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It Couldn't Happen Here

Writers - Lowe/Morricone/Tennant
First released - 1987
Original album - Actually
Producer - David Jacob, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Essential
Other releases - (none)

Although he borrowed the title (more or less) from American author Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here, which concerned a prospective fascist takeover of the U.S., Neil's somber ruminations here are somewhat less political and deal not with the U.S. but the U.K. As he himself has pointed out, "It Couldn't Happen Here" grew out of a conversation he recalled having several years earlier with a friend, during which they expressed their belief that the AIDS epidemic, which was beginning to attract attention on account of its rapid spread among the gay population in the States, wouldn't have much of an impact in Britain. As it turned out, that same friend later contracted the disease himself, inspiring Neil to write the song, in which he sadly describes how wrong they had been.

The music was written in collaboration with Italian film composer Ennio Morricone in preparation for a project that evolved into It Couldn't Happen Here, the Boys' fascinating but largely unsuccessful film venture. At the official PSB website, Neil described the composition of the song like this: "Morricone's manager gave us a tape of an unfinished song and told us we could do what we liked with it. Around the chorus melody by Morricone, we wrote verse and intro music and I wrote the words. We never met him." But on another occasion (in an issue of their Fan Club publication Literally), Neil described the circumstances a bit differently, stating how Morricone (or his representatives) had sent them "a funny song about a man building an ark." He went on to add, "We liked the tune of the chorus, so we took the tune of the chorus and wrote a new verse…." (An attempt to provide a succinct step-by-step "recreation" of the process is provided below in the "Annotations.") Details are a bit sketchy, but it seems the Morricone piece from which Chris and Neil borrowed the chorus melody of "It Couldn't Happen Here" may have been originally composed for the 1983 French film Le Marginal, but wasn't actually used. Instead it remained unreleased (and possibly, as Neil described it, "unfinished") until 1999, when it finally saw the light of day as the song "Forecast" by the band Blizzard on the compilation CD Belmondo-Morricone, and still later re-released on an expanded edition of the Le Marginal soundtrack album.

Annotations

As already noted, the title is a variation on It Can't Happen Here, a 1935 novel by U.S. author Sinclair Lewis.
"In six-inch heels, quoting magazines" – An allusion to the 1970s, when for a time high heels were nearly as popular for men as for women. Neil has noted on more than one occasion that during that period he would sometimes wear a pair of high-heeled women's shoes that he particularly liked. (Webmaster's note: I wasn't immune. I had a couple pairs of men's "platform shoes" back then—quite stylish circa 1977, but damn uncomfortable. In retrospect, I find it remarkable that I was able to do any disco-dancing in those things. But it gave me a certain admiration that most women are able to tolerate such shoes themselves.)
"Someone asked: Who do you think you are?" – Neil has said that this line refers to the notion felt by some that gay people were being "too public."
Several of the song's lines, such as "We've laughed too loud and woke up everyone" and "We've found ourselves back where we started from," may be allusions to the "two steps forward, two steps back" feelings that pervaded the gay community in the 1980s. With "gay liberation" having made tremendous strides toward public acceptance in the 1970s, the following decade's AIDS pandemic was viewed as an equally tremendous setback, intensifying homophobia in many quarters. That Neil (or his lyrical persona) might express such feelings in the late 1980s is completely understandable. In hindsight, however, it's now clear that—as indisputably horrible as AIDS has been—it has actually contributed in the long run to even greater openness and acceptance of gay people.
An additional lyrical snippet appeared in an earlier version of the song. As noted in Chris Heath's book Pet Shop Boys, Literally, the recurring line in the chorus "You said it couldn't happen here" originally was immediately followed by the words "just before it did." But it seems that Chris (Lowe, of course—not Heath) found it somewhat amusing, whereas Neil didn't mean for it to be funny at all. Rather than risk others similarly responding to it in an unintended fashion, Neil removed it.
As I can best summarize the process based on available information (including how Neil once described it during a performance with an orchestra in 2012), here's the story of the "Morricone connection":
- During the period when they were recording the songs that would become Actually, the Boys approached Ennio Morricone about orchestrating "Jealousy." (Remember that at one time the album itself was going to be titled Jealousy after what would've been its title song.)
- Morricone declined (which may account for the fact that "Jealousy" would remain unreleased for several years), but he sent a tape to them, saying they could use the music on it pretty much as they pleased.
- Neil and Chris used the melody on the tape for the chorus of the song that would become "It Couldn't Happen Here" and wrote the rest of the song around it.
- They sent their demo of "It Couldn't Happen Here" back to Morricone, asking if he would provide an orchestral arrangement.
- Again, for whatever reason, Morricone declined. The ball was back in the PSB court.
- The Boys then commissioned composer Angelo Badalamenti to orchestrate "It Couldn't Happen Here." This he did.
- When the Boys tried to arrange for an orchestra to record Badalamenti's arrangement, they ran into serious booking difficulties—so much so that they decided to scuttle these plans (which would've been their first recording with an orchestra).
- They then hired Blue Weaver (former member of Amen Corner, Fair Weather, and The Strawbs, but probably best known for his extensive work with the Bee Gees in the mid- and late 1970s) to use Badalamenti's orchestration as the basis for the instrumentation of the song programmed on a Fairlight Series III digital synthesizer. This is what was finally used in the recording of "It Couldn't Happen Here" on Actually.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: David Jacob and Pet Shop Boys

Album version (5:17)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: [unknown at this time]
- Demo (5:12)

List cross-references

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