PELLICCI’S is an East London institution. Dating from 1900, this family-run café is an old-school, Art Deco hold-out amidst the nearby hipster joints. One regular customer attests to its status as a local cultural treasure: “It’s a valuable place,” says Kevin Rowland as he takes a seat at one of the Formica tables. Today Rowland is as well-dressed as ever – in a light-grey, checked soft cap, high turn-up blue jeans, blue-striped white Breton jersey, “fine-meshed”, he advises, “to keep out the rain”, and white shoes. Kevin Rowland in 2023 is surprisingly buoyant. There’s no evidence of the tense, isolated figure who struggled to deal with Dexys Midnight Runners’ success during the mid-’80s and his own cocaine addiction in the 1990s. He’s relaxed, friendly even, as he passes the salt and brown sauce to the diners sharing our table and greets the arrival of a plate stacked high with vegetarian sausages, chips and beans with genuine relish. “I’m never going to eat all that! That’s lovely, mate. Bless you!” According to Pellici’s staff, the secret to Rowland’s stomach lies in the sausages: “When you think they’re cooked, cook ’em again, and again. And then they might be cooked…”
This is how Rowland makes records, too, from the marathon sessions for 1985’s masterpiece Don’t Stand Me Down to the two years of painstaking demos for their last album, Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul (2016). Seven years on from Let The Record Show…, The Feminine Divine is finally ready, offering a typically ambitious brew of blissed-out soul, bedroom funk and tragicomic dialogues, this time focused around his evolving masculinity and attitude to women. Combining revised versions of songs first written during the ’90s with a new song-suite, it’s yet another fresh start for Rowland.
Rowland has, it transpires, been through radical changes in his time away. In 2017, he began quietly visiting Thailand for long periods to restore his physical and mental health. In the process, he found a
