You know Dexys Midnight Runners: Their lone American hit, “Come on
Eileen,” remains an indelible touchstone of MTV’s golden age, a
piss-and-vinegar Irish jig both unmistakably a product of its times and
utterly distinct from context. Skinny and scruffy in faded denim
overalls rolled ankle high, singing and dancing with banjos and fiddles
in hand, they helped usher in a new generation of UK blue-eyed
soul.
And yet you don’t know Dexys Midnight Runners at all. Throughout
their brief but brilliant existence, the group were every bit as
elusive and mercurial as their name promised, transforming from soul
revivalists to Celtic folk ruffians to polo-shirted pop sophisticates
in the span of three near-flawless albums. So it’s particularly ironic,
even poignant, that at the quarter-century anniversary of “Come on
Eileen,” the only label Dexys failed to transcend—one-hit wonder—is the
cruelest and least appropriate of them all.
Singer Kevin Rowland and guitarist Kevin “Al” Archer cofounded Dexys
Midnight Runners in Birmingham, England, in 1978, channeling their
sound and sensibilities from the UK’s northern-soul club circuit and
its attendant mod culture (including the amphetamine Dexedrine, the
rocket fuel behind many a northern all-nighter). The Dexys lineup
swelled to eight by the 1980 release of their breakthrough single
“Geno,” a heartfelt homage to R&B cult icon Geno Washington—their
acclaimed debut album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels,
followed soon after, evoking nothing so much as the classic Motown
sound caked in the dirt and grime of working-class Britain. Rowland’s
extraordinary vocals also summoned sources spanning from the R&B
mysticism of Van Morrison to the arch-romanticism of Bryan Ferry, but
while the inspirations were myriad and easy to spot, the album was
exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.
Rowland was also a world-class eccentric with kamikaze commercial
instincts. When he insisted upon issuing the radio unfriendly “Keep It
Part Two (Inferiority Part One)” as the third Dexys single, its
inevitable failure forced Archer’s exit. Rowland responded with the
so-called “Dexys Midnight Runners Mk. 2,” an even grittier and funkier
lineup that bootleg recordings and archival releases like the recent
The Projected Passion Revue reveal as the premier live
incarnation of the group. However, this roster recorded only three
singles, most notably the gorgeous “Liars A to E,” none to chart
success—so Rowland again shuffled the lineup, adding fiddle players
Helen O’Hara, Steve Brennan, and Roger MacDuff, and beginning work on
Dexys’ 1982 comeback effort, Too-Rye-Ay.
Expanding on Young Soul Rebels via influences of folk,
jazz, and gospel, Too-Rye-Ay recast Dexys as barefooted street
urchins seeking salvation through the power of music. Catholic soul
with a lowercase c, the record is Rowland’s call-and-response
communion with a spirit deeper and more meaningful than mere religion.
Highlights like “Let’s Make This Precious” and “Until I Believe in My
Soul” notwithstanding, as career-defining moments go, Dexys could have
done far worse than the closing “Come on Eileen.” For all its
infectiousness, it still seems remarkable that a record so profoundly
against the grain of the prevailing Billboard wisdom would
have ever entered the charts, let alone topped them.
Ragamuffin chic gave way to starched-shirt Ivy League couture with
Don’t Stand Me Down, a masterpiece of both rampaging egomania
and heartbreaking fragility. Rowland’s refusal to release a single from
the album inevitably spelled its commercial demise, but what at first
blush appears an act of pop-idol hubris on closer inspection seems more
a self-defense mechanism: The songs—uncompromisingly complex
meditations on love and country rendered in gorgeously muted hues—are
so deeply personal that Rowland obscures their meaning by engaging in
long-winded, hilariously mundane spoken repartee with foil Billy Adams
(the Jerome Benton to his Morris Day). Never before was a collection of
love songs so combative or so demanding—critics and fans hated it,
Dexys dissolved, Rowland retreated, and “Come on Eileen” entered the
purgatory of Jack FM playlists, VH1 retrospectives, and “Where Are They
Now?” features.
What goes around comes around, and with Rowland reportedly working
on the first new Dexys material in over two decades and a two-disc
25th-anniversary reissue of Too-Rye-Ay on tap, their influence
is more pronounced than ever, pointing the way for present-day British
soul revival acts like Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone, and James Morrison. A
generation on, Dexys remain like no other band before or since; they
wrought clarity from contradiction and forged innovation from their
influences—theirs is music about music itself, its power and glory
romanticized, challenged, and made real.