Speaking to At the Barrier journalist Peter Freeth and author of ‘Standing On The Shoulders of Giants’ Michael Daly, Kevin Rowland shares more of his insights, influences and aspirations.

Let’s Get This Straight (From the Start)

Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners fame was born in Wolverhampton to Irish parents. Moving back to Ireland as a young child he then returned to North London for his school years and later back to the Midlands. This cultural upheaval through the 1970s and 1980s created a perfect storm of personal and political dynamics. The result was a relentless creative drive and a search for personal belonging and self expression. Rowland’s autobiography, ‘Bless Me Father’, is out now and he has recently toured, talking about the life influences which informed it.

Nowhere Is Home

Torn between a need to settle and fit in during his time at school in London and a love of Ireland, Rowland felt that cultural pull from an early age. “It makes me emotional thinking about it, I absolutely loved it (County Mayo) and I still do. It feels like home, I feel I belong there. The music I loved and the easy going way of life, the things that people valued there were different. It’s not all about success and achievement and possessions.”

The lyrics of My Life in England echo this outsider’s view of English culture; “I felt awake but at the same time romantic, cut off and misty eyed. Their faces are so pained and melancholy, with smoke clouds on the side.”

The need to belong is a basic human instinct yet, for Irish immigrants, this often felt out of reach. “At school , other kids would talk about the Irish in a derogatory way, making jokes, poking fun at the uneducated, manual jobs. There have been research studies since the 1990s which show that Irish immigrants have worse health and worse life expectancy than natives, even compared to immigrants of other nationalities. There was awful racism in England.”

Searching for the Young Soul Rebels

Dexys’ first release in 1980, Dance Stance (aka Burn It Down), was written in response to this attitude. It marked Rowland’s first foray into standing up to the injustices of his youth. The lyric “Shut your mouth ‘til you know the truth” is a counter-attack, aimed at the English bigots who might celebrate names such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett or Eugene O’Neill without realising or acknowledging their Irish heritage. In short, don’t mock the Irish, we’re just like you.

“I wrote that in the late ‘70s in Birmingham. I just got so sick of hearing jokes about how stupid Irish people were. I felt such frustration because the people who were saying this were looking down on the Irish without knowing what they were talking about. I wanted to put some more Irish influence into my music but that wasn’t fucking welcome at the time, especially in Birmingham. The first time BRMB (the big radio station in Birmingham) played Come On Eileen, they apologised in case that offended anybody.”

“On the first album cover, we had a picture of people being evicted from their homes. It felt subversive to get this stuff in, to put little things in about Ireland, to say that I’m Irish and I’m not ashamed of it.”

“We started using fiddle and accordion and we opened Come On Eileen with Endearing Young Charms. By that time, I was saying, I’m fucking Irish and I’m proud. My manager, who’s English, said that people here don’t like the Irish. I said, I’m putting some Irish into my music and he said, it’s not a good idea. I didn’t listen to him, obviously.”

I’ll Show You

Imagine traditional Irish music and you might imagine fiddles and bodhráns played in a local pub, accompanied by singing, dancing and Guinness. What does this say for contemporary Irish music and the artists who grew up against this multicultural backdrop?

“There was Irish music around but in my family, there was an ambivalence about it. My dad’s view was that work is serious, music is not serious. He didn’t want to share the lifestyle of sitting around in social clubs, singing. I think because of the association with heavy drinking. He wanted us to integrate into English society.”

As Rowland wrote in the 1982 song I’ll Show You, “Alcoholics, child molesters, nervous wrecks and prima donnas. Jilted lovers, office clerks, petty thieves, hard drug pushers. Lonely tramps, awkward misfits, oh anyone of these.” Maybe this was the possible future that his father’s aspirations spared him from. To rise above these prejudiced expectations meant integrating with English culture, at least enough to develop new aspirations. If you can’t join them, beat them.

“We were Irish, but with our English mates, we were kind of English. My friends’ parents were Irish, but they weren’t interested in being Irish. They wanted to be at the forefront of British culture, we were all obsessed with it.”

Let the Record Show

Irish cultural influence, carried on a wave of immigration, easily wove its way into English and even global popular culture. There was enough shared history and language that the influence was familiar, understood, it made sense. The uneducated English natives rejected immigration in whatever its current form was. Whilst fitting in was tough for Irish migrant parents, their children, integrated through schools and new friends, found new ways to express themselves.

“The influence of the second generation Irish is massively disproportionate, there’s not an also-ran among them. John Lydon’s heritage was Irish and what he was doing was right at the front, stirring it up. Anarchy in the UK, those lyrics were great and he was such a great front man. Shane McGowan was at the forefront of punk. The Smiths. Cathal Smyth of Madness (aka Chas Smash), his dad was an Irish dance teacher. Boy George was cutting-edge, revolutionary. Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama and Shakespeare’s Sister. Jim Cregan worked with Rod Stewart and played the heavenly guitar solo on Steve Harley’s Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me).”

“Bands like U2, Boomtown Rats, The Undertones, they all brought Irish influence into mainstream British music. Even Robbie Williams claims Irishness. Kate Bush’s mother is Irish.”

Listen to This

It seems that the timing of this cultural influx can’t be a coincidence. Thatcher’s Britain, the miners’ strike, the poll tax riots, punk and the synthesiser all contributed to the rejection of the status quo and the embracing of difference. Kids could dress differently, hear different musical influences. They could make their own music without needing recording studios or the support of a record label.

Linguists Noam Chomsky and Stephen Pinker observed that immigrant workers develop a pidgin language, a mash-up of their native linguistic structure peppered with words of their new host culture. Their children, however, spontaneously develop a new, grammatically well formed language which is a merging of the two parent languages. Second generation migrants are often naturally bilingual or multilingual. Perhaps this cultural hybridisation is not only true for spoken language but for all forms of communication. Rowland, and his second generation cultural siblings, developed a new, fully formed musical and stylistic language. It wasn’t Irish culture transplanted, it was a shared culture transformed.

I’m Going to Get Free

Young people found a voice and had something to shout about. At a time when a generation of teenagers were searching for a new identity, cultural exposure to Irish sensibilities had arguably a greater yet more subversive influence than the Caribbean culture which spawned Reggae and Ska. Irish and English people looked alike and spoke the same language and infectious Irish rhythms easily found their way into mainstream culture.

On TV, Terry Wogan and Dave Allen showed that Irish people could be charming and funny without being the butt of the joke. Guinness took its place as a globally unifying force, bringing travellers into Irish pubs in every major city of the planet.

Musicians such as Kevin Rowland showed that music could be both raw and gentle, angry and heavenly, divisive and healing. In the words of that first Dexys release, “This man is waiting for someone to hold his hand, he doesn’t yet fully understand the meaning.”

Both Sides Now

Has the sense of Irish heritage helped or hindered Rowland’s career? “It has totally helped me, because I think it’s informed so much of my work. It’s just in me, the music, the lyricism. That Irish stuff touches me deeply, and that’s why I’ve been glad to put some Irish influences into my music over the years because I just needed to express it, the beauty of it.”

“I just think that there is something about the relationship between Britain and Ireland that I can’t even begin to describe. I did feel I had to work really hard, a sense that I had to prove myself. I don’t know whether that’s because my dad was very critical when I was growing up. He came from real poverty and maybe his desire to prove himself was passed on to me. I was too driven. I couldn’t see it at the time, but I definitely grew up with something of an inferiority complex because of being Irish.”

The Celtic Soul Brothers

There’s a strong sense of personal evolution, of moving from isolation to acceptance, from outsider to figurehead for a generation. Perhaps Rowland’s personal journey mirrors the journey of the Irish people, struggling against rejection to assert their own identity.

“I’m in awe of a lot of the people in Ireland,the prejudice they went through, fighting for their rights. They stuck to it and they believed in it and they fought for Irish culture. They just believed in what they were doing against all the odds.”

The words of The Celtic Soul Brothers sum it up best;

“Come on, my friends, I would now like to propose a toast,
To the strength that I see that’s surrounding me.
Because I’ve been scared but now I don’t care,
And I’m telling anyone who’ll listen.”

Bless Me Father: A life story by Kevin Rowland is published by Ebury Spotlight and available from 10th July 2025, ISBN 9781529958720.

Standing on the Shoulders Of Giants by Michael Daly is published by Genius Media and available from March 2026, ISBN 9781908293657

Kevin Rowland: Instagram

Dexys Midnight Runners: Website / Facebook / Instagram / X

Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube