Dexys Midnight Runners

History

Dexys Mark I: 1978–1980

Dexys Midnight Runners were founded in 1978 in Birmingham, England, by Kevin Rowland (vocals, guitar, at the time using the pseudonym Carlo Rolan) and Kevin "Al" Archer (vocals, guitar). Both had been in the short-lived punk band the Killjoys. Rowland had previously written a Northern soul-style song that the two of them sang, "Tell Me When My Light Turns Green", which became the first Dexys "song". The band's name was derived from Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine used as a recreational drug among Northern soul fans to give them energy to dance all night. Rowland later said of recruiting members for the band that "Anyone joining Dexys had to give up their job and rehearse all day long ... We had nothing to lose and felt that what we were doing was everything." "Big" Jim Paterson (trombone), Geoff "JB" Blythe (saxophone, previously of Geno Washington's Ram Jam Band), Steve "Babyface" Spooner (alto saxophone), Pete Saunders (keyboard), Pete Williams (bass) and John Jay (drums) formed the first lineup of the band, which began playing live at the end of 1978.

By the middle of 1979, Bobby "Jnr" Ward had replaced Jay on drums. The Clash manager Bernard Rhodes then signed them and sent them into the studio to record a Rowland-penned single, "Burn It Down", which Rhodes renamed "Dance Stance". In response to Rhodes' criticism of Rowland's singing style, Rowland developed a "more emotional" sound influenced by General Norman Johnson of the Holland–Dozier–Holland band Chairmen of the Board and the theatricality of Bryan Ferry.

After a series of dates opening for the Specials, who wore suits on stage, Rowland decided that his band needed its own distinct look. Borrowing from an outfit that Paterson had worn to rehearsals, Dexys subsequently dressed in donkey jackets or leather coats and woolly hats, a look described as "straight out of De Niro's Mean Streets". In January 1980, Rowland said of the band's sound and look, "we didn't want to become part of anyone else's movement. We'd rather be our own movement". Image became very important to the group: Rowland said, "We wanted to be a group that looked like something ... a formed group, a project, not just random."

"Dance Stance", which Rhodes produced, was released on Oddball Records, which Rhodes owned, and which was distributed by EMI. Although it was named "single of the week" by Sounds, it stalled at number 40 in the British charts, which EMI and Rowland believed was due to Rhodes' poor production. Rowland said, "We learned that early on, that the wrong producer can totally screw your record up." As a result, Dexys fired Rhodes and signed with EMI, and EMI immediately put Pete Wingfield in charge of their production. Saunders and Ward left the band, replaced by Andy Leek (keyboards) and Andy "Stoker" Growcott (drums).

Dexys Mark II: 1981–1982

Rowland and Paterson first chose to write several new songs, so that Dexys could move forward from the split. They then brought in an old friend of theirs, Kevin "Billy" Adams (guitar/banjo), along with Seb Shelton (drums, formerly of Secret Affair), Mickey Billingham (keyboard), Brian Maurice Brummitt (who dropped his last name for his stage name "Brian Maurice", alto saxophone), Paul Speare (tenor saxophone) and Steve Wynne (bass). This new lineup also adopted a new look that included hooded tops, boxing boots, and pony tails. Along with the new image, Rowland brought in a fitness regime, which included working out together and running as a group, Rowland commenting "The togetherness of running along together just gets ... that fighting spirit going". The group would also take part in group exercise sessions before performances, and drinking before shows was strictly forbidden.

By the time the new band's first single "Plan B", produced by Alan Shacklock instead of Wingfield, was released in March 1981, the band's management had discovered that EMI had failed to pick up a mandatory contract option, so Dexys were technically no longer under contract. They asked, without success, that EMI not release the single; without promotion, the single flopped. Later in March 1981, an ad appeared in which Rowland stated that the previous members of the band had "hatched a plot to throw Kevin out and still carry on under the same name". It also cited Rowland's suggestion that "they might learn new instruments" as a reason for their displeasure. The ad announced that Dexys had been working on a new live venture, "The Midnight Runners Projected Passion Revue".

In April, Dexys prevailed to win their release from EMI, although without the financial support of a label, they were unable to mount the spring tour that had planned and had to settle for playing only five dates, including one recorded by BBC Radio 1. In June they signed to Mercury Records, where Dexys remained until their 1987 breakup. Dexys' first single for Mercury, "Show Me", produced by Tony Visconti, was released in July 1981 and reached No. 16 in the UK. The label switch was followed by a session for Richard Skinner's BBC Radio 1 show in which the band previewed tracks that would be reworked later on Too-Rye-Ay. Wynne was sacked by the group at this point, to be replaced by Mick Gallick (whom Rowland gave the stage name "Giorgio Kilkenny") on bass. Music journalist Paolo Hewitt commented about this version of Dexys: "Dexys wouldn't make a record unless they thought it was great. And they wouldn't play a gig unless they thought they were gonna be great."

Dexys Mark III: 1982–1987

With Paterson and Billingham's departures, the core of Dexys became Rowland, Adams, and O'Hara. In September, touring behind the hit album, Dexys embarked on The Bridge tour. On 10 October 1982, the Dexys performance at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London was recorded by Steve Barron and then released on videodisk and videocassette (and later DVD) as an edited 9-song set also entitled The Bridge.

Rowland, Adams and O'Hara jointly wrote the band's next single, "Let's Get This Straight (From the Start)" (with O'Hara also contributing piano on the recording along with Billingham). At the start of 1983, Robert "Bob" Noble replaced Billingham on keyboards and Kilkenny was replaced by John "Rhino" Edwards on bass. Dexys finally toured the U.S. in 1983, and continued to tour through that summer. However, the major success of Too-Rye-Ay became a problem for Rowland, who said in 1999 that "I was fairly comfortable being the outsider knocking on the door [but] once the door opened and I stepped inside, I was completely lost" and that he went into "complete self-destruct mode". Rowland and O'Hara also began a personal relationship during the U.S. tour; in Rowland's words, he was "obsessed with her but not enjoying the band".

Although Dexys began preparing material for a new album in late 1983, once the touring stopped, the band was reduced to a nucleus of Rowland, Adams, O'Hara and Gatfield. Rowland wanted to explore different songwriting, and Dexys Midnight Runners began recording more "introspective, mournful" music. Recording and mixing the new album took almost two years and spread across Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S; at various times, Tom Dowd, Jimmy Miller, and John Porter were attached as producers. Some seasoned performers, ex-Dexys members, and session musicians made up the rest of the band, including Vincent Crane (ex-Atomic Rooster) on piano, Julian Littman on mandolin, Tim Dancy (who had been Al Green's drummer) on drums, Tommy Evans on steel guitar, and former Dexys members "Big" Jim Paterson on trombone, Robert Noble on organ and synthesizer, and John "Rhino" Edwards on bass. Near the end of these sessions, Rowland and O'Hara's personal relationship broke up, although they continued to work together.

In September 1985, Dexys released their first new album in three years, Don't Stand Me Down. Production was originally credited to Alan Winstanley and Rowland, although reissues also credit Adams and O'Hara. The four remaining members were pictured on the album cover in the band's fourth look, an Ivy League, Brooks Brothers look, wearing ties and pin-striped suits (except for O'Hara, who wore a grey women's business suit), and with neatly combed hair. Rowland described Dexys' new look as "so clean and simple; it's a much more adult approach now".

Rowland solo and failed Dexys reunions: 1987–2002

Rowland became a solo singer with the release of 1988's poorly received album, The Wanderer. Rowland suffered from financial problems, drug addiction and depression. Rowland said: "I'd been too confident, too arrogant. I thought everyone would hear our new music and go: 'Wow.'" When he went to sign on for a jobseeker's allowance, another unemployed person recognised him and sang "Come On Eileen".

Dexys returned to the charts in 1991 with the greatest-hits TV compilation The Very Best of Dexys Midnight Runners, which featured a number of songs that had never been released on CD, reached #12 on the charts, and was certified "Gold". Consequently, Rowland "spent most of my time in rehab" in 1993 and 1994. As part of that, Rowland made plans to reform Dexys together with Big Jim Paterson and Billy Adams, although these plans resulted in little more than a solitary TV performance in 1993. Rowland then went on the dole; as he put it in 1999, "Insanity is no fun, mate. People try to romanticize the idea of the suffering artist. At my lowest ebbs there was no romance to it at all."

After more treatment, Rowland returned once more as a solo performer and signed to Creation Records, although, in his words, "every other record label advised [Creation] against it because I was trouble." In 1997, he released his first project on Creation: a remastered and reprocessed version of Don't Stand Me Down with extensive liner notes, revised credits and titles, and two extra songs, which helped contribute to a significant reversal of opinion with regard to the album, which was now increasingly being re-evaluated and recognized as an unfairly overlooked masterwork. Following this, in 1999 Rowland released a new solo album of interpretations of "classic" songs called My Beauty, which received virtually no publicity or radio airplay and sold poorly but attracted attention for Rowland's cross-dressing cover attire. Rowland limited his pre-release publicity for the album to one interview, and he "auditioned" potential interviewers before selecting Jon Wilde. However, the negative reaction to My Beauty and the demise of Creation Records shortly after its release meant that Rowland's planned follow-up album, which would have featured Dexys performing new material, was never made. The failure caused Rowland more problems; in his own words from 2003, "Four years ago, I was nuts." Later, in March 2010, Rowland said that signing to Creation was "definitely a mistake".

Dexys Mark IV: 2003–present

While recording two new songs, "Manhood" and "My Life in England" (both credited to Rowland, Paterson, and David Ditchfield) for a forthcoming Dexys greatest hits album, Rowland recruited Welsh classical violist (and studio musician) Lucy J. Morgan to play on the sessions along with original Dexys members Pete Williams as co-vocalist and "MD" Mick Talbot on keyboards, plus Paul Taylor on trombone and Neil Hubbard on guitar. Following the sessions, Rowland offered Morgan a permanent place in the group, and she accepted. With her addition, Rowland announced the reformation of Dexys in April 2003; he told Williams that his goal for the reformed band was to be true to the memory of Dexys but to "take it somewhere else".

The Dexys greatest hits album containing the new songs, Let's Make This Precious: The Best of Dexys Midnight Runners, was released on EMI in September 2003, followed by a successful tour 'to stop the burning' in October and November. The new songs on the album were touted as new singles, with Dexys even performing "Manhood" on Top of the Pops. However, despite promotional single releases for each by EMI and airplay on national radio, neither was officially released as a commercial single. Instead, a live performance by this 2003 version of Dexys was released on DVD, entitled It Was Like This – Live (although some versions were packaged with a misleading picture of Rowland from the 1980s on the cover). It Was Like This – Live was reissued in 2012 on CD and DVD as At the Royal Court, Liverpool. It was released digitally in 2019, featuring songs from the first three albums plus "Because Of You", new song "Manhood" and the band's version of The Commodores' "Nightshift".

In 2004, another Rowland-supervised reissue of the now-out-of-print Don't Stand Me Down, subtitled "The Director's Cut", was issued on EMI with different remixing and remastering, an additional track ("Kevin Rowland's 13th Time"), and a different cover photograph showing the core trio (Rowland, Adams and O'Hara) walking in a park wearing "preppy" attire (instead of the previous business attire). In the liner notes, Rowland said that, after the remastering and track changes, the album "now sounds to me as it was intended to sound."

During a June 2005 interview on BBC Radio 2, Kevin Rowland announced that Dexys were "back in the studio" and seeking a record deal for a new album. A new track, "It's OK Johanna", appeared on the band's MySpace site in 2007, and in January 2008, Rowland told Uncut magazine further details about the album, saying in part: "I'm in the process of demo-ing the songs ... I don't know when it will be ready or who will play on the record. I want to get everything 100 percent right, and know that it's the best I can do and every note is there for a reason ... The only way I can be satisfied is to make the record I'm hearing in my head on my own terms." As Rowland repeatedly stated, "Dexys are not a revival band. They are going forward, not backward."

Members

Current members

Kevin Rowland – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, bass (1978–1987, 2003–present)

Jim Paterson – trombone (1978–1982, 1985, 2005–2016, 2021–present)

Sean Read – guitar, saxophone, keyboards, backing vocals (2013–present)

Michael Timothy – keyboards (2013–present)

Lucy Morgan – violin, viola (2003–2021, 2024–present)

Former members

Awards

1983 Brit Awards – Best British single (for "Come On Eileen")

Discography

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels (1980)

Too-Rye-Ay (1982)

Don't Stand Me Down (1985)

One Day I'm Going to Soar (2012)

Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul (2016)

The Feminine Divine (2023)

Love (2026)