Clever, witty, talented - Kirsty was just wrong in every way
by Declan Lynch "Sunday Independent" (Ireland) April 10, 2005
AT the turn of the century, I was writing some stuff with Philip Chevron of The Pogues and the Radiators, who had somehow persuaded me that it might be a good idea if we wrote a musical.
In these days of Improbable Frequency and I, Keano and The Ha'penny Bridge, that doesn't sound like quite such an insane proposition. But at the time, Philip was virtually on his own out there, making a case for the musical.
It became a mad Irish-American sort of thing called Jack Rooney In Person, still a work in progress, as they say. And by the end of 2000, Philip had finished a few songs which were ready to be recorded as demos by old friends and collaborators such as various other Pogues and Ronnie Drew.
And Kirsty McColl, who had always been hugely supportive of the project.
Manhattan Moon, a coming-to-America song which the aficionados might call 'a big 11 o'clock number', was sung by Kirsty at her home studio in Ealing in early December. She did a terrific job, as we knew she would. A few days later she went on holiday to the island of Cozumel in Mexico with her sons Jamie and Louis and her partner James Knight.
On December 18, Philip spent a long night at a studio in Nottingham mixing the demo with co-producer Nick Robbins. He remembers: "I was at home, too shattered to sleep later that morning, and listening to the final mix of Manhattan Moon when the telephone rang. It was a choked-up Frank Murray, and I knew he was not about to give me good news . . . I heard of Kirsty's death while her wonderful voice rang out clear and warm and oh, so alive in the background."
That version of Manhattan Moon, which no-one in their darkest imaginings thought would be her last recording, is the last-but-one track on the just-released compilation From Croydon to Cuba: An Anthology. It's a superb collection, three CDs of Kirsty's finest, put together with due care and attention. But for all its retrospective aspects, the Kirsty McColl story is itself something of a work in progress.
The circumstances of her death remain unresolved. She was scuba-diving with her sons and their dive master about 300m offshore when she was killed by a powerboat owned by Guillermo Gonzalez Nova, chairman of the holding company Controladora Comercial Mexicana, the second-largest retail operator in Mexico. No-one has been made accountable to the satisfaction of Kirsty's family and friends. Her mother Jean Newlove runs the JFK (Justice for Kirsty) campaign.
The campaign is growing. The BBC recently broadcast a documentary, Who Killed Kirsty McColl? Fans are writing to their MPs and raising money. President Fox of Mexico has received about 10,000 postcards already. The campaign has the support of the Foreign Office.
And listening to her astonishing body of work, it seems there is also something unresolved about the circumstances of Kirsty's life. It's impossible to listen to any part of From Croydon To Cuba . . . without being mystified that an artist of this stature could have received such relatively scant recognition.
She is still probably best known for her part in Fairytale Of New York, though it is not typical of her work, as she wasn't the main creative force behind it. Old folkies would see her primarily as the pop-singer daughter of the legendary Ewan McColl, and leave it at that.
Perhaps it is other musicians who value her the most. If you were to ask a Tom Waits or a Shane MacGowan how they rate Kirsty as a songwriter, they wouldn't hesitate to place her in the first rank. Bono reveres her.
Most likely, her reputation will continue to grow, as a bigger audience is drawn to her music by the tragic twist that she died so young. And maybe it was as simple in commercial terms as her ex-husband, producer Steve Lillywhite, put it when he explained that Kirsty had a few hits over the years, but she never followed up a hit with another hit.
She never got on a roll. She had children; she had a life. But you also suspect there was something more old-fashioned in the inability of the music industry to make Kirsty a star.
Frankly, she was just the wrong sort of woman. She was immensely clever, and devastatingly witty, and the industry, on the whole, prefers its women to be more the simple, 'soulful' type.
Nor could she be improved much, as she could write her own words and music, produce her own records, and even had a weird gift for selecting the perfect running order of an album.
This was all very impressive, but also strangely terrifying. So she remained a major league artist with a minor league following.
Justice is coming far too late for Kirsty. But it's coming.
Declan Lynch
From Croydon To Cuba: An Anthology is out on EMI; also the DVD From Croydon To Cuba: The Videos. For the JFK campaign, visit
http://www.justiceforkirsty.org
