Dead Or Alive - Misty Circles

Pete Burns was famous before he was famous: a waspish Wirral weirdo who gave five times as good as he got to hapless hecklers on the streets of Liverpool and a sharp-tongued shop assistant at Probe record shop, legendary for viciously vetting the choices of customers. Stories abound of Burns refusing to sell people Secret Affair singles “because they’re shit”, or contemptuously hurling OMD records at customers across the counter. Underneath it was a battleship-strength belief that he could do better. Sophisticated Boom Boom, the debut Dead Or Alive album, is the sort of record one typically finds in second hand bargain bins and charity shops, on vinyl for a quid. And rarely will a quid be better spent, because it stands up fantastically well. Having signed to Epic, the band hooked up with rising German producer Zeus B Held, who had made his name with Gina X Performance and worked with British synth artists such as Fàshiön and John Foxx. Held gave DOA’s sound the crisp snap and thwack it needed. The album’s lead single Misty Circles was a disco-noir cracker, still popular with clubbers decades later. Despite the major label behind it, Misty Circles only made it to No 100, though it would later find its way into millions of homes on the B-side of the band’s biggest hit. It did, however, take Burns on to national television via ITV’s Razzmatazz, startling pre-teen viewers with his Vivienne Westwood get-up, heavy make-up, oversized top hat and ribboned dreads, looking for the entire world like Boy George’s evil stepsister. Which, in so many ways, he was.

Dead Or Alive - It’s Been Hours Now

For a time in the mid-80s, Pete Burns’ Dead Or Alive were the toast of the post-new wave/hi-nrg scene, a scene that unveiled several major hits, including the Stock-Aitken-Waterman produced UK chart-topper, `You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’, a resounding global phenomenon. Focal point Burns was able to plough his field of pop dreams: doors left ajar by Visage, Soft Cell, Culture Club and Merseyside rivals Frankie Goes To Hollywood. From the 90s onwards, Dead Or Alive were a spent force (in Britain at least), though their chameleonic cross-dressing frontman seemed always to hog the limelight; Celebrity Big Brother 4 (featuring his costly reconstructed lips), Celebrity Wife Swap and as a TV presenter, himself.

It was all so simple back in post-punk Liverpool where provocateur Pete Burns (born Peter Jozzeppi Burns, 5 August 1959, Bebington, Wirral) worked at Geoff Davies’ Probe Records Shop. From there, he formed short-lived late-’77-era punk outfit, the Mystery Girls, a quartet that numbered Pete Wylie, Julian Cope and drummer Phil Hurst, before all affiliates found their own niche. Both Burns and Hurst (the latter a replacement for Pink Military-bound Paul Hornby) would duly re-surface in 1979 as front-and-back of Nightmares In Wax, a goth-dance act that also comprised keyboardist/co-scribe Martin Healy, guitarist Mick Reid (ex-Crash Course, ex-Glass Torpedoes) and bassist Pete Loyd; Loyd superseded Ambrose (ex-Big In Japan) who’d deputised for Walter Ogden on their only disc: the EP `Birth Of A Nation’, which featured three cuts led by `Black Leather’ (a song that interpolated K.C. & The Sunshine Band’s `That’s The Way (I Like It)’).

The group name was switched to Dead Or Alive prior to offering up tracks for a John Peel radio session in May 1980 and, after subsequent re-shuffling of personnel, Burns and Healy were joined by guitarist Adrian “Mitch” Mitchley, bassist Sue James and drummer Joe Musker (of Faction); the scarily androgynous Burns was to marry Lynne Corlett, around this time.

A debut Dead Or Alive single, `I’m Falling’ (issued on local Liverpool Indie Inevitable Records), varied little from the keyboard-heavy, sub-goth wailing of Nightmares In Wax; drawing comparisons with The Doors, if only for the Manzarek-like keys and Burns’ theatrical vocals. Yet while his singing suggested an imposing prince of darkness type figure, the frontman’s stage persona was more akin to a kind of sexually ambiguous, gothic dandy. By the band’s sophomore single, `Number Eleven’, the indie-goth quintet had attracted a cult following in Merseyside and beyond.

With the departure of Mitch and the arrival of Bristol-born guitarist Wayne Hussey (from Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls), and Mike Percy taking over from Sue on bass, a percussive, organic tone was apparent on their self-financed 1982 single, `It’s Been Hours Now’ 12”, undoubtedly their best tune so far; or indeed, ever!

Released the same month as Culture Club’s chart-scaling “…Hurt Me” smash hit, the not-so-spectacular `The Stranger’ (complete with Pete’s dreadlock’d hair-bob on the pic sleeve!) found some airplay from Peely and, despite, or courtesy of, Boy George’s unintentional upstaging, Epic Records won the battle to sign Dead Or Alive.

I’m Falling

Playing only one gig (opening for Sham 69 at Eric's in Liverpool in November 1977) before disintegrating, The Mystery Girls was the world’s first introduction to Julian Cope, Pete Wylie, Pete Burns and Phil Hurst. Pete Burns returned in 1979 with a new band, Nightmares In Wax playing their first gig supporting Wire at Erics in July 1979. Although now signed to the Eric's Records label, their only release, a three-track 7" EP entitled Birth of a Nation, appeared in March 1980 on Inevitable Records. In May 1980, just before they were to record a radio session for John Peel, Burns changed the name of the band to Dead or Alive. The band went through several different line-up changes over the next three years while recording a series of independent singles.