''Don't Stand Me Down'' is the third studio album by English pop band

Dexys Midnight Runners Dexys Midnight Runners (currently officially Dexys, their former nickname, styled without an apostrophe) are an English pop rock band from Birmingham, with soul influences, who achieved major commercial success in the early to mid-1980s. They a ...

, released in September 1985 by

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it is ...

. The title of the album was inspired by a line in the album's song "The Waltz". The album was released three years after their second album, the internationally successful '' Too-Rye-Ay''. At the time, Dexys' lineup had been pared down from ten members to just four: vocalist/guitarist

Kevin Rowland Kevin Rowland (born 17 August 1953) is a British singer and musician best known as the frontman for the pop band Dexys Midnight Runners (currently called ''Dexys''). The band had several hits in the early 1980s, the most notable being "Geno" an ...

, guitarist Billy Adams, violinist

Helen O'Hara Helen O'Hara (born Helen Bevington; 5 November 1956) is a British musician. She was a member and violinist of Dexys Midnight Runners from 1982 to 1987, including performing on songs such as "Come on Eileen", and in 2021 rejoined the band. Early ...

, and saxophonist Nick Gatfield, the last of whom left the band after the recording sessions were completed. These four members are pictured on the original album cover in suits (and, for the men, ties), in what Rowland referred to as an "

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

" or "

Brooks Brothers Brooks Brothers, founded in Manhattan, New York, in 1818, is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in America. Originally a family business, Brooks Brothers produces clothing for men, women and children, as well as home furnishings. B ...

" look. The album was a commercial failure upon release, and its rejection by both critics and the public resulted in the group's disbandment in 1987. The album was later described as a "neglected masterpiece" by ''

Uncut Uncut may refer to: * ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship * ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997 * '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...

'', and was selected as one of the ''

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die ''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' is a musical reference book first published in 2005 by Universe Publishing. Part of the ''1001 Before You Die'' series, it compiles writings and information on albums chosen by a panel of music critics ...

''. In 2002, EMI and Rowland co-operated on a remastered "Director's Cut" edition of the album, which included an additional song added to the tracklist and expanded liner notes.

Recording

Because the band's lineup had been reduced to a quartet by the time of the recording, a number of performers and session musicians filled the other roles during the lengthy recording sessions, including

Vincent Crane Vincent Rodney Cheesman (21 May 194314 February 1989), known professionally as Vincent Crane, was an English keyboardist, best known as the organist for the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster. Crane co-wrote "Fire", the 1968 hit sing ...

(ex-

Atomic Rooster Atomic Rooster are a British rock band originally formed by members of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, organist Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer. Throughout their history, keyboardist Vincent Crane was the only constant member and wrote ...

) on piano, Julian Littman on mandolin, Tim Dancy (who had been

Al Green Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), better known as Al Green, is an American singer, songwriter, pastor and record producer best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including " Take Me to the River", ...

's drummer) on drums, Tommy Evans on steel guitar, and former Dexys members "Big" Jim Paterson on trombone, John "Rhino" Edwards on bass, and Robert Noble on organ and synthesizer. In an interview with

HitQuarters HitQuarters was an international music industry publication and contact database founded in 1999. It was noted for its in-depth interviews with industry figures, as well as its A&R and manager contact directory, free artist promo pages and song ...

, saxophonist Gatfield described the recording as a "long drawn out painful process". Gatfield, who did not play on ''Too-Rye-Ay'', felt that the new album marked a telling and troubling shift from it, as unlike that record, which he claimed was made very inexpensively and "had an energy about it", ''Don't Stand Me Down'' cost a huge amount of money and, according to Gatfield, "felt uncomfortable and unnatural". O'Hara expressed a different perspective in a newspaper interview accompanying the reissue of the album. O'Hara, who had been part of the ''Too-Rye-Ay'' band, said that "it became clear that Kevin wanted to experiment more musically" than the record company was comfortable with, and that, even before the album was released, "it was obvious that nobody was really going to promote it." To her, the best thing about ''Don't Stand Me Down'' was "that it got released at all", but the lack of commercial success was "quite hard to deal with, particularly for Kevin." On the original issue, just

Alan Winstanley Alan Kenneth Winstanley (born 2 November 1952) is an English record producer and songwriter, active from the mid-1970s onwards. He usually works with Clive Langer. His early career during the mid-1970s was as an audio engineer, working on album ...

and Rowland were credited as producers, but Adams and O'Hara were added as co-producers in 1997, when the CD was reissued on Creation Records; at the same time, the titles to two of the songs were changed.

Reception

The album was a commercial failure upon release, in part due to frontman

's refusal to do publicity for the album or to release a single from it. An edited version of "

This Is What She's Like "This Is What She's Like" is a song by Dexys Midnight Runners, released on their third studio album ''Don't Stand Me Down'' in September 1985 by Mercury Records, and in November 1985 as a single. The song is credited to Kevin Rowland, Billy Ad ...

" was eventually released as a single, backed with part one of "Reminiscence", but the two-month delay from the album's release to its release led to the single missing the charts entirely. Some reviewers were highly critical, with "

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference to ...

" characterizing the release as "a torpid snore that denies entertainment on every level", although writing in the ''

Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. It was founded in 1926, largely as a magazine for dance band musicians, by Leicester-born ...

'', Colin Irwin described it as "quite the most challenging, absorbing, moving, uplifting and ultimately triumphant album of the year". The album is now considered something of a lost treasure: it was featured in ''

'', published in 2006 by Universe, where it was referred to as "a towering achievement... a ''

Pet Sounds ''Pet Sounds'' is the 11th studio album by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on May 16, 1966, by Capitol Records. It was initially met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the United States, peaking at number 10 on th ...

'' for the 1980s". Writing for ''

'' in 2007, Paul Moody called it a "neglected masterpiece".Paul Moody ''Uncut'', March 2007, p.10. Rowland remarked in 2008 that "I don't want to think about it too much because I want to think about what I'm doing now, but I remember coming out of the studio thinking, 'That's the best I can do.'" In 2008, Bob Stanley of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' commented on the album's failure, noting that it "emerged in a far less adventurous era than the one ''Too-Rye-Ay'' was released into. New mavericks on the block such as

the Smiths The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982. They comprised the singer Morrissey, the guitarist Johnny Marr, the bassist Andy Rourke and the drummer Mike Joyce. They are regarded as one of the most important acts to emerg ...

and

the Jesus and Mary Chain The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid. After signing to independent label Creation Records, they rele ...

were entirely ignored by

Radio 1 Radio 1 or Radio One most commonly refers to: *BBC Radio 1, a music radio station from the BBC ** BBC Radio 1Xtra, a digital radio station broadcasting black music *CBC Radio One, a talk radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporatio ...

. The same happened to Dexys, though it was their own fault – no single was released from the album."

Reissues

1997 Creation CD

In the 1990s, Rowland purchased the rights to ''Don't Stand Me Down'' from Mercury and decided to license a digitally-remastered CD reissue of the album to

Creation Records Creation Records Ltd. was a British independent record label founded in 1983 by Alan McGee, Dick Green, and Joe Foster. Its name came from the 1960s band The Creation, whom McGee greatly admired. The label ceased operations in 1999, although ...

, which was releasing his current material. The album was issued by Creation in 1997 (CRECD154), and the cover of the album was changed to a shot of just Rowland and Adams from the same photo sessions as the original cover. Rowland's new sleeve notes, entitled "Foreword to the Second Edition", discusses the changing of two of the song titles from the original release: "Knowledge of Beauty" became "My National Pride", and "Listen to This" became "I Love You (Listen to This)". "My National Pride" was the original title of the former song, but Rowland "didn't have the courage to title it that when it came around to the artwork." In addition, the writers of the

Warren Zevon Warren William Zevon (; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003) was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician. Zevon's most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money", and " Roland the Headless Tho ...

song "

Werewolves of London "Werewolves of London" is a rock song performed by American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. It was composed by Zevon, LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel and was included on ''Excitable Boy'' (1978), Zevon's third solo album. The track featured ...

" were given co-writing credit on "One of Those Things", which uses the Zevon song as a background theme. Finally, two extra tracks were added to the release: "Reminisce (Part One)", recorded in the spring of 1983 prior to ''Don't Stand Me Down'' (and released as the

B-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...

to the reissue of "The Celtic Soul Brothers" that year), and a version of "

The Way You Look Tonight "The Way You Look To-night" is a song from the film ''Swing Time'' that was performed by Fred Astaire and composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics written by Dorothy Fields. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. Fields remarked, " ...

2002 Director's Cut

During the mastering process for the Creation release, a stereo enhancer was used, which both Rowland and original recording engineer Pete Schwier felt "ruined the dynamics." As a result, Rowland ultimately licensed the tracks to Dexys original label,

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

, to release a third and definitive version of the album in 2002, subtitled ''The Director's Cut''. The tracks were again digitally remastered, but without the stereo enhancer, and the CD featured new artwork, further notes by Rowland, and the additional track "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time", but excluded both of the extra tracks on the Creation release. The cover photo was changed to a photo from a contemporaneous but different photo session of Rowland, Adams, and O'Hara strolling in a park wearing "preppy" clothes (which had been used as the back-cover photo on the Creation reissue). According to Rowland, the album now sounded to him "as it was intended to sound." The extra tracks added in the Creation release were excluded, but another new track was added. According to Rowland, "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" had originally been intended to be the opening song (with the introductory lyric "My name is Kevin Rowland, I'm the leader of the band" and, in a later verse, a "joke" of sorts, to "kick off the proceedings"), but was left off the original issue of the album due to his perception at the time of a "dodgy drum beat" at one point; it was restored for ''The Director's Cut''. Rowland penned two pages of notes relating to the track, as well as a new "foreword to ''The Director's Cut''", while also including his sleeve notes from the Creation "Second Edition". A limited-edition version of ''The Director's Cut'' had a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

disc included, featuring videos for the songs "This Is What She's Like", "My National Pride", and "I Love You (Listen to This)", directed by Jack Hazan. Rowland penned another page of notes regarding the videos. The booklet shows, in a two-page spread, a photo from the video shoot, with Dexys as an eight-piece band, with Rowland, Adams, and O'Hara in the foreground. All three videos feature footage from this set. While "This Is What She's Like" includes footage of Rowland and Adams walking the streets of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and "My National Pride" shows the band in pastoral scenes evocative of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, "I Love You (Listen to This)" is shot entirely on this set, dark, with a single spotlight on Rowland, no other band member visible, just various angles on Rowland singing the verses and choruses—the majority of the song—until the final instrumental ride-out, when Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, and the rest of the musicians are finally seen for a few seconds.

Track listing

Original 1985 version

#"The Occasional Flicker" (

) – 5:49 #"

" (Billy Adams,

, Kevin Rowland) – 12:23 #"Knowledge of Beauty" (Helen O'Hara, Kevin Rowland, Steve Wynne) – 7:01 #"One of Those Things" (Kevin Rowland) – 6:01 #"Reminisce Part Two" (Kevin Rowland) – 3:31 #"Listen to This" (Billy Adams, Kevin Rowland) – 3:19 #"The Waltz" (Kevin Rowland, Steve Torch) – 8:21

1997 Creation reissue

#"The Occasional Flicker" (

) – 5:51 #"

" (Billy Adams,

, Kevin Rowland) – 12:23 #"My National Pride" (Helen O'Hara, Kevin Rowland, Steve Wynne) – 7:01 #"One Of Those Things" (Kevin Rowland) – 6:00 #"Reminisce (Part 2)" (Kevin Rowland) – 3:23 #"I Love You (Listen To This)" (Billy Adams, Kevin Rowland) – 3:19 #"The Waltz" (Kevin Rowland, Steve Torch) – 8:27 #"Reminisce (Part One)" (Kevin Rowland) – 5:50 #"The Way You Look Tonight" (

Jerome Kern Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over ...

Dorothy Fields Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1904 – March 28, 1974) was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Her best-known pieces include "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936), "A Fine Romance" (1936), "On th ...

) – 2:17

The Director's Cut

#"Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" (Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, Kevin Rowland) – 5:05 #"The Occasional Flicker" (Kevin Rowland) – 5:49 #"This Is What She's Like" (Billy Adams, Helen O'Hara, Kevin Rowland) – 12:23 #"My National Pride" (Helen O'Hara, Kevin Rowland, Steve Wynne) – 7:01 #"One of Those Things" (LeRoy Marinell, Kevin Rowland,

Waddy Wachtel Robert "Waddy" Wachtel (born May 24, 1947) is an American musician, composer and record producer, most notable for his guitar work. Wachtel has worked as session musician for other artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, Kim Carnes, Randy N ...

) – 6:01 #"Reminisce (Part Two)" (Kevin Rowland) – 3:31 #"I Love You (Listen to This)" (Billy Adams, Kevin Rowland) – 3:19 #"The Waltz" (Kevin Rowland, Steve Torch) – 8:21

Release notes

*"One of Those Things" has a riff taken from

's "

". For the 1997 re-release, Rowland admitted in the liner notes that he had used the riff and consequently Zevon and his co-writers, LeRoy Marinell and

, were given writing credits on the song. *"Reminisce (Part Two)" includes "I'll Say Forever My Love" (James Dean, William Weatherspoon, Stephen Bowden).

Personnel

;Dexys Midnight Runners *

— bass, rhythm guitar, piano, vocals, producer, liner notes * Billy Adams — lead guitar, rhythm guitar, vocals, producer *

— violin, backing vocals, producer * "Big" Jim Paterson — trombone * Nick Gatfield — saxophone, backing vocals *

— piano * Tim Dancy — drums * Julian Littman — mandolin * Tommy Evans — steel guitar * Bob Noble — organ, synthesizer * John "Rhino" Edwards — bass * Tyrone "Crusher" Green — drums on "Listen to This" * Mick Boulton — piano on "The Waltz" * Randy Taylor — bass on "Knowledge of Beauty" *

Woody Woodmansey Michael "Woody" Woodmansey (born 4 February 1950) is an English rock drummer best known for his work in the early 1970s as a member of David Bowie's core backing ensemble that became known as the Spiders from Mars in conjunction with the relea ...

— drums on "The Waltz" ;Technical *

— producer * Pete Schwier — engineer, mixing *

John Porter John Porter may refer to: Politicians * John Porter (portreeve), 1390–94, Member of Parliament (MP) for Taunton * John Porter (Illinois politician) (1935–2022), Illinois politician, U.S. Representative * John Porter (MP for Bramber) (died 1599 ...

— mixing on "Kevin Rowland's 13th Time" * Peter Barrett — cover design * Kim Knott — photography * Claire Mueller — photography * Jack Hazan — director * Arun Chakraverty — engineer (reissue) * Nigel Reeve — project coordinator (reissue)

References

External links

''Don't Stand Me Down''
(

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) at

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(streamed copy where licensed) {{Authority control Dexys Midnight Runners albums 1985 albums Albums produced by Alan Winstanley Mercury Records albums