Frocky horror

He's asleep on the train in a frayed white T-shirt, dark brown, corduroy ankle-length skirt, black tights and trainers. An old-fashioned briefcase contains publicity photographs of him in a white satin, crotch-skimming camisole, underwear and stockings alongside a girl in a bikini; in others, he's wearing a Basque and suspenders, next to a shirtless, muscular man playing the congas, three angels and a guitarist dressed as a cowboy. Kevin Rowland, formerly the voice of Dexy's Midnight Runners, is feeling the strain. 'Four years ago, I was just going off to sleep and I found myself visualising wearing a dress, so I got up and drew it, took it to someone and had it made.'

One sweltering day later, at his home on the South Coast, Rowland, now wearing little more than shorts and sun block, is attempting to straighten out the misconceptions surrounding his clothes and his comeback. He is promoting his first record for 11 years, a cover of the old Unit Four Plus Two song 'Concrete And Clay' from which, 16 years ago, he pilfered the chord sequence for his own chart-topper 'Come On Eileen'.

All across town, there are giant posters of him in a royal blue dress, lipstick and pearls, underwear and stockings. 'I wear all sorts of clothes,' he is at pains to point out. 'Sometimes, I feel quite macho. I'll wear a dress one day, but the next I might wear a suit. What's the big deal?' Mind you, he did wonder. 'Am I gay? Or maybe I'm going to be a transvestite. Maybe the next step will be wearing a stuffed bra and a wig. The first time I wore a dress was round to a friend's house and I was so embarrassed. It took courage. I told him I would come over and that I'd be wearing a dress and he said, "Yeah, great."' People think it's a scam or merely the latest in a line of Rowlands looks, from the woolly hats and donkey jackets, through the ponytails and boxer boots, to gypsy dungarees and the Ivy League suits.

His response is unequivocal. 'It is not an image, it's me. It is my self-expression. I am not a musician. That's someone who sits in his bedroom practising licks. I am a recording artist, and visuals have always been important to me. When I was younger, I used to put on nice clothes and do my hair, and girls would like me, and that was nice. I am proud to be a man, but who says I've got to wear a suit or trousers? Who says I can't enjoy the lovely softness of these fabrics? It makes me feel good. A nice fabric feels soft and kind of sexual. I have always loved soft things, but felt it was a weakness to admit it, or that it was sissy.

This is fun, and I've cut off that side of me for a long time. I've now started going around buying fabric and saying, "Yeah, I like this."' All his life, Kevin Rowland has felt ugly. Inside and out. 'My soft, sexy side has been suppressed because of my fear that I am not OK. I don't know who I am. I used to like it when people were intimidated by me because it stopped them getting close and seeing the real me, which was flawed. I had this notion that I had to be tough to survive and not show weakness or I'd get fucked over.'

In his heyday, Rowland had two number one records and, it appeared, a steel-hard grip on his destiny. His first hit, the brass-blasting 'Geno', was in 1980. It name-checked soul singer Geno Washington, but it was about soul singer Kevin Rowland. Three years later, the fiddle-driven 'Come On Eileen' went one better, topping the charts in the US and UK. Dexy's was no ordinary pop group. Rowland refused to talk to the music press, beat up journalists, banned alcohol at concerts and hated every other group. His fan club was called the Intense Emotion Circle. Yet, for the man in the gypsy dungarees, it was all too intense.

By 1987, with record sales plummeting, he wasted into the embrace of cocaine, Ecstasy and, briefly, heroin. He plunged from celebrity to bankruptcy. He took to meditating beneath a blanket where, he believes, he discovered God. He went to hell. His biggest fear is that the return ticket might still be valid.

In an exhausting two days with me, he patiently dredges up memories he probably wishes he could forget. A lot could be made of his childhood: difficult, strict, beatings at school. But it can be dangerous to overanalyse, and Rowland has already spent a long time in counselling.

Born in Wolverhampton in 1953, Rowland was the second youngest of five children, his mother a housewife, his father a builder. When he was one, the family moved to County Mayo, Ireland, where his earliest memories are of the rustic colours of his grandfather's small farm. Aged four, it was back to Wolverhampton. At 10, it was Wembley then Harrow, north London, where he was badly bullied, burdened by an accent 'broader than Noddy Holder's'.

He stole and got caught. Often. The nuns at his primary school had words with his ½ µ mother. The head at the Catholic secondary school - one of three he attended - simply reached for the cane. 'I was getting into trouble, but I was trying not to. I broke into scout huts. Art galleries were a speciality. I'd hang around pretending to admire the paintings then nick the owner's purse. I once came into school with a big wad of notes I'd stolen and took all the kids down the caff.

'It wasn't enough for me just to be a normal kid. I was compulsive. I smoked from 11. I needed money for that, so I had to steal. I had to have loads of sweets. I was the kind of kid who felt under pressure. At school, I couldn't really hold my pen properly. I would grip it so tightly my arm ached. Even today, I find learning difficult.'

On a table in Rowland's living room is a teach-yourself computers guide and a floppy disc labelled 'lyrics'. A drug-help manual shares the bookshelf with Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, biographies of Elvis and the plays of Eugene O'Neill. There are CDs by Lauren Hill, Massive Attack, Van Morrison, Lennon, Family, the Four Tops and, yes, Dexy's and three videos: Steve Coogan, Dennis Pennis and The Sound Of Music.

Rowland had been in court four times by the time he left school at 15. 'I would have ended up in prison, no question. Music saved me. I loved it from really early. I remember singing that one "I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home." I had that down when I was three. I was one of those kids at school who would just get up and sing. People would smile and girls would send me little notes in class.'

There were bands: one, two, three. Four was Dexy's. Punk had come and gone and music had returned to being dull. From nowhere came an eight-strong gang with the songs, the stance and the soul. Dexy's Midnight Runners were born, playing Sixties music cut with a dash of punk, and with taped announcements, including one of a train noise, replacing between-song patter. The first gig, to bemused Saturday lunchtime boozers in a Wolverhampton pub, was a disaster. But with camaraderie the fuel, Rowland was flying. There were drinking binges, fights and more thieving. It was Dexy's against the world and he remembers thinking 'fucking great'.

By this time, he was on a suspended sentence for violence, having attacked a group of men outside a Birmingham pub with a length of scaffolding. 'It was such a mission. I lived and breathed it. I was so driven and everyone else was willing. We were number one and we went down to London on the train to do Top Of The Pops for 'Geno' and I still insisted we bunk the fare.

I remember Stoker (the drummer) saying: "We don't have to do this Kevin, we're number one."' Rowland was determined not to stick to the formula, wouldn't, in his words, 'stop bunking the fare'. 'The pressure got too much. It got too intense. All the humour went out of it. I couldn't handle it. I was feeling way out of my depth. We had chart success and a whole new audience, but I was not prepared to court that audience. I turned tyrannical, after which the group left. The paradox was, I really wanted success.'

His reaction was typical. He changed everything - sound, clothes, band - and got what he craved, in bucketloads. 'Come On Eileen' lit up the charts for weeks. But for Rowland, 'life got very dark'. 'It was deliver, Kevin; there's a US tour, Kevin; they want you in Germany, Kevin.' When he tried to step off the treadmill by changing the formula - releasing an album but no single - things really fell apart.

On its re-issue in 1997, the Don't Stand Me Down album was hailed a classic, but in 1985, few had time for its mix of scripted, spoken dialogue and 11-minute songs. Bits of it were like a musical. One song, 'Knowledge Of Beauty', was originally pro-IRA. The LP bombed, theatres were half empty and, despite a solo album, the music industry kicked him out, with relish. Asked now to explain that record, he points to the purple chiffon draped from his living-room walls and windows. 'The woman who put that up said, "If you let it, the fabric will speak to you and show you which way it wants to go." That's what it's like with music. By that time, I felt like a machine to make money for people, so I said, "Right, sell this."'

Rowland is often recognised. He is no more comfortable with it than he was back then, but here, on the South Coast of England, on home territory, many of these interruptions are unintentionally comic. As we walk around the corner to the newsagents, he spots someone he knows. The man is carrying a large travel holdall. 'Been on your holidays?' asks Rowland. 'Nah, down the launderette,' the friend replies and invites the singer 'for a Chinese' later in the week. Another man asks directions to a hotel. 'What's it called?' asks Rowland, having failed to hear first time. 'Rowlands,' the man repeats, straight-faced. Indoors again, drinking tea, he reflects. 'I loved celebrity for a couple of weeks, but I felt a fraud. I felt I had to act. I felt ugly and exposed. I did not feel glamorous. I felt shit and vulnerable. I thought that if I got on Top Of The Pops once, no one would put me down again. It didn't work. My self-esteem was so low I felt unworthy of everything. It felt like it exposed my core and my core was ugly. I wouldn't smile, and people would say, "He's so angry," but I was just terrified.'

Silence. Thirty seconds of it. I start to feel intrusive. 'I feel like that again lately. It is getting too much and I have to be careful. I feel fucking scared, scared I'm going to fuck it all up, unworthy, ugly. Those feelings are never far away.' Before we began, he had asked for space - time to answer my questions. 'The more you give, the better it will be.' But the pauses are getting longer, and it is hard to know if he is waiting for the next question, still considering the present one or, eyes closed, is lost to the past.

Listening to those old songs now, with the benefit of hindsight, you can hear trouble coming. He puts on one such track: his vocal so out, it is little more than a strangled howl of anguish. Disc jockeys found it unlistenable. Rowland turns away, close to tears. He's had it with the head games and charades. He wants to tell it as it was. But whatever fresh light he can now throw on events back then, whatever explanation, he now has for his behaviour of old, the songs and the strategy stand. I have known Kevin Rowland for 20 years and he has great instincts. Much of what he began - his attitude to the press, image changes, the sheer bravado of it all - became pop currency. I'd hate for that to get lost in the fog of subsequent events.

He returns, quieter. 'I remember as a little boy combing my hair back and wetting it with water, because I didn't have any grease, and turning my collar up to look like Gene Vincent or Elvis. Elvis to me was beautiful, so full of love, so loving. All I wanted as a kid was to be a good singer. Back then, I could sing without frowning. It would be nice to get back to a place where it was that easy. I remember being in a club out of my head in the late Eighties and someone said to me, "I liked your band, but why didn't you just stick to the music?" And I remember thinking, "Yeah, you're right, why didn't we?"'

There'd always been drugs. 'I don't know if it was amphetamine or puff first, but when I had the chance I didn't flinch. In the early days of Dexy's, we would go on binges. We were playing London and got a load of speed and downers. Some took speed, some took downers and some took both. Some of us ended up walking around London all night, some of us ended up being carried, and one of us finished in hospital having his stomach pumped.

'I had a strict Catholic upbringing and when I was younger its influence figured large. You would have found me defending it a few years back, but I know now the way it affected me was no good. I was such a Catholic about everything. All the stuff in Dexy's about banning drink was just me saying, "I am not going to be an alcoholic. I am not going to be a drug addict. I am not going to be a fuck up."'

In 1987, with the music business closing its doors and his self-esteem at an all-time low, he sought out cocaine. At his worst, he was spending £360 a night. Friends and family were frozen out. 'I was with a girlfriend through most of that and I put her through an awful lot. The wife of a good friend called me saying she was worried that I was changing, and I told her to fuck off and slammed the phone down. 'Drug dealers were my gods. When they said, "Jump," I said, "How high?" They were the people I'd drink with because they had what I wanted. I'd court them and even lent one of them money. I licked their arses.'

He was evicted from his flat in West Hampstead, London, and went bankrupt, owing £180,000. He got a shabby place in Willesden, stopped paying the rent and squatted. But, as the royalty cheques dried up, so too did his supply. 'I was only living for those moments when I had drugs. The time between was very depressing. I felt about 90. I was a down and out. What belongings I had were in cardboard boxes. The post was unopened. There was no one left in my life. I had no money, and when I got it, I would have a binge. I just ended up on my own in my bed and, eventually, life was so dull and grey it was unbearable.'

In 1993, he saw a poster for a religious cult. 'I used to go there at six in the morning and put a blanket over me and meditate with them. They said there was a woman in India and God was talking through her. They told me the world was going to end and we were going to go into a golden age. We were the conscious souls, the chosen ones.' To Rowland, rudderless and adrift, this sounded like good news. 'I wanted to believe it so badly. I was not speaking to any member of my family. My friends had all gone. I was bitter. I thought about ending it. I didn't want to live.

They had an idea of not drinking, taking drugs, eating meat, fish, eggs, smoking cigarettes. I stopped the lot. Before I knew it, I had been four or five weeks without drugs.' He confesses: 'It did me harm going there. I was fertile ground after abusing myself for so long, the turmoil I'd been through, and losing everything and everybody.' The next day, out in the sunshine, he wants to add something. 'I found God there. I felt peaceful, better than I had for a long time. But it involved stopping everything, including sex, even thinking about sex.'

But he couldn't do it, and left. 'I thought I had turned my back on God.' He takes the next bit slowly. 'My attitude to sex and my own sexuality, my own body and nakedness, has been something I have had to struggle with and try to change. I thought sex was great, but it was wrong. I felt guilty, and thought low of a woman for letting me have sex with her. Women were either saints or prostitutes. Because of the way I was, I have not been able to have a fulfilling adult relationship.'

He had a daughter at 20. It would be 17 years before he saw her. 'I abandoned the mother five months pregnant. The relationship was ending, it was on-off, on-off, but I did think about marrying her. I was completely irresponsible back then. I thought children were a nuisance, a by-product of sex.' A Father's Day card is on the mantelpiece. Are they close? 'We're working on it. It's a damaging thing to do to somebody, to abandon them before they are even born.' There's a photograph on his wall of him with his arm around a smiling young woman. Daughter? No, counsellor. It wasn't easy for Kevin Rowland to step into the world of treatment centres and self-help groups, a place where he wasn't a rock star, just an addict. 'I was a big shot, a legend in my own head, and I couldn't deal with how far I had fallen.' The first time, a friend took him. 'He conned me. He said he'd take me to this place in Chelsea and we'd see a few people we recognised. I thought I was going to a glamorous party, because it was Chelsea, and that he meant there'd be a few faces from the scene. I walked in, took one look around and thought, "Oh, oh..."'

As if in preparation for this conversation, he had first listened in meditative silence to 'The Greatest Love Of All', which opens his new album, My Beauty. The song concludes with the most wonderful and life-affirming delivery of the word 'love'. It was love, he says, that opened him up in those naked confessionals. That and loneliness. It was a struggle, and there were many lapses, but he stuck with it. When he emerged, clean, from six months in a secondary treatment centre in Clapham, he wanted nothing to do with music.

'People would tap me on the shoulder and say, "Didn't you used to be in Dexy's?" It's like when you have a broken leg and people ask you how you did it. The first few times, it is all right, then you get fed up giving the same answers. I am not great with that side of it. I remember being in a restaurant in London in 1983 and seeing Boy George. George was outside signing autographs in all his regalia, big hat and everything, for a crowd of small girls. I sneaked out in disguise. Celebrity highlighted my low self-esteem. I feel like it again lately. I find myself becoming more and more obsessed with my work when I am scared and I have become like that in the past few weeks. I am struggling a bit... 'It is good for me to talk about this,' he says unexpectedly. 'I am still so driven, and I need to get out of that. It is dangerous and will lead me back to drugs.'

In August 1996, he signed to Creation Records and next month releases an album of cover versions, remarkable not least for the fact that it ever got made. There isn't to be another Dexy's album but, during the drug years he had been working on an album of his own songs, in between binges. He even got close to deals before his habit derailed negotiations. That record will be made, as part two of a trilogy. This record, on the other hand, had to be made, he says.

'I was having group therapy and I was nothing but confused. Someone had an guitar and played these old songs. Every now and then, I would hear a song - like 'Long And Winding Road' - that made more sense than the therapy. There was a time when I felt innocent, when I had a glimpse of something. What happened? I got lost, I reached a dead end and had to go back.' From 'You'll Never Walk Alone' to Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' via 'Daydream Believer', Rowland was as surprised as anyone at the song selection. 'If you asked me what I was into in 1970, I would have said reggae. But these were the songs that I would hear on the radio and they were the soundtrack to my life. It was like I was going to back to find what I had lost.'

He heard one listening to Capital FM and another in a cafe and picked the first 12 that came along. The only criteria were that every one of them made him cry. Don't be misled.This is his record, and it is not easy listening. It is Kevin Rowland up close, uncomfortably so sometimes. If he cried while he sang, he left it in. At the end of the month, he'll play at the Reading Festival. He wants it as badly as ever. He's trying to take his foot off the gas, but he's as obsessive and driven as he always was. It scares him. He says he doesn't know what the future holds. 'All I know is that I needed to make this record.'

Right now, all he needs is a break. We have talked ourselves dry and drunk a lot of tea. We head out. A bare-chested, berry-brown man in his fifties approaches us. The singer greets him like an old friend and asks how he's been. 'Kevin,' the man says, 'compared to where I was, I'm having a ball.'

Beauty is released by Creation Records on 4 October. Concrete and Clay is out at the end of this month.

• Kevin Rowland
• The Observer

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