Dead or Alive
Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know

After David Bowie and Prince, another gay icon left us in this leap year 2016: Pete Burns, leader of Dead or Alive, died of a heart attack at the age of 57 last October 23. The first time I saw the video for “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” on DeeJay Television, I was only 14 years old, it was the summer of 1985, and I was struck by a dazzling, stunning Pete Burns and the compelling groove of that classic song. I rushed to buy the album Youthquake and listened to it in massive doses throughout that summer. From then on, I had no more doubts, not so much about the obvious fact that I liked gay people, but about the definitive awareness that I, myself, was completely gay!

Sure, other artists were around at that time, but Pete Burns had a very cool masculine charisma (with that eye patch), completely different from Boy George, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, or Jimmy Sommerville of Bronski Beat. (Now that I think about it, the first time I saw Martin Gore of Depeche Mode on TV in “It’s Called a Heart,” he seemed more transgender than Burns, and it was still 1985, the same year Close to Me by The Cure came out: but that's another story). With post-punk and dark, my musical and aesthetic tastes changed radically, and in 1987, despite the release of the single “Brand New Lover”, Dead or Alive were merely a pale memory. However, it wasn’t a psychic removal in the classic sense because Dead or Alive were, in their way and within the Hi-NRG dance genre, an excellent commercial product (Burns' look would be imitated by Marilyn Manson, and by that band of youngsters... whose name I can never remember...), and it is for this reason that I want to review the album Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know as a heartfelt tribute to the memory of Pete Burns.

The Gothic cover presents an impassive leader, dressed all in black with a silver cross around his neck, against an icy and auroral backdrop—an excessive dark aesthetic even for the single cover “Something in my House” (or when Burns is portrayed with drummer Steve Coy, raiding the post-punk aesthetic, and their singles can appear next to the 7" of Joy Division/P.I.L./Sisters of Mercy/Christian Death: but no!) In Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know, it is still electronic dance music but with a less edgy sound compared to Youthquake and beyond the Gothic image, it is more in line with Julian Cope’s pop of World Shut Your Mouth in “I’ll Save You All My Kisses” and “Come Inside.” A futile glance towards “My Heart Goes Bang” in the opening track “Brand New Lover” that achieves something strong but doesn’t hold up in comparison; while the terrible opening of “Something in my House” is completely skippable or discardable. The pure Hi-NRG of “Son of a Gun” and “Hooked on Love” is not displeasing at all, but something different about Dead or Alive can only be heard in the last two tracks of the album: in “I Want You” Pete’s beautiful, sensual voice flows like shiny oil on a synthesizer, while “Special Star” is a sweet love song, it has a spiritual element, a white and nostalgic light that can hold back a tear, or make you cry uncontrollably: a beautiful track!

With this album, DOA did not match the tremendous success of “You Spin Me Round”, they only managed to maintain their fame in Europe and the USA, establishing huge popularity in Japan. And it was Japan that, only in 1989, would crown that long-awaited new hit with a dizzying sales success, at the time a record for 17 weeks, of “Turn Around and Count 2 Ten” from the album Nude. Everything would change in the next decade, both for DOA and Pete Burns, with success turning into decline for the group’s ideas and a leader who was no longer sexy, increasingly lost in plastic surgery issues. However, vast horizons of great memory still link us to Pete Burns’ 80s icon and his music.