Funny, what a difference a year can make, Pete Burns, like former Liverpudlian John Lennon, has a big mouth. Like the late Lennon, Pete Burns has spent as much time retracting his outrageous statements as he has making them. With "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" making Dead Or Alive trans-antlantic hitmakers, you can be sure that Pete will have better words to say about being a pop star. 1985 has (finally) been his year.

Here in Britain, groups like Dead Or Alive and King have been slogging away for several years with only minor record sales to show for their efforts. Early in '85, with major hitters like Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Spandau Ballet out of the spotlight, there was finally room at the top of the charts for groups on the outside edge to take center stage.

Enter camp, melodramatic Pete Burns, the last of the gender benders to grace a magazine cover. Yet, Pete was one of the first to make a pop career after the last ashes of punk smoldered. Back in 1977, long before Frankie Goes To Hollywood had learned to tie their leather straps together, Pete Burns was strutting about Liverpool in leather gear in a band called Nightmares In Wax. Shortly after, he formed Dead Or Alive and they gradually picked up a local cult following and issued records on the healthy independent label scene. There are old timers here who feel that Boy George owes a debt to Pete Burns. But Culture Club's worldwide success has made Pete, not Mr. O'Dowd, look like the follower of fashion.

In mid-83 Dead Or Alive signed with Epic Records, who began to give the band a big push. The DOA lineup consisted of Pete on lead vocals, Mike Percy on bass, Tim Lever on keyboards and sax, and percussionist Steve Coy. '83 was the year when all self respecting trendy white boys sported long rastafarian dreadlocks led by Boy George. "Fashioneers" had overtaken the new romantic slot started by Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet in 1981.

"The people who are fashioneers," said Pete in '83, "are the people who missed the first 70's bandwagon, which was punk. Everyone missed it. It was over when it caught on in the mainstream. Now, everyone's jumping on any bandwagon. People are wary of being out of it."

Actually, the new romantics and fashioneers owed more to the Bowie-Bolan glitter rock movement of the early 70's, but who am I to argue with a budding pop star? Besides, the above quote shows an intelligent, perceptive side to Pete Burns, which is usually forgotten. Better remembered are Burns' bitchy asides about other pop stars. at one point he described Culture Club's Helen Terry as "a crowd" and has never been allowed to forget it. These days Pete wishes he had been talking about the Weather Girls, then he figures people would laugh.

Between '83-'84 Dead Or Alive racked up more magazine articles than hit records. Gender bender Pete was distinctive not simply because he looked like a woman, but because he is married to one. His wife is hairdresser Lynne Corlett.

"At first my parents thought Pete was just a gay friend of mine," smiles Lynn. "They thought he was very sweet and nice. They didn't like it when they found out we were serious. My Dad always wanted a son-in-law he could go and watch football games with."

By early '84 Pete Burns was in trouble. His continually bitchy comments about pop stars more successful than he, made him appear to be a case of sour grapes. Nine flop singles including "Misty Circles" and "I'd Do Anything" plus a failed album called Sophisticated Boom Boom made his prospects look doomed.

All the Liverpool lads of long ago had been into the charts and out again. Frankie goes to Hollywood, once so far behind Dead Or Alive, left everyone in the dust. In spring '84, desperate to get a chart hit, the group did an electro-funk version of the old K.C. and the Sunshine Band hit "That's The Way I Like It."

These days Pete hates it, but the song served it's purpose. The group had taken a first step to justifying all that publicity. After the single's success, Dead Or Alive visited America. When they returned, unimpressed, internal and health problems nearly drowned them.

"We could have followed 'That's The Way I Like It' with an obvious hit, but we didn't," says Pete bravely, but not convincingly, "We changed managers, Lynne and I bought a new flat and decided it was time to stop getting publicity by insulting other people's shortcomings."

By the time "You Spin Me Round" was released in Britain in November of 1984 Pete Burns was sounding as pure as a reformed alcoholic. The record dissapeared under the publicity and airplay earned by the Band Aid Christmas record for Ethiopia. There was no enormous sign of DOA in January. But slowly, very slowly, did they start to climb the charts. During the week of March 9, 1985 they made number one for one week only.

I think I'm supposed to come across as really humorless, says Pete. "I know that people think I'm nasty. It's true I'm flippant, but I'm trying to curb it. People don't seem to have caught on to that."

Follow up singles like "Lover Come Back To Me" and "In Too Deep" have not done as well for the group. The video for "In Too Deep" is a deliberately trashy affair with Pete, a la Bette Midler, emerging from a giant seashell as a peach colored pearl. The rest of the video features mermaids and sea horses and a deliberately phony underwater atmosphere.

Having adjusted to America better than a year ago, the group are more confirmed fans of the place. Pete loves shopping and drags home the strangest American products, "I think Joan Collins is a modern day genius," he admits, then explains how he scoured America for a specific brand of eyedrops she recommended in a book. "In New York we bought up all these cans of hair spray from the 1950's. They don't work, but we have the cans displayed all oer the flat."

What does fame bring a man with shoulder length hair attachments and a diamond nose ring?

"It's easier to walk around without getting beaten up. That's about it," he sighs. "Years ago, people wouldn't sit next to me on trains, now they gape at me. But, if you don't want everyone gaping at you, don't be in a pop group. I can't complain. I wanted this."

Pete is quick to confess, "I'm very much my own creation." The critics say he's not. They say he's too much the imitation of other established performers and styles. But the fans, especially the long term ones from Liverpool feel that Dead Or Alive were the blueprint for others to steal from. Whether the issue of originality makes a difference to music fans remains to be seen.

Like so many modern pop stars, Pete is quick to point out that his stage persona is not the real person, "In my normal life, I'm shy," he is quick to tell you. "My stage persona is something I become when I get onstage. I wouldn't go around acting on the street the way I act onstage. For one thing, if I tried to, I'd certainty be arrested. Also, in my private life I like to go around as quietly and privately as the next person."