page_title: Dexys Midnight Runners
section_title: Too-Rye-Ay, stardom, and turnover
hierarchical_section_title: Dexys Midnight Runners / History / Dexys Mark II: 1981–1982 / Too-Rye-Ay, stardom, and turnover
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Dexys Midnight Runners en concert à Zürich en 1982.
context_page_description: Dexys Midnight Runners are an English pop band with soul influences from Birmingham, who achieved major commercial success in the early to mid-1980s. They are best known in the UK for their songs "Come On Eileen" and "Geno", both of which peaked at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, as well as six other top-20 singles. "Come On Eileen" also topped the US Billboard Hot 100, and with extensive airplay on MTV they are associated with the Second British Invasion.
  During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dexys went through numerous personnel changes over the course of three albums and 13 singles, with only singer/songwriter/co-founder Kevin Rowland remaining in the band through all of the transitions and only Rowland and "Big" Jim Paterson appearing on all of the albums. By 1985, the band consisted only of Rowland and long-standing members Helen O'Hara and Billy Adams. The band broke up in 1987, with Rowland becoming a solo artist. After two failed restart attempts, Dexys was reformed by Rowland in 2003 with new members, as well as a few returning members from the band's original lineup. Dexys released their fourth album in 2012 and a fifth followed in 2016.
context_section_description: As Dexys prepared to record their first album for Mercury, Rowland decided that he needed more proficient string players to achieve the sound he envisioned. He sent Speare to invite Bevington to join Dexys, which she agreed to do, and Rowland gave her the Irish-sounding stage name of Helen O'Hara. Rowland also asked her to recruit two other violinists; she brought fellow students Steve Shaw and Roger Huckle, whom Rowland renamed as Steve Brennan and Roger MacDuff, and Rowland named the violin section "The Emerald Express". However, the need to rearrange all the songs for both strings and horns left the brass section of Paterson and Maurice (and to a lesser extent Speare) feeling that their role in the band had diminished. Thus, just prior to the recording sessions, Paterson and Maurice quit. Rowland was able to persuade them to remain in Dexys long enough to record the next album .  Shortly thereafter, Speare also joined their planned departure.
  This fractured line-up recorded Too-Rye-Ay in early 1982 with producers Rowland, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley. The album featured a hybrid of soul and Celtic folk, similar to Archer's new direction. All of the post-breakup singles and the Projected Passion Revue material were re-arranged and re-recorded with the new lineup. The new sound was accompanied by the band's third new look, with the band attired in dungarees, scarves, leather waistcoats, and what was described as "a generally scruffy right-off-the-farm look", or "a raggle-taggle mixture of gypsy, rural Irish and Steinbeck Okie".  Rowland jokingly said of the new image: "These are my best clothes. Again it just feels right for the music. Everybody else is dressing up sort of straight-laced and pretty down-to-earth and we come in wearing these and it's like, y'know here we are, a bit of hoedowning is even possible".
  The first single, "The Celtic Soul Brothers" (cowritten by Rowland and Paterson with Mickey Billingham), which was released before the album, only reached number 45 on the UK charts.  After the failure of this single, O'Hara said that the band believed that they immediately needed a hit single to survive.  To help create momentum, the band performed a live BBC Radio 1 concert in Newcastle on 6 June 1982, which was the last appearance of the horn section of Paterson, Maurice, and Speare with Dexys.
  Released right after the live appearance, Dexys' follow-up single, "Come On Eileen" (cowritten by Rowland and Paterson with Billy Adams), became that much-needed hit – a Number One hit in the UK, which also became Dexys' first single released in the United States (and second in North America, after "Seven Days Too Long", which was only released in Canada) – where it peaked at #1 in April 1983 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The third UK single from the album, Van Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", also reached the top 5 in the UK singles chart. The band sang this song on the UK comedy The Young Ones. When the band performed this single on the BBC TV music show Top of the Pops, instead of a picture of Jackie Wilson, the American soul singer, the band performed in front of a photo of Jocky Wilson, the Scottish darts player.
  The horn section became known as The TKO Horns and continued working with Too-Rye-Ay producers Langer and Winstanley, just as The Bureau and The Blue Ox Babes had continued working with Pete Wingfield. To replace them, Dexys added saxophonist Nick Gatfield and used various session musicians, including Kevin Gilson (saxophone) and Mark Walters and Spike Edney (trombone).  Soon thereafter, Billingham also left the band but continued to appear with Dexys on a session basis until the end of the year, when he joined General Public.
caption: Dexys Midnight Runners in Zürich in 1982. Photograph by Ueli Frey.
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