Suddenly, yesterday's men Dead or Alive are pop stars. Here flamboyant PETE BURNS tells Adam Sweeting about fame and dressing up. Tom Sheehan wipes steam off his lenses.

"I MEAN," fluttered Pete Burns in that way of his, "what do you say to somebody like that over the phone who's got no sense of humour?" The person down the phone had been a reporter from a daily newspaper, who had taken Burns to task for describing Culture Club diva Helen Terry as "a crowd". It seemed fair enough to Burns - hell, she's a big girl, any damn fool can see that.

"So I said 'well, I've been called worse things than A Crowd in my life',"' gesticulated Burns, sending morsels of pate splattering across nearby diners with a practised flick of the wrist. "And I have! I'd have had an easy time if I'd only been called A Crowd." Burns smiled wanly to himself and swilled down a mouthful of enamel-stripping house white. "Lionel Richie - chin like an ironing board," he added, for no qood reason.

The usual clich・we press barons like to wheel out about Pete Burns is that he's "the man most likely to who never did", the face that launched a thousand leotards, drove nice boys wild but didn't sell a bean. Pursued by cries of "faggot!" Burns and Dead Or Alive pussyfooted round the fringes of a Liverpool "scene" that included such notable totalitarian egomaniacs as Wylie, Cope and McCulloch but didn't fit. Wylie even used to go round slagging Burns off, though Burns' revenge is currently scaling the charts. It's called "That's The Way (I Like It)", the song that's put the bang back in aerobics. Generously, he even expresses a fleeting moment of regret for Wylie's one-hit-wonder fate - or was that a hint of a smirk I saw just then?

"We were an indie band and you can't make it as an indie band, can you?" demanded Burns. "You can't get into the Top 40 as an indie band unless you've got some really powerful things behind you. Since last year when we did the major deal with Epic, it just feels like a fresh start really - all that went before I've forgotten."

He couid feel a punchline coming on. "We did alright as an indie band, y'know, but you can't conquer the world. Now we've got the world at our conkers." He flicked back a hundredweight of hair which had fallen into his spaghetti.

I was lucky. Burns was on form and friendly. "Why haven't you brought a list of questions?" he asked. "I'm so sick of telling people how long it takes me to put my lipstick on." One major hang-up, you might gather, is the voluminous shadow of Boy George. The music press know Burns has been around for years, but the dailies don't --- to them, he's another polysexual pop star who wears dresses and make-up, except this one's from Merseyside and not Kilburn.

"The record company can't understand why this image doesn't wanna go anywhere,"he rattled on. "I don't wanna become a showbiz personality, really - I don'twanna do chat shows and Russell Harty Programmes and things like that. It's great for somebody who can cope with it but...I'm not good at talking.

"It's unpredictable. If you catch me in a good mood, I'll talk, but if I'm not in a good mood, I won't. You can't expect your whole career - if you're gonna be a chat show personality - to follow your mood swings. Burns sighed heavily clearly enjoying this new-found attention. Already he's been rude to his American record company, had his video ignored by several TV shows and spoken to John Blake on the telephone. For a boy who's spent 25 years learning how to attract attention, this feels like earning a diploma.

"Anyway, think of the viewers of these TV programmes. Do you really want them to have your record? I know it's all money, but do you really wanna be selling to pensioners and things? I've got nothing against old people, but ...when you're in music and that you do tend to think it's geared towards a young market, really, and I can't see many 18 to 25 year olds tuning in to the Terry Wogan show."

Battle-hardened in a squalid Liverpool which becomes dirtier and more dangeours by the minute, Burns has become adept at ducking incoming trouble, at knowing how far you can push your luck when you dress like he does.

"We never worked that hard at it really," he said of Dead or Alive's days with Peter Fulwell's Inevitable label. Burns has always known that his music is merely a peg on which to hang his own extravagant idea of self.

So why do you think Epic signed you, Pete? "Well, they're a bit slow up there, and when they signed us they didn't really know who I was," Burns began with a predatory gleam in his eye.

"In other record companies a lot of people did know me and they thought 'oh yeah, dick-brain, drag queen, not signing 'im.' But they didn't know who I was over there. They just about know who Michael Jackson is sometimes and he pays their wages. But out manager took them a tape - God this is just like an old rock clich・story, I don't know if I wanna tell it."

But of of course he couldn't stop himself. "They got the tape and Muff Winwood said we gotta sign this band, we wanna know in 24 hours and the rest would be history if there was enough of it."

Dead or Alive, who hail from the same place as cheeky Frankie Goes to Hollywood, probably haven't suffered from the connection. There may still be a few quid left in the idea of pop as subversion yet even though the bizarre Burns has been running amok for years. The time, suddenly, is ripe, what with Frankie, George, Marilyn, the Mystery Girls, Bronski Beat and so on. Soon, it'll be "Sing If You're Glad To Be Straight"

"I think we're in the never-never land of being lumped in with Frankie and being lumped in with Culture Club - we're in the middle, I suppose, somewhere," Burns opined. Dead Or Alive drummer Steve Coy, who isn't especially and was sitting next to the rampant Pete, raised an eyebrow quizzically. He considered saying something but thought better of it. "Now everybody's gonna jump on anything that's slightly subversive," Pete went on. "Everybody wants their token homo band now, I think."

Clearly Burns values highly the experience, wisdom and good taste of most record company employees. "One thing Frankie has proved is that if people think you're slightly subversive, then the airwaves and the powers that be can't stop the public wanting it, if they wanna follow it up. Cos if the BBC had their way it wouldn't have been anywhere, would it?

"Mind you, Frankie were bloody lucky, but I love that record and I'm personal friends with some of the group. I'd much rather see them at Number One than some of the shit that gets there."

Whether Dead Or Alive have a hope of competing with "Relax" remains debatable, despite its accompanying video featuring astoundingly-proportioned female body builders. Basically Dead Or Alive's new music is electronic dance in a not-especially-novel vein, as you'll shortly hear on their album"Sophisticated Boom Boom". The track I like best is a slower, camper and more caberetish tune called "Far Too Hard", which Burns and Coy both dismiss with a disgusted snort. "I think that's really 'shit," announced Burns, with a flap of the hand.

The songs do sound a trifle samey, though. "I don't think any of them sound like each other," said Coy loyally.

"Oh I do, I think they're all the same," guffawed Burns, to the discomfiture of his lieutenant. "I like things all the same. This has been my LP concept for the last three or four years when nobody would let me make an LP, I wanted everything to sound exactly the same, no breaks, no stops. I've done it now, got it out of me system, though I can't see anything drastically new that's likely to happen. We'll progress soundwise and everything and make it better, but we'll stay in a similar direction."

Burns won't make rash claims for "Boom Boom" - "I 'aven't heard it since October" - but is heartily dismissive of fanciful critical notions which would seek to impose excellence on the most appalling trash.

"I've still not made 'a brilliant record' but I don't think it matters - I like the records, y'know? What do you class as 'a brilliant record'? It's somebody's personal taste. I don't hink many records are brilliant at all - I can'think of the last one I thought was brilliant.

"I read people saying that 'Karma Chameleon' was a brilliant record, and I think anybody who says that needs their head reading. If that's a brilliant record then you know you've slipped. People like 'That's The Way' better than any of our others so maybe it's a shit record and that's why people think it's good. Things that I thought vere brilliant didn't really sell.

"I didn't really want this one out, I just liked he song and thought it would be quite funny to do it, next thing it's out as a single and selling like hot cakes, so . . . maybe in future I should follow the instinct that if I think something's crap-o it's gonna be a hit."

DESPITE dressing like something that got thrown out of a fancy-dress party for the cast and crew of "Quest For Fire", Burns possesses an earthy kind of suss which will do him no harm at all if the Dead Or Alive glimmer turns into a sunburst. Sceptical of everything with a joyfully corrosive glee, Burns knows about hard time but knows also that they wouldn't dare come near him for fear of embarrassment. Back in 1977, Burns estimates he was taking home 370 quid a week from running a couple of clothes shops - much more than he's currently earning with a record in the Top 40. And if he wasn't inmusic now? "I'd probably end up as a prostitute. Or sell blackmail corner photographs of Julian and Pete Wylie in the old days." He giggled at the thought. "We were going through the photo album the other day. I had short hair and I was wearing a rubber tee-shirt and things like that, this was in punky days, but some of them were wearing big bell-bottoms and headbands. That's where I've rendered a lot of people harmless, cos I tell them everything. Not that I really want to, but if anybody asks me or suspects something then I'll tell them. They can't ever embarrass me, cos there's nothing in my closet. When you're in the public eye people really look for dirt on you, and when you give it to them they don't wanna know."

He laps up publicity, of course, perhaps havinq had his sense of purpose strenqthened by slag-offs from the likes of Nick Heyward, Steve Severin and ex-hack Chris Burkham. "After what Chris Burkham wrote about me - and he gave me some really spine-tingling reviews - anything seemed good. Even if somebody says 'the record's shit and he looks like a stuffed hog', it seems like a good review compared to what he did."

But beware, all would-be assassins - after that nice Nicky Heyward gave Dead Or Alive a pasting in the revered columns of your soaraway Maker (which contains Burns'favourite gossip-column of all time, ta very much) he found himself caught in a crossfire of fire-extinguishers while attempting to have a quiet dump.

"He tried to make fools of us and we just made a fool of him," squawked Burns indignantly. "I must admit, if I had to sit and listen to 12 records I wouldn't hear otherwise it would be an intolerable strain and I'd be bound to get nasty about them. Then one day I'm having a crap somewhere and someone gets me with five fire-extinguishers - I'd feel pretty silly.

"But Nick 'eyward's review was irresponsible, and Steve Severin's last week . . . How can you respect a review by somebody who's still not learned to play a second string on his bass? doesn't mean I think he's a talentless turd cos I think Siouxsie And The Banshees are brilliant, but he's played the same bassline for 10,000 years."

Ironically, the cyclic nature of pop fashion has swung round so much that Burns now appears . . not normal exactly, but no sillier than many leading pop stars. "God, it's made it a lot easier or me to walk down the street. I'm delighted, it used to be so heavy. I just think I'm lucky - I could've been badly scarred by now."

On the other hand, you then become mere fodder for the scummy tabloids. "I've heard some great rumours about me - I'm into black magic, I've had a nose job. What else? Oh yeah, I'm on hormone tablets. And I've got a child.

"But the tabloids only ever talk to you as a formality, or to get your phone number in case you ever marry Richard Burton. That's all it is and after they've spoken to you they forget everything you've said. I've had to explain to me parents and that, 'whatever you read in the daily papers I haven't said'. Cos me parents were going 'Oh! Have you got a child?' "

But Burns is confident that his finest hour is yet to come. When it happens, perhaps it'll be televised. "I'm dying to have 'Nude Romp With 65 Sailors' on the front of the News Of The World," he confided. He swilled down some nore house white, grimacing resolutely, and recalled a phone interview he'd done with The Sun's John Blake.

"He asked me how much money I'd earned, that was the first question. 'How much money did you get out of CBS?' I said 'mind your own business'. 'Does your wife mind you being a transvestite?' - that's a thriller out of The Sun, too. And they asked if I ever wore her dresses and I said 'all the time, yeah'. And I thought this will be brilliant publicity, great press', but they never printed it.

"You can't wind them up, can yer? They've got no sense of humour. But I don't think I've ever been asked a really insulting question. I don't think I could be, I think I'm beyond insult really."

BURNS pondered for a moment, so I asked him if he'd always wanted to sound like Jim Morrison. His eyes widened in horror. For a moment, he was genuinely off balance. "Why Jim Morrison? No . . . God, that's a blast-o from the past-o! I nearly farted then when you said that cos I remember reviews saying about me and Jim Morrison . . .

"No, not at all," he went on, composure speedily topped up. "In fact I can swear to you that I really hate The Doors' records except for 'Thc End'. We no longer sound like that. Do you think it sounds like Jim Morrison? Mine's a mellow, deep tone . . . God, that was a stumping question, that, you pulled that out from your handbag !"

However, Burns doesn't hesitate to tar various Liverpool contemporaries with the notorious Doorsian brush. "You could say 'did McCulloch or Julian Cope set out to be Jim Morrison?', and I think now they're actually trying but I don't think they did in the first place. Liverpool bands got really compared with The Doors cos there was a Doors obsession in Liverpool."

So why do they sound like American West Coast groups when you sound like re-bored Soft Cell?

"Cos there were drugs available," retorted Burns in a flash. "They'd take acid and then say 'what do people who take acid do? They live on the West Coast and they listen to The Doors', so everyone tried to re-enact certain people's lifestyles. I think it was very conscious indeed, I think people manufacture other people's personalities. I've never been impressed enough with anybody to want to follow in their footsteps. "

Indeed, the perverse Burns alleges that when everyone else was writhing in the throes of punk, he, doggedly unhip, preferred to gavotte round dance floors to the accompaniment of people like Donna Summer and Tavares. He preferred grooves to artificially-induced personality cults. But surely there must have been somebody he admired sometime?

Burns pondered, idly dismembering a piece of toast and peering round the edge of his hair. "People whose personalities I've admired? Bette Davis. I don't even smoke, I could never get to be like her. 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane' was my favourite film, I thought it was wonderful the way she kept kicking her sister over.

"'All About Eve' was brilliant too. I love the way she swishes her fur coat over that guy's head when they go into the cinema - 'Hello Max, you old fox!' She's great, but I can't really see Bette Davis In a group.

"It's really hip to have a film-star's name in your record now, isn't it? We must try it." He improvised a bar or two of a strikingly atonal song -- "Sylvester Stallone's Masturbating . . ."

The Americans should love that one, if they ever let Burns back in the country after his last visit. Invited to video-tape a cheery greeting to the city fathers of the US parent company of Epic, Burns immediately balked. The sight of Slade's Noddy Holder doing his video clad in an Epic promotional hat was the last straw.

"Yeah, it's just so they can all play it back in some board meeting and have a good laugh at yer. They got me in front of the camera and the guy said 'where would you be without rack 'n' roowl?' An' I said 'probably in burlesque in Soho', and they went 'Whaaat! Stop! Do it again !'

"Then they said 'what do you think of Epic in America, Pete?' And I said 'I think it's got the best Mafia connections in thc world, you should be able to get this record somewhere or you could bump the people off'. And he went 'quick! Stop the tape!' and you could see guys everywhere wiping their eyebrows. Anyway it all took about an hour and they said 'okay, we've had enough Peter and that was great', like 'get out!'."

But if America winds Burns up, it can't be worse than Liverpool, if his account is to be credited. Last time Dead Or Alive played there, their gear was stolen. "It's quite sad when you see somewhere where you've spent a few years that used to be completely safe to go out at night and everything - you couldn't do that now, you'd be so stupid to go for a walk at night, you'd get robbed or something. But I don't think it's all poverty and everything, I think it's human nature changing. People who are poor don't just naturally go and Stanley-knife somebody, do they?

"I think a lot of the young kids who do things like that - God, this sounds like an old parent! -a lot of them are going through drug abuse and things. There's hundreds of 'em walking round the streets smacked out of their 'eads, y'know, and a lot of then are doing speed and getting really aggressive and that. It's just going through its weird phase at the moment. I can't wait to leave.''

And with that, Burns and Coy had to go and meet Peter Powell for the latest promotional hi-jinx. "Everything goes round in circles," Burns chirruped over his shoulder, "and luckily we've got the current sound of the moment. Not as far as the press are concerned because the press are always looking for something new, but as far as the public's concerned, who are maybe one step behind and not quite as progressive."

But hardly your average pop stars, wouldn't you agree?

Melody Maker April 14, 1984