Pat Geary speaks to Pete Burns on September 17th, 2000. Recorded in the UK. A RIGHT STUFF exclusive!!

Pat: Pete, we'll try and just have a conversation, as you said earlier.

Pete: Much easier, because I've just been through 25 interviews a day, saying where have I been for the last 10 years, what's been happening. And obviously there are points of that that I'm more than willing to reiterate. But I've said them more than a thousand times, and I've started to feel like the repeating parrot saying them all the time to Japanese people, having to sit through translations. I didn't think I had the tolerance to do that.
But it constantly amazes me that when an artist disappears for any period of time, people think you have to be doing SOMETHING. And I suppose if you made a list day to day of everything you do, beginning with walk down 5 flights of stairs, entered kitchen, switched on kettle, you know, that's the kind of things people do.

Pat: Well, I think what you do in your normal life is what eventually enables you to write a song, though, isn't it? Because if you don't live your normal life, there's nothing real there to put into it. You've got to do all those mundane things.

Pete: Yeah, you do. You know, recently, I hope this is not some kind of psychiatric disorder (laughs), I've derived great pleasure from loading the dishwasher and bleaching the kitchen floor, because you see instant results. Everything else involved in an artistic career, other than maybe a salaried job in a retail store, it takes so long to see the actual finished product and then achieve something with it. To me a packet of Flash floor cleaner and a mop give me an instant result.
So every morning, I arise at 8:30 and do the kitchen first of all. And it certainly reminds me that all of the trivial things that I took for granted, with the support ring around me of Lynne and Steve, that I just thought fairies came in the night and did these things. I've been learning a lot of lessons, like learning to organise your wardrobe and remembering where things are, handling your own money...things that were always done for me automatically. And I used to feel that I wasn't intelligent enough to do those things. And now I realise that I'm more than intelligent enough to function on those levels. And I'm enjoying the experience of moving in the real world.
Because I'm not 100% confident, but I do get a feeling, and it's probably the most definite feeling, that I'm not going to be granted that normal life for much longer. I'm going to possibly revert back to the existence I had back during the mega-success of "Spin Me Round", "Lover Come Back", etc... where it was very difficult for me to move about and walk the streets. Because one of my greatest pleasures is walking. As you know...you've accompanied me on a walk from my house into Soho and back.

Pat: Yes.

Pete: I don't like to take cabs. I like to be out there on the street. And I don't mean hanging out in clubs. But I like to be walking and I take in a lot of detail about everyday things...the way people walk, the way people interact. Unfortunately, when you are famous to any degree, you are the watched. And due to my appearance, and I'm not complaining, I have to put up with being watched as an oddity rather than a celebrity. And it's a little less safe to be watched as an oddity. But if you keep moving and don't have eye contact, it's easier to live life observed as an oddity rather than a life observed as a celebrity.

Pat: I think it takes a lot of inner fortitutde to be true to yourself and to look the way you want to look. Because it would be so much easier to try to conform and camouflage yourself, but you don't do that. I can't think of many other people anywhere who carry their existence into both their professional world and their everyday world pretty much the same. You are the same person.

Pete: I wouldn't say I was the same person; I think I'm a lot more withdrawn than I am when I'm onstage. I find it more difficult to relate on a two to one basis. One to one's ok, two to one's difficult, one hundred thousand to one is ok.

Pat: But in appearance, anyway, you don't tend to adopt a completely different appearance.

Pete: No, as Marlene said, "I can't help it". And I really have tried the other side for a brief period of time. I went through exhaustive medical tests, initially diagnosed as possible manic depressive with hypomania. But when we got down to it, it was my system's disagreement with medications that were administered very willy nilly by American showbiz doctors.
If I was having a blue day, I didn't want to do something, things like Prozac came into my life, which worked for a period of time. But then you had a blue day and you'd think "Hold on, I'm not supposed to feel this". So I was changed onto an anti-depressant in America called Welbutrim [spelling?] and it was the wonder drug. And within the swallowing of one, I felt immortal.
I didn't sleep for 39 days, and ended up having to go into a clinic to be withdrawn from them, because those drugs weren't available in the UK market. Incidentally, they were also combined with steroids for a voice problem. Steroids are highly dangerous. So the combination of steroids and an anti-depressant that should not have been taken following Prozac...there should have been a 3 week period before I was even started on the drug I was prescribed.... But I went absolutely...I have never had rushes of feeling like this. I didn't know reality from fantasy.
I've got to say for the period of time I went through I highly enjoyed the feeling. I knew everything I was doing, but I was doing everything too fast. I thought everyone around me was taking downers because they seemed so slow and I was so fast and didn't sleep.
After 37 days of no sleep, 19 of those I was physically unable to eat food, and I was quite happy and keeping busy all the time. I drove everyone around me into high alarm. I didn't know what was going on.
I asked the doctors to tranquilise me. They refused, so I ended up having to go into hospital to withdraw from these so blissfully easily-prescribed antidepressants. And from then on I developed a severe case of...and it took me up until December 29th to be diagnosed as having chronic fatigue syndrome. Which is looked on as a condition which is combined with depression. It isn't. It brings on depression. Because you are physically unable to do the smallest task.
And in order to gain that diagnosis, I had to go through exhaustive blood tests and brain scans and lumbar punctures and skin biopsies. Because it went from every disease, from possible spinal cancer to brain tumours to MS. And this is a long waiting period for results, etc.
And it's not a matter of "Oh, I haven't got disease #1, but I could have the other four." And doctors are constantly probing, and when they found the disorder in the blood cells, they thought I had glandular fever. I hadn't ever developed an actual virus, but I had post-viral syndrome, for which there is no cure. And antibiotics violently disagreed with me.
I was actually too weak to shampoo my hair or take a bath on my own. Everything had to be supervised. Somehow through that period I was really desperate not knowing what was going on because nobody could give me any literature, and any literature I did come across was all very, very negative. It said "invest in a handrail or a stair lift", etc. It was very hard for somebody who's very physically active to go through the position where you simply cannot walk.

Pat: Yes, it seems to be you've got the kind of personality that can be vulnerable to this, because in your normal state, you're very enthusiastic. Admittedly, you are a shy person, as you were saying, around people one to one.

Pete: Not with you.

Pat: No, no. But around strangers, maybe. But I find people who can be vulnerable to these things are the people like you who, when you are functioning at full capacity, which you appear to be now...you appear to be very enthusiastic and very focussed.

Pete: Well, I'm functioning at a much more moderate pace. For instance, I used to run between 7 and 10 miles seven days a week. I realise that running brings on such a rush of cortisol and aggression in me, that once I finish running, instead of being chilled out with and on an endorphine high like everybody else, I feel like I might turn into a serial killer (laughs). So now I've taken up exercise like slow walking and use a stair climber. I no longer pump weights that are heavier than my own body weight. I do everything gently.
If I'm late for something, I make sure I've begun my departure for the agreed event on time, but because I like to take things on foot, I will not run. I will wait for the traffic lights to say go and I will walk slowly across the zebra crossing. And I've been practising that now for probably 3 months. And it sometimes annoys me. I think "Quick! Quick! Hurry!", then I think, "No!".
For instance, before we did this interview, I really needed to take a bath, because it was so hot and sweaty here. And it made me feel a bit renewed. And I was thinking "Hurry up, hurry up", then I thought "No, there's no need to hurry up. There's no need because you'll be on time". And I am on time. And sometimes the slow hare overtakes the quick brown fox.
And it was kinda like that with my career with "Spin Me" as well. Like Culture Club, Haysi Fantazi, Marilyn, all those groups raced ahead of me. And I was doing things slowly, and I eventually got to the top. Not that that is what actually matters. But one thing that was pointed out to me by Tom Yoda from Avex was how many other artists are around from the Eighties and still functioning as fresh as they were?
And also, doing everything completely independently. We operate like an independent label within another label. We do our own artwork, our own videos, our own music, our own production, our own absolutely everything. I believe for the health of my family life, it is time to delegate a little.
But it is very difficult for us to trust anybody that we delegate to. Because sometimes it's like you have to say to somebody, "See the ball. Pick up the ball. Place the ball on the TV." By which time, you could have done it yourself. We require people to almost work instinctually, like friends.
You don't find many friends in a lifetime. You find a few acquaintances. you may have a phone book full of people, but they're not actually friends that you'd let see your ass. And it's like that when we eventually rebuild a working team around us. You've just got to know what's right. Because Steve and I really don't have time for questions.
We've got this kind of psychic link really. Although sometimes we don't agree. He's willing to concede, and I don't say this as an egomaniac (laughs), but 98% of the time I'm right. (Pat laughs.) And if I do something I'm uncomfortable with, I'm not going to do it well. Our collaboration on songs now is getting to be... it was such a gift last night to help him put my rhythm down. Because I sing in a certain rhythm.
But to go back to your previous point that people like me are vulnerable to that. It is actually a now recognised disease for which there is no treatment. I treated myself, totally. Which is by drinking four litres of aloe vera juice a day, with Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture six days a week. And then gradually reintroducing myself to...because I developed complete agoraphobia after being completely housebound for 14 months...reintroducing myself to walking to the gym, going to the gym, taking a cab to the studio, walking to the studio, getting out 50 yards before I got home. I got used to being on the street in the cold air. And it was a real process.
And then quite miraculously, due to various vitamin supplements that I discovered through the Internet, which I take extremely seriously, and I don't mean like vitamin B. I mean fairly advanced things like MSM and stuff like that, and wheat grass juice. And within a matter of weeks my system was functioning perfectly. My skin cleared up. I dropped a tremendous amount of immovable body fat. All of my muscle strength and aerobic capacity is back. And also my writing ability and vocal strength is back.

Pat: Pete, would this all have to do with the choice of the album title, "Fragile".

Pete: Oh my God, yes. Because during the first few weeks of that, that's what I felt.

TO BE CONTINUED

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