“ The look – the visual creation and expression of an identity – is part of the very essence of rock & roll.” Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone said this in 1995. And for Dexys Midnight Runners it was nothing short of vital.
Not that the band needed it at all, or as one might first suspect. With the insurmountable swagger of a thumping horn section, the lingering swell and burn of a Hammond stab and the vociferous and athletic soul address of the cantankerous Rowland – it was a potent enough brew anyway – regardless of what they were wearing. Thesedays, great clothes may lead us naturally to assume that there’s nothing behind them to back them up; that fashion demonstrates by over-production, a fundamental absence of substance and personality. But in the hands of Kevin Rowland, the clothes, the look became the conduit through which Dexys’ mighty theatre of the soul could be realised. The clothes were more than a reference point, they provided the blood, the flesh and the bones upon which everything else stood. From the torturous, spiralling octaves of ‘Tell Me When The Lights Turn Green’ to the ecstatic release of ‘This Is What She’s Like’ the tough mean streets look, the boxer boots, hoods and sweatpants, the dungarees and the wild gypsy locks, the shirts and the ties bore us through the critical stages of nothing less than spiritual cleansing and redemption. Whilst ‘Come On Eileen’ pitted the pretensions of outrageous love against the backdrop of a quick knee trembler and the ravages of an ordinary life, ‘Geno’ sought the transcendent and sublime in the sweaty confines of a London club. Rowland delivers his mighty rhetoric with the fervour and intensity of a fallen-angel: a priest of love. And his assembly? The unlikely hopeless cases of the street, the town where you live: angels with dirty faces, those kids on the street, those resigned to what their fate is. Some seek truth through scaling the lofty heights of academia, Rowland seeks it within the hopeless and the obscure, the commonplace, the ordinary – and I defy anyone to argue for a more finely staged public pursuit of purity, than what you have here. ‘Lets make This Precious’, ‘Show Me’, ‘Plan B’, ‘Until I Believe In My Soul’, ‘There There My Dear’ – it’s there in the very titles: the relentless pursuit of truth, perfection and consolation.
The Christian Gnostics believe that when the seeker has achieved true gnosis – when they’ve perceived the truth – they are exempt from sin and error thereafter. Rock journalists believe much the same. When a true visionary has transformed a generation once in his lifetime, it’s nothing less than scandalous to expect them to keep transforming our lives. Rowland has taught us how to live, how to fight, how to learn and how to love. What more could we possibly ask of him?
There’s really no words to express how beautiful the songs, how beautiful the soul, how beautiful the execution: my bombers, my dexys, my high.