Dead Or Alive - It’s Been Hours Now

For a time in the mid-80s, Pete Burns’ Dead Or Alive were the toast of the post-new wave/hi-nrg scene, a scene that unveiled several major hits, including the Stock-Aitken-Waterman produced UK chart-topper, `You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’, a resounding global phenomenon. Focal point Burns was able to plough his field of pop dreams: doors left ajar by Visage, Soft Cell, Culture Club and Merseyside rivals Frankie Goes To Hollywood. From the 90s onwards, Dead Or Alive were a spent force (in Britain at least), though their chameleonic cross-dressing frontman seemed always to hog the limelight; Celebrity Big Brother 4 (featuring his costly reconstructed lips), Celebrity Wife Swap and as a TV presenter, himself.

It was all so simple back in post-punk Liverpool where provocateur Pete Burns (born Peter Jozzeppi Burns, 5 August 1959, Bebington, Wirral) worked at Geoff Davies’ Probe Records Shop. From there, he formed short-lived late-’77-era punk outfit, the Mystery Girls, a quartet that numbered Pete Wylie, Julian Cope and drummer Phil Hurst, before all affiliates found their own niche. Both Burns and Hurst (the latter a replacement for Pink Military-bound Paul Hornby) would duly re-surface in 1979 as front-and-back of Nightmares In Wax, a goth-dance act that also comprised keyboardist/co-scribe Martin Healy, guitarist Mick Reid (ex-Crash Course, ex-Glass Torpedoes) and bassist Pete Loyd; Loyd superseded Ambrose (ex-Big In Japan) who’d deputised for Walter Ogden on their only disc: the EP `Birth Of A Nation’, which featured three cuts led by `Black Leather’ (a song that interpolated K.C. & The Sunshine Band’s `That’s The Way (I Like It)’).

The group name was switched to Dead Or Alive prior to offering up tracks for a John Peel radio session in May 1980 and, after subsequent re-shuffling of personnel, Burns and Healy were joined by guitarist Adrian “Mitch” Mitchley, bassist Sue James and drummer Joe Musker (of Faction); the scarily androgynous Burns was to marry Lynne Corlett, around this time.

A debut Dead Or Alive single, `I’m Falling’ (issued on local Liverpool Indie Inevitable Records), varied little from the keyboard-heavy, sub-goth wailing of Nightmares In Wax; drawing comparisons with The Doors, if only for the Manzarek-like keys and Burns’ theatrical vocals. Yet while his singing suggested an imposing prince of darkness type figure, the frontman’s stage persona was more akin to a kind of sexually ambiguous, gothic dandy. By the band’s sophomore single, `Number Eleven’, the indie-goth quintet had attracted a cult following in Merseyside and beyond.

With the departure of Mitch and the arrival of Bristol-born guitarist Wayne Hussey (from Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls), and Mike Percy taking over from Sue on bass, a percussive, organic tone was apparent on their self-financed 1982 single, `It’s Been Hours Now’ 12”, undoubtedly their best tune so far; or indeed, ever!

Released the same month as Culture Club’s chart-scaling “…Hurt Me” smash hit, the not-so-spectacular `The Stranger’ (complete with Pete’s dreadlock’d hair-bob on the pic sleeve!) found some airplay from Peely and, despite, or courtesy of, Boy George’s unintentional upstaging, Epic Records won the battle to sign Dead Or Alive.

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Dead Or Alive; It’s Been Hours Now 12"

A1.  It’s Been Hours Now

B1.  Whirlpool

B2.  Nowhere To Nowhere

B3.  It’s Been Hours Now (Reprise)