A British dance-pop group which found fame thanks to the antics of androgynous frontman
Pete Burns,
Dead or Alive formed in Liverpool in 1980.
Burns first surfaced three years prior in the
Mystery Girls, later heading the proto-goth rockers
Nightmares in Wax; he founded
Dead or Alive with keyboardist Marty Healey, guitarist Mitch, bassist
Sue James, and drummer
Joe Musker, debuting in 1980 with the
Ian Broudie-produced
Doors soundalike "I'm Falling." "Number Eleven" followed, but just as the group was gaining momentum, they were swept aside by the emergence of the New Romantic movement, with
Burns subsequently charging that fellow androgyne
Boy George of
Culture Club had merely stolen his outrageous image.
Undaunted,
Burns forged on with a retooled
Dead or Alive roster including future
Mission U.K. guitarist
Wayne Hussey and bassist
Mike Percy. Over the course of records including the 1982 It's Been Hours Now EP and the follow-up single, "The Stranger," the group evolved into a true dance band and ultimately landed with major-label Epic. A series of singles appeared over during 1983, including "Misty Circles" and "What I Want";
Hussey soon exited, and it was a lineup comprising
Burns,
Percy, keyboardist
Tim Lever, and drummer
Steve Coy which scored
Dead or Alive's first major hit, a 1984 cover of
KC & the Sunshine Band's disco classic "That's the Way (I Like It)" which fell just shy of reaching the British Top 20.
The group's full-length debut,
Sophisticated Boom Boom, also fared well with audiences, but they achieved true stardom in early 1985 with the Hi-NRG smash "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)," the first number one hit for the production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman. The succeeding LP,
Youthquake, was also a smash, yielding further hits in the form of the singles "Lover Come Back to Me," "In Too Deep," and "My Heart Goes Bang." 1986's "Brand New Lover" kept the group in the limelight, but the 1987 LP,
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know proved disastrous at home and in the U.S., although a fervent following emerged in Japan. In the wake of 1989's
Nude, both
Lever and
Percy left the group; the nucleus of
Burns and
Coy remained, additionally taking over production and managerial duties. Subsequent
Dead or Alive LPs included
Fan the Flame, Part One, and
Nukleopatra.
–
Jason Ankeny, Rovi