"Our song about a guy angry after a break-up is really about Putin and the former Soviet republics": The Pet Shop Boys' Russian lament - Neil Tennant talks war and more

"I do not imagine that anyone really cares what we think about Russia, but you did ask."

In a new interview with independent Russian outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, translated by The Guardian the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant talks about his experiences with and within Russia and how he laments its Putin-powered journey to global pariah.

The band have previously played multiple sell-out, large-scale concerts within the country, being one of the best-known European bands and always welcomed as part of their regular touring duties.

Russia, and its iconography regularly weave into the band’s songs and they were a major act for MTV’s Russian launch and shot the Russian imagery-laden video for Go West in Red Square.

Pet Shop Boys - Go West (Official Video) [HD REMASTERED] - YouTube

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Thus, when it comes to Russia’s journey from dictatorship, through burgeoning democracy, to arriving at its current spot as war-loving belligerent globe worrier, Tennant finds himself ideally placed to share his memories of an altered time, love for its people and concerns for its future.

“I have been interested in Russia since reading a book when I was a young boy about 1917,” says Tennant. “This interest fed into the lyrics I wrote.

"For instance My October Symphony, or indeed our first hit single, West End Girls: “In every city, in every nation / From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station.

“Kaputnik, our song about a guy angry after a break-up, is really about Putin and the former Soviet republics: ‘I’ll never recognise your new independence / I’ll say you wish you hadn’t lost all you had / And then suggest an intervention is needed / by someone like me who knows you’ve gone mad.’”

"We swept into Moscow in Gorbachev’s limousine"

“The first contact the Pet Shop Boys had with Russia was in 1988, during the first exchange visit of Soviet and British teenagers to each other’s countries. We were delighted to discover that, when the Soviet kids were asked who they’d like to meet in London, they said the Pet Shop Boys. And so we met them and discovered we had a Soviet audience.

“In 1993 we travelled to Russia for the first time to launch MTV Russia,” Tennant recalls. “While we were there we filmed part of the video for Go West in Red Square. Russia was politically and economically “going west”, so it seemed relevant and funny to have statues of Lenin pointing west.

“We were met at the airport by a driver in a big limousine that they said used to be Gorbachev’s. Those days in Moscow, there were still three lanes: two going opposite ways and then another in the middle for important people. So we swept into Moscow in Gorbachev’s limousine.”

Other reminiscences sway from the nostalgic (“I remember a wonderful white night when we toured the canals of St Petersburg in a boat, eating caviar and drinking wine”) to the tragic (“It was impossible to ignore the victims of the economic problems that followed the implosion of the Soviet system – old ladies, for instance, selling possessions on the street”) to the frankly unlikely (“Once, when we couldn’t get a taxi, the police drove us back to our hotel from a gay club”).

And there’s more than a few name-drops along the way. Obviously. “Brian Eno and his family lived in St Petersburg for a while, and we attended the opening of his show at the Russian Museum. A few years later, our friend the British artist Sam Taylor-Wood [now Taylor-Johnson] had a big show at the same museum and we threw a crazy party for her in a new restaurant,” Tennant recalls.

"We have seen the optimism of Russia opening up, and the tragedy of it closing down."

“When Putin was manoeuvred into power 25 years ago, it felt like it could be a positive thing: he was going to take on the oligarchs and improve the economic situation for Russians. But when I asked a friend in St Petersburg what he thought about Putin, he gave a one-word answer: “Stalin.” I assumed he was pessimistically exaggerating, but he was right and I was optimistically wrong.

“Putin lives in a 19th-century past where provinces are annexed,” Tennant observes. “We have seen the optimism of Russia opening up, and the tragedy of it closing down.

“For Russia to move on from the cancer of Putin will require a revolution of attitudes, a rejection of Putin and Stalin… Reparations must be paid to Ukraine. Then Russia could become what surely everyone wants: a peaceful and prosperous country positioned in Europe and linking it to the east, rejecting its past as a bully to both its neighbours and its own citizens; an integral part of world civilisation.

“This is a huge task and it begins with the retreat of all Russian (and North Korean) troops from Ukraine, followed by the arrest and trial of Vladimir Putin. We can only hope for this red letter day.”

You can read Tennant’s full reply to Andrey Sapozhnikov of Novaya Gazeta Europe here, courtesy of The Guardian.