One of the most colorful figures in British pop music is dead: singer of the band Dead or Alive with their 80s hit “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”, Pete Burns, died of cardiac arrest on Sunday at the age of 57.
Burns became world famous with “Dead Or Alive” in the 1980s with the hit “You Spin Me Round”. In later years, the singer made a name for himself with a series of cosmetic surgery procedures with which he blurred the external differences between men and women. According to his own statement, the eccentric singer had around 300 operations performed. It all started with his crooked nose. “I had a broken nose. When I was punk, I got a headbutt in Liverpool and it has been crooked since then, ”Pete Burns once explained in an interview. It was the beginning of many, many interventions - and operations that went wrong.
In the US show “Celebrity Botched Up Bodies” (in German: “Botched prominent bodies”) he talked about his lips, which he had filled with filler. Because that also went wrong. Something was wrong with his lower lip, he felt. Pete went to a doctor who put two syringes in his lip. "A pint and a half of yellow liquid came out of the lip." That's almost two liters of disgust ... But that's not all: The filler, which was supposed to enlarge his lips, migrated all over his face, causing severe inflammation and leaving holes. He sued the doctor who had done it and got over half a million euros in an out-of-court settlement.
"You Spin Me Round" was the first top hit for the Stock-Aitken-Waterman production team, which made the hit parades of the second half of the eighties and brought in brilliant young people like Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley hits on the assembly line. But with Dead Or Alive there were still some interesting stains on the later dirt-repellent Stock-Aitken-Waterman surface. That was of course mainly due to Pete Burns, an extremely flamboyant character who purred into the camera in a leopard suit and crawling on all fours on the cover of the first Dead-Or-Alive album. In the video for “You Spin Me Round” Burns presented a black eyepatch to the wildly tufted hair - when he wasn't swinging his hips to the beat in a purple kimono under a disco ball.
“Dead Or Alive” made its debut in 1980 with a new wave single (“I'm Falling”) and felt close to the Gothic scene, in which temporary band member Wayne Hussey later performed with “Sisters of Mercy” and “The Mission” became a hero. But a cover version of the 1984s disco hit “That's The Way (I Like It)” paved the way in 1986, on which the band danced to the top of the charts with “You Spin Me Round”. For Pete Burns, however, things did not continue as brilliantly. “Dead Or Alive” had a few smaller follow-up hits in the mid-eighties, “Brand New Lover” for example made it to number one on the US dance charts in 2006, and there were still successes in Japan. But in the nineties Burns was less talked about with new hits than more with unsuccessful cosmetic surgery. So it is almost logical that he moved into the British “Celebrity Big Brother” house in 46. Episode: “You Spin Me Round” returned to the charts. Which Burns commented with the words: "It's like wearing your school uniform again at XNUMX years old."
Goodbye and thanks for all the spins, Pete ...
Hi guys, it's Kyle here. Was asked to send out this tweet on behalf of Steve, Lynn & Michael. #rippeteburns #sadtimes #icon SO SAD !!! pic.twitter.com/rOkAVHsZQg
- Pete Burns (@PeteBurnsICON) October 24, 2016