| Name |
Pete Burns |
| Height |
|
| Naionality |
English |
| Date of Birth |
5-August-1959 |
| Place of Birth |
Port Sunlight, Wirral, United Kingdom |
| Famous for |
Singing |
Burns was born in Port Sunlight, Bebington, Wirral, to an English father and German mother. His mother Eva was Jewish and born in Heidelberg, Germany. She had fled to Vienna, Austria to escape the anti-Semitic laws of the Nazis. It was in Vienna that she met Burns' father, then a British soldier, at a soldiers' tea dance.
When talking about his late mother in an interview for television programme Psychic Therapy, he said "as far as parental skills go in the conventional, normal world, she certainly wasn't a mother, but she's the best human being that I've ever had the privilege of being in the company of, and I know that she had a special plan for me. She called me Star Baby and she knew that there was something special in me. Just an incredible German woman; tiny, five-foot-one, but she could move a fucking wardrobe, she could lift a wardrobe." Burns also told that for the first five years of his life, he and his mother spoke to one another in German. "I grew up until I was five speaking German and a bit of French. There was no English spoken in my house. My father spoke to my mother in French, she spoke to me in German."
Burns first became famous with the success of Dead or Alive's number one dance hit "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)", along with his strikingly individual, androgynous image. Originally labeled as gay, due to his gender atypical appearance and sexual relations with men, Burns is reportedly bisexual and was married to Lynne Corlett. While building his career, Burns worked at a Liverpool record shop, Probe Records, which became a meeting-place for local musicians. Burns first performed as a member of the short-lived Mystery Girls, and then Nightmares in Wax, a proto-Goth group that formed in Liverpool in 1979. Nightmares in Wax released a 12" single, "Black Leather", and a 7" single, "Birth of a Nation", each containing the same three songs, but never produced an album. In 1980, after replacing several members, Burns changed their name to Dead or Alive. Burns has accused fellow pop star Boy George of appropriating his unique image.
Expressing an overtly sexual and flamboyant style, Burns shocked audiences in the late 1970s with his androgynous clothing and hair styles, make-up, high heels, long fingernails and trademark black eyepatch. Almost as much as his career with Dead or Alive, Burns is known for his ever-changing appearance, which he freely admits has been greatly modified by cosmetic surgery.
