Pet Shop Boys versus America

Inhoud

A book by Chris Heath. Photographs by Pennie Smith. No other pop group in recent years has faced celebrity with such intelligence, humour and prudence as the Pet Shop Boys. Nowhere else is celebrity more glorious or more preposterous than in America. So when the Pet Shop Boys met America head-on, it was going to be a fascinating collision. Chris Heath and Pennie Smith shadowed the Pet Shop Boys, hour by hour, for a month as they faced the American record industry's incessant banal rituals, collided with other notables (Axl Rose, Liza Minnelli, Steven Spielberg), laughed and rowed amongst themselves with an uncomfortable intensity, and somehow squeezed a curiously honest triumph from the whole strange manic brouhaha. Pet Shop Boys versus America is a gripping, intimate picture of modern celebrity in America, and also of the Pet Shop Boys themselves.

Bespreking

A brave and authentic report of two remarkable artists

When in 1991 the Pet Shop Boys toured for the first time in America, they were closely scrutinised by writer Chris Heath and photographer Pennie Smith. The result is this book, or to put it more correctly: this tour report.
Much can be said about the format: a transcription of a few conversations the boys had during their eventful American tour. At first you may fear to get bored by this format, but strangely enough it's quite the opposite. Because nothing is really interpreted by the author, it gets a very authentic feel to it. The quite remarkable -not always generally accepted- opinions of Chris and Neil are left untouched, and ready to be put into perspective by the reader himself. That in itself proves the courage of the 'boys' to allow such a report to be published. I can imagine that people tend to get a bad opinion -to put it mildly- about the egos of both artists, because what is in this book is not all nice and happy. But if you allow yourself to look behind this curtain of the two personalities, you can only appreciate the dedication they produce for their 'art'. Not many artists are prepared to put their image at risk in favour of authenticity.

The black-and-white pictures shot by Pennie Smith are completely in line with the works of the Pet Shop Boys. Sombre settings dictate most of the pictures, but at the same time illustrate the feeling of detachment the 'boys' suffer while travelling through that strange, but fascinating land: America.

To conclude: a warning! Although this book is a must-read for everybody who likes (or dislikes) to be referred to as a 'Pet Shop Boys-fan', it might not have the same effect on people who only 'like' what the Pet Shop Boys create. This book is a bit too 'fan-focussed' to be appreciated by a broader audience, to my humble opinion. As some kind of a footnote: I belong to the first category.