As a 600-page doorstopper celebrates their groundbreaking costumes, gigs, sleeves and videos, the duo talk about \u2018side-stepping the pop-star thing\u2019 \u2013 and the naked trampolinist EMI had to censor<\/p>\n\n
In 1988, when he was 20, Wolfgang Tillmans tore an A0 poster off a building site hoarding and nailed it to a wall in his flat in Hamburg. It was advertising Pet Shop Boys\u2019 new album, Introspective, and consisted of thick vertical bars in different colours. \u201cIt was just so cool in the context of the time,\u201d the artist says today, admiring how the pop group had gone \u201cone level more abstract\u201d.<\/p>\n
Around the same time in Doncaster, teenager Alasdair McLellan \u2013 now an A-list fashion photographer \u2013 was impressed by the clothes of Pet Shop Boys\u2019 keyboard-player Chris Lowe; for instance the cap, stripy T-shirt and Issey Miyake glasses on the cover of their single Suburbia. \u201cI always thought he was the best-dressed man of the 80s,\u201d McLellan says. \u201cObviously, he just stood there playing the keyboard and I always noticed what he was wearing, especially all that sportswear stuff. He just seemed to do it better than everyone else.\u201d McLellan couldn\u2019t get style magazines in his village, so his visual education came from pop and the music press. \u201cI got into photography through album covers, Smash Hits and NME.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/408d683769ce68e91927c203ddb1100c570f0b37\/240_0_4038_3230\/master\/4038.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=a990bf808b494d10de1ec0ed1b7fa85e\" "\\"\u2018Barbara")
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