Dead or Alive – Early singles, EPs, Peel Sessions

After releasing the first single in 1980 I’m Falling (b/w Flowers, see previous posts), the same line-up - Joe Musker (Drums), Sue Bagton-James (Bass), Marty / Mandingo Healy (Keyboards), Adrian Mitchley (Guitar), Pete Burns (Vocals) – recorded their first BBC ONE Peel Session (recorded 04/02/1981, broadcast 17/02/1981). The tracklist for that session was:

- Nowhere To Nowhere
- Running Wild
- Flowers
- Number 11

The last song of those sessions would be their next single, released only a few months later, in May 1981:

- Number Eleven
- Namegame (b/w)

Here information is a little blurred. DOA biographers state that this 1981 single was the first to feature the new line-up, including Wayne Hussey (later Sisters of Mercy and Mission) on guitar, Mike Percy on bass and Steve Coy on drums, whereas according to the man’s biographers, Hussey joined the band only for their EP It’s Been Hours Now, released in February 1982. In fact, despite the guitar sound slightly reminiscent of the early Sisters of Mercy, the song was already there before Hussey joined, see the 1981 BBC sessions. The new EP is instead characterised by a distinctively different sound: Hussey’s typical guitar soundscapes, tribal rhythms (overwhelming at the time –Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, Slits, etc.).


- It's Been Hours Now
- Whirlpool
- Nowhere to Nowhere
- It’s Been Hours Now 2

A couple of weeks later, the same line-up – Pete Burns (Vocals), Joe Musker (Drums), Mike Percy (Bass), Wayne Hussey (Guitar), Mandingo Healy (Keyboards) – recoded their second BBC ONE Peel Session (recorded 01/03/1982, broadcast 18/03/1982):

- Misty Circles (Part 1)
- Misty Circles (Part 2)
- Number 12
- Untitled

After the recording of the sessions, drummer Steve Coy joined the band, which, according to what seems to have become a standard (!), released the last tack recorded during the Peel sessions: Untitled, in fact, is the provisional (no) title of the next single, released in May 1982 (which features the same guitar pattern that will surface some years later in the Mission’s Tower of Strength single):

- The Stranger
- Some of That (b/w)

Two months later Dead Or Alive were signing to the Epic label. The rest is history. A series of singles appeared over the course of 1983, including "Misty Circles" and "What I Want” all of which then collected in DOA’s first album Sophisticated Boom Boom (1983). Hussey soon exited, and it was a line-up comprising Burns, Percy, new member Tim Lever on keyboards and drummer Steve Coy which scored Dead or Alive's first major hit, a 1984 cover of KC and the Sunshine Band's disco classic "That's the Way (I Like It)" which fell just shy of reaching the British Top 20.

Part 1
Part 2