Pet Shop Boys formed in London in August, 1981 when vocalist Neil Tennant (a former editor at Marvel Comics who later gained some notoriety as a journalist for Smash Hits magazine) first met keyboardist Chris Lowe (a onetime architecture student) at an electronics shop; discovering a shared passion for dance music and synthesizers, they immediately decided to start a band. Dubbing themselves the Pet Shop Boys in honor of friends who worked in such an establishment — while also obliquely nodding to the sort of names prevalent among the New York City hip-hop culture of the early 1980s — the duo's career first took flight in 1983, when Tennant met producer Bobby 'O' Orlando while on a writing assigment. Orlando produced their first single, 1984's 'West End Girls'; the song was a minor hit in the U.S. but went nowhere in Britain, and its follow-up, 'One More Chance,' was also unsuccessful.