Steve Coy, the longest serving member of Dead Or Alive after frontman Pete Burns, has died at the age of 56.
The news was announced by Coy’s wife Marina on Facebook this morning. No details of the circumstances surrounding his passing have been released.
Born in March 1962 in Harrow, Steve Coy joined Dead Or Alive as drummer in 1982, shortly before the band signed to Epic Records. Their début album Sophisticated Boom Boom was a modest success in 1984, helped along by a cover of KC & The Sunshine Band’s That’s The Way I Like It which became Dead Or Alive’s first top forty hit. Released in November of that year, You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) spent thirteen weeks in the lower reaches of the chart before finally breaking in to the top forty in February 1985; four weeks later it was number one, the band’s only chart topper and the first of many for the fledgling production team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. The single’s parent album Youthquake reached the top ten and produced three more top thirty hits: Lover Come Back To Me, In Too Deep and My Heart Goes Bang.
While Stock, Aitken and Waterman went on to dominate the charts in the latter part of the 1980s, the reaction to Dead Or Alive’s third album Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know was muted. Lead single Brand New Lover stalled outside the top thirty and while Something In My House reached number 12, it would be the band’s last top forty hit in the UK. By 1988 Dead Or Alive was down to just a duo of Pete Burns and Steve Coy; the drummer took on all musical and programming duties for next album Nude which, although not a success at home, reached number one in Japan where the band maintained a huge following. Burns and Coy continued as the nucleus of Dead Or Alive, releasing the albums Fan The Flame (Part 1) (1990), Nukleopatra (1995) and Fragile (2000). Coy also became the band’s manager and was involved in the compilation of the comprehensive box set Sophisticated Boom Box MMXVI, released shortly after Burns’ death in 2016. Sadly, just eighteen months later, the box has now also become a memorial for Coy.
