Boston Herald - interview with Spider

[Zuzana]

Drinking it all in: Pogues enjoying second round of life on the road
By Sarah Rodman/ Music
Monday, March 13, 2006

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Spider Stacy would like to apologize.

The Pogues’ tin whistler is convinced his band is partially responsible for the rise in Irish theme pubs during the past 20 years.

“I’m really deeply sorry for that,” he says from England, laughing, of course.

Stacy also thinks the seminal group - the first to wed traditional Irish folk music with punk rock energy - had something to do with the growth in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the UK.

“It really used to be hardly commented on at all over here until we started getting popular, and then people started noticing St. Patrick’s Day.”

Fortunately, the Pogues, whose reunion hits the Orpheum for sold-out shows tomorrow and Wednesday, are responsible for something more pleasurable than green beer-soaked revelry.

From 1984 to their dissolution in 1996, the hard-charging and hard-drinking octet released seven albums of rowdy yet poetic musings on whiskey, women and working-class values.

The group - Stacy, singer Shane MacGowan, guitarists Jim Fearnley and Phil Chevron, bassist Darryl Hunt, drummer Andrew Ranken, banjoist/accordionist Jim Finer and banjoist/vocalist Terry Woods - also helped pave the way for younger bands such as Flogging Molly and Boston’s own Dropkick Murphys.

“I think it might be a bit presumptuous of me to say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re responsible for them’,” says Stacy. “But I like to think we are. They’re really, really good.”

Dropkick bassist Ken Casey says his band was honored to open some recent holiday shows in the UK for the Pogues.

“Anyone who plays this music who says they weren’t influenced by the Pogues is in denial,” Casey says. Stacy sees that influence as the Pogues’ ultimate legacy and something that outweighs a recent Lifetime Achievement Award from the Meteors, Ireland’s equivalent of the Grammys.

“It’s nice to get that recognition,” he says, “but at the end of the day it’s the way that people react to you. We were maybe disregarded in a way by the mainstream, certainly by the music press. Yet at the same time you’ve got this whole scene in America born of us. We’ve done something that those people have deemed to be very important. That’s a lifetime achievement award. It’s like when you meet some guy at a gig in Wales and he says you should see his Granny getting drunk on Christmas Day singing ‘Fairytale of New York.’ That’s brilliant, y’know?”

But for at least three members of the group, including Stacy, the Pogues’ legendary consumption of alcohol is no longer brilliant. Stacy says there’s no tension between the teetotalers and the imbibers, such as MacGowan. The dentally challenged singer, infamous for incapacitating inebriation on tours past, continues to drink.

“He’s been great onstage,” Stacy says. “As for being more of a handful off it, I don’t know about that. I’m going to maintain a diplomatic silence on that front. Nah. He’s fine. I think everyone’s in really good form. Shane’s been great. It only really works if we’re all firing on all cylinders and I really feel we are.”

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© Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media.

[CraigBatty]

Go raibh maith agat a Zuzana... Focail na damhán alla(?) My Irish is bloody awful innit?

Great interview.

[Simon Maguire]

The group - Stacy, singer Shane MacGowan, guitarists Jim Fearnley and Phil Chevron, bassist Darryl Hunt, drummer Andrew Ranken, banjoist/accordionist Jim Finer and banjoist/vocalist Terry Woods

Great interview Zuzana. But wouldn't it be great if a journalist finally got the instruments right for a change. James Fearnley plays accordion/Piano. Jem Finer Plays Banjo/Guitar and Terry Woods plays Mandolin.

[Alex]

The group - Stacy, singer Shane MacGowan, guitarists Jim Fearnley and Phil Chevron, bassist Darryl Hunt, drummer Andrew Ranken, banjoist/accordionist Jim Finer and banjoist/vocalist Terry Woods

Great interview Zuzana. But wouldn't it be great if a journalist finally got the instruments right for a change. James Fearnley plays accordion/Piano. Jem Finer Plays Banjo/Guitar and Terry Woods plays Mandolin.

there's hardly an interview that get's all instruments and their actual players correct.

[Zuzana]

there's hardly an interview that get's all instruments and their actual players correct.

Have mercy on poor journalists. There are soooo many people in the band. Even more instruments. So once you spend all your energy on remembering them, the easiest next step is to match them at random. There's a pretty good chance that at least something will come out correctly.

[CraigBatty]

...Have mercy on poor journalists. There are soooo many people in the band...

Yeah. And there's more than 10 letters in the alphabet.... I fink.

[Alex]

there's hardly an interview that get's all instruments and their actual players correct.

Have mercy on poor journalists. There are soooo many people in the band. Even more instruments. So once you spend all your energy on remembering them, the easiest next step is to match them at random. There's a pretty good chance that at least something will come out correctly.

Yeah, too bad if their "vox, guitar, bass and drum scheme" doesn't work out on every band hehe

[Niall]

nice one zuzana

[rumsodomyandthelash]

there's hardly an interview that get's all instruments and their actual players correct.

Have mercy on poor journalists. There are soooo many people in the band. Even more instruments. So once you spend all your energy on remembering them, the easiest next step is to match them at random. There's a pretty good chance that at least something will come out correctly.

Show em no mercy the blood sucking maggots they are

[Michaelo]

It's strange how it is nearly always Jem and James whose names they mix up. Can't they use some new name combinations for a change? I think Spider Hunt would be a good one, and the name could double up as a Bushwacker Trail on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.