Chris Lowe

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Chris Lowe is an English keyboard player and songwriter, born in Blackpool in 1959. He grew up in a musical family: his grandfather was a trombonist. Lowe learned trombone and piano and as a boy played in a dance orchestra and a brass band. At the end of the 1970s he became a fan of disco. Even so he chose security and went to study architecture in Liverpool.

Music and breakthrough

During a work placement in London in 1981 he met Neil Tennant in a shop selling sound equipment. They discovered that they both loved electronic music and began writing songs together. That is how the Pet Shop Boys came about. In 1985 the duo broke through with West End Girls, and in 1985 Lowe also gave up his studies for good. Hits such as It's a Sin, Always on My Mind and Go West followed. Lowe wrote a large part of the accompaniment and often the melodies too, while Tennant wrote the lyrics and sang.

Influence

Lowe is the man behind the dance floor in the sound of the Pet Shop Boys. He followed what was happening in clubs, first in the gay clubs of London and later in Ibiza and Berlin, and brought it into their synth-pop. On stage he stands almost motionless behind his keyboards, wearing a cap and sunglasses. The Pet Shop Boys became the most successful duo in British pop history.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 2005Battleship Potemkin (soundtrack)

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 7: The 1980s^NL Reader