Kevin Rowland
British singer
Kevin Rowland (born 17 August 1953) is a British singer and musician best known as the frontman for the pop band Dexys Midnight Runners (known as Dexys from 2003 to 2026). The band had several hits in the early 1980s, the most notable being "Geno" and "Come On Eileen", both of which reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.
Early life
Rowland was born in Wednesfield, Staffordshire (now West Midlands), on 17 August 1953 to Irish parents from Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland, and he lived for three years in Ireland from the age of one year old before returning to Wolverhampton. The family moved to Harrow when he was 11 and he left school aged 15.
Before his music career, Rowland worked as a hairdresser.
Career
Rowland's first group, Lucy & the Lovers, were influenced by Roxy Music and turned out to be short-lived. His next project, the punk rock act the Killjoys, were slightly more successful, releasing the single "Johnny Won't Get To Heaven" in 1977.
Alienated by the punk scene, Rowland, together with Killjoys guitarist Kevin Archer, formed a new soul-influenced group, Dexys Midnight Runners. Many of the group's songs were inspired by Rowland's Irish ancestry and were recognisable through Rowland's idiosyncratic vocal style. On forming the band Rowland thought it was "important to have a vocal style", he later recalled, "and I had the idea of putting that 'crying' voice on", partly inspired by General Johnson of Chairmen of the Board.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kevin Rowland” is british singer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kevin, Rowland and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q335788. VIAF identifies the subject as 19866838. The Library of Congress control number is n94115751. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2003, 2026 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kevin Rowland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.