Dexys

“Number 12, Flat 5,” explains Kevin Rowland, with the sort of finite detail that had many call him a megalomaniac and others call him a genius after Dexys Midnight Runners followed Geno from 1980 debut Young Soul Rebels with Come On Eileen in 1982.

We’re talking about his escape from London to Sussex Square in Kemp Town in the mid-1990s – namely because Brighton played its part in the triumphant return of Dexys.

“I loved my neighbours and I loved the space Brighton allows you.

“It was 1995, 1996, before that boom. I got a place cheap and it was a bit like going back in time.

“Now Brighton is a bit slicker, with the catchy slogans on the buses about ‘our city’ and so on. It’s got a bit jazzy but the essence is the same.”

Following the disaster of his second solo effort – covers album My Beauty, with Rowland ditching the dungarees for drag and being bottled on stage at Reading Festival in 1999 after appearing in a white dress to sing Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love Of All – came the seven-year itch.

“I felt like I’d escaped London and it helped creatively. It helped me think what I really wanted to do, to be out of the noise of London.

“I made some good friends. But I missed London. I wanted to be stimulated again.

“I decided to leave Brighton after six or seven years – but it took me another five or six to do it. Finally, I had to force myself. I’d been talking about it for ages.”

London calling

In 2007, he moved to Shoreditch, East London. It’s from his new place off Brick Lane he’s speaking to The Guide.

“That was the spark to get back in the studio. It’s a lot harder to live here. It’s hectic. I felt I wanted that after sleepy Sussex Square. Creatively, it helped.”

Reviews for the comeback record, One Day I’m Going To Soar, have been positive.

Twenty seven years after Don’t Stand Me Down – a record panned on its release, as the band dropped the ragtag robes for corporate 1980s-styling and laboured over its writing – Rowland has made another album with depth and sensibility.

As is the Dexys way, the line-up has been reshuffled.

“Big” Jim Paterson, the eloquent trombone player, is back. Mick Talbot, once of the Style Council, is on keys. Midnight Runners founder member Pete Williams returns. Fiddle player Lucy Morgan, like Talbot, is a veteran of 2003. Madeleine Hyland, who provides a counter-point for the boy-girl vocals, is the most notable newbie.

After the drugs and the meltdowns, Rowland, now 59, has mellowed. Yet the creative intensity is always bubbling under the surface.

Many of the 11 tracks on One Day I’m Going To Soar were developed in Kemp Town, so they have been cooking for years. He refused to release something he didn’t believe in and has penned his most honest lyrics.

“Do I trust my inner voice? One thing I do trust is the work, after all the things I’ve been through. The one thing I have is my work. If an idea comes, no matter what it is, if it is pure and it feels right, then that is exactly how it is supposed to be.”

Nowhere Is Home, a slice of Al Green-ish sorrowful blues, was developed in the 1990s.

“I went shopping in Sainsbury’s in London before I moved to Brighton and I walked into the café and Glen Matlock was there. He said, ‘All right, want a cup of tea? Do you want to write a song?’

“I went round the next Thursday with a couple of records – Johnny Nash, Hold Me Tight, I think – and we found a chord sequence and rhythm and I started singing melodies over it.”

He finished it off alone – as he prefers to do.

It was the same with Lost, written with Blur bass player Alex James at his home, and fleshed out on the South Coast.

He hates to rush things. The recording process was two songs at a time, six days in the studio and then a few weeks off.

“That way you don’t get studio fatigue. If you do 12 tracks it can feel like a production line. We wanted to capture a performance on each one.

“I’d take a tape home with all the different versions and put them on while I was doing the washing up. Mick would do the same. We’d pick out a guitar line or the brass and keep it.”

The title came quicker.

“I woke up at about 3am and I wasn’t happy with the way I was conducting myself with people. I thought, ‘One day I’m going to soar’.”

The final signoff on a song is his.

“It’s certainly not a democracy. But it is not a dictatorship. I’ve got the vision, and everybody adds to that vision and I’ll ask what people think of this or that version.

“I ask everyone, not just the band – people who are not involved in music, people in Brighton too.

“Just by asking questions I find the answer.”

For Rowland, Brighton’s always been a hard place to leave. He was back only last week.

“I was there on Sunday. I still haven’t changed my opticians, after five years – Bromptons in Gardner Street. And I seem to lose about two pairs of glasses a year, so I’m always down there.”

• Brighton Dome Concert Hall , Church Street, Thursday, September 20. Doors 7pm, £25. For more information, call 01273 709709.