Conversation with Kevin Rowland: “I do think that I strongly emphasize my feminine side”

taz: Kevin Rowland, is your new album “Love” a musical autobiography?

Kevin Rowland: I think it became that even though it wasn't originally intended.

taz: Last year you published your autobiography “Bless Me Father”. The title of the book refers to the difficult relationship with your father. In the song “Once A Man And Twice A Child” from the album, you sing about the closeness that you were only able to establish with him in the last years of his life.

Born in 1953 in Wolverhampton, England. His parents came from Ireland. He worked in his father's construction company and later as a hairdresser. Participation in various bands. In 1978 he founded Dexys Midnight Runners, who had their biggest hit with “Come On Eileen” (1983). In his autobiography “Bless Me Father” (Penguin, London 2025, 400 pages, approx. 15 euros), Rowland writes openly about drug abuse and his egomaniacal behavior, which repeatedly became a problem in the band and in private relationships.

Rowland: My father was a very big presence in my life. I saw him as a very angry person, almost until the end. My father was 102. He had a stroke five years before his death, which finally allowed him to relax a bit. He became much calmer after that and I was suddenly able to talk to him. I am very grateful for this time. When he died, I didn't cry. Not until today. No idea why.

taz: As an artist, you have often dealt with your feminine side. Whether externally, when you dress androgynously, or in song lyrics. On the last Dexys album, “The Feminine Divine,” you apologize and sing about how many bad things you have done to women. The self-criticism is impressive. And yet I was wondering why you don't celebrate your own feminine side a little more?

Rowland: I do think that I emphasize my feminine side a lot. But I was macho all my life. Or let's say I pretended to be macho because I thought I had to be tough. I thought I wasn't allowed to show any weaknesses, that I had to take everything into my own hands because otherwise women would leave me. I just believed in the whole program, values ​​that I grew up with. The control that men had, and still have, over women. And this is mainly because we are afraid of women. We are so afraid, of their sexuality, of everything. And I was part of it. I had to get rid of that first.

taz: In 1999 you released your solo album “My Beauty” on Creation Records. Label boss Alan McGee described it as his “last big failure,” which he is still proud of to this day. You can see her on the cover in sexy lingerie and make-up. No other label wanted to release it in this form, but you insisted on it. How do you look at it today?

Rowland: That was maybe a little too early for me, and a little too extreme. There was another cover design that wasn't as revealing. Maybe it would have worked better and not created so much fuss.

taz: McGee writes that he was looking forward to the posters with the cover. He wanted there to be pile-ups on British streets when people saw the image on construction site fences.

Rowland: I had a really hard time dealing with the rejection that it provoked. A lot of people said I was crazy, that was below the belt. Today, such reactions are difficult to imagine. “My Beauty” was re-released five years ago and sold well, with the same cover. Times have apparently changed. However, with the global rise of the right, the social mood is moving back towards macho culture.

taz: Producer David Holmes compared your way of singing to method acting. In your autobiography you describe the state you enter when singing as a “state of grace”. How do you reach it?

Rowland: Sometimes I reach him, sometimes I don't. When I stand in front of an audience and really give it my all, like a method actor, it happens more easily. I read a book by the Russian acting teacher Konstantin Stanislavski, the inventor of this method. A lot of it has to do with letting go of tension in the body. And it's about immersing yourself in the person you're playing and the scene. In relation to me, this means: I have to be clear about who I'm singing to and why, what do these words really mean for me personally? Maybe these are completely natural things that every singer does? I have no idea, I've never asked colleagues. Maybe I should do that.

taz: In the epilogue of your book it says that you tried all your life to be an ordinary person. But you never tried that musically, did you? I get the impression that you've always felt pretty free in music.

Rowland: That's right. My music was the place where everything could come out. But I write about my life in the book, and it's more than just my music, you know? I have always strived to have a good life. Sometimes I almost hated the music because that's not really me, that's just a person that people think that's me.

taz: Who are you really? Doesn't every person have different personalities?

Rowland: Yes. However, in my life I felt like I had to be more like the others. Don't forget that I haven't spent most of my life making music. But yes, in music I always wanted to be different, I thought it was important to be individual, to have my own style and to say what I want to say. There I was always afraid of sounding too much like someone else.

taz: When reading the autobiography, I immediately felt sorry for the man you are writing about because you judge yourself so harshly.

Rowland: Yes, I've heard that before. I don't know. I had to write this book the same way.

taz: Because you wanted to tell the truth?

Rowland: Exactly. My story was different than that of other musicians. According to the motto: I went to school, didn't like it, left it, found my people and started a band. It wasn't like that for me. I had a lot of battles to fight. And I also judge other people harshly. With my father and my brother. And that's why I had to be hard on myself, otherwise it wouldn't be fair.

taz: On your last tour three years ago, you first played the songs from your current work “The Feminine Divine” – great, rousing music. But it wasn’t until the end, during “Come On Eileen,” that everyone got up and danced. Isn't that frustrating in the long run?

Rowland: I'm grateful for "Come On Eileen," for everything that song gave me. Especially for the money. But yeah, it's annoying when people only know this one song of mine. Sometimes people come up to me and say: I loved your music, “Come On Eileen” meant so much to me. Yes, great, thank you, I say, but you know what, we're still making music! It's difficult. To this day I don't know how to deal with it.

taz: There is a song on your new album that I particularly like, “Old Love”. In it you sing about how difficult it is to grow old and to be perceived exclusively as an old person. It was only then that I realized that you are now over 70. I never saw you as an old man.

Rowland: Young people don't even notice you, for them you don't even exist. And if so, all they see is age. I feel like I used to inside. I only notice that I'm old when I look in the mirror. Otherwise I'll just forget it. But sometimes I just feel tired. I recorded the song lying on a sofa. Our sound engineer Sam put a microphone in front of me, I wanted to sound as tired as I feel some days. Old and tired, and tired of being old.

taz: I only know you from photos and on stage, with extravagant clothes. Do you also dress like this in everyday life? If so, I actually can't imagine that young people will overlook you.

Rowland: Well, they're looking at me. But I have no idea what they will see in me. Some kind of eccentric? But you're probably right, it's all in my head.

taz: Why are you now calling yourself Dexys Midnight Runners again after your last name was just Dexys?

Rowland: In 2024 we played at the Glastonbury Festival. Shortly before, I was sitting on a bench in front of my house and talking to a young neighbor. She told me she was going to Glastonbury and I told her I was playing there with my band called Dexys. To which she: Ah, does it have anything to do with Dexys Midnight Runners? That's when I realized that there are young people who know Dexy's Midnight Runners, probably through songs like "Come On Eileen" and "Geno." So, I thought, we have to go back to the original name.

taz: The last word on your new album is “Goodnight”.

Rowland: Yes. That's a good way to end, maybe this will be our last album. It's been quite a journey from "Searching For The Young Soul Rebels" to now. Seven albums. Not that we were extremely productive, but I think we did a pretty good job.