Kevin Rowland: ‘I couldn’t ever see myself doing the music again. I was violently against it'

I met Kevin Rowland for lunch on the day before his 70th birthday. The Dexys frontman had tried hard to ignore the previous 20 or so milestones, he says, hoping they’d go away, but he had plans for a celebration this time around. There are plenty of reasons to cheer his hard-won threescore and 10: he has an album of new music out, a tour of the UK, Europe and the US about to begin, and he has exorcised a fair few of the demons of his past.

We’re at the Riding House Café, a busy brasserie off Oxford Street in London. Rowland is conscious of not straining that soulful, vulnerable voice before the three months of touring, so we have retreated to an outside table away from the indoor clatter. He likes the associations of this place, because it’s where he and the band came after their