The book is called Bless Me Father, the phrase Catholics use when confessing their sins to the priest. There are some details I think might have been best revealed only in the privacy of the confession box. His family get a lot of mentions. Maybe I am just being prudish, but I can’t imagine they were too thrilled reading about his introduction to the sin of Onan and his subsequent struggles with it. Nor perhaps his detailed account of threesomes with women fans. Nor indeed his observations on his girlfriend’s knickers the night he unexpectedly returned home and found her in bed with someone else.

 It is also a reference to his difficult relationship with his Mayo father. His mother was a much more supportive and affectionate presence for him. Multiple times while reading it occurred to me that “Sorry, guys. I behaved like an idiot” might have been a better title. That particular apology, one of dozens in the book, was addressed to The Specials.

It was not uncommon for boys from an Irish Catholic background to want to become a priest. There may be a parallel universe in which Pope Kevin now sits in the Vatican, but in this one his prolific, comically unsuccessful criminality closed that door for him. He was constantly getting into fights, shoplifting, thieving and generally breaking his mother’s heart.

His theory is that he had what would now be diagnosed as ADHD and much of his life involved a variety of addictions, depression and incredibly volatile behaviour. He seemed to be forever punching people for real and perceived slights, on one occasion chasing members of another band through Birmingham with a four foot metal pole and getting himself arrested. Happily, he had the presence of mind not to punch the cops who arrested him as that would have seriously messed up his touring schedule.

As Kevin points out throughout the book, much of his bravado was concealing a lot of insecurity though this was sometimes an impediment to commercial success. In the early 80s the band was paid £25 000, an absolute fortune at the time to support David Bowie in Paris, then probably the biggest star in the world. When some Bowie fans at the front made it clear they wanted the main attraction rather than the support act Kevin was less than gracious and shouted “you silly c*nts have sat in a filthy muddy field, waiting all day, just to see David Bowie. You’re f*cking stupid because he’s nothing but a pale imitation of Bryan Ferry.”

Oddly enough, their PA was turned off immediately and they didn’t support Bowie again.

Blue Rondo à la Turk

The book has much of the usual musical autobiographical “we sacked the drummer because he liked Mud” sort of detail which may be important to the writer, less so to the general reader, as well as a settling of scores with bent or useless managers, accountants or record company executives. There is a longish section on how he was struggling to craft a visual and musical ethos which would have made them a Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran about a year before those two useless showers hit the big time. Observing that he hated them because they were doing what he’d set out to do he even retrospectively apologises to the justly forgotten Blue Rondo à la Turk.

Intentionally or not, some of his descriptions of his clothes, while clearly of massive importance to him are quite funny to those of us who aim for a more understated style. When was the last time you stepped out wearing a cummerbund, big trousers and bolero jacket or a rose pink satin suit with a mandarin collar?

The politics

We have to hope that Yvette Cooper doesn’t read this book. In between all the violence, creativity and addiction Kevin is also very political. Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ first single was a horn driven tirade against the anti-Irish racism that was universal in England at the time. A chapter that opens with him moving into a flat with Helen Bevington takes a six page detour onto his views on British imperialism in Ireland which concludes with the observation “the IRA made some horrific mistakes, but certainly no more than the British, and that very sadly, is war.” He also refers to the “astonishing bravery of Bobby Sands and the nine other Irish Republican prisoners”. This is not the memoir of a man trying to gloss over his youthful and continuing radical politics. He has been out canvassing with Corbynista election candidates and feels about Gaza the way all decent people do.

A happy ending and a true story

Throughout most of the book Kevin comes over as a very unhappy boy and man. His parents and teachers were no more violent than most Catholic parents and teachers of the time, but his sense that nothing he ever did was quite good enough for his father troubled him in a very profound way. That constant inner struggle meant that even at the peak of his commercial and artistic success he was always tormented. This put him on a path to bankruptcy and addiction which meant that at one stage he couldn’t afford a box of fish fingers and was getting a free bus pass to attend treatment sessions.

Mercifully, he had a reconciliation with his father, reconnected with his daughter, is producing decent new material and putting on great live shows from time to time.

Here is my true Kevin Rowland story, which shows that even though he might have been famously difficult in the past, he is a really lovely man.

A friend of mine was in a café a couple of years ago where he often goes. Dexys had just released a track called “I’m going to get free” and she told him that the sentiment really caught the way she was feeling then. At the end of the conversation, he asked for her phone number and said he’d put her on the guest list for a show in Southend. There were no tickets left for the London guest list because lots of his family had those. So, a few weeks later my friend and I turn up at the box office in Southend and tickets for two of the best seats in the house were waiting for us.

A massive thanks to Kevin for the tickets and the music and a brave book which sets the record straight and apologises to people who didn’t deserve to get hurt.