with the greatest pleasure
Even fewer teeth short of a mouthful, but is Shane MacGowan growing up?
A COUPLE of days ago, I got an alarming phone call. "Something's happened to Shane," the caller said. "But I'm not allowed to tell you what it is. He'll be calling you himself to tell you."
Shane MacGowan, the person being referred to, is not a person who leads a quiet life and therefore the fact that something was up wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the mysteriousness of whatever was up. What could possibly have happened to warrant this level of secrecy? Had Shane been kidnapped?
I lived with Shane for most of my adult life, so I was accustomed to strange goings on, but I got worried and insisted he speak to me immediately.
A few moments later, Shane came on the phone sounding slightly sheepish. Plans for a trip that we had been making were being postponed, he announced, because of an "Incident". An "Incident"? I asked. What kind of an "Incident"?
Shane had, he confessed, been set upon in a bar in Belgravia, a nice part of London. The man had followed him to the toilet and for no apparent reason had severely beaten him with what he described as a "bit of scaffolding". Shane suffered a fractured cheek and is nursing a black eye. Which will be all right, he assured me, because he can wear shades.
For most people, the idea of a loved one being attacked and beaten up is a shocking thing and quite upsetting. And indeed, it was upsetting for Shane to have been hurt. But there was a time in the history of our relationship when Shane was more often than not causing the trouble; a time when I regularly saw him get involved in physical fights. He was, after all, one of the first punk rockers, along with Sid Vicious and Johnny Lydon, aka Rotten.
My first date with Shane involved standing outside the 100 Club on Oxford Street in London while he and the bouncer had words, which were mostly Shane repeatedly inviting the man to punch him in the face and see what happened. Violence for punks was a fashion thing. The imagery was blatantly aggressive, flirting with Nazism and military paraphernalia and bovver boots for boys and girls.
Punks were always having their heads kicked in just for being punks. You spat at the bands you liked, while they were on stage. Johnny and Sid would snarl and bait their audiences, but looking at Sid with blood all over his face and arms was often sufficient to deter anyone from rising to the challenge of actual physical contact.
This week, I read an interview with John Lydon which shocked me. In the interview, John confessed that he had been shit-scared of the audiences every time he went out there. And that he really hadn't enjoyed being "Rotten" at all. He went on to complain of an incident when a girl had thrown her stiletto-heeled shoe at him on stage. The heel had lanced his forehead, but the girl had had the nerve to go backstage after the gig and ask for her shoe back.
These days, John lives happily with his partner in California and talks proudly about caring for his nephews. A family man. Shane used to boast about the fact that he never backed down, no matter what they did to him. He wore what he wanted to wear, said what he felt like saying and didn't take shit from anyone.
Shane hasn't changed on any of those counts, but something has changed. He wasn't happy about being beaten up. But he wasn't angry, either. He wasn't looking for revenge. He was simply bemused. After all, what had he done to these guys? Absolutely nothing.
In the old days, that wouldn't have mattered. He would have been looking for an excuse for aggression. A way to get a few more teeth kicked in. Sadly, he's just lost two more teeth, which doesn't leave him with many. And he will need an operation to repair his cheekbone. But he does seem to have grown up a bit. Even punks have to do it.
©Victoria Mary Clarke
