Dead Or Alive – In session for John Peel – Recorded March 1, 1982 – Broadcast March 18 – BBC Radio 1 –
Dead Or Alive, in session for John Peel. Their second of two sessions, recorded on March 1, 1982 and broadcast on March 18th.
Dead or Alive were a pop band formed in 1980 in Liverpool. The band found success in the mid-1980s, releasing seven singles that made the UK Top 40 and three albums on the UK Top 30. They were the first band under the production team of Stock Aitken Waterman to have a number-one single. At the peak of their success, the lineup consisted of Pete Burns (vocals), Mike Percy (bass), Steve Coy (drums) and Tim Lever (keyboards).
Two of the band’s singles reached the U.S. Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100: “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” (No. 11 in 1985) and “Brand New Lover” (No. 15 in 1986).
“You Spin Me Round” peaked at number one for two weeks in 1985 in the UK, then charted again in 2006 following Burns’ appearance on the television reality show Celebrity Big Brother. It also became the first of two singles to top the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. In December 2016, Billboard ranked them as the 96th most successful “dance artist” of all time.
The group had several more hits in the 1980s, including “Brand New Lover” and “Something in My House.” By the late 1990s the group had mostly faded from the pop scene, though different iterations of it continued to release remixes, new material and compilation albums into the 2000s.
“You Spin Me Round” has been covered by Jessica Simpson and repurposed by the rapper Flo Rida.
Mr. Burns began undergoing plastic surgery around the time the song became a hit. He was open and unapologetic about his many procedures, undertaken, he said, mostly out of boredom.
As of 2017 Dead or Alive had sold over 30 million albums and 28 million singles worldwide. The band was discontinued following Pete Burns’ death in 2016.
As a reminder, here is their second and last session for John Peel, as it was broadcast on March 18, 1982.