The Pogues - article from Boston's Weekly Dig

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THE POGUES

Reunited, and it feels like it's gonna be sick

PATRICK KENNEDY
Boston's Weekly Dig
March 8, 2006

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There’s a lot more to the Pogues than Shane MacGowan’s remaining teeth. It may be hard to believe now, but when MacGowan and Spider Stacy formed the band in London in the early ’80s, there was nothing hip about traditional Irish music. There was certainly no call for a punk band to play folk songs and sea chanteys with acoustic guitar, accordion, tin whistle and banjo (plus electric bass and a stripped-down drum kit).

In the ’80s, inimitable singer and guitarist MacGowan was already a scenester in London, thanks to a photo of his grinning, bleeding mug in NME alongside an article about punk rock. But he’d spent much of his childhood in Tipperary, Ireland , where he gained a love for old songs about drinking, fighting and fucking—especially as perpetuated by the bearded, irreverent Dubliners. After his rockabilly-tinged punk band, the Nipple Erectors, ended its run, MacGowan wanted to do something different and even more raw to counter the dreary synth-heavy pop. When he turned his English friend Stacy onto the Dubliners, Stacy taught himself the tin whistle (and the beer tray, which he played by hitting himself over the head), and the two formed an Irish rebel band called the New Republicans. A ballsy move—though the ol’ tale that the crowd threw chips (what we’d call “freedom fries”) at them during their first gig is, apparently, a canard.

“I actually have no memory of the chips,” says Stacy. “The story goes, there were these British squaddies—you know, off-duty soldiers—in the audience, and they were throwing chips at us. [But] first off, the place we were playing was not the kind of club that you’d expect to find soldiers in, you know? In the middle of Soho, it was a real sort of New Romantic hangout.” Secondly, “if they had been there and we were doing Irish rebel songs, I think they might have been throwing a bit more than chips.”

It was not an easy time or place to wear Irishness on one’s sleeve. “There were [IRA] bombings and stuff going on, and Irish people were just tarred with that brush, and there was a lot of discrimination and a lot of anti-Irish feeling in this country.”

MacGowan and Stacy’s band—which, after lineup changes and the addition of more of MacGowan’s original songs, became Pogue Mahone (anglicized Gaelic for “kiss my ass”), and finally the Pogues on their first release, 1984’s Red Roses for Me—gave Irish immigrants and their descendants in London some courage and pride.

Stacy says, “A lot of Irish fans, particularly people living over here, said, ‘You know, you made it OK for us to be Irish … There was no reason for us to go around hiding.’ … If that’s the case, then I’m really proud of that.”

In London today, “you got all these, like, Irish-themed pubs, which are fucking dreadful,” Stacy laughs. “I really do believe we had a part to play in that—which is maybe something not to be so proud of! But at the same time, it shows a certain level of assimilation. [Irishness] was a stupid stigma and it just kind of dissolved. It’s not, obviously, entirely down to us, but I think we were a part of that.”

The band’s appeal soon proved wider than any one ethnic segment of any one city, especially as they started to tour and their sound broadened and deepened. No one-trick pony, the Pogues released the Elvis Costello-produced Rum, Sodomy & the Lash in 1985, which included several heartfelt ballads and a good dollop of American country and spaghetti-Western influence. With the sweeping, polished If I Should Fall from Grace with God in 1988, the Pogues marked themselves as a thing far greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, the live shows were wild, and MacGowan became infamous for his onstage drunkenness—and tardiness (in that way, Shane is the Axl Rose of Irish rock). Of course, as Stacy notes, “we were none of us exactly saints.”

But it was the songs, beautiful epics like Grace’s “Fairytale of New York,” that “set us apart,” Stacy acknowledges, “from being just another band or a really good night out, or a band to come and see if you just want to have a few beers and go a bit mental. The strength of the music transcended that sheer partying aspect.”

“Fairytale” is, Stacy says, “no longer our song, you know? Over here, certainly, it’s like a standard now; it’s a classic, and it’s got nothing to do with Irish music … I think we’ve reached beyond the confines of any particular genre.” He adds, “That sounds really pretentious and I’m sorry for that.”

MacGowan and the Pogues parted ways in 1991, but the pull was too great for them to stay apart forever. “There was never any sort of bad blood,” Stacy says. MacGowan (who formed the Popes in the ’90s) and the Pogues (who petered out after a couple Shane-less albums) reunited briefly for some dates in Ireland and the UK around Christmastime in 2001. They did it again in 2004 and 2005, traveling as far as Spain and Japan.

“And now,” says Stacy, “it’s your turn.”

THE POGUES
WITH WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE, THE STREET DOGS (3.14.06 ONLY) AND THE WALKMEN (3.15.06 ONLY)
TUESDAY, 3.14.06 & WEDNESDAY, 3.15.06
THE ORPHEUM
1 HAMILTON PLACE, BOSTON
617.931.2000
7:30PM/$39.50-$59.50
http://WWW.POGUES.COM
http://WWW.TEAPARTYCONCERTS.COM

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