Dexys Midnight Runners
O'Hara left Uncle Po in late 1977 to study music at Birmingham School of Music (now UCE Birmingham Conservatoire), graduating in 1982 with an offer to join the Madrid Philharmonic. However, after a stint with The Blue Ox Babes, a band founded by ex-Dexys founder Kevin 'Al' Archer, she had also been offered a place with Rowland's new line-up of Dexys—the result of a session she and two other violinists from the university had carried out as part of Kevin Rowland's decision to revamp the band's sound and image. Rowland has said that he saw O'Hara standing at a bus stop with her violin case and stopped to meet her. The more prosaic truth is that of the three violinists at the session she was the only one with any rock and roll experience, and therefore the only one to be able to play a solo by feel. This she did well enough to be immediately drafted in. Within months she was touring the US as "Come On Eileen" reached #1 in the charts. With the singles "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" (a Van Morrison cover) and "Let's Get This Straight (From The Start)" maintaining their popularity, the group continued to tour until 1983 with a nucleus of Rowland, Adams, O'Hara and Shelton augmented by other musicians.
In 1985 she was part of the nucleus of the band that wrote and recorded Don't Stand Me Down.
Read more about this topic: Helen O'Hara
Famous quotes containing the words midnight and/or runners:
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms,”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino’s windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds’ will.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)