The Orchard Cafe, which looks down onto Church Street, is where Dorran and myself are taken by Pete Burns and Marty Healey.
We talk about a wide range of topics which include nuclear war, capitalism, revenge, taxidermy and the ozone barrier amongst other, more obvious subjects such as Pete's appearance, which on stage, seems even more pronounced with the rest of the group appearing the picture of normality.

- Firstly though, we talk about the bizarre way in which Sue James and Adrian Mitchley met the then named Nightmares In Wax to become part of the more defined Dead Or Alive.
Pete: "We just found them trying to steal our equipment one day."
Marty: "We found them in our room trying to use our gear and so we wouldn't let them out until they play along to our music. Sue wouldn't play along so we just kept kicking her until she did. We wouldn't let them out of the room, we were standing against the door, telling them to plug in. We kidnapped them for about an hour and they came back for more. I think they must be masochists."

- When did you start feeling you had to express yourself through your dress?
Pete: "It's not expressing myself... You said I'm wearing a dress? (mock threatening) I mean, even since I was a child I used to steal my mother's wigs and stick them on me head. It's completely natural. I mean, I just dazzle people, we almost caused a crash in a place in Scotland. I just couldn't go any other way. I might want to wear a three piece tweed suit one day, then again that would shock people."

- How did you find it at first, people's reactions to you?
Pete: "I never really noticed. Unless I am with other people I don't notice what is happening because often if you are with a crowd of people you can laugh at other people's reactions. When you are on your own I'm totally oblivious to it reality, I'm a dozy twit you see. Nothing's ever happen to me bad."
Marty: "You'll probably go outside and get the shit beaten out of you now."
Pete: "I've been nervous sometimes."

- We talk about the press/band relationship in London.
Pete: "All there is in London, if you're in the music scene, is the press who are just real arse holes. There's to many bloody bands, who are all arse holes, trying to ponder to the press. Here, there is a lots of things to do with the music business, but you can easily get away from them by just turning a corner. We don't just not like the press because we have had bad reviews either, we just don't think much of the ones we have met. I just think they are very very empty people. Like, this bloody really obese scrubber who reviewed our single for Zig-Zag, with this deformed jaw..."
Marty: "She said I don't like your new single, it sounds like a cowboy song. I said I don't like your chin."
Pete: "I didn't like her spare tyres either. You look at certain people and think, if they are the ones who are judging what I'm doing, Jesus Christ."
Marty: "We sent Melody Maker an offensive letter with a shit in it. The morning the paper came out we rang them up and hurled abuse down the phone, saying Hi, this is Top Taylor and his orchestra, we think it's really unfair the way you gave Dead Or Alive a bad review, you bastard!"
Pete: "We terrorised them for a day. They don't think that's funny. You know big plastic shits from joke shops? We sent them boxes of that."
Marty: "We put 'Itchy-Coo" in the envelopes, so when they pulled the letter out, it would go all other their hands."
Pete: "We are very vengeful you know."
Marty: "None escapes our wroth."
Pete: "We even tried to buy a live Ferret to send to somebody through the post... second class. By the time they opened it, it would have been so crazy it would have gone arrrh!" (Pete pretends to be savaged by a Ferret.)

- Have you got a stuffed Ferret at home or something?
Pete: "I've got hundreds of stuffed dead things. It's the only way to have animals dead."
Marty: "We've got stuffed interviewers as well."
Pete: "Yeah, I've got loads of stuffed Ferrets, Deer, Pythons and a stuffed Boa Constrictor."
Marty: "I like Whales."

- What, live ones?
Marty: "Well, you couldn't really stuff one, could you. I'd love to have a Whale but you can't really get on with them socially can you."
Pete: "The good thing you see is, if you've got loads of dead animals around your house when you come back after being away for a week, they haven't been starving or anything. You're not lonely when you're sitting around surrounded by all these dead things, well they all look alive don't they?" (To Marty.)

- Is that how you got your name?
Marty: "No, that was an accident. We were doing a radio session for Piccadilly and we wanted to change it from Nightmares In Wax 'cos we'd got the new band and it just came out as Dead Or Alive some how."

- How about that band, Dead On Arrival, does that get on your tits?
Pete: "They've done that... I haven't got tits, er... They've done that deliberately to soak up some of our glory. They even sent tapes to our record company... Never guess what we did with those."
Marty: "They went half way along Bold St when we stretched them out."
Pete: "They should change the name for their own good. People keep thinking we're playing these really crappy venues that they're playing at."

- Conversation turns to Dead Or Alive's determination to stay with the independant label Inevitable, which saw some reorganisation after Wah! departed for the WEA conglomerate.
Pete: "We're carrying Inevitable on. We've been the only money making band on it for a while anyway, so it's our right to carry it on. We don't want to go to a major and have all that trouble of having to do fifty two albums in ten minutes. God, can you imagine the strain?"

- Won't you find it difficult in getting the finance?
Pete: "No, because we've made enough money on these singles, despite the press. By the time we're not alright for money somebody will come up with something, not necessarily a major. The majors put too much pressure on you. We've worked so far without anyone telling us what to do, making all our own decisions. The majors have board mettings and they decide what's commercial. The mere thought of that breaks me out into a sweat. People saying, you can't do this, you can't do that, it makes you want to do it more. We like the way we are at the moment. We're not making a living out of it yet, but eventually we will. An album makes you a living."

- What about distribution, won't you go to a major for that?
Pete: "Well, Rough Trade is doing our distribution and they've branched out into the States and they do exportsto other countries. Our records even sell in Italy. The last one was number four in the Italian playlists and I'm more beautiful than Siouxsie Sioux a according to an Italian magazine."

- Although you don't want to sign to a major , has any of them shown interest?
Pete: "There's been talk in the pipe-line. What they say is I like your last single, we'll keep an eye out for your next one, and when one of your independant things has taken off on a huge scale they make out they're doing you a favour by signing you. They won't take any chances the majors, they're all run by big fat business men."

- Ultra capitalists.
Pete: "Capitalism is wonderful, I don't have anything against it. I think charity begins at home. I admire capitalist pigs, I like money you see. I couldn't bear to stay poor."

- What if you didn't have the money would you change your tune?
Pete: "No; no... A thing really annoys me, the whole country is going through a downer where everyboy's poor... I don't care. The whole economy drive that we're trying to go through... You should just spend everything. That'll help us go bankrupt, and you'll have to find some other way of doing something. In fact I think the whole nation shoulg go and plug in everything they've got that's electriv and leave it on permanently, use up all the fuel seeing how quick it runs out... I can't wait until the ozoe barrier goes. I used to have a man aerosol campain, spraying them everywhere."
Marty: "And walk around in six inches of deodorant."
Pete: "When it goes, we'll have to get a new one. The Americans will invent a tinned ozone barrier."
... Nuclear war as well. God...

- You want that do you as well?
Pete: "Well, as long as it doesn't go off outside my house."
Marty: "There's always a way round it... I mean, you could always built a tin hut!"
Pete: "You know the building societies will give you a mortage to built your own nuclear air-raid shelter. That's a great sign of the times."
Marty: "You're supposed to put doors and sandbags up against your walls and sleep there for fourteen days. They're all sitting there, what are we going to do now?, and you have to go to the end of the room to sit on a bucket in front of everybody to have a shit. Imagine the pile that'd beat the end of the room from your average family. I'd rather go out and get blown up."
Pete: "They say don't take anything inflamable behind the door, but take some magazines and books for the kids to read."
Marty: "And to wipe your arse with."

- You've got a toilet fixation, haven't you?
Marty: "Yeah... Excuse me (calling to the waitress). Excuse me if you would be so kind."
Pete: "Go and kick her in the knee."
The waitress finally walks over

- Even Adam And The Ants can't get as world-wide as you lot. I read about them in the papern you'd put them to shame, so don't you think that's a compliment?
Pete: "Wonderful, yeah."
The waitress wonders off.
Marty: "Who said you shouldn't have euthenasia."
She comes back with some more coffees. "E are."
Pete: "I really want to throw her down the stairs, she pipes into every conversation."

- What about the Adam And The Ants thing, etc, is it what you want to do, the whole video bit - Dead Or Alive on Top Of The Pops?
Pete: "If it happens easily and you don't have to break your back to do it, well do it don't you. I think it will happen."
Marty: "But we're not deliberately trying to do such and such a thing to get somewhere. It'd be a bit horrible wouldn't it?"

- What about the much vaunted influence, then?
Pete: "I've listened to about three Doors songs. It's reviewers that and the public believe it. I think The Doors are shit anyway."
Marty: "I really like them, then again I hate saying that because people go ha, ha! all knowingly, but I like million other bands and I love the classical music as well."
Pete: "They think they've found your dirty laundry don't they? The only thing that can be compared, is that our things and some Doors songs sound moody."

- Pete goes on to describe what he does like.
Pete: "I like music that effects your mood rather than what its content is or what it's trying to say. I'm very superficial like that. I like cheap, nasty, bubble-gum, throw away trash to listen to. Like, I don't think I'd buy our records if I wasn't in the group. If I hear our music, I just take off the turntable, but I can enjoy doing it and know that it's right for us to do... There's a difference between doing and hearing it you see."

(Bop Eye, 1981)