The mood of the Pet Shop Boys’ new album is a touch more sombre than one would normally expect, with mortality the central theme of the album. I wonder if this as a result of the group’s lyricist, Neil Tennant, getting closer to 60.

“God, 60, it even feels weird to hear you say it,” replies the urbane and humorous Tennant. “But I suppose a few things have happened in the past few years that would put you in a more reflective mood. Both of my parents passed away, so I’ve become an orphan. Also, occasionally ‘West End Girls’ does seem like a long time ago – particularly when I hear another song from that era, which happened recently. Then you have the fact that we’re still doing things that aren’t normally expected of musicians our age, like going on tour with Take That. So all this things combine to give the material a particular mood.”
Nonetheless, PSB haven’t lost their trademark sense of humour. This is particularly evident on ‘Your Early Stuff’, which features the chorus “You’ve been around but you look too rough / And I still quite like some of your early stuff.”
“It’s something that taxi drivers say to me,” notes Tennant. “Sometimes when you get chatting, they ask what you do and I mention the Pet Shop Boys. Then it’s, ‘Oh yeah, I liked your early stuff’. Cos taxi drivers of course don’t really listen to music – they listen to talk radio. It’s just a funny song, but it also fit in with the theme of the album.”
I thought it might be about relationships.
“No, just my relationship with taxi drivers,” laughs Tennant. “Which is an up and down one.”
One of the interesting contradictions about the Pet Shop Boys is that they are a textbook example of how to have a long and consistently interesting career, even though in their early days they were very much anti-classicist, and celebrated the way singles such as ‘West End Girls’ were very much of the moment.
“In the ’80s, we used to slag off rock bands, because they were always trying to be significant,” reflects Tennant. “And actually, the music that really survives is pop music, because people hear it without even necessarily making any effort to hear it – they come across it in a shop or in a car or something, and it sort of defines the time in a way. So it is interesting that some of our songs, like ‘West End Girls’, turn into a kind of a classic, even though at the time we were against that way of thinking.
“We used to say, ‘It’s pop that survives more than rock music’. We did once nearly do an EP ironically titled Rock Classics, which is actually where our version of ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ came from. We were going to do four rock classics in a Hi-NRG style. The other ones were going to be ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – and we were going to get Patsy Kensit to sing them.”
Recent times have also found Tennant and his musical partner Chris Lowe doing a live version of Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida’. Was that in a similar spirit to their U2 cover?
“It actually comes off our song ‘Se A Vida E’ – geddit? – which goes into ‘Viva La Vida’, with a bit of ‘Discoteca’ in between,” explains Tennant. “It astonished us, I remember hearing that song for the first time in the car, when we were making our previous record with Xenomania, and we were driving out to them in Kent. We were both amazed, ‘Wow, Coldplay have made a really good song!’
“ It’s sort of a four-on-the-floor song, and it reminded us of us. A bit anyway, and so we decided that we should put it in the show. Also, we’ve also been fascinated by ‘oh-oh-oh’ choruses, which you can hear in our song ‘Paninaro’. (Laughs) And when the whole audience sing along with it, I feel like we wrote it in that moment.”
Pet Shop Boys also performed at the recent Olympic closing ceremony, playing a segment of ‘West End Girls’ before handing over to One Direction. Was it a time-consuming commitment?
“It wasn’t at all actually,” replies Tennant. “The designer of the ceremony has actually designed our last two tours. We were invited to a meeting about four months ago and they showed us a model of the performance. It was actually very exciting backstage to think you were going to be performing before such a huge global audience.”
The same night, I was across town at Hyde Park to see Blur, for whom PSB remixed ‘Girls & Boys’.
“We did, and I think it’s on the boxset they put out recently,” says Tennant. “What people don’t remember is that Blur had to go on a promotional tour of Europe miming to our version! I think the only time I’ve ever spoken to Graham Coxon, he complained about it. (Laughs) Because that was the one they were pushing to radio. But then we re-did the favour – a bit like Coldplay, we performed ‘Girls & Boys’ on tour once.”

Elysium is out now on Parlophone