In the eighties, British dance-pop scene Pete Burns made Boy George conservative. He possessed a tongue that was sharper-edged than your average machete, a dress sense that has never been matched since and a voice that delivered the sexiest growl since Eartha Kitt.
Back then his androgynous look was all the rage. His band Dead Or Alive sold millions and created camp, hiNRG dance hits that crossed over from the gay club market to radio stations that you gran tuned into to. He'd emerged from the glam and punk scenes in the seventies to become an icon of the eighties pop indulgence with songs like "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)", "Lover Come Back To Me", "In Too Deep" and "My Heart Goes Bang".
But the glitter faded, the record sales dropped and the Dead Or Alive sound was allotted to golden oldie radio as the refreshing grooves of house and techno swamped theever-changing club scene. But, with a couple of club hits under his belt, including "Sex Drive" with Glam and a cover of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel", Burns is back in limelight. There's a tour of Australia underway, an album titled "Nukleopatra", remixes of "You Spin Me Round" and success in Japan where a Dead Or Alive gig fills a 150,000-capacity stadium.

Keeping in shape, Burns is busy working his treadmill when he's interrupted for a round of chats with the Australian media. With barely time to mop his brow, he rolls straight into explaining why it has been such a long wait for a new Dead Or Alive CD.
"Eighteen months ago we signed a new record deal with Pete Waterman's label, PWL Records", says Burns about his return to the producer that he worked with on many of his earlier hits. "When we were about three songs into the album his record label fell to pieces. Everyone went and left him, they couldn't stand working with him. So we were left there trying to complete an album in whatever time we could get in the studio. And you had the bailiffs coming in and taking all this equipment and stuff because Mike Stock and Matt Aitken (former Waterman partners) had left and a whole money fracas had erupted."
Nor is he sad to see the demise of the label that many believe helped make Pete Burns the star he once was, "We made them", he snaps. "Before us they had only produced Divine, who was just a comedy act, and Hazell Dean, who I don't think anybody has ever heard of."
Although Burns does credit Waterman and his crew for giving them some help in the studio it was his own creative independence that finally wedged his band away from the production team's pop mill. Burns: "If they ever came up with an idea that we didn't want to do they'd go 'oh well then fuck off, we'll just get Kylie or Jason to do it'. It was easier for them to work with non-musicians. Artistically that was soul-destroying. Then they tried to formulise thousands of Kylies that never saw the light of day."

Away from that particular pop circus, Burns rarely involves himself in the biz side of his show career. "I remain blissfully ignorant towards exactly what's going on", boasts Burns. "I've never had what I called career cancer and been glued to the TV and radio to see who is getting played and who is selling more records. Try as hard as they did the record company people could never inflict that disease on me."
He's not even sure that people are really taking to his music again on the dancefloors, although he accepts that maybe it's possible. "If we have a niche now where people can tolerate our sound I'm very grateful for that. If that sound is regaining popularity I breathe a sigh of relief because it means that I'm back working."

The first sign of Burns' re-emergence on the dance music scene was his familiar vocal purr on the Italo house hit "Sex Drive" with an act known as Glam. Burns admits to being appreciative of their approach to him: "Glam are a group of Italian musicians that are really just computer programmers. I hadn't written anything for abouta year when they contacted us through my manager's office and asked me to work to their music."
"I just went into the studio and really didn't care what happened or even if it never saw the light of day because it was just an opportunity to be working again. It was a huge hit in Italy, Spain and other countries around Europe. It got me back into the swing of wanting to create my own music."

But he believes his voice may not to be welcome everywhere yet: "In England it's most definitely not welcomed. I've had no luck whatsoever in England with the last couple of releases. England, more than ever, is swept up in the ecstasy movement of the repetitious instrumental soundtrack. So any of those people find my type of singing offensive. Unless you're a black soul diva that they can sample a line from, singers in England are almost a redundant thing."
In England then, his last single "Rebel Rebel" was released under another name, International Chrysis, to avoid the Burns backlash. Word leaked out and the song stiffed commercially but on the dancefloors it was another hit.
"That was a song that seemed to sum up what was going on in the clubs in England at the time it was recorded", says Burns of the Bowie cover. "There was a huge drag movement. There was this once-monthly party (Kinky Gerlinky) that would attract five thousand people to this ballroom, it wasn't just strictly drag but anyone that looked outrageous. That song seemed to have come around again, it seemed an appropriate song to cover as opposed to having kids dancing around to Bananarama records. In my adolescent years that was a song I heard on radio and it obviously touched a nerve with me..."

So, how does he describe his own look?
"Whatever I look like, whatever that may be it's got very little to do with my career. It's been more a hindrance than a help. It's not a marketing man's idea, I just like to experiment with what I look like. I've never tried to pass myself off as a woman or done what I refer to as drag, which is basically looking like a suburban housewife. I came out of a time that was well before punk rock, way back in the seventies when there were a lot of strange individuals experimenting with their appearances. Suddenly when punk rock came along it had a name."

And, all those Pete Burns lookalikes?
"If that was the way kids found their identity... But I don't find it particularly flattering, it doesn't really endear anybody to me. I think people should find their own identity. But I realise things like that come in stages, you have to start off somewhere, you had to be a bit like someone and then find your own identity. So, I suppose it's healthy. But if anything I find it a bit embarrassing, I mean what am I supposed to do."

His look took some criticism in the recent Boy George autobiography and although Burns admits to it being a "brilliant" read he's got a few things to say back to George, "I never liked his music in Culture Club and I thought he looked absolutely ridiculous. and, I didn't like the fact that someone who looked a little bit different was always being apologetic and trying to convince the next door neighbours that he'd rather have a cup of tea (than sex)."

Yet Burns has never been up front about his sexuality. And we're not getting straight (or gay) answers from him now. "I will never hedge on anything", responds Burns. "It's absolutely nobody's business but my own. The thing I object to with that kind of PR angle, is what it's almost like putting yourself up for sale and asking for approval of some minority or a majority. The reason I'm still here is that when I started in 1978 is because I have never come shrink-wrapped with my records. If I was coprophiliac or someone who liked to start fires it would be nobody's business. I always get questions like that and I ramble on like this because unless someone's gonna ask me for a date or to fuck me I don't think it's anybody's business."

So, no autobiography?
"I wouldn't write an autobiography but I would like to write a book. I think that to write a biography before you have one foot in the grave is just like buying a volume of an encyclopedia, there's gonna be a whole set. I think people should wait until they're death bed. It's the last ditch attempt of the celebrity. It's much better if some awful writer goes and writes it about you without consent."

Just like someone's about to do to old stablemate Kylie...
"Well, if I run out of loo paper I might get that. She doesn't interest me in the slightest. A journalist was asking me about her last night and I don't give a shit. She made some good records but as far as I'm concerned she's just a frock on a midget."

"BrotherSister" - 3rd October 1996

THANK YOU JAMIE FOR THIS FANTASTIC MAGAZINE