Christopher Sean Lowe (born 4 October 1959) is an English musician, songwriter, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Neil Tennant in 1981. He is primarily the keyboardist and occasionally a vocalist, and he is the co-author of the catalogue of Pet Shop Boys songs with his writing partner, Tennant. Lowe is known for his impassive stage persona, standing still behind a keyboard with his head and eyes covered.
Early life and education
Christopher Sean Lowe was born and raised in Blackpool, Lancashire, He is the oldest of four siblings. His grandfather, Syd Flood, was a trombonist and a member of the comedy jazz troupe The Nitwits. His mother was a dancer, and his father—a sales representative for the gas board—could play piano by ear. He studied music as an A-level subject.
Lowe played trombone in a semi-professional seven-piece dance band named One Under the Eight that performed favourites like "Hello Dolly", "La Bamba" and "Moon River", and he joined the Musicians' Union with them. Entering his teenage years, he preferred listening to artists his grandparents enjoyed, like Dorothy Squires, Frank Sinatra, and Tom Jones, rather than the music that was popular with his peers at the time. During a work placement in 1981 at Michael Aukett Associates architectural practice in London, he designed a staircase for an industrial estate in Milton Keynes. It was at this time that he met Neil Tennant in Chelsea Record Centre, a hi-fi shop on King's Road in London. As their music career developed, Lowe continued his architecture course and earned a Bachelor of Architecture, but did not complete the final work requirement to qualify as an architect before he and Tennant committed full time to the Pet Shop Boys in 1985.
Musical career
Pet Shop Boys
thumb|Lowe (left) with [[Neil Tennant in a Pet Shop Boys concert, Boston, 2006]]
thumb|Lowe performing at [[Pori Jazz 2014 in Pori, Finland]]
Lowe and Tennant began writing music together shortly after their first meeting in August 1981. During their early sessions, Lowe played a Korg MS-10 monophonic synthesizer belonging to Tennant. Lowe had musical training and fluency, while Tennant was largely self-taught and had been writing his own songs for a decade. In 1982, Lowe wrote a piece of music on the piano at his family home in Blackpool and gave a cassette recording to Tennant to write lyrics. The song, "Jealousy", was later released on their fourth studio album, Behaviour (1990). Lowe called it "probably the first time I'd ever constructed a song".
Lowe has strong views about his taste in music, as he expressed in a 1986 interview with Entertainment Tonight: