Glasgow goes de-de-de-delirious for Dexys: 'I've never heard applause like it'

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I cried the last time I saw Kevin Rowland, the earnest front man and ringleader of Dexys, formerly Dexys Midnight Runners.

It was the 1999 Reading Festival, and Kevin Rowland made one of his first public appearances in over a decade off the back of releasing My Beauty, a bewildering set of covers that addressed a period of mental illness in his life.

Those tears were not of joy that the man behind more than THAT Come on Eileen song was back on stage. It was of despair.

It certainly was not because he dared to go on stage with a dress and pearls - after appearing similarly and with lingerie on the cover of My Beauty.

This was a time when mental illness and an acceptance of crossdressing was not front and centre of people's minds.  But Eddie Izzard had long since broken down some barriers over what was acceptable as a regular cross-dresser by then.

It wasn't even that his voice was flat and there was a disbelief that he would resort to being an awful cabaret sideshow, singing an out of key George Benson and Whitney Houston song The Greatest Love Of All.

More to the point, this true icon of UK popular culture and a national treasure was bottled off from an unforgiving section of the crowd.

He just didn't deserve it. This undoubted UK pop music icon appeared totally and utterly fragile.

I always felt that Alan McGee, the redoubtable Scots pop mogul and his by then struggling Creation label shouldn't have gone through with the project at that time and felt it smacked of desperation.

The Scot, responsible for breaking some of the finest bands the UK has seen, says that it was a "great record" even "a classic" and "it's just a pity the world couldn't deal with him dressed as a woman".

Many like me see it a different way. It was reported that the album was one of Creation's lowest-selling albums, shifting only 500 copies, but McGee said it actually sold over 20,000 worldwide.

According to the documentary Upside Down, McGee opted to close Creation soon after in December 1999 after he began to suffer burnout and disillusionment with the label.

Twenty-five years later and at the age of 70, Kevin Rowland's appears in Glasgow to be in a far far better place.

If there were to be any tears at all, it was through sheer relief that it seems that the mojo had returned.

And in the place of My Beauty is an accomplished return to form in the shape of the latest album, The Feminine Devine, which conjures up that irresistible combination of breast-beating, soaked-in-horns soul married to an inward-looking re-evaluation of life and a social conscience.

In Glasgow, and it surely can only happen here, we see a Kevin Rowland in the finest of form, free it would seem of any of the hangups he might have had - and truly enjoying himself.

The legendary Glasgow crowd certainly helped stir this pot.

Arriving from the Bandstand seats beside the audience, to make his way on stage, he struts in his mainly pink attire and dapper trilby hat, and for a moment he looks the spit of Kid Creole and is singing a sweet cover of the Bee Gees song To Love Somebody.

After a rousing oldie Tell Me When My Light Turns Green and three songs in he is confident enough to say the show was over. Only to smile and say quietly: "I'm joking of course."

By which time he has the hundreds gathered in raptures and they get noisier when he says: "What a fantastic response. It makes all the difference."

Someone shouts for the band's big song Come On Eileen, and Rowland hardly blinks as he retorts: "It might be on later. I wouldn't be surprised."

Before plunging into a stirring Coming Home, a new song from the last album, he even dares to do a broad Glaswegian accent, growling, "Get tae f***, ye b*stard", like a teenager that had just joyfully  mimicked something he heard in the school yard.

It is a world away from that awful sight of 1999 and enough to banish that memory for ever.

But we have not even got to his classic material and after a punchy Plan B and that other number one Geno gets a rapturous response he says: "You know, we like Glasgow, thank you."

It is the Too-Rye-Ay classic and Van Morrison cover Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile) that hits the spot, with the amalgam of up-front-horns and ethereal violin elevating it to new levels.  And the crowd went wild.

"I've never heard applause like it," says Rowland, looking genuinely stunned. "Amazing."

The audience then keep repeating the de-de-de-de-de-dede-de-de-de intro hook from the song with a level of gusto that it seems only Scots gig goers seem to muster in a parallel to that now oh so familiar 'here we f*cking go' chant.

Suddenly, we have morphed into an impromptu acapella, with the Glasgow party people doing the tune, needing absolutely no encouragement whatsoever, and Rowland going through some of the song again.

"Absolutely incredible," he says. It was.

Then Come On Eileen starts up. It is easily one of the most overplayed songs of all time, and ridiculously tars the band in some quarters with the one-hit-wonder brush.   It is ridiculous, because the band can afford to leave out a string of UK hits from this set headed by my favourite Show Me, and continuing with Celtic Soul Brothers (no less), the debut single Dance Stance, There, There, My Dear and Let's Get This Straight (From The Start).

It is sung with all the passion and fire that you might not have expected from Rowland these days - albeit in a lower register. He punches the air and says "f*cking great" as the boisterous audience go berserk.

As they leave the stage there is a mass refrain of the Jackie Wilson Said de-de-de-de-de-dede-de-de-de hook. And in a break to the norm, Rowland does the song again as part of the encore.

And that was that... and note, not a whiff of any of any of the 'classic' My Beauty to be seen. And not a single bottle. It is best this way.