Redemption song
It is 1982. I am at the school disco, a party at the village hall or at Cinderella Rockafellas in Gloucester. I have sat out as Duran Duran have been down to Rio, Spandau Ballet have gone in search of Gold, but then there is that familiar opening three beats on a drum and bass before the fiddle kicks in and everyone, me included, gets to their feet and heads to the dance floor, because Dexy’s Midnight Runners are being played. Me, yes, I always preferred the earlier, harder sound of Geno and Dance Stance, but it is 1982 and everywhere, but everywhere is the sound of ‘Come on Eileen’, its infectious Celtic melody getting under our skins and making us dance!
It is 1992. I am in Dudley, at a party in the summer back garden of a friend. I am being introduced to a man I have never met but somehow feel I already know. He has about him an easy, calming charm that I am drawn to and want to know more about. I offer him a cigarette, he accepts and I ask him how he spends his time. ‘I’m a musician’, he replied. I probed a little further and discovered that he was the bass player in Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I didn’t quite drop to my knees, bowing and chanting ‘I am not worthy’ but I did say ‘wow’ and ask him more. Pete Williams joined the Dexy’s in 1978 and was an integral part of the first incarnation of the band that recorded ‘Searching for the Young Soul Rebels’, one of the great albums of the Twentieth Century. He had played Top of the Pops more times than he could remember and had very, very much enjoyed being a pop star. Then, at the back end of 1981, exhausted and skint, three quarters of the band walked out on Kevin Rowland, the front man of the band because his ego had just gotten too big. Kevin quickly assembled a new line up of more compliant musicians and set about recording a song that the old band had been working on for a few months. It was called ‘Come on Eileen’.
Pete was the single most talented man I ever worked with, and for six short years, was also one of my best friends. He was a brilliant performer and a wonderfully creative partner on a variety of shows that we wrote, produced and toured during the middle of the decade. In the car on the way to gigs, or in the hotel afterward, I would always get him to tell me again about what it was like being a pop star and he would patiently tell me stories I loved to hear. But his tales were always tempered by a certain unspoken, gently burning resentment, especially of Kevin who had engineered the politics of the band so that only he, Kevin Rowland, made any money. ‘Geno’ in particular, although not in the league of ‘Come on Eileen’ had been a massive hit single, the album too sold very well and there were Greatest Hits packages and other compilations that should have seen Pete doing very well out of mechanical, if not publishing, royalties. He never got a penny and spent years living only just above the bread line. There had been talk of lawyers, but he had been advised that success in the courts would cost him as much as he was likely to receive in back payments, such was the Byzantine nature of the tangle that would need to be unravelled. But despite his reservations and an itch at his core, he never openly bitched about Kevin, never really complained about the fact that he had seen no reward for his efforts. Rather he chose to remember the laughs and the drugs and the girls. But his eyes gave him away.
It is 1999. I am living in Brighton. I have recently returned from America and am building a new life on the south coast. There is no room for people from my old life so, on the way back on the ship, I had ripped pages and pages out of my address book and threw them into the Atlantic Ocean. Pete’s was one of them. There was no bad feeling, just an acknowledgement that it was time to move on. And then, somewhat surprisingly, I find as I am in a seaside café having an all day breakfast, that I am sitting at a table next to Kevin Rowland. I am gripped by an overwhelming desire to push his face into his soup, only bringing him up from his tomato choking to ask him just what he has done with my mate’s money. I know the answer of course – he has shoved it up his nose- for it is a well documented fact that Kevin had a serious cocaine problem, but nevertheless I wanted him to know that I knew that he was a thieving little shit. I was furious: all the controlled resentment that Pete had looked after for nearly twenty years was having its expression in me. I didn’t do anything though. I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him very hard in a way that meant ‘I am not staring at you because I know who you are, but because I know what you are.’
It is 2003. I am standing at the front of the crowd at the Warwick Arts Centre. On stage are Dexy’s Midnight Runners and it is the final song of the night and they are singing ‘Come On Eileen’. On the left, Kevin, in a pin striped suit, and there, on the right, amazingly, is Pete. During the introduction to the song, he looks down and sees me. He gives me a lovely, big smile, his eyes light up and he mouths ‘Dave!’ and gives me a thumbs up. The band has been touring for a few months and they are tight and hot and everyone is dancing. Pete is as brilliant as ever (he is actually a much better singer than Kevin) and he is plainly having the time of his life. And then, half way through the song, Kevin starts to busk some lyrics and he sings. ‘It’s twenty one years since I sang this song, but now I’m back again to right all the wrongs.’ When they walk off, they have an arm round each other’s shoulder and they are smiling and I realise that something redemptive and good has happened: the power of forgiveness is so much bigger, so much more joyous and good than that of bitterness and resentment.
The next day, Pete phoned me and as he sat around on a coach waiting to go to Finland for the last leg of the tour, he told me how it came to be that he and Kevin are once again sharing a stage. ‘He phoned me out of the blue’, said Pete. ‘He said that he was very, very sorry and that he would like to try and get the original band back together to record some new stuff and go out on tour. He knew what he had done was wrong. It’s nice to be able to sing ‘Eileen’. I never got the chance first time round.’
It is 2009. I am at the Village Hall Christmas Party. ‘Come on Eileen’ comes on and everyone gets up to dance. Me included. Our friends and neighbours smile as they dance and I look at Helen and I smile as we dance and I remember Pete and Kevin smiling at each other at the end of their redemption song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBmKYS8fOFo
David Izod December 2009
