that somehow, sometimes manages to be too subtle for his own good. And when he's not being particularly satirical, as in "Marie" and "Louisiana 1927," he can be as deeply moving as songwriters get. All in all, a man after my own heart.

Favorite album: Good Old Boys (1974)

Favorite songs:

• "Sail Away" (1972)
  A slave-trader lures unsuspecting Africans aboard his ship with half-truth tales of America sung to a luscious melody and arrangement. Sick, brilliant stuff.
  
  
• "Marie" (1974)
  A portrait of a redneck who treats his wife like crap yet still loves her deeply, only he can't bring himself to tell her that while he's sober. And this one's even more gorgeous.
  
  
• "I Love L.A." (1983)
  Newman simultaneously parodies and celebrates Los Angeles, turning the joke back on himself because he in fact does love L.A. despite his tacit acknowledgment ("Look at that bum over there—man, he's down on his knees!") that he really shouldn't.

Recommended DVD: Live at the Odeon (1993)

PSB connections:

• Neil once described the song "I Don't Want to Hear It Any More," written by Randy Newman (and as performed by Dusty Springfield) as a particular favorite: "It just breaks my heart to listen to it.… Ah! It's a great record." (Not surprisingly, he selected Dusty's rendition of that song as another of his Desert Island Discs.)
• Interestingly, one of my own favorite Newman songs, the lovely "Marie," is sung from the perspective of a man who can tell his wife that he loves her only when he's drunk—written nearly thirty years before Chris and Neil covered similar territory from the other angle.
• One of Newman's most famous compositions is titled "Sail Away"—not the same "Sail Away," however, that the Pet Shop Boys recorded. That one was written by another great songwriter, Noël Coward.

There's a reason why The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the best-selling albums of all time: it's that damn good. But, as great as it is, there's so much more to Pink Floyd than that one album. Everything from Meddle through The Wall is terrific. Some of the most thoughtful, melodic, haunting, and—especially in the later material before Roger Waters left—downright angry rock ever made. And, no, you don't have to be stoned to enjoy it.

Favorite album: The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

Favorite songs:

• "Time" (1973)
  This made me think—really think—about the prospect of growing old when I was still a teenager. No mean feat.
  
  
• "Have a Cigar" (1975)
  As jaundiced a view of the music industry as you're ever likely to find, made all the more bitter because it's based on the band's real-life experiences.
  
  
• "Comfortably Numb" (1979)
  There can be beauty in anger, and here's the proof. Not only is the music sumptuous, but it has one of the most sublime stanzas, lyrically speaking, in all of popular music:

  When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
  Out of the corner of my eye
  I turned to look, but it was gone
  I cannot put my finger on it now
  The child is grown, the dream is gone

  I can't put my finger on it, either, but deep down I know exactly what they mean.

Recommended DVD: Pulse (1994)

PSB connections:

• For their Nightlife tour, Chris and Neil used a lighting engineer who had formerly worked with Pink Floyd—impressive credentials when you consider Pink Floyd's longstanding reputation for state-of-the-art stage lighting.
• It was the Scissor Sisters' outrageous Bee Gees-on-ecstasy remake of the Floyd classic "Comfortably Numb" that helped persuade the Boys to tap them (the Sisters, that is) for remixing "Flamboyant."
• During the Fundamental sessions, producer Trevor Horn thought that "Luna Park" sounded like Pink Floyd.
• More than one concert reviewer has compared the Pet Shop Boys' 2009 "Pandemonium Tour" staging with the Floyd's classic 1980-81 The Wall tour in that both made use of an onstage wall, though in very different ways. One reviewer suggested that the PSB wall was inspired by their song "Building a Wall," which is distinctly possible considering that it was part of the tour setlist.
• An "anti-connection": Neil has noted on more than one occasion that he has no fondness for Pink Floyd's music.
• Both Katie Kissoon and Sylvia Mason-James, who have provided backup vocals for PSB—very famously and frequently in the latter case—have also served in that capacity for former Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters in his solo career.
• Pink Floyd's most famous (and, arguably, their greatest) album The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, where the Pet Shop Boys have often recorded as well.

The biggest case of career suicide ever —which I, perverse being that I am, find strangely compelling. Then again, his 2006 single "Black Sweat" mightily affirms the potential for full-fledged resurrection. But none of it would mean a thing if it weren't for the fact that, back in the eighties, before he changed his name to a glyph and morphed into a punchline, he unleashed a string of jaw-droppingly innovative singles (most notably "Little Red Corvette," "Kiss," "U Got the Look," and the greatest jaw-dropper of them all, "When Doves Cry") that forever cemented his place in the pantheon of popular music.

Favorite album: Purple Rain (1984)

Favorite songs:

• "Do It All Night" (1980)
  It was the summer of 1981. I was living in Minneapolis at the time, and I hung out quite a bit with a gay softball team. We had just completed our annual "Gays vs. Cops" all-star game. Unlike a year or two before, the police team had won, so they were feeling good. Everybody—the gay players, the cops, and their wives and girlfriends—headed down to a local gay bar to celebrate. When the DJ put on local pre-superstardom wunderkind Prince's "Do It All Night," the place erupted into a frenzied communal dance boasting every conceivable combination of partners, including cops dancing with gay guys and gay guys dancing with the cops' wives. That memory alone guarantees this song a place among my favorites.
  
  
• "Kiss" (1986)
  My brain had long assigned the startlingly innovative "When Doves Cry" to this spot. But my heart had just as long lobbied instead for the not-quite-as-newfangled but three-times-as-much-fun "Kiss," in which His Royal Badness navigates a sparse staccato groove like a horny castrato. That is, if such a thing were possible—and this track suggests it is. Yes, my heart finally won out.
  
  
• "U Got the Look" (1987)
  Audacity personified. With Sheena Easton's invaluable assistance, Prince assumes the mantle of James Brown—and lives to tell the tale. Hardly anyone but a humorless prude could resist such an outlandish chorus:

  U got the look, U got the hook
  U sho' nuff do be cookin' in my book
  Your face is jammin'
  Your body's heck-a-slammin'
  If love is good, let's get 2 rammin'
  U got the look, U got the look

Recommended DVD: Sign 'o' the Times (1987) - Apparently out of print, but well worth finding.

PSB connections:

• Neil and Chris attended a party thrown by Prince in August 1986 to celebrate his first U.K. shows in five years.
• At various times Neil has cited specific Prince albums or songs as favorites, including Music from Graffiti Bridge, "Money Don't Matter 2 Night," and "If I Was Your Girlfriend." Of the latter, he told New Musical Express, "I think it's very brave for such a heterosexual man as Prince to imagine he's a woman."
• Prince shares with David Bowie (see above) the "PSB connection" of releasing a free promo album through the U.K. Mail on Sunday newspaper. Prince beat them both to the punch on July 15, 2007 with his special Mail on Sunday release titled Planet Earth.

Kinda like the Moody Blues, but without the mellotron and with much, much stranger lyrics. In fact, resident wordsmith Keith Reid is responsible for some of the most weirdly poetic stanzas in pop music history (such as the one from the bizarrely erotic "Luskus Delph" that concludes, "Make me split like chicken fat"). Singer-pianist Gary Brooker took his tales of drunkenness, venereal disease, undead sailors, gluttonous infants, pathologically jealous siblings, and homicidal cowboy hat-wearing felines—all couched in metaphors so thick that nearly every line seems to carry multiple meanings—and set them to stately and/or melodramatic music that makes it easy to forget just how warped some of this stuff really is. And when guitarist and eventual Hendrix emulator Robin Trower occasionally got his hands on those lyrics, all hell could break loose. Frankly, I'm surprised that "Poor Mohammed" hasn't earned them a fatwa.

Favorite album: Broken Barricades (1971)

Favorite songs:

• "A Salty Dog" (1969)
  The tale of a lost ship and abandonment on an uncharted island—which, by the way, is the afterlife. That, plus a beautiful melody and lewd non sequitur sexual wordplay at the end. What more do you want?
  
  
• "Long Gone Geek" (1969)
  This rocker's got just about everything going for it, including fantastic Trower guitar work and an equally great Matthew Fisher organ solo. But, best of all, it has one of Reid's most outré lyrics, about prisoners taking over a county jailhouse. It concludes with a tongue-twisting couplet that he might have written just to see if Brooker could actually sing it without fumbling—and, yes, he could:
  
        When onto Geek's back jumps a Stetson-hatted cat
        Which breaks Geek's neck like he was a rat
  
  
• "Simple Sister" (1971)
  A thundrous ode to dysfunctional familial relationships that evolves into a full-scale melodrama complete with Hollywood strings. I kid you not.
  
  

Recommended DVD: Live at the Union Chapel (2004)

PSB connections:

• Friends and pets play a role in both bands' names. The Pet Shop Boys, after all, were named for petshop-owning friends. And Procol Harum borrowed their name from a friend's Burmese cat.

This one snuck up on me. If anyone had asked me, "Are you a fan of Queen?" I would have said, "Not especially." And yet, as I look at my music collection, I have to admit that Queen is well represented. As with George Michael, I think I like them in spite of myself. In addition to their democratic approach to songwriting (all four were highly capable songwriters), I think what finally won me over was their relentlessly tongue-in-cheek style coupled with an equally relentless devotion to quality. I don't think they ever took themselves seriously—although I'm sure they were very serious about their music. Here's where I commit heresy: I don't actually like any of their studio albums overall, but they were a killer singles band. Hence my choice of favorite album.

Favorite album: Greatest Hits I & II (1995)

Favorite songs:

• "Somebody to Love" (1977)
  All the press goes to "Bohemian Rhapsody," but I've always preferred this follow-up. It's prettier, just as meticulously arranged, and doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: a song about being downright lonesome.
  
  
• "Radio Ga-Ga" (1984)
  Queen used to boast "No synthesizers" on their early albums. By this time, however, they had dropped that misguided rockist attitude. And, as this track demonstrates, they did so to terrific effect.
  
  
• "A Kind of Magic" (1986)
  Latter-day Queen at their best, with a great Brian May guitar hook and nary a pretension in sight.

Recommended DVD: Greatest Video Hits 2 (2003)

PSB connections:

• Queen concluded the original vinyl edition of their 1989 album The Miracle with a song titled "Was It All Worth It." Two years later, the Pet Shop Boys would end Discography with "Was It Worth It?" Undoubtedly a coincidence, but an interesting one.
• An even closer title link: both bands have songs called "Jealousy" in their catalogues. Queen's is on their 1978 album Jazz.
• Both released collaborations with another musician in this list, David Bowie: Queen with "Under Pressure" and PSB of course with "Hallo Spaceboy."
• Like a number of other artists listed here (the Beatles, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Genesis, and Pink Floyd), Queen shares with the Pet Shop Boys the honor of receiving the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.
• While Neil has said on more than one occasion that he has never been a fan, Chris chose Queen's "The Show Must Go On" as one of his selections on their 2005 Back to Mine various artists compilation.
• Queen's Freddie Mercury and PSB share opposite sides of a rarity released in 1987 by EMI in Hong Kong: a clear vinyl single titled Dance and Romance, in which Freddie's solo outing "The Great Pretender" appears on the "Romance" side and the Boys' "It's a Sin" occupies the "Dance" side.
• I've seen a television documentary about Queen that asserted that U.S. radio programmers stopped playing their new music after Freddie Mercury adopted his "clone look" (short hair, moustache, etc.). At that point they figured he wasn't the "pretend queer" of his early "glam look" but rather a "real queer." To be sure, Queen had one of their biggest U.S. hits, "Another Bites the Dust," shortly after Freddie adopted his new look, but it took a while for the true meaning of the change to set in. If this perception of gayness does truly account for the decline of Queen's fortunes on American radio, then it strongly parallels what later happened to the Pet Shop Boys after the "Domino Dancing" video and U.S. radio programmers began to perceive them as gay, too.
• Queen is another of the artists listed here who share the Parlophone record label with the Boys.
• Both PSB and Queen have collaborated with Liza Minnelli: the Boys, of course, on her album Results, and the surviving members of Queen in April 1992 at the Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert in London, where she sang "We Are the Champions."

So he's a notorious multi-culti dilettante. I can excuse it when the results have been so consistently satisfying. And he's one of the three or four greatest songwriters of his generation, which is saying quite a bit. A lot of musicians would give their left arm—well, maybe at least one or two of their fingers—to write something as good as "Something So Right."

Favorite album: There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973)

Favorite songs:

• "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" (1972)
  People don't often think of Paul Simon as a humorous songwriter, but this one's pretty darn funny. Yet it's also cryptic enough to make you wonder: just what were they doing down by the schoolyard?
  
  
• "Something So Right" (1973)
  Quite possibly the best song Simon ever wrote, at least during his solo career. Instantly recognized as such, Barbra Streisand couldn't wait to get her hands on it—although, to be honest, I don't think it was something so right for her.
  
  
• "Graceland" (1986)
  I'd love this song even if it didn't have one of my all-time favorite opening lines: "The Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar."

Recommended DVD: Graceland - The African Concert (1991)

PSB connections:

• Paul Simon, Neil Tennant, and Chris Lowe have an interesting characteristic in common: they all share their names with other prominent figures. Paul Simon was also the name of the late former U.S. senator from Illinois (serving 1985–1997); Neil Tennant is the name of a contemporary scholar/philosopher; and there are a remarkable number of other Chris Lowes of varying degrees of fame, including a jazz musician (who, coincidentally, plays trombone, which "our" Chris can also play), a rap artist, the bass player for the band Dexter Freebish, a soccer player, a basketball player, a financier, a film art director, an actor, a BBC news anchor, a professional photographer, and several academicians, among others.

Garfunkel's solo voice and/or the blend of the two of them together were the perfect vehicles for Simon's wonderful songs. Their actual recorded output was surprisingly small considering the impact and influence they've had—which serves to underscore the overall quality of their work.

Favorite album: Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

Favorite songs:

• "America" (1968)
  A brilliant evocation of the aimlessness of pampered American baby-boomers who felt the need to "look for America" because so much had been handed to them on a silver platter that they were left with little or nothing to obtain for themselves, leaving them hollow and guilt-ridden. Not that I imagine Simon and Garfunkel would put it quite like that. They put it like this instead.
  
  
• "The Boxer" (1969)
  A portrait of determined resistance, dogged survival, and crushed idealism in an uncaring world. It's no accident that the "nonsense syllables" sung in the refrain aren't "la, la, la" but rather "lie, lie, lie."
  
  
• "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (1970)
  Simon is justifiably proud of this song as one of his greatest composing achievements. And Garfunkel is justifiably proud of this, his finest vocal performance.

Recommended DVD: Old Friends, Live on Stage (2004)

PSB connections:

• Paul Simon wrote and Simon and Garfunkel recorded "The Only Living Boy in New York." Nearly thirty years later the Pet Shop Boys wrote and recorded "New York City Boy." What is it about boys in New York City? (See the Manhattan Transfer, above.)
• Simon and Garfunkel were, like the Moody Blues (see above), among the recording artists Neil used to enjoy parodying back in the 1970s.

Before the perfectionist lethargy set in (you can hear it looming in Aja, but the songs were just too good to be denied) they were the greatest—as well as most intelligent and comically cynical—rock band of the seventies. In my humble opinion, Becker-Fagen are in a three-way race with Tennant-Lowe and John-Taupin for the title of best songwriting duo since Lennon-McCartney. All cynicism aside, anyone who could come up with the line "The spore is on the wind tonight" (from "Rose Darling") as a metaphor for sexual desire is, dare I say, a poet. But you can pretty much forget anything they've recorded after reuniting in the 1990s; it pales by comparison.

Favorite album: Katy Lied (1975)

Favorite songs:

• "My Old School" (1973)
  I was attending William & Mary when this song came out, where its "Oh, no, William & Mary won't do" line made it an instant classic with that college's students. Terrific guitar solos, too.
  
  
• "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number" (1974)
  But this one is on another plane altogether. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter performs one of the most graceful, lyrical electric guitar solos ever. And its crypto-gay lyric (even if it isn't, it sounds as though it is) provides the stuff of endless speculation.
  
  
• "Aja" (1977)
  The single most ambitious track Steely Dan ever recorded, flirting with both jazz-fusion and prog-rock. Wayne Shorter's remarkable saxophone solo and Steve Gadd's incredibly agile drumming are particular standouts.

Recommended DVD: There are a few DVDs, but so far none that I can recommend.

PSB connections:

• Both are songwriting teams known (fairly or unfairly) for irony. Yes, I know the Boys don't like to be called "ironic"—in the immortal words of Neil Tennant, "Irony is shit"—but there's no denying they've written their share of ironic songs.
• In a 1988 television interview, Neil compared the Pet Shop Boys to Steely Dan as songwriters who seldom toured as performing musicians. Of course, that was a few years before both bands began to perform live much more often in the 1990s.

Here's the formula: I love late seventies disco music in general (I was there, baby!), and Donna Summer, usually in collaboration with producer-composer Giorgio Moroder, consistently made some of the greatest disco music of the late seventies. You do the math. But if you want real evidence, look no further than "I Feel Love," one of the most innovative singles in popular music history.

Favorite album: Bad Girls (1979)

Favorite songs:

• "I Feel Love" (1977)
  As I said, one of the most innovative singles in popular music history—the mother of all technopop. It may not sound like such a big deal nowadays but, lemme tell ya, in 1977 it was radical.
  
  
• "Macarthur Park Suite" (1978)
  Jimmy Webb's "Macarthur Park" is one of the most misunderstood, unfairly besmirched songs of all time. Some people just can't appreciate a good extended metaphor. But Summer and Moroder weren't misled. They transformed it into the bookends of one of their peak musical statements, a full-blown disco suite.
  
  
• "Our Love" (1979)
  Akin to "I Feel Love," Part 2. Not as innovative (been there, done that), not as influential (how could it be?), but a stronger melody and lyric, almost as if Summer and Moroder had said to each other, "How can we do that again, but this time even better?" Not one iota of cynicism about it, either.

Recommended DVD: VH1 Presents - Live & More Encore! (1999)

PSB connections:

• German synthesist-composer-producer Harold Faltermeyer, who cut his professional teeth working extensively with Summer and Moroder during their disco heyday, co-produced the Pet Shop Boys' album Behaviour.
• When asked which pop record he would like played at his funeral, Chris (appropriately but perhaps facetiously) chose Summer's "Last Dance." Also, during his appearance on BBC Radio 2's Tracks of My Years, Chris picked this same song as having particular personal significance for him.
• The Boys paid direct tribute to the "queen of disco" with their collaborative cover with Sam Taylor-Wood (in the guise of Kiki Kokova) of Summer's first big hit, "Love to Love You, Baby."
• Donna beat the Boys and Taylor-Wood by two decades in covering Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime… Moi Non Plus."
• A more tenuous connection is the fact that the PSB song "New York City Boy," though a Village People tribute, contains a bridge with an instrumental arrangement highly reminiscent of Summer's hit version of "Macarthur Park."

Who'd have thought that a quartet of such preppy white kids could have created music that was simultaneously so arty and funky? If you don't get it, listen to their albums Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues, and Little Creatures. If you don't get it after that, see their amazing concert film Stop Making Sense. If you still don't get it, I can't possibly help you.

Favorite album: Little Creatures (1985)

Favorite songs:

• "Found a Job" (1978)
  The best of the early Heads in their "punk-lite" New Wave mode, helmed by none other than Brian Eno. A bizarre tale of a couple who save their marriage while resolving their frustrations with the lack of quality television programming by going into business together as TV producers. Or do they really? It's all somewhat ambiguous—and delightfully strange stuff.
  
  
• "Girlfriend Is Better" (1983)
  David Byrne has always had a bit of the absurdist artist in him—OK, more than a bit—and this song is one of his most absurdly arty. And it's so tough to sit still while listening to it.
  
  
• "Television Man" (1985)
  Byrne also has a penchant for reveling in the mundane wonders of life: overly familiar things that, if they weren't so overly familiar, would seem absolutely miraculous. Take television, for instance, a thing for which he seems to have a near-fetish. Built around a killer keyboard-guitar-bass riff, this track makes mundanity seem extraordinary.

Recommended DVD: Stop Making Sense (1984)

PSB connections:

• David Byrne, the Talking Heads' erstwhile leader—I want to call him the "head Head" so badly I could just burst—has, like the Pet Shop Boys ("My October Symphony") and Kate Bush (see above), drawn upon the services of the Balanescu String Quartet. In 1988, the Quartet joined Byrne for a series of live concert performances.

If the Moodies were the faves of my teen years, these guys—the greatest and most enduring of the Italian-American doo-wop groups—were the faves of my pre-teen years. Like their contemporaries the Beach Boys, they quickly transcended their initial genre and produced some of the most vivacious music of the sixties. Frankie's often astonishing voice, boasting the most remarkable falsetto in the history of recorded music, struck a chord in me even then. Bandmate Bob Gaudio wrote some terrific tunes, too. In fact, let's hope the Pet Shop Boys can match the legendary longevity of the Valli-Gaudio musical partnership, which has lasted more than 40 years. And on a handshake, no less.

Favorite album: 25th Anniversary Collection (1987)

Favorite songs:

• "Dawn (Go Away)" (1964)
  Italian-Americans have always been very conscious of class distinctions, and this is one of several Seasons songs that hinge on that very subject. The sheer drive and energy of this thing is astounding. And I love the way Frankie punches the word "Girl" near the beginning of the second verse ("Girl, we can't change the places where we were born").
  
  
• "Girl Come Running" (1965)
  You should take a few minutes to really listen to Frankie's incredibly intense performance—a masterful triumph of vocal technique spanning nearly three octaves—in this minor hit. It only got up to #30 on the Billboard singles chart, but it's one of the great pop vocals of all time.

• "Beggin'" (1967)
  Having been rediscovered by the children of its original audience, this track has in recent years become more popular than it ever was when it first hit. And it sounds completely contemporary today. That, my friends, is the definition of being ahead of its time. Besides, Frankie delivers yet another outstanding vocal, only this time without once resorting to his trademark falsetto.
  

Recommended DVD: The DVD that accompanies the 2007 boxed set Jersey Beat: The Music of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons

PSB connections:

• Well, the Pet Shop Boys did turn "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You"—which was co-written by Gaudio and originally performed solo by Valli—into an unlikely hit medley with "Where the Streets Have No Name."
• Speaking of which, lest you think that Chris and Neil were completely original in that irreverent deconstruction of rock mythos, consider what the Four Seasons did (in the guise of "The Wonder Who?") more than a quarter-century earlier to Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice": an utterly surreal 1965 hit rendition that Frankie sang in a meta-falsetto, sounding like little Shirley Temple on uppers.
• In the February 2009 issue of the PSB Fan Club magazine Literally, Chris listed the Four Seasons' "The Night"—recorded in 1971, making it nearly 40 years old—as one of his favorites at the time. He also named it as one of his selections on the aforementioned BBC Radio 2's Tracks of My Years. (See the Bee Gees and Donna Summer, above.)

I haven't felt this enthusiastic over "discovering" an artist for myself in more than a decade—in fact, not since I "discovered" the Pet Shop Boys. Rufus Wainwright is one of the most original, moving, and imaginative singer-songwriters I've ever heard, the creator of unexpected melodies, intelligent lyrics, and eclectic arrangements that owe equal debts to classical, Broadway, ragtime, rock, pop, and folk. The breathtaking Want One is an instant classic if there ever was one. And its follow-ups, the even more ambitious Want Two and the deceptively "poppier" but still wonderful Release the Stars, are also spectacular.

Favorite album: Release the Stars (2007)

Favorite songs:

• "I Don't Know What It Is" (2003)
  I'm not sure what it is, either, though I think it's a contemplation of destiny. But what matters most to me is the music, a genre-defying tour de force that bounces among ages of pop from the 1940s to the 2000s. It helps if you're familiar with old MGM movie musicals like The Harvey Girls, but that's hardly a prerequisite.
  
  
• "Dinner at Eight" (2003)
  The most moving father-son song I've ever heard. It didn't hit me the first time I heard it, but the second or third time it made me cry, and I mean that quite literally. The fact that my father had passed away only the previous year probably had something to do with it. It still gets my eyes to watering if the mood is right.
  
  
• "Sanssouci" (2007)
  A light, lilting, lovely tune about temptation and the often-illusory nature of that which tempts us. What clinches it, however, is the descending melodic trope that opens the song on guitar, recurs several times throughout, and finally closes it on flute and vocals. Simply charming.

Recommended DVD: All I Want (2004)

PSB connections:

• Rufus interviewed Neil in the January 2000 issue of Interview magazine.
• Neil is a professed Rufus fan, having praised his work highly in print on more than one occasion, and even going so far as to cite Want One as his favorite album of 2003.
• Neil appears in several brief interview segments on Wainwright's DVD All I Want, commenting on the younger artist's work.
• In the Want One liner notes, Rufus includes both Neil and Chris in his "thank you" list. (Apparently our heroes provided some helpful advice and encouragement.)
• Neil and Rufus were interviewed together in 2004—talking about songwriting and the state of contemporary pop music—for the London Daily Telegraph.
• Rufus appeared as a guest vocalist at the Boys' special May 2006 BBC Radio concert with orchestra, singing their "Casanova in Hell." (This show, including Rufus's performance, was recorded for the live album Concrete.)
• Neil served a consulting "executive producer" role (and sang backup and/or played instruments on several tracks) on Rufus's 2007 album Release the Stars.
• It should be no surprise that Neil can be spotted taking his seat in the star-studded audience near the start of the 2007 DVD Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy! Live from the London Palladium, during which Rufus performs "If Love Were All." (Chris was apparently in attendance as well, but he doesn't appear on the DVD.)
• Rufus's September 2009 live Milwaukee at Last! CD and DVD include his own rendition of Noël Coward's "If Love Were All," which had previously been covered by PSB.
• As with the aforementioned Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields, Rufus was among the artists lined up for the Boys' erstwhile 2001 touring "gay music" summer festival "Wotapalava."
• Like PSB, Rufus contributed a new song to Shirley Bassey's 2009 album The Performance. His contribution is titled "Apartment"; Chris and Neil's, of course, is "The Performance of My Life."
• Marius de Vries, who co-produced two tracks on the Boys' December 2009 Christmas EP, has worked often with Rufus Wainwright, including producing his albums Want One and Want Two.

Maybe it's because Who's Next is, in my opinion, a serious contender for the greatest rock album of all time—that and my (admittedly arguable) beliefs that Keith Moon was rock's greatest drummer and John Entwistle its greatest bassist. And while Pete Townshend is hardly rock's greatest guitarist and songwriter, he's certainly no slouch in either department. As much as I love the Pet Shop Boys, I have to say that the best concert by far that I've ever attended was by the Who back in the mid-seventies on their final North American tour before Moon died. I consider myself blessed.

Favorite album: Who's Next (1971)

Favorite songs:

• "Baba O'Riley" (1971)
  As revolutionary as anything the Beatles did, and that's no lie. If Summer's "I Feel Love" is the mother of technopop, this is its grandmother—except technorock is more like it.
  
  
• "Won't Get Fooled Again" (1971)
  A virtual definition of rock music without the dictionary, an unforgettable statement both musically and lyrically.
  
  
• "However Much I Booze" (1975)
  Townshend bares his soul, and it ain't pretty. Emotional, moving, even touching, but definitely not pretty.

Recommended DVD: The Kids Are Alright (1979)

PSB connections:

• Pete Townshend is another artist who, like Chris and Neil, supports the War Child charity.
• Tina Turner and Elton John, who have both collaborated with PSB, also both appeared in the 1975 film version of the Who's classic rock opera Tommy.

I know I sound like a broken record (remember them?), but he's a remarkable songwriter, in spite of his predilection for contorted syntax. His early embrace of and experimentation with synthesizers pushed the envelope for electronic keyboards. And he could do some unbelievable things with a clavinet, such as when he plays it with a wah-wah pedal on "Higher Ground." He is, quite simply, an incalculable influence on half of everything from the seventies on.

Favorite album: Innervisions (1973)

Favorite songs:

• "Superstition" (1972)
  Fierce, fearful funk and the meanest clavinet riff ever committed to vinyl. Stand me up and I'm dancin'. Sit me down and I'm still dancin'.
  
  
• "Boogie On Reggae Woman" (1974)
  Funny, sexy, danceable (again), and a bass synth line sharper than a surgeon's scalpel.
  
  
• "Isn't She Lovely" (1976)
  Inspired by the birth of his daughter, Stevie writes and sings the single happiest song in the known universe. I'm sorry, but if you don't feel good listening to this, there's something seriously wrong with you.

Recommended DVD: Live at Last: A Wonder Summer's Night (2009)

PSB connections:

• Neil has cited Innervisions as one of his favorite albums, too.

Another guilty pleasure. Yes, there was excess. (Tales from Topographic Oceans, anyone?) Yes, Jon Anderson's lyrics often bordered on nonsense. Yes, those asteroids did look a lot like giant floating mushrooms. But these guys were virtuosos who transcended the dross through the sheer weight of their talent. And they can take credit for some of the most transcendently beautiful passages in all of prog rock.

Favorite album: Close to the Edge (1972)

Favorite songs:

• "Roundabout" (1972)
  This is the hit single that turned millions of kids into progressive rock fans. Generally they didn't have much use for hit singles after that.
  
  
• "Siberian Khatru" (1972)
  If I'm not mistaken, there's no such thing as a "khatru," Siberian or otherwise. They made it up. With music as powerful as this, lyrical substance is largely irrelevant, anyway.
  
  
• "Going for the One" (1977)
  Musos demonstrate that they enjoy a good ball game as much as the next guy. And what Steve Howe does with a pedal steel guitar would make a Nashville session player recoil in horror if he weren't so damn impressed.

Recommended DVD: Keys to Ascension (2001) – As with the Pet Shop Boys' Montage, the video inserts can be annoying, but it's still a superb performance.

PSB connections:

• Trevor Horn, who has worked quite a bit with the Boys (he co-produced "Left to My Own Devices," remixed the single version of "It's Alright," co-wrote and -performed "The Sound of the Atom Splitting," and, last but certainly not least, produced their albums Fundamental and Concrete, on which he also performs as a supporting musician), was briefly a member of Yes—the lead singer, in fact—around 1980, during the recording of their album Drama. After he left the band, he continued for a while to serve as their producer and was largely responsible for Yes's biggest radio hit, "Owner of a Lonely Heart."
• Of course, the Pet Shop Boys titled their 2009 album Yes, but surely that's just a coincidence. (After the title was announced but even before the album itself was released, fans were cracking jokes online about how the band Yes should respond in kind, titling their next album Pet Shop Boys.)
• I can't resist noting that Neil had his photo taken with Yes's best-known keyboardist, Rick Wakeman, and posted it on the Boys' Twitter page on March 10, 2009.

The "Top Ten"

Somebody asked me, "Out of all your favorites, who would be in your 'Top Ten'?" I tried to choose subjectively, but found it extremely difficult. So I decided to use a far more objective method: I would base my Top Ten choices on the number of CDs (including singles and—gasp!—bootlegs) and DVDs that I own by each artist. Therefore, using that "purely scientific" criterion, here are my Top Ten favorite artists in descending order:

1. Pet Shop Boys
2. Beach Boys/Brian Wilson
3. Madonna
4. Manhattan Transfer
5. Beatles
6. Genesis
7. Steely Dan
8. Erasure
9. Elton John
10. Moody Blues

Incidentally, if I didn't count CD singles, the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson would easily replace PSB in first place.

"Near Misses" (aka "The Second Tier")

Here are some other artists that I'm quite fond of, although in each case there's something that prevents them from ranking up there among my "favorites."

Ambrosia

Art-popsters with a spotty record: a good (not great, but good) debut album, a so-so second, terrific third and fourth albums (Life Beyond L.A. and One Eighty, which account for their inclusion here), and an abysmal fifth and final album—so awful that I wonder whether it was the cause or the effect of their disbanding shortly after its release.

Tori Amos

Sort of like an American rendition of Kate Bush, but missing a certain je ne sais quoi—is that horribly pretentious of me?—that keeps her from among my faves. I think she's excellent in small doses, though too much at a time makes me start gazing longingly at the medicine cabinet.

The Cars

The Steely Dan of New Wave, at least from a stylistic perspective. If nothing else, they deserve respect for putting out one of the greatest debut albums in rock/pop history. Yeah, sometimes they were a little too slick—the simile "like leather tuxedos" comes to mind—but I forgive them.

Chicago

Six of their first seven albums, recorded from 1969-1974 (who cranks out albums that quickly anymore?) are stone-cold classics, filled to the brim with great songs. (Why not all seven? Because that interminable fourth counts among the deadest live albums ever made.) Unfortunately, after the seventh I don't have much use for them.

Patsy Cline

A woman with a magical voice who made country music for people who don't like country music. Her "best of" and "greatest hits" collections boast one unforgettable performance after another. Too bad she also recorded more than her fair share of disposable filler.

Coldplay

About 50% of their stuff is great—especially their more uptempo tracks, where Chris Martin's sometimes cloying wounded-puppydog vocal mannerisms aren't as noticeable as on their slower numbers.

King Crimson

Fearsome prog rock—sometimes downright scary. I absolutely love their "middle period" trio of albums: Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red. Their first album is quite nice, too. The rest, however, I can pretty much do without.

Brenda Lee

Little Miss Dynamite. What I said about Pasty Cline goes for Brenda as well—only there are even more classics and even more crap. By the way, it's no accident that she and Patsy had the same producer, the brilliant Owen Bradley: a man so important to the history of country music that they erected a bronze statue of him in Nashville.

Nine Inch Nails

Trent Reznor is a man with a vision, even if that vision is enough to make some people want to shove knitting needles into their eye sockets. But underlying the industrial façade, hiding behind the angst-ridden lyrics, are some superb melodies. He's also a lot funnier than most of his fans realize, so busy they are taking him totally at face value.

The Pretenders

It's a cliché to point out that Chrissie Hynde comes across as tougher, musically and otherwise, than most men. Maybe I just like strong women who write really good songs.

Barbra Streisand

I can't help it—I am gay, you know. There's a caveat, however: give me her excellent discography from 1970 to 1985, but forget anything before (too Broadway) and after (flaccid attempts to recreate past glories).

Tears for Fears

If everything they've done were as fantastic as their "best of," they'd easily make my list of unreserved favorites. OK, I could say that about a lot of artists. But—I'm not sure why—I regret that it's not true for these guys more than for anyone else. Not so incidentally, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is one of my all-time favorite singles. Curiously, hearing it always make me nostalgic for my college years, depsite the fact that it came out nearly a decade after I graduated. Figure that one out!

My Favorite Albums by Artists
Who Are Not Among My Favorites

In addition, I count a number of other albums among my favorites despite the fact that I wouldn't place those who created them among my favorite artists. Please note that I don't include my favorite "best of" or "greatest hits" albums here; otherwise this list would be damn near interminable. These albums are listed in chronological order, with those released in the same year sorted alphabetically by artist.

• Are You Experienced? (1967) - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Chicago II (1970) - Chicago
• All Things Must Pass (1970) - George Harrison
• Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus (1970) - Spirit
• John Barleycorn Must Die (1970) - Traffic
• Tapestry (1971) - Carole King
• (aka untitled, IV, Runes, and Zoso) (1971) - Led Zeppelin
• No Secrets (1972) - Carly Simon
• Tubular Bells (1973) - Mike Oldfield
• A Wizard, A True Star (1973) - Todd Rundgren
• Starless and Bible Black (1974) - King Crimson
• Silk Degrees (1976) - Boz Scaggs
• The Cars (1978) - The Cars
• City to City (1978) - Gerry Rafferty
• One Eighty (1980) - Ambrosia
• The Nightfly (1982) - Donald Fagen
• She's So Unusual (1983) - Cyndi Lauper
• High Crime (1984) - Al Jarreau
• Learning to Crawl (1984) - The Pretenders
• Brothers in Arms (1985) - Dire Straits
• …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) - Sting
• Everything's Different Now (1988) - 'Til Tuesday
• Achtung Baby (1991) - U2
• Diva (1992) - Annie Lennox
• Automatic for the People (1992) - R.E.M.
• Martinis and Bikinis (1994) - Sam Phillips
• Surfacing (1998) - Sarah McLachlan
• Hopes and Fears (2004) - Keane

Concerts I've Attended

I've never been a big concert attendee. In general, the "live experience" doesn't do a lot for me. That being said, I have immensely enjoyed most of the shows I've attended. Here's a short list of the artists whose concerts I've gone to—at least those that I can recall at this time.

• Beach Boys +
  
  I attended quite a few of their shows (at least five) from 1974 to 1980. They ranged from absolutely superb early on—when they were one of the best live bands ever—to a near-disastrous final show after drugs and mental illness had exacted obvious tolls on the Wilson brothers. I decided I just couldn't take any more concerts like that. Witnessing the steep decline of Dennis, in particular, through that seven-year period was tragic.

• Chicago
  
  A very good, solid show in late 1973 or (more likely) early 1974, in the midst of their commercial heyday.
  
  
• Genesis
  
  In 1992 during their "We Can't Dance" tour—an excellent concert.
  
  
• Jefferson Starship
  
  In the mid-1970s. I attended only because I was reviewing it for my college newspaper. I didn't particularly enjoy it. But, then again, I've never really been a fan.
  
  
• Elton John
  
  During his remarkable 1979 tour when he was playing relatively small venues in shows that featured just him and the fabulous percussionist Ray Cooper.
  
  
• Kansas
  
  Before they hit it big. Another show that I attended in the mid-seventies solely because I was assigned to review it. But it wasn't half bad.
  
  
• Manhattan Transfer +
  
  Several shows—three, I believe—during the 1980s. All very good.
  
  
• Barry Manilow
  
  I attended one of Barry's shows in the early 1980s on a last-minute whim—literally. I didn't know I was going to go until about an hour or two beforehand. In retrospect, I really can't explain why. But I distinctly remember enjoying it more than I thought I would.
  
  
• Joni Mitchell
  
  In early 1976, shortly after the release of her album The Hissing of Summer Lawns. I would have attended even if I hadn't been tasked with reviewing it. Simply marvelous.
  
  
• Pet Shop Boys +
  
  Three times so far—1999, 2006, and 2009—each one superb and each even better than the one before. I don't think I need to add anything else.
  
  
• Starcastle
  
  An aspiring prog-lite band from Chicago in early 1976, touring to promote their debut album. Another reviewing assignment, but this time I got to interview the group at their hotel several hours before the show. I learned two important lessons: (1) I don't like interviewing musicians, and (2) I'm not very good at interviewing musicians. Do I not like it because I'm not very good at it, or am I not very good at it because I don't like it? Perhaps an unresolvable philosophical question. But I can say with certainty that the concert was all but totally forgettable in that I've all but totally forgotten it.
  
  
• The Who
  
  Also in the mid-seventies, but this time it was no assignment. As I note above, this was the single best concert I've ever attended. So loud I feared my ears would bleed. So good I didn't care.
  
  
• Brian Wilson
  
  A very good show by Brian in 2001 with one of the best backing bands in popular music.
  
  
• Yes
  
  In 1979 on their tour in support of one of their lesser albums, Tormato. I honestly can't remember very much of this show. No, I didn't and don't do drugs—well, aside from alcohol, caffeine, and, when necessary, presecription medicines. But there were so many people smoking around me that night that I suspect I suffered a "contact high," resulting in partial amnesia. Still, I vaguely remember enjoying the performance, even if we did sit so far away that I could block out the entire stage with my hand stretched out before me. That I remember clearly!

There were also several "aborted" concerts for which I had tickets but didn't attend for one reason or another: Yes, missed in 1977 because of an automobile accident earlier that day (I wasn't hurt but my car was put out of commission); Paul Simon, skipped in 2001 because I wasn't feeling well; Pet Shop Boys, missed in 2002 because of the death of my father; and Rufus Wainwright, skipped in 2007 because of a sudden unavoidable conflict in my partner George's schedule and I simply didn't feel like going by myself.

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