Career
O'Hara began her music career in her home town of Bristol joining Gunner Kade, a band led by Ken Pustelnik, drummer from The Groundhogs. She then joined a band called Wisper, who combined their solo career with backing various artists. 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 Bilbao Symphony.
She was 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 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 into Dexys. To fit in with Dexys Celtic image, she took the stage last name of "O'Hara". Within months she was touring the US as "Come On Eileen" reached #1 in the charts, and she was also in a personal relationship with Rowland.
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 through 1983 with a nucleus of Rowland, O'Hara and Billy Adams, augmented by other musicians. In early 1985, Rowland appointed O'Hara as Dexys musical director. That same year she, Rowland and Adams comprised the nucleus of Dexys that wrote and recorded Don't Stand Me Down.
She later commented that the American musicians that they worked with "couldn't quite make out my position in the band, and the whole thing." Some of the lyrics and songs from that album, especially "This Is What She's Like", were written by Rowland about her, which she said made them "pretty uncomfortable" to record. The lengthy, contentious sessions for that album strained both her relationship with Rowland and the trio at the core of that version of Dexys. Although Dexys returned to the charts with "Because Of You" (co-written by Rowland, O'Hara, and Adams) in 1986, and O'Hara's "fan club" letter in November 1986 discussed imminent recording sessions for a new Dexys album, she later said that at that point "Dexys were finished really" and the band broke up in 1987.
After leaving the band she worked with rock performers such as Graham Parker, Tanita Tikaram (with whom she recorded "Good Tradition") and Mary Coughlan. In 1990, she released a solo album entitled Romanza, with a backing band including keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, which was later reissued as Southern Hearts, and in 1998, she released her second solo album, A Night in Ireland.
