Sunday Tribune
December 21, 2008
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Everyone said the Pogues singer wouldn't see another one in 1987. But he's still with us, and as much a part of Christmas as booze and family bust-ups, says Valerie Shanley
Shane MacGowanIf a ghoulish bet had been taken in 1987 as to which of the singers duetting on 'A Fairytale of New York' would make it to the millennium, it's unlikely anyone would have wagered on the untimely demise of Kirsty MacColl. But over two decades on is the staggering, 100% proof of Shane MacGowan, who continues to deny the obituary writers their day. He appears to exist in a limbo between rehab and oblivion, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the singer's imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.
All manner of descriptions are levelled at the Pogues' infamous frontman. "Survivor" comes up a lot (he once fell out of the back of a van travelling at 50mph). "Drunk" is the more frequent. He's a living example of that fine old tradition of creative Irish thinker. Or perhaps that should read creative Irish drinker, knocking back lethal cocktails that would floor a horse. And that's just for breakfast.
Legend has it that he had his first drop of the hard stuff aged five: somewhere the Ribena got confused with the Guinness. With his sick-stained suits, and teeth like a row of condemned houses, MacGowan has always been easier on the ear than the eye. But in a popular music industry dazzling with tooth-whitened, Tango- tanned boy bands belting out big ballads written by someone else, MacGowan is an old-style original with a unique X factor all his own – plus a couple of full-measure chasers to boot. He is a walking miracle with an unquenchable thirst, the fine old battered piece of Irish Georgian silver in the drawer full of Dunnes Stores cutlery.
Behind the repetitive use of "yeah?" closing his sentences, and that wheezy, Muttley-esque snicker, lies an articulate and sensitive artist according to those who have interviewed him. Jools Holland has described MacGowan's voice as one that "touches the heart and soul". Bono, another admirer, says much of MacGowan's seemingly self-destructive behaviour is actually "a mask, a way of ignoring people he just doesn't want to deal with. Shane is more together than most people imagine."
Yet people still want to save him. Usually from himself. When Sinéad O'Connor reported him to the police after allegedly seeing him shooting up heroin in his London flat in 1999 he was in denial. It didn't end his relationship with her. "It ended my relationship with heroin," he said two years later. "I'm not recommending to people that they should rat their friends out to the police. At the time I was furious, obviously, but I'm actually very grateful to her now."
Born in England, MacGowan spent the first six years of his life in his mother's native Tipperary, before moving back to Kent. It may come as a surprise to many that he was a pupil at one of England's oldest public schools, Westminster; but it's probably not such a surprise that he was expelled for taking drugs.
The London punk scene, and in particular, seeing the Sex Pistols perform, sparked a musical fuse in the creative and well-read twenty-something who merged the tradition of Irish folk with the spirit of new wave.
"I play popular music. Calling it folk is like putting it in a box," the singer has said. "It's a living tradition. Irish music is guts, balls and feet. It's either frenetic dance music. Or it's impossibly sad like slow music. It handles all sorts of subjects from rebel songs to comical songs about sex. I don't think people realise how much innuendo there is in it.
"If you listen to a Dubliners song, or a Clancy Brothers record, the songs that aren't about drinking or shooting the Brits are gonna be about f**king. Such as maids when they're young with an old man."
His Irishness, by way of London town, is hugely important to the singer. England, MacGowan has said in the past, is a "miserable, stinking, boring, stupid, useless waste of space". And yet, you suspect, that really is the gin and tonic talking, and that his bile rises more at the establishment than the people.
Empathy with the immigrant inspires many of his great songs, such as 'Thousands Are Sailing', and 'If I Should Fall from Grace With God'. The title of Rum, Sodomy and the Lash was taken from a comment by Winston Churchill about naval history. He feels a bond with poets who have a love of the land, wherever that land may be. But his is a restless spirit, as his long-term girlfriend, writer Victoria Mary Clarke, recalls from an emotional conversation on holiday in 2004.
"I don't feel at home in Ireland anymore," he said. " I don't feel at home anywhere. But wherever you are is a little bit of Ireland, like Rupert Brooke said about England just before he was killed: 'If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.'"
Sobering images of death, he said on another occasion, "pop up now and again in the old cinema in the back of my head". He told the Guardian in a 2000 interview of how once, fearing he was at death's door, he called to the Holy Ghost.
"I was screaming at him: 'You f**king bastard, I have faith in you. Now f**king show yourself and get me out of this bed.' I made a full recovery, mentally and physically. I'm from sturdy peasant stock."
So, a free spirit then – and not just because his opening gambit to Clarke was to bum a drink from her. The man for whom the three worst words in the English language are no doubt 'Time, gentlemen, please' has endured to become an Irish classic, just like the good silver.
He was born on Christmas Day and has filmed a guest role in the Christmas edition of the long-running RTé soap Fair City, said to be a favourite of his.
But Shane MacGowan, he's not just for Christmas, y'know…
CV
Born: Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan,
25 December 1957, in Kent, to Irish parents Moved to: Tipperary shortly after birth, returned to Kent, aged six
Education: 1971 earned musical scholarship to Westminster School, London, one of England's most prestigious public schools; eventually expelled
Career: 1977: formed punk band the Nipple Erectors; early 1980s: the Pogues. Sacked from the band in 1991, then formed Shane MacGowan and the Popes. Reformed the Pogues for tour in 2001; toured each subsequent year from 2004.
Shane MacGowanIf a ghoulish bet had been taken in 1987 as to which of the singers duetting on 'A Fairytale of New York' would make it to the millennium, it's unlikely anyone would have wagered on the untimely demise of Kirsty MacColl. But over two decades on is the staggering, 100% proof of Shane MacGowan, who continues to deny the obituary writers their day. He appears to exist in a limbo between rehab and oblivion, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the singer's imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.
All manner of descriptions are levelled at the Pogues' infamous frontman. "Survivor" comes up a lot (he once fell out of the back of a van travelling at 50mph). "Drunk" is the more frequent. He's a living example of that fine old tradition of creative Irish thinker. Or perhaps that should read creative Irish drinker, knocking back lethal cocktails that would floor a horse. And that's just for breakfast.
Legend has it that he had his first drop of the hard stuff aged five: somewhere the Ribena got confused with the Guinness. With his sick-stained suits, and teeth like a row of condemned houses, MacGowan has always been easier on the ear than the eye. But in a popular music industry dazzling with tooth-whitened, Tango- tanned boy bands belting out big ballads written by someone else, MacGowan is an old-style original with a unique X factor all his own – plus a couple of full-measure chasers to boot. He is a walking miracle with an unquenchable thirst, the fine old battered piece of Irish Georgian silver in the drawer full of Dunnes Stores cutlery.
Behind the repetitive use of "yeah?" closing his sentences, and that wheezy, Muttley-esque snicker, lies an articulate and sensitive artist according to those who have interviewed him. Jools Holland has described MacGowan's voice as one that "touches the heart and soul". Bono, another admirer, says much of MacGowan's seemingly self-destructive behaviour is actually "a mask, a way of ignoring people he just doesn't want to deal with. Shane is more together than most people imagine."
Yet people still want to save him. Usually from himself. When Sinéad O'Connor reported him to the police after allegedly seeing him shooting up heroin in his London flat in 1999 he was in denial. It didn't end his relationship with her. "It ended my relationship with heroin," he said two years later. "I'm not recommending to people that they should rat their friends out to the police. At the time I was furious, obviously, but I'm actually very grateful to her now."
Born in England, MacGowan spent the first six years of his life in his mother's native Tipperary, before moving back to Kent. It may come as a surprise to many that he was a pupil at one of England's oldest public schools, Westminster; but it's probably not such a surprise that he was expelled for taking drugs.
The London punk scene, and in particular, seeing the Sex Pistols perform, sparked a musical fuse in the creative and well-read twenty-something who merged the tradition of Irish folk with the spirit of new wave.
"I play popular music. Calling it folk is like putting it in a box," the singer has said. "It's a living tradition. Irish music is guts, balls and feet. It's either frenetic dance music. Or it's impossibly sad like slow music. It handles all sorts of subjects from rebel songs to comical songs about sex. I don't think people realise how much innuendo there is in it.
"If you listen to a Dubliners song, or a Clancy Brothers record, the songs that aren't about drinking or shooting the Brits are gonna be about f**king. Such as maids when they're young with an old man."
His Irishness, by way of London town, is hugely important to the singer. England, MacGowan has said in the past, is a "miserable, stinking, boring, stupid, useless waste of space". And yet, you suspect, that really is the gin and tonic talking, and that his bile rises more at the establishment than the people.
Empathy with the immigrant inspires many of his great songs, such as 'Thousands Are Sailing', and 'If I Should Fall from Grace With God'. The title of Rum, Sodomy and the Lash was taken from a comment by Winston Churchill about naval history. He feels a bond with poets who have a love of the land, wherever that land may be. But his is a restless spirit, as his long-term girlfriend, writer Victoria Mary Clarke, recalls from an emotional conversation on holiday in 2004.
"I don't feel at home in Ireland anymore," he said. " I don't feel at home anywhere. But wherever you are is a little bit of Ireland, like Rupert Brooke said about England just before he was killed: 'If I should die, think only this of me, that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.'"
Sobering images of death, he said on another occasion, "pop up now and again in the old cinema in the back of my head". He told the Guardian in a 2000 interview of how once, fearing he was at death's door, he called to the Holy Ghost.
"I was screaming at him: 'You f**king bastard, I have faith in you. Now f**king show yourself and get me out of this bed.' I made a full recovery, mentally and physically. I'm from sturdy peasant stock."
So, a free spirit then – and not just because his opening gambit to Clarke was to bum a drink from her. The man for whom the three worst words in the English language are no doubt 'Time, gentlemen, please' has endured to become an Irish classic, just like the good silver.
He was born on Christmas Day and has filmed a guest role in the Christmas edition of the long-running RTé soap Fair City, said to be a favourite of his.
But Shane MacGowan, he's not just for Christmas, y'know…
CV
Born: Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan,
25 December 1957, in Kent, to Irish parents Moved to: Tipperary shortly after birth, returned to Kent, aged six
Education: 1971 earned musical scholarship to Westminster School, London, one of England's most prestigious public schools; eventually expelled
Career: 1977: formed punk band the Nipple Erectors; early 1980s: the Pogues. Sacked from the band in 1991, then formed Shane MacGowan and the Popes. Reformed the Pogues for tour in 2001; toured each subsequent year from 2004.
