“I wanna be a platinum blonde
Just like all the sexy stars
Marilyn and Jean, Jayne, Mae and Marlene
Yeah, they proved they really had fun”
— Blondie, Platinum Blonde (1975)
Born 123 years ago in Berlin, Marie Magdalene ‘Marlene’ Dietrich was one of the first international superstars of Hollywood’s early Golden Era – right up until her cinematic swansong in 1978’s Just A Gigolo opposite Kim Novak and David Bowie.
She was much more than that, though. By constantly reinventing herself, Dietrich stretched her career over sixty years, becoming a celebrated star of radio and film, troop-boosting war hero, top flight international cabaret artist, and an uncompromising visual icon for generations of LGBT people round the world.
Famed as much for wearing men’s clothes as being a femme fatale, Dietrich’s cosmopolitan, pansexual persona inspired many artists, with everyone from Madonna, Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and Sam Taylor-Wood channelling her glamorous allure.
To mark the anniversary, a throwback to an interview I conducted in April 2003 with the irrepressible frontman of Dead Or Alive, Pete Burns, whose maternal German family were seemingly on first name terms with Marlene.
Get him to tell me the Dietrich stories? Not arf.
Ostensibly a commission by Gay Times, the magazine used not much more than a meagre extract in their June issue, which coincided with a new single, a contempo club remodelling of the enduring ’80s pop perennial You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) and Dead Or Alive’s first greatest hits album, Evolution.
As formidable as you’d expect, we pick up just a few days after Burns bumped into Neil Tennant in Soho electroclash nightspot Nag Nag Nag. At the end of the exchange, he’ll discuss what eventually became the Pet Shop Boys collaboration Jack And Jill Party, on the duo’s shiny and new indie label Olde English.
But we kick off with the lippy one waxing lyrical about an unfinished album of acoustic piano ballads called Love, Pete.
Drawing heavily on the Great American Songbook made famous by the likes of Sinatra, Dietrich and Dusty Springfield, it still irked him over a decade after its “naive and misguided” recording, intended to help AIDS sufferers in the US, that unscrupulous sorts were making the LP available on the internet, “selling it for extortionate prices”.
PB: They were taking money out of dying peoples‘ mouths, and you know what? I hope they damn well suffer for that. The product out there? Shit! Don’t pay a high price for it. That won’t prevent anybody… I’m not trying to deny the fact that I did it but what I wanted to do was explain the reason why I did it and why it realistically couldn’t be completed.
SP: What kind of songs were you doing?
PB: Oh, I can’t… Oh, there were things like Someone To Watch Over Me. It was all standard stuff, Gershwin stuff. I don’t even own a copy, that’s how nice the studio people were.
SP: So you predated Robbie Williams by a few years then.
PB: Yeah, but it certainly wasn’t a Robbie standard. I have a real fondness for that type of music. That’s the type of music I probably listen to at home, Gershwin things. I listen to old Marlene Dietrich records. I listen to a lot of old standards because that’s the substance of songwriting. That’s where the real good songs, and also the real emotive lyrics came in… when people were writing about their feelings and love lost, and love searched for. I love that kind of music and I could have done it very well if they’d given me someone who could have stayed conscious through their piano ventures. But they couldn’t.
SP: It’s interesting you mentioned Dietrich, because you once called Neil Tennant the Marlene Dietrich of pop. Do you still stand by that?
PB: Absolutely. So before Dietrich became The Blue Angel, my mother’s father, a guy called Hugo Quittner, was a big film director in Berlin. He actually put Dietrich in her first silent movies, which he tried to deny. So Dietrich’s always been sort of a presence right through my childhood. I had photographs of my mother with Dietrich, and my mother was in silent films. The Dietrich thing was always prominent: my mother listened to Dietrich, she had letters from Dietrich, blah blah blah, so consequently I started to become aware of Dietrich at a very early age.
And I loved her delivery of songs, especially as she got older and, you know, the ravages of time and emotion had set in. I just used to love the way she would stand on a stage in that huge swan’s down coat, and, singing, it would get the emotions going. When she sang Where Have All The Flowers Gone? and things about the soldiers disappearing, you knew she understood the lyrics of those songs, it was in her.
SP: Have you ever seen that documentary that Maximilian Schell did?
PB: I have. How brilliant was that? I’m dying to get another copy of that but it’s not available. I had it on video.
SP: I wish they’d release it on DVD or something.
PB: It is on DVD I hear, and for that purpose alone this week I’m buying a DVD player. Because people misinterpreted that documentary in an awful lot of ways. I saw it three times, but also around that time I wrote her a fan letter. And I got a letter back from her, which was really great, a treasured letter.
But yeah, Neil Tennant, I don’t know what it is… I’ve heard so many people just go, “Oh, he cant sing.” He can sing just enough. When I hear him do something like Love Comes Quickly or even that cover of Go West, the emotion that his voice says without even trying. I just love his voice, I really really do. And I know it’s got inadequacies but you don’t have to be Pavarotti to get across the feeling. I mean, how difficult must it actually be to make that kind of shattered dream that the Village People sung about in Go West, and the gay lifestyle and we’re all be in San Francisco… he made it sound so poignant, for the great big chance of a dream turned sour.
SP: It’s that melancholy quality.
PB: And when I hear him do that song called Love Comes Quickly, and there’s so many other things, like Being Boring and stuff. Oh god, he can really move me vocally and he doesn’t damn well even have to try or push a note. I wish I had that restraint, I wish I had that that skill. I’m too full on. But he’s got that way of stepping back from it.
Actually, when he came down the stairs of Nag Nag he said to me “You said I was a disco diva”, well, he is. I mean, you couldn’t really want to be anything more, could you? You don’t need to be Christina Aguilera to get a song across. Sometimes it’s what you’re not doing that gets the feeling across, and the Pet Shop Boys can make me go really weepy because they sing about things that I understand.
SP: Exactly. That’s the most important thing. And I really, really do hope, sincerely, the collaboration with them happens. I think it would be amazing.
PB: You don’t think I’m being cheap by mentioning that? But I was so excited and I said “You gotta call me” but, duh-duh-duh, they haven’t got my number (laughs). You know, I’ve only got this old phone number but I get mixed up, and I thought I’ll give them my number. I was like, “Oh god, Neil wants to do a song with me.” I’d love to do it and I’m available, and all he’s got to do is call me and I’ll be there.
And what great company — Dusty, that’s another one. Goddess. And I know I probably like all of the… erm, people would say clichéd gay icons. That’s really a patronising thing to say about these people. But I do think that the queers and the people that are sensitised by their experience in life, they sometimes have this radar and they know other people are on the same wavelength. I do hope that when you transcribe this, that when I say the queer is for the gay people. They’re just special people.
SP: Completely. And you know the Pets have just done a new record with Yoko Ono?
PB: Oh, how fabulous is that? You know if they do it, I’m sure they’ll use Marilyn instead. You know, I’m always like that — I’m always the bridesmaid, never the bride. I’m up for consideration but I hope they give it consideration because it’d just be an honour and a privilege. And I don’t say this out of any career desperation, I just think they’re absolutely fabulous.
Eventually, there would be a time when I would cover one of their songs. I keep looking at Love Comes Quickly but I don’t think I’ve got that gentle enough voice to get across the emotion of Love Comes Quickly or even Being Boring and stuff. I’ll have to wait a while in life to see when I’ve got more vocal restraint, but I just fucking love them, I really really do.
SP: I certainly hope they wouldn’t do anything with Marilyn.
PB: You can go on as long as you want. (Thinks aloud). Who’s the other person I’ve got on the list today? (Glances at schedule). The thing with the Marilyns and the Steve Stranges, I know nothing about them but I keep hearing things. And I know Marilyn is doing an appearance next week, which I’ll have to go, because it must be like watching a car crash. I know that supposedly he‘s really really messy and it just seems a shame. And I‘m not talking in respect of desperate comebacks but…
Pete Burns was talking to Steve Pafford
The interview has been slightly edited for clarity. The Audio recording is here, and if you enjoyed it please consider donating to keep this website afloat…
Dead Or Alive at G-A-Y: The Pete Burns Interview You’ve Never Heard Before is here
