The tape must have clicked off half-an hour ago, but Pete Burns is still at it hammer and tongs. His gripe of the moment? People with famous dads.

"Julian Lennon - Why?", he deadpans, like a tranvestite Arthur Askey in sour mood. "If he has to make that good-awful cacophony, then why does he have to use his father's name to draw attention to it? Why can't he call himself "Julian", so it can be judged on its own merits?"

Ah ah! This is exactly what we expect from the ex-Dead Or Alive singer. Plenty of bile, plenty of incisive humour, plenty of quick-fire scouse wit. But - and I'm being serious here - I'm not sure if that is the real Pete Burns.

In fact, for much of our 90-minute meeting, Burns was anything but the bitchy hard-man drag queen we read about in the papers. He was funny, sure, but he was also keen to talk soberly about his bitter disillusionment with the pop world. Not than he despairs so much that he wants to jack it all in - he'll be the first to admit that the money's too good - but it's obvious that he finds all the attendant music biz baloney very difficult to deal with. Take away the make-up, the cocky veneer and the clubby clothes, and you're left with a very ordinary bloke with carrer troubles.

"Pete reads lots of books - he absolutely eats them", chirps drummer Steve Coy, as we wait for the singer to arrive at PWL's London Bridge studio. A fellow Liverpudlian, Coy was a member of Dead Or Alive for most of their 12-year carrer, and when Burns recently decided to disband the group to start a new project, International Chrysis, Coy remained with him.

The personable drummer rarely gives interviews, but as Burns phones up to say his taxi's stuck in traffic, he fills me in on the events of the past few years. Basically, it seems, Burns was getting increasingly cheesed off in the late 80s, thanks chiefly to fans and promoters who wanted him to do nothing more than bash out DOA's mid-80s hits like "You Spin Me Round" and "Lover Come Back To me" every night.

In the end, despite the fact that Dead Or Alive were playing stadium-sized gigs in Japan and the States, the singer got so depressed that he decided to knock it all on the head - though he did resurrect the DOA name for a Stateside solo tour in 1993, which suffered from the same old problem: punters baying fanatically for the oldies at every turn. Sometimes the got them, too: these were the concerts where his refusal to comply would have sparked a full-scall riot.

Back in Londin, where the singer has liver since the mid-80s, Burns decided to make a new start, with a fresh project and a different name. With Cy in tow, he looked around for a deal, and eventually found a home at PWL - Pete Waterman's label, a bredding ground for dance talent since the mid-80s. (As part of the SAW production team, Waterman had, in fact, had a hand in many of DOA's vintage hits.)

At the time of our meeting, Burns and Coy were putting the final touches to an as-yet-untitled album, already being promoted by a dance-up cover version of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel". Steve is adamant that this time around, the group's songwriting skills are going to speak for themselves. "We've always written great songs. They could be given a heavy metal treatment, a country treatment - the dance bit is only down to the production. We've never been nominated for an Ivor Novello Award or whatever - the writing side of the band has never been brought out."

PRISTINE

After ten minutes or so, Pete Burns arrives, dressed in a red-qtreaked denim smock, a tall white hat and pristine gold trainers. His hair is long and straight, cut at the front in a Cleopatra-type fringe, and his smooth white skin is lightly made up. Strangely, he doesn't have the fearsome visual impact I was expecting. The reason why struck me immediately: Burns looks magnificent pretty even -perhaps it's only those gauche, tawdry drag queens that prompt a curious double-take.
Steve departs, and I'm left in the presence of pop royalty - or at least the closest I'd been to it since I brushed past Pete Waterman an hour ago, overseeing a shipment of CDs at the studio door.
With the two of us locked in a conference room, Burns lights up a fag, draws his knees up to his chest, crosses his arms in the fashion of a bitchy fish-wife, and tersely tells me to fire away.
So, I ask him why, in the late 80s, did the group's success peter out in this country, and what was it about DOA that struck a chord with Japanese and American audiences?

"I think it's cos I didn't really want it in this country", he retorts in his mildly-camp Liverpool brogue. "It was a two-way process - this country didn't particularly want it and I didn't want it either. The thing that was so frustrating, and which hept making me go through really bad moods, was the realisation that if you have a hit song, then you're gonna be singing it for the rest of your life.
"There is a syndrome of brain death, that I see everywhere. I can't compare myself in status to Madonna, but I see her going through the paces of doing "Like A Virgin" - bored shitless. Next time, she's gonna have to have a shit on stage to keep herself amused, and I don't want to get into that trap.
"Today, I don't feel too good because we booked a gig to preview material under our new name. I didn't want all the pomp and ceremony of DOA, so I went out for a lower fee, because you're not obligated to do things you'd have to otherwise. But the contract came through saying that I had to perform "You Spin Me Round". In the end, I'll probably do it, but I'm feeling really stubborn at the moment. But I can't do that fucking song till I'm 50."

This is Burns in full-flow, chasing his neuroses around like a dog chasing its tail; clutching at ideas, which when explored, suddenly dissolve into a mess of truisms. Burns has obviously got a bee in his bonnet about playing his old songs, and it's visibly eating him whole. Again and again he'll return to this point, each time concluding with greater a sense of resignation thazt he probably will be singing these songs to the grave.

"In a lot of ways, I've come to realise that this job fucking sucks', he continues, wearily. "We started out doing John Peel sessions, then we signed to Epic, and before I knew waht, we'd had a No.1 hit. It was like being Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" when the house blew away. I didn't realise thent that "You Spin Me Round" would probably be played at my funeral. I was still a kid, I didn't know what was going o. But that song has become like a jailer.
"TV programmers are the worse, because they want you to play it so their programmes can appeal to a wide audience. But it becomes more and more obvious that I'm just in an idealistic frame of mind at the moment, and it will gradually crumble away. It looks like I'm going to become a glove puppet, doing "You Spin Me Round" till I turn fucking blue."

A sulky Burns seems quite happy that we're stuck in this bizarre conversational loop. But, hey, I've got a job to do, a feature to write. So I try to get him off the subject, mentioning the positive response to International Chrysis's new single, a cover of Bowie's "Rebel Rebel".

"There's not been much positive feedback from the radio", he retorts, sipping water froma plastic cup. "They don't want you to fuck with David Bowie's work, because now that he's 90, he's in a position of respect. I don't even like that song - though I like our version of it - it was just a flippant decision to do it. We thought it would be easy to get it programmed.

3I changed all the words to it, but Bowie wouldn't approve it - I thought he'd been lazy repeating the first verso, so I wrote another one. But we went back and listened to the original in the context of the "Diamond Dogs" album and it was obviously a last-minute filler anyway.

"They didn't like our original version because they thought if didn't do him justice. I thought, fuck off! If you don't think it does him justice, then send me the PRS cheque! I mean, I have liked things he done - not since he's turned into Val Doonican - but when I was about 13. But at the time, he was moderately better than Alice Cooper, though I liked Roxy Music more. But if you asked me if I was a David Bowie fan, I'd say "absolutely not". And I certainly wouldn't want to be like him, singing "Starman" at 50, looking bored."

Oops! We're back in spitting distance of the "You Spin Me Round" gripe. So, manfully I change tack again, asking him about Courtney Love, who hung out in Liverpool in the early 80s, when Dead Or alive, the Teardrop Explodes and Echo & The Bunnymen were arch rivals in the doom and gloom post-punk pop scene.

"Well, when she started appearing in the newspapers I thought she was so funny. At last, somebody was saying the things that I was thinking. That quote, "If you say anything bad about me, I'll hurt you, Kurt'll shoot and we'll both sue you" was so... childish. But I think she's a great rock'n'roll role model for little girls. I'd love to have that sense of diminished responsability, getting busted in L.A. hotel rooms (or not - legal ed.) and having your husband shoot his head off.
"I used to think she was great. She used to call me names on streets corners. But when she went with Kurt she picked up a guitar and did something fer herself, and I find that admirable. At least she didn't join Nirvana and play keyboards, like Linda McCartney. After all these years, to see her turn out good - I'm really glad.
"I keep hearing all these cocky wankers saying Kurt's death was a cop-out. No one knows what he went through. Can you imagine the pressure on him to turn up on time? He wasn't a clock-in, clock-off kind of person, he was rebellious. it must have been like an elastic band round his head.

"I'd like to see more rebellious artists, but there comes a point when you're paying a mortgage, and no one stands up for what you believe in anymore. You go along with it, then you get grouchy. We seem to have this hardcore of fans, but when they write to me and say they paid $500 for a 12" single, it's very flattering. But I don't get any of it, so it doesn't make any fucking difference to me. Just because they've been ripped off rigid, it doesn't mean that I'm going to sing that song. I can understand why people get addicted to drugs in this job, because it's repetition, it's like being a hamster on a wheel."

COSMETIC

"We signed to this label... Well, why did we sign to this label? The people here seem more dedicated to their jobs, I suppose. It may be a cosmetic gloss. We've met another people on the label who have it in the contract that they can't go into the studio, they just get sent a tape to sing over the top. I think that's really fucking sick. But companies like this pick on artists who'd have no hope elsewhere. I mean the Kylies and Jasons, it's just a springboard for them. But it's like throwing someone who doesn't knit a ball of wool and saying make me a sweater."

"I wish I was a moron", he speeds on, straight-faced and unruffled. "I really wish I xas a fucking idiot who was happy doing it... because it's glorified karaoke. But I also see the enormous financial rewards these people get for being imbeciles. Sometimes I think, fuck it, I'll do what I'm told.
"It's like when we first signed this deal, worked with Mike Stock and his attitude was just so bad. I didn't want to work with him, and he didn't want to work with me, so I made sure I did such a shit job on what we were working on that he'd walked out."

Burns sighs, flicks his hair out of his eyes, and lights another fag. Slowly exhaling the first puff, he shifts back into gear, and then, WHOOSH!, he's off, bitching about his contemporaries, switching this way and that as he tries desperately not to tread his verbal stilletos into too many toes.

"I mean, there are a lot of people in this business that are better than me. I've just hung on by the skin of my bullocks. I'm not saying I'm the answer to their doldrums."

Later, walking down the Strand, trying to make sense of our meeting, it suddenly strikes me that Burns had talked so much, but given away so little of his real self. Would the real Pete Burns please stand up?

(Published in "Record Collector", August 1994)