VOX: How does it feel to be back out on tour

NT: Great! This is our first world tour in eight years, and we started in Miami a week and a half ago. The crowds have been wild. It’s great. I mean, literally, Chris and I haven’t toured in America in eight years. It’s fantastic. We have such a loyal audience here.

VOX: What made you go back on the road

NT: Well, we finished the last album, "Nightlife", we love the album. I think it’s one of the best we’ve made. We thought, "Why not tour when the album is done." [Laughing] We usually tour when the album is done.

VOX: You have such a fanatical following with out the benefit of much airplay…

NT: We get no airplay.

VOX: Well, how does it feel to have that kind of fan base?

>LISTEN to Neil Tennant discuss the various sides of PSB live.>>47 seconds

NT: It feels great, because you know they like what you do - it’s as simple as that really. Funny, there’s a review of the album in the latest edition of Rolling Stone. It compares us to the Grateful Dead. It says the "Euro-cheese disco version of the Grateful Dead," because we have so many fans swapping mixes on the Internet and chat lines and all that. I think no one else does what the PSB do. I think the song writing, in what we write about, the way we present ourselves; design, video and on stage is completely unique. And we’re getting a lot of new fans as well. A lot of our new fans are in the early twenties in America and I think that’s great.

VOX: Who or what has influenced you in the visual sense?

NT: Visually we tend to get influenced by the things we see in artwork rather that other music stars. This show is designed by a world famous architect known as Zahar Hadeed who is one most revolutionary architects in the world today. Chris and I always try to do something totally new. We like a four-piece rock band; we have our computers, we have our singers, we have Chris on keyboards live and I sing live. That’s what always has attracted us to live performances we have the opportunity to try something new.

VOX: Neil, in your opinion which PSB song best showcases you as performers?

NT: Hmmm…There are different approaches in this show like "NY City Boy." It’s like a scene from a show, you have film of New York City, and you have dancers dressed like sailors, doing a routine…that film that they come out singing, ‘New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town'…it’s taken from that. Then you have the song "Young Offender" which is completely me and Chris playing keyboards and singing… There's this fantastic film from Ireland about the young kids that ride ponies everywhere. Then you have one that's all acoustic…the many different versions of PSB that you get in the show.

VOX: What is your favorite track off of the album and why?

NT: I think it’s "You Only Love Me When You're Drunk." It’s a very simple song. But I think it works in many different ways. It’s sort of funny, the title - I think it gives everyone a guilty conscience when they hear it. Umm, It true, it’s got a lovely melody. The producer, Chris Armstrong, whose a film composer, did the a brilliant string arrangement which make it uplifting as well. I think-it’s short - 3 minutes. It's a perfect pop record

VOX: What do you think of Los Angeles?

NT: I haven’t been to Los Angeles in five years, and that was just a two day stay en route to somewhere else. Cause Chris and I, in the late 80’s, were always in Los Angeles. But I like it; the weather’s nice.

It’s pleasant and quite cool.

VOX: What changes in growth do you see in your music between Bilingual and Nightlife. Has something changed professionally, personally…

NT: You know, Chris and I write constantly. We try to aim to produce music that is simultaneously simple and sophisticated. A song like "Vampires" on the new album has a very simple melody. Chord change…musicians, we have this chord change. We have this musician, Peter Schwartz, and he loves this chord change. And I love that 'cause he’s this classical musician - he loves this piece of music that we’ve written. And I also like the pop simplicity - that’s what we like to achieve. And also we gradually changed the PSB sound. We are not the sort of band to come back and jump on the latest trend. Our last album Bilingual, was, half of it, Latin inspired by trips to South America. Everyone thought it was weird at the time cause that’s when Brit pop was happening. But now of course everything has gone Latin! We’ve moved on but we do experiment as well.

VOX: What is the PSB creative process like?

NT: We work in the studio, we write together. Sometimes Chris works at home, I work at home. I’ve written with the piano, guitar at home like the song "Boy Strange" on the album. Then Chris vibes all over it as well. Sometimes Chris writes an instrumental and I write the words for it.

VOX: The song "In Denial", everything is laid bare, you lay all of the emotions out. What inspired it?

NT: "In Denial" comes from a scene we've written. We’ve written a musical…we’re going to workshop it in the spring. We hope to produce it within the next year. It’s set in a club and I am a manager.

VOX: What's behind the title Nightlife?

NT: Well we realized that a lot of the content of the songs took place at night. And actually we have a song called "Nightlife" which did not make it to the album cause we haven’t got it down right yet. We thought it was a good concept 'cause a lot of the songs take a place at night. It starts with "For Your Own Good," and it ends with a song called "Footsteps" which is really about being scared of the dark and wanting the comfort of your lover next to you. And in between that you get lots of different aspects of nightlife. You get vampires, when they come out at night…You get the fun disco side in "New York City Boy."

VOX: How long would you like to see the PSB exist?

NT: I think, the end will come when it comes. Chris and I are really good friends. We get along great together. You know we have got a lot of projects on the go at the moment. I just think it’s one of those things that you let it just happen [end]. If you told me 15 years ago, or even for that matter ten years ago that [today] we would be playing at Irvine Meadows…I mean let’s face it, bands from our generation aren’t around anymore. I think the key is to keep doing new stuff, change and use your imagination. The Pet Shop Boys are about using your imagination.