Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland: Dexys star gives a powerful account of his life

Irish Times

6 days ago

Bless Me Father: A Life Story
Author
:
Kevin Rowland
ISBN-13
:
978-1529958720
Publisher
:
Ebury Spotlight
Guideline Price
:
£25
The Colonel and the King Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership that Rocked the World
Author
:
Peter Guralnick
ISBN-13
:
978-1399635295
Publisher
:
White Rabbit
Guideline Price
:
£35
Kevin Rowland
and
Dexys Midnight Runners
made three of the best albums of the 1980s. Now, it is time for him to tell some of the best stories. A press release announces this is Rowland's first book and 'he does not intend to write another'.
A previous effort to capture Rowland's extraordinary life in print was documented by Ted Kessler in 2022's Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures, where the former Q editor memorably wrote: 'The chemistry isn't right between us? Is Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners breaking up with me?'
Kessler's project was abandoned as Rowland felt his story should be told in his own voice, which makes
Bless Me Father: A Life Story
a breathtakingly raw and unvarnished read.
Rowland's vocals are a famously innovative take on a soulful croon where he sounds like he is crying. Sometimes, there is a slight sense of him gently sobbing when he writes. He seems incapable of acknowledging his talent and success, let alone daring to blow his own trumpet.
READ MORE
As its title suggests, Catholic guilt looms large. Rowland opts for a confessional tone that is remarkably candid, telling how a devoted altar boy, who often served multiple masses a day, transformed into a teenage truant who ran away from home and got into numerous brushes with the law.
Rowland had a volatile and estranged relationship with his father, who regularly beat him up and treated him like the black sheep of the family. One of the most moving aspects of Bless Me Father is how their relationship became tender and loving before Rowland's dad died in 2021 at the grand age of 102.
In addition to his trials and tribulations at home, Rowland became confused about his identity. He perfected a chameleon-like ability to change his accent when he returned to England from Crossmolina, Co Mayo, and yet again when his family relocated from Birmingham to London, where Rowland was forced to drop his Brummie burr and adopt clipped Cockney tones to avoid getting a hiding.
This constant need to look over his shoulder, both at home and on the street, contributed to Rowland becoming adaptable but anxious.
Clothes are a huge part of Kevin Rowland's story and identity. Photograph: Nicky Johnston
Despite morphing his accent, Rowland continued to follow Wolverhampton Wanderers while living in London. He witnessed England's triumph over West Germany at the World Cup Final in Wembley in 1966 and enjoyed a highly memorable encounter with Muhammad Ali.
Still cherishing the memory nearly 60 years later, he writes: 'My dad, a strict disciplinarian and a staunch Irish republican, dropping me off at Wembley Way, knowing I was planning to bunk into the World Cup final to support England. It was like a positive spell had taken over London.'
Unlike so many hackneyed rock memoirs about acts plagued by division and infighting, Rowland doesn't seem at all interested in settling scores. Instead, he proffers profuse apologies for past behaviour. He says sorry for ejecting two girlfriends of other band members off a tour bus due to his strict adherence to a no-partners rule, begging for their forgiveness if they happen to be reading.
His recollections of his years in the throes of cocaine addiction are harrowing. Ultimately, after a few false starts, he emerges as a survivor. Considering he once consumed a cocktail of a staggering amount of powdered ecstasy tablets mixed with lager, it is fortuitous that he has even lived to tell these tall tales. His experience of the early 90s was mad, rather than madferit.
Clothes are a huge part of his story and identity. A former hairdresser, Rowland rues the decision to change their look for a high-profile tour with The Specials before achieving breakthrough success. 'I feel we missed an opportunity to become the most culturally significant and coolest group of the 1980s,' Rowland laments. 'I have found it very hard to forgive myself for that decision. In fact, I've tortured myself about it over the years.'
The New Romantic look they dabbled with was ditched for dungarees, a look captured in the video of their career-defining hit, Come on Eileen, their second number one following Geno and also a chart-topper in the United States.
Kevin Rowland has raised the game for autobiographies by musicians at a time when they are in danger of becoming a predictable late career exercise. Photograph: David Corio/ Redferns
When Rowland signed a record deal he was already jaded and completely sick of the music industry. He garnered a fiercely committed fan base, many of whom have stuck with him to this day, yet he reveals his paranoia and scepticism extended to those who loved his group the most.
'I didn't even trust the fans who would come to wish us well after a gig,' he writes. 'I thought they might have agendas, having spoken to other band members about me.'
Rowland has gone through the mill and produced a powerful account of his life, but I'm not so sure if he realises just how great an achievement it is. Music memoir publishing has blossomed in the wake of Keith Richards' Life in 2010, and Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run in 2016. As the 21st century splutters towards the end of its first quarter, Rowland has raised the game for autobiographies by musicians at a time when they are in danger of becoming a predictable late-career exercise.
[
Passion, booze, madness and comradeship: Bruce Springsteen's special relationship with Ireland
Opens in new window
]
As Oasis dominate the headlines with their reunion tour trundling into Croke Park, this is a thrilling tale of how another second-generation Irishman with Mayo roots conquered a world of his own creation.
Rowland didn't enjoy fame when he was in the thick of it in the early 1980s, and there was also a messy and prolonged financial fallout, so he deserves to savour his terrific career and this marvellous book about a life less ordinary.
At both the beginning and the end of Bless Me Father, Rowland quotes lyrics from the Elvis song Follow That Dream, which Springsteen has also covered.
Elvis Presley and his manager Colonel Tom Parker are surrounded by armed services police in Hawaii, 1961. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images
Presley's veteran biographer, Peter Guralnick, whose books Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love are widely considered to be definitive accounts, now turns to Colonel Tom Parker, the mysterious Svengali figure said to have made Presley's success possible, in
The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and the Partnership that Rocked the World
.
He was neither a colonel nor a Parker, but a Dutch immigrant named Andreas van Kuijk, who entered the United States illegally when he was 20 years old, where he claimed he was American born, assumed a new identity and enlisted in the army.
In an era when immigration is yet again such a contentious powder keg, an illegal immigrant playing such an instrumental role in creating the Elvis phenomenon, which was arguably America's defining cultural export of the 20th century, is richly ironic.
Colonel Parker worked as a carny in a travelling circus and became inducted into the world of entertainment. He pioneered a gimmick called the Wedding on the Wheel, where he would visit a local courthouse and collect the names of every couple who had applied for a marriage licence. After choosing a couple at random, they were wed on a Ferris wheel and Parker procured them a dress, suit and a bridal suite from local businesses.
As a result of such early marketing masterclasses, Parker ended up working with Gene Austin and rejuvenated the prototype crooner's career. Seeking new challenges, the colonel expanded into management. Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips discovered Elvis, but Colonel Parker made him a superstar, steering him towards RCA Records and subsequently breaking every record in existence.
Presley sold a whopping 12 million records in 1956 alone and an Elvis song held the number one spot on either the pop, country or R&B charts for a staggering 80 weeks that year. His advice to Elvis at this thrilling, but terrifying juncture was three short words: 'Stay the course.'
Elvis Presley with his manager Colonel Tom Parker backstage before the singer appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, in New York in October 1956. Photograph: CBSNearly a half a century before the advent of social media, Presley's reputation was badly smirched by a baseless rumour claiming he had said: 'The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.'
Parker arranged for the star reporter of the black culture magazine, Jet, to come on to the set of Jailhouse Rock and interview Presley at length about his love of black artists and attending black churches in Memphis. The rumour subsided after the story was published.
While undeniably a damage-limitation exercise, Parker's actions appeared to be deeply sincere – he never forgot how an African American family cared for him as a young immigrant at a time when no one else seemed to care less.
Divided into two parts – Parker's story and a vast archive of letters – The Colonel and the King peels back the layers of myth, celebrity and the American dream, charting the giddy highs and sorrowful lows. Guralnick reveals Elvis was so stricken by grief following the sudden death of his mother that Parker looked after all the practicalities of the funeral and the acknowledgment of more than 100,000 condolence cards and letters from all over the world.
'While Elvis remained frozen in his grief, Colonel was just as clearly frozen in his inability to help the one person in the world he would have wanted to protect,' Guralnick writes.
Unlike most artist and manager relationships, Presley and Parker was a true partnership where profits were 50/50. Such a deal looks exploitative in the context of today's entertainment world, where the standard rate of managerial commission tends to be 20 per cent, but Parker stopped taking on other clients to focus all his time and energy into Elvis. Guralnick calls their relationship 'a unique confluences of forces'.
Often perceived as a cigar-chomping con man, The Colonel and the King presents a much more complex and nuanced picture. Photograph: NBCU Photo Bank/ NBCUniversal via Getty Images
All responsibilities regarding publicity, marketing, record and concert promotion were handled by Parker rather than being outsourced to other agencies, plus 50 per cent of his fee was reportedly pumped back into Elvis's business.
When dealing with Presley's tax liabilities – decades before Americans read George Bush snr's lips and voted for no more taxes – Colonel Parker said: 'Elvis and me got one job: to keep him in the 91 per cent bracket. It would be unpatriotic to go below that figure.'
Parker is often perceived as a cigar-chomping con man, but The Colonel and the King presents a much more complex and nuanced picture, which will contribute to the story of Elvis haunting popular culture forever.