Pete Burns opens up about his career and being “marginalised” to an LGBTQ+ audience in an archive interview obtained by Retro Pop. 

Speaking in 2012 from PWL Studios on London’s Southbank, the Dead or Alive frontman looks back over his life and career and opens up on his later years. 

Despite topping the charts with their 1984 single You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), in later years the hitmaker admits the music industry saw his records as “gay music” and wouldn’t promote him in the mainstream. 

“When my ‘Greatest Hits’ came out in 2003, my record company had greatly changed,” he says. “Now my ‘Greatest Hits’, if I decided to do it, would be huge, and they said, ‘We’re not going to advertise this in any of the ordinary, straight papers, we’re going to put it in gay news, and we’ll fly post in Compton Street, because it’s gay music.’ 

“Then, I thought, ‘Oh my God, things haven’t changed’.” 

He adds: “In America, it was released and guess what the Americans said? ‘We’re only going to fly post it in the district.’ 

“So, I was marginalised to a gay audience, and you know what? That’s absolutely fine by me because they’ve stuck by me… They also love the fact that I’ll tell it like it is!”

On the impact of the LGBTQ+ community on popular culture, he adds: “The gay community are the absolute inventors of taste and style – everything starts there, right down to Voguing. Look what it did for Madonna. And, I took that sound mainstream.”

Read the full interview in the August 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store or use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist.