(courtesy of Penguin Books)

In America, Kevin Rowland may be best known as the denim-dungaree’d street urchin crooning one of the biggest hits of the ‘80s, Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen,” on a Birmingham street corner. But there’s so much more to him than that, as detailed in his new autobiography, Bless Me Father: A Life Story. The book chronicles his journey from Catholic altar boy to troubled teen to unlikely MTV sensation to bankrupt cocaine addict, and the comeback that followed, culminating in Dexys’ critically acclaimed 2023 album The Feminine Divine and triumphant performance at 2024’s Glastonbury Festival.

To celebrate the release of Bless Me Father, I am running this interview, conducted around the time of The Feminine Divine’s release, which has never been shown in full.

For almost an hour, and with great candor and vulnerability, Rowland opened up to me about many of the topics covered in his memoir, like the Catholic guilt he suffered during his strict adolescence in repressive ‘50s/’60s Britain; the surprise success of “Come On Eileen” and the battles with both his record label and bandmates over its release; his previous deeply ingrained misogyny; the intense and unexpected backlash to his controversial My Beauty album cover; his experimentation with sexual expression; how he finally got sober; and much, much more.

Let’s make this precious, indeed. Watch our special conversation in the video above, and read it in Q&A format below.

LYNDSANITY: I’m really excited to speak with you, because I’ve been a fan for a long time, and there are long gaps between Dexys records. No Dexys album is the same, and I certainly people will be surprised by The Feminine Divine. What inspired this record? I know there was an eat/pray/love-style Thailand trip that sort of opened your eyes…

KEVIN ROWLAND: Well, I was just quite sort of down after the last Dexys album in 2016. My mum passed on at the end of that year also, so by 2017, I was just not feeling very positive — you know, when you lose your vitality and you don’t have any enthusiasm and don’t really know why. I just felt quite weighed down. And I just didn’t want to do any music. So, I started to do some courses here in England, and then one of them kind of led me to Thailand to develop it a bit more. That was a big factor. And one of the things that happened along the way is I started to look at women differently as a result of that. Going into my body more and getting out of my head, that was a bit of a revelation.

I’m curious about your thoughts about women and the concept of femininity. I know you grew up Catholic, and in an era where gender roles were maybe more rigid. What were the shackles of your old thinking that you wanted to throw off, so to speak?

Well, I didn’t even know that I had any shackles, do you know what I mean? Because that’s how entrenched they were. And I’m really nervous talking about this issue, because I do feel it’s a kind of a minefield… because there’s a lot of stuff around this at the moment. But I’ve only got my personal experience, and all I can do is just share my experience. What happened to me is I started to realize that I’d never really thought about women, or I didn’t realize that I had any shackles and until I started to start to get out of them. I did these courses and as we were doing some body work, they’re referring to women as “goddesses.” They were like, “OK, bring the goddess in.” I was just thinking with the first one, “She’s not a goddess!” So, I had some resistance to it. But as I got into it more and worked on my body more, got into my body more, it dawned on me what actually they are. And they’re actually really powerful. I hadn’t really thought of it, because I suppose I’ve been subconsciously part of this thing of repressing women.

Can you elaborate? I appreciate you talking about this. I know you’re nervous. You don’t need to be nervous with me. You do come from a transitional generation. You were on MTV and there were lots of cool, fierce women on MTV, but you grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s. You’ve seen a lot of change in your lifetime.

Yeah, but not only that, it’s the experiences that I’ve had. I won’t go into it, but I had a thing with a girlfriend. I was about 21, and I came out of that thinking, “You’ve gotta be tough. You’ve gotta be really tough. You’ve gotta be strong. You can’t show any weakness.” I don’t know when exactly I’d picked that up, but it was around that time. I probably already had it before that, but now I really had it. Because if you’re not tough, you’re gonna get screwed over. And that’s how I operated for a long time. And obviously it wasn’t very effective, wasn’t very positive or healthy. It’s all in the song “The Feminine Divine.”

You mentioned your mother passing recently. Did her death make you want to connect more to the feminine? Because for a lot of people growing up, their first goddess is their mother — the first woman they look up to.

I did think of her as a goddess, actually, or a saint, more like, because she was Catholic as well. It wasn’t conscious. I know people like explanations where this led to that, but I can’t say. But I do know that I just didn’t feel very good and I just realized this is wrong in my life, and I just started to look at all this stuff and try to improve myself. And as a result of all of that, it led me here.

There’s a line on The Feminine Divine where you say, “I had so much hate in me.” How did making this album, along with the trip and the coursework you did, help you hopefully get past that?

Oh, I think a few things have helped me, and it’s still a work in progress. I’ve probably still got a bit of hate in me sometimes, but,who hasn’t, right? It’s not just this album, but it’s cathartic, recording it and putting it out. What I need to not do is read the social media comments. That’s what I need to not do.

I know that you’ve been on the bad end that before, like, when you released My Beauty in 1999. Thankfully we didn’t have social media then, but you got a hard time for way you presented yourself on the cover. I don’t even know if I should call it “drag”…

Not drag. Not drag.

But you were wearing a dress. You were ahead of your time, actually. Now we would just call it gender-fluid clothes. I mean, we have got Harry Styles on the cover of Vogue in a dress. Bad Bunny wears dresses.

That’s it. I had a male haircut. I had sideburns. So, there was not an attempt to be a woman. It was just wearing a fucking dress. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.

I’m just curious about what made you, as early as 1999, want to toy with fashion like that. It kind of ties back to The Feminine Divine and the whole idea of what’s masculine, what’s feminine, what’s right for a man to do, what’s right for a woman to do. This is something you’ve played with throughout your life a little bit, and in your recent video for “My Submission,” you’re wearing lingerie.

OK. So ‘99, My Beauty, what happened is I got clean from cocaine and other drugs in ‘93. Then I had a couple of years I did rehabs and all that stuff. I had a couple of years where I didn’t know where the hell I was. And then I started to come out of that about late ‘94, ‘95. And then I just felt like I was kind of reborn, because I’d looked at my past and felt like I had a new lease of life. So, I wasn’t interested in being “Kevin Rowland of Dexys” … I’d fucked up so many things, I just didn’t want to talk about it. I just wished I was anonymous. I wanted to be the same as [the other patients]. I didn’t want to be different. So anyway, when I came out of there and started to think about things, I wanted to do music in a different way. And at that point at time, I was oblivious to my past. It was just like a blank slate. I felt like a new person and it was just like a first album. And I just thought, “Well, these are the songs that kind of guided me through, so I’ve gotta do these songs.”

And then about ‘95, I think it was summer of ‘95, I just thought, “Hmm, I’m gonna get paint my toenails and paint my fingernails. That’d be nice.” And then I just got some sandals and I thought, “Oh, you know what? I’ll be good with this.” It was like a Roman leather kilt, and I got one of those. And then one night, I often get inspiration as I go off to sleep, and I got inspiration for a dress. I drew it, a dress and makeup, and got it made. It just was that, really. I think the problems I ran up against, [critics] were either invested in Dexys as they were for the first three albums in the ‘80s. I felt that if I’d been a new artist, it might have been easier in a way, you know? I saw myself as a new artist. I didn’t see any connection with what I’ve done before. But of course, people were like, “Oh, this is Kevin Rowland from Dexys, and now he’s wearing this?”

Were you not prepared for the backlash?

I wasn’t prepared for it then, and it’s a shame because it overshadowed the music. Because the music was good. I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought it’d probably rustle a few feathers, but I wasn’t prepared for the response that it got at all. It was a shock to me. And it did affect me. I allowed it to affect me. Now, like I said, I need to stop. I’m going to get off [social media]. Facebook’s the bloody worst, because it’s all old guys.

All of this sort of ties into your biggest U.S. single, “Come On Eileen,” in a way. I read that you used to have a very Catholic view of sex and women, and “Come On Eileen” was inspired by that.

I mean, I never had any sexual education — as in none. The school didn’t tell me about sex. My parents didn’t tell me about sex. So, it was a secret. You’re 13 or 14, your body is starting to explode with these feelings, and it’s a secret. So, if it’s a secret, it must be “bad,” because you’re not supposed to be doing it or thinking about it or feeling like this, you know? So, I’d grown up with these Irish Catholic girls in my community and you’re not supposed to touch ‘em, but you want to.

Yes, because you’re human.

Yeah, exactly! [laughs]. But I didn’t see it like that. It was like, “Well, you shouldn’t really be having these feelings.” But you do, and you want to make it happen. But also, you feel terribly guilty because they’re Irish Catholic and you shouldn’t be touching them.

So, there’s a lot of shame, and self-hate factors into all that…

Yeah, all of that. But, you know, something good came out of it.

So, with the Catholic guilt and shame that you felt surrounding sex, it’s interesting that on side two of The Feminine Divine, there are some very sexual songs with BDSM undertones to them — or maybe more like overtones. It’s not subtle! These are bold things to sing about, especially given the preconceptions people might have about you and Dexys already.

I’m not saying that the album is 100 percent autobiographical, but guess that came from starting to see women as goddesses and realizing that, you know what, I don’t have to be Mr. Fucking Tough Guy. It’s all right to be feminine, and maybe I don’t have to be in control. I don’t have to be that. Sex doesn’t have to be all about penetration and all that stuff. But I just started to learn, not even learn, but just sort of face my own desires of things that were more subtle.

There’s one song called “I’m Going to Get Free.” Do you feel was this a freeing experience, making this record?

I do feel a bit raw now, I have to say.

Tell me why.

Well, because, like I said, I’m reading comments on social media. I’m going to delete Facebook and Twitter — and just keep with Instagram, because they’re cool. I don’t really get any really any negative stuff on [Instagram]; they all seem pretty open-minded. I know it shouldn’t affect me, but it does.

I’m sorry it does. I know we’re supposed to just sort of shrug it off, but…

Like I say, I don’t think it should affect me. I don’t want it to affect me. I sort of feel I should rise above it. … But I can feel myself just feeling a bit raw, because I’m putting myself out there on this album. I’ve served myself, soul-up, so people can just dissect it. I mean, it’s really stupid, because I’m just the kind of guy where I can remember one bad comment. I can quote lines from [negative] reviews in my head from the ‘80s. There’s one that used to haunt me. But then I met that [journalist] about 20 years later and I just thought, “What the hell was I worried about? This ain’t even a guy that I would be interested in what he’s got to say.” … This was a live review around the Don’t Stand Me Down period, and it was quite nasty. I think we upset quite a few people around at the time. Instead of doing interviews in England, we put adverts in their papers and we’d make a few jibes about [journalists] at the same time. So, when the time came, there were a few knives ready for us. But there you go. And then I saw the bloke later and I thought, “My God, what was I so bothered about?”

Did you ruffle feathers because Dexys didn’t stay in a box? As I said, you never sounded the same from record to record. I’m sure a lot of people wanted Too Rye Ay Part 2.

Yeah, definitely some people did. There was a few things really. But anyway, that’s history.

I know in England, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels was a very big hit album and “Geno” was a big hit song, but here in America you’re mostly known for the Too Rye Ay era and specifically “Come On Eileen.” Does that ever bother you that, considering all the things you’ve done before and since? I’ve always wondered why MTV and radio in the U.S. didn’t jump on the follow-up single, “The Celtic Soul Brothers.”

Well, the label in England, Mercury/Universal, didn’t actually want to release “Eileen.” They wanted to release “Jackie Wilson Said” [as the lead single]. It was only when the radio plugger listened to both, because I was arguing with the A&R man. I wanted “Eileen” and he wanted “Jackie Wilson Said,” and the plugger went “Eileen,” and that’s how it got released. But the deal with the label was they said, “OK, it’s gotta be ‘Jackie Wilson’ next, then.” So, [“Come On Eileen”] was four weeks at No. 1 in the U.K. It was the biggest song of the year. I didn’t want to follow it up with a cover version, which is what “Jackie Wilson Said” is. But we’d made a deal with the label and that’s what they said it has to be. But I think the American label said, “We don’t do cover versions, they don’t get played on the radio,” or something like that. … The [U.S.] label didn’t want to release the cover. So, we went with “Celtic Soul Brothers.” I mean, I don’t know how passionate the label were. … I think they saw us as a gimmicky thing, the way we dressed and everything. I don’t think they thought we were serious.

Were you surprised at the huge success that the “Eileen” song and video had? It didn’t look or sound like most of the bands coming out of England at that time.

Well, we were always trying to look and sound different. We were always looking at new ideas. We didn’t look like Duran Duran. We weren’t wearing what they wore. I was wearing what they wore, to be honest, in about 1978, ‘79. I’m not being funny; that’s what I was wearing, because I was in Birmingham and they used to go to the same club I went to. They were like the young kids on the block. That was a whole look. Roxy Music inspired all that. We were all Roxy and Bowie fans, and we were all wearing suits, the big frilly shirt, all that. But as much thought had gone into [Dexys’ denim overalls look] as anybody else, what anybody else was wearing. It was a lot of thought.

[The success of “Come On Eileen”] was a surprise, I suppose, because we weren’t even thinking about America when we wrote that. We were on our uppers a bit and we were in danger of being dropped by the label. We didn’t write it as a thing to try and be successful. We always don’t think like that. We always just try and write the best songs we can. I felt it was really good. I thought, “Wow, this one is really special.” But it was controversial. One of the guys in the band didn’t like it, and he was very vociferous about that. It was a lot to do with, like I said, we were on our uppers and people weren’t getting paid. And like, “Here’s Kevin with this new wacky song,” do you know what I mean? And was trying to get him to sing the “come on, Eileen, ta-loo-rye-ay” part, but and he was sort of doing it half-hearted. He was sort of making it clear to the rest of the band that he didn’t like it and was making a joke of it. … I was always nervous showing my songs to the band because in the back of your mind, you just never know; there’s always that nagging doubt that maybe this is complete and utter rubbish. So, I snapped and just went, “Well, if you don’t like it, fuck off!” And he did. And then Jim [Paterson], who had co-wrote that and the other songs on Too Rye Ay with me, said, “You can’t talk to him like that. If he’s leaving, I’m leaving!” And then Jim left. So, the band was kind of in tatters. Jim came back and did the album on a session basis, and one or two of the others did too, but it wasn’t really hopeful. The record company were pissed off with us. The previous couple of singles had been flops. So yeah, I thought it was a great song, but with the way things were at the moment, you just didn’t know.

I know Dexys never play the ‘80s nostalgia circuit, like those multi-artist revival tours. That’s not surprising considering that you don’t seem into nostalgia at all, but you easily could have done that and probably made a tidy sum of money. Have you ever been offered those opportunities?

Loads of times, loads of offers! I’ve never done it in the States. And I wouldn’t do it. Look, if I was completely broke for some reason and I had no life or not enough money to live, or if my daughter didn’t have enough money to live or something, I might. But I don’t think I would, because I’d hate it. I’d hate myself. I wouldn’t be able to do it.

It seems like you’re in a good place now, but you have had some hard times. I don’t know if that has anything to do with why there have been large gaps between Dexys albums in the past.

That’s got a lot to do with it. When you’re in addiction, or really when I’m in addiction — some people are different, they can work. But I can’t. When I was doing a substance, that was all I was interested in. That was my obsession. Now Dexys is my obsession. And before that, Dexys was my obsession. But when I was doing cocaine, cocaine was my obsession.

You’ve been sober or clean since 1993. Congratulations! I don’t know how many times you tried to get clean — with some people it sticks the first time, and others have to do multiple tries — but what’s your secret to lasting sobriety?

For me, it was realizing that I am completely screwed unless I do what these people tell me. Because I went along to the meetings and didn’t do what they told me, just stood there at the back and thought, “I don’t like these people. I don’t want to be here. Fuck them.” And I relapsed and it was straight back. I thought, “I’m gonna get the good times again.” I’d had a bit of clean time, so I thought I was going to get the good times like it was at the beginning. But no, it was right back where I’d left off: misery, despair, paranoia, crazy thinking that the police are coming in the windows, all mad, not being able to speak. It was horrible. I couldn’t stop. So, yeah, I was lucky. I got back in and I thought, “OK, this time I’m gonna listen to what they say.” And then when I really looked at it, when I did a study of what had happened, I saw that left to my own devices, I’m going [relapse] again. So, I better start doing what these people say.

How many tries did it take of you not listening before?

Well, I tried on my own. I tried on my own a lot. I used to go to hypnotists and all that. Went to two different hypnotists and they’d be playing a tape: “You will not be interested in cocaine anymore! It is no longer a part of your life! You have moved on!” I listened to that tape every morning, but it didn’t work for me. I joined a religion, which was basically a cult. That didn’t work for me either. And then I just went to the obvious place, meetings and recovery, and I didn’t listen to them either. But then, as I said, I relapsed, and then my second try of that way [worked].

It seems like you’re in a really good place now. Do you feel like you have a new lease on life?

I don’t know about that. I’m still breathing.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.