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Go West

Writers - Belolo/Morali/Willis; additions by Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1993
Original album - Very
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, , Stephen Hague, Brothers in Rhythm
Subsequent albums - Disco 2, PopArt, Pandemonium, Ultimate, Inner Sanctum, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #2, US Dance #1)

Neil has said of this track, "We tried to bring out the elegiac quality of a utopia that couldn't be realized." It was Chris's idea to cover this Village People semi-classic from 1979. Neil was reluctant at first, but he soon warmed to the idea and later conceded that, as usual, Chris's idea for a remake—not to mention its conceptual underpinning, which was also apparently his idea—was right on target. They performed it live well before a studio version was ever released, having done so in 1992 at The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester for an AIDS charity benefit, where they had been asked to perform by Derek Jarman.

When it came time to record it in the studio, they did so with the help of an all-male authentic Broadway chorus, described by arranger Richard Niles as "very butch, very camp." In so doing, the Boys transformed the original celebration of the "Gay American Dream" of California sunshine, warmth, brotherhood, and sex into an intensely ironic yet assertive and strangely uplifting disco dirge haunted by AIDS. And in the process, the Pet Shop Boys elevated the Village People's semi-classic to full-fledged classic status, essentially making it their own.

Of course the Village People had successfully drawn upon the famous suggestion to "Go West, young man"—which, by the way, wasn't original with nineteenth-century American journalist Horace Greeley, as commonly believed, although he did popularize it. That certainly remains in the PSB rendition. But I can't help but wonder the extent to which Chris and Neil were also consciously drawing upon the ages-old cultural tradition of "going west," riding off into the sunset, being symbolic of death—an idea that surely wasn't in the minds of either Greeley or the Village People when they respectively appropriated the phrase.

Further, the video took an altogether different approach, applying the lyrics to an ironic commentary on the defeat of Soviet communism and the "westernization" of Russia. In this way Tennant and Lowe created several layers of meaning where only one had existed before. And they got a major hit single in the process. At least it was a major hit in Britain and much of the rest of the world. In the U.S. it was rarely heard outside of gay dance clubs, although a sound-alike instrumental track made a brief appearance in the background of a car commercial. Incidentally, the Pet Shop Boys noticed that the chord progression on which the original tune was based is that of German composer Johann Pachelbel's Canon, so they emphasized it in the opening phrases, thus further suggesting a dirge-like atmosphere. (Coincidentally, the music also resembles the former Soviet national anthem.)

Neil and Chris added the new middle section ("There where the air is free…," ending "We'll find our promised land"); Neil wrote the new words and Chris the additional music. Neil modified some of the original lyrics as well.

It may be worth noting that in the wake of the hit PSB remake of this song, it became a common "football [soccer] chant" in the U.K. and much of Europe, much as Queen's "We Will Rock You" became a sports "arena anthem" in the U.S. There's some intense real-life irony going on there in both cases, the nature of which I hardly need to describe in detail.

Annotations

"Go West," as noted above, originated with the Village People in 1979 and draws its title and at least part of its basic theme from the famous "Go West, young man" assertion popularized by nineteen-century American journalist and editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872), who wrote, "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country." (Although Greeley indeed popularized it, the phrase apparently originated with another journalist, the far lesser-known John Babsone Lane Soule, though there's some uncertainty as to whether even he originated it.) For a little more about the Village People, see my annotations for "New York City Boy."
Given the role that AIDS played in inspiring the Boys to cover this song—as well as in underpinning much of its meaning in their rendition of it—it's rather poignant to realize that one of its co-writers, Village People producer Jacques Morali, himself died of AIDS-related illness in 1991, only the year before Chris and Neil decided to perform and subsequently record it.
The chord progression and melody of this song are derived from the well-known Canon in D by the German baroque composer Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706). This was of course true of the Village People original, but it was accentuated by the Pet Shop Boys' arrangement.
Spinning off from the fact that the same chord progression was also found in the Soviet national anthem, the Boys referenced the collapse of the Soviet Union in their music video for the song, thereby assigning yet another level of meaning to the words "go west."
"We'll find our promised land" – The term "promised land," so often used in art, culture, history, and even politics, derives from the Bible (specifically describing the region very roughly coinciding with the present-day territory of Israel) to refer to the land God promised to the patriarch Abraham and his descendants. (Consider, for example, Exodus 12:25: "… the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, ….") Through the centuries "promised land" has been used metaphorically to refer to any land or, for that matter, any state of being, that a given group regards as their birthright. After 1492, European migrants to what they considered "the New World"—most especially the Bible-engrossed Puritan settlers of New England and their both literal and spiritual descendants—often used it to explain and justify moving to the Americas and into its interior, much to the detriment of the Native American peoples already living there. In the context of the song, it describes how gay people striving for social equality in the United States in the 1970s had begun to view the West Coast state of California as the place where they would be most empowered to achieve it.
Considering the "disco dirge" aspect of the PSB rendition in the wake of the AIDS crisis, it's worth noting that the concept of "going west" has long been linked to death in many western cultures, dating back to ancient times. This view of "the West" being the realm of the dead stems from the fact that the sun sets in the west. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Celts, Gauls, and others all believed that the "land of the dead"—bearing such diverse names as the Elysian Fields, the Blessed Isles, the Garden of the Hesperides, Tír na nÓg, Aralu, and Avalon—lay far to the west, beyond the Atlantic Ocean. One of my site visitors has even told me that, in full knowledge of this tradition, "Go West" has become a fairly popular choice of music for the funerals of gay men, although I personally haven't been able to find any documentation of this. Historians have also noted that "going west" was at one time a common British euphemism for being sent off to execution since the village of Tyburn, infamous as a site of executions from the twelfth through the eighteenth centuries, was just west of London. In light of all this, the Boys' remake of "Go West" takes on even darker undertones.
The wonderful TV Tropes website has noted a delightful lyrical anomaly. The PSB rendition of "Go West" includes the line "The hustling, rustling just to feed," but that resulted from the Boys apparently misinterpreting the Village People's original line, "The hustling, rustling of the feet." An earIy demo recording, however, includes another lyrical mistake ("We'll outrun all the power degrees" rather than the correct "Without rush, and the pace back east") that they managed to catch and correct before they recorded the "final" version.
The Pet Shop Boys have referred to "Go West" as their "albatross" in that people who are only slightly or casually familiar with them consider it representative of "what they sound like." The use of the word "albatross" in this way is a fairly common literary allusion, drawn from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's lengthy 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the central character, a sailor, had shot and killed an albatross—regarded by seamen as a bringer of good fortune—after which he is forced by the ship's crew to wear the dead bird around his neck thereafter both as an act of penance and as a signifier to others of his crime. The allusion is therefore to a song and the "reputation" it carries that the Boys must figuratively "wear around their necks," presumably for the rest of their career. While I have no doubt about the truth of this observation for most of the world, I'm sure that it's far less true in the United States than it is elsewhere. "Go West" was not a major PSB hit in the States, where I suspect one of their far bigger U.S. hits—most likely "West End Girls," but possibly "Opportunities," "Always on My Mind," or even "It's a Sin"—plays more the "albatross role" for them.
Neil has stated that, in the wake of their success with "Go West," the Village People's original record company approached him and Chris about doing a new remix of VP's biggest hit, "YMCA." But the Boys declined because they felt the original was such a classic and was so familiar that they might only risk "spoiling" it.
A interesting footnote is that some people have accused the writers of "Go West" of stealing its melody from the Christian song "Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart" (more popularly known simply as "Give Thanks"), composed and copyrighted by Henry Smith in 1978, the year before the Village People song first appeared. But since "Give Thanks" was never recorded until several years later and didn't gain widespread popularity in the field of Christian music until the late 1980s, it seems a clear instance of the composers of two different songs quite accidentally and independently coming up with virtually identical melodies. This could, of course, have arisen from their shared influence, conscious or otherwise, of the Pachelbel Canon in D chord sequence.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Stephen Hague and Mike "Spike" Drake
- Album/single version (5:03)
  - Available on Very
- Album/single version, early fade (4:44)
  - Available on the second "corrected" edition of the Brazilian release Party
Mixer: Brothers in Rhythm
- US Radio Edit (4:21)
- Ming's Gone West First and Second Movement (10:12)
- Ming's First and Second Movement Mix (4:45)
- Ming's First and Second Movement Edit (4:30)
- Ming's Gone West Second Movement (5:18)
Mixer: Terry Farley and Peter Heller
- Farley & Heller Mix, aka Heller & Farley Project Mix (3:40)
  - Available on Disco 2
- Farley & Heller Disco Mix (6:00)
- Farley & Heller Fire Island Mix (7:42)
Mixer: Kevin Saunderson
- Kevin Saunderson Trance Mix (6:54)
- Kevin Saunderson Tribe Mix (6:52)
Mixer: Mark Stent
- Stent Extended Dance Mix (7:07)
- 1992 12" Mix (aka Full-Length Extended Dance Mix) (9:12)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc of the Very reissue
- Stent Original 7" Mix (4:23)
Mixer: Stuart Price
- Pandemonium CD live version (3:55)
- Inner Sanctum CD live version in medley with "Heart" (7:59)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: Stephen Hague
- Stephen Hague 7-inch version (5:40)
Mixer: Brothers in Rhythm
- 7-inch Mix (5:22)
Mixer: Kevin Saunderson
- Kevin Saunderson Reese Vibe Mix (4:30)
- Kevin Saunderson Reese Praise Reese Mix (4:17)
Mixer: Mark Stent
- Mark Stent Allez a l'Ouest 12-inch version (8:30)
Mixer: Mark Picchiotti and Terry Bristol
- Sunny Beach Vocal (cold ending) (6:00)
- Sunny Beach Vocal (percussion ending) (6:47)
- West End Dub (7:58)
- California Dreamin' Dub (6:40)
Mixer: Chris Lowe
- Fabdens 12-inch Dub Mix (aka 12-inch Dub Mix) (5:10)
  - This instrumental is the mix that evolved into the song "Falling"
- Fabdens 12-inch Remix (aka "Falling" Remix Demo) (6:20)
  - This variation on the preceding 12-inch Dub Mix includes the "Go West" vocals by Neil and the backup singers
Mixer: uncertain (probably either Chris Lowe or Pete Gleadall)
- Fabdens First Vocal Demo (5:16)
Mixer: Andy Gray
- Euro 2000 remix (timing unknown)

List cross-references

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