Irish Independent - The making of a timeless 'Fairytale'

[MacRua]

The making of a timeless 'Fairytale'
Irish Independent
20 Dec 2006
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The Pogues had decided to record a Christmas single. In the second half of 1985, they'd been rehearsing and recording new songs with Elvis Costello. Frank Murray had suggested a song by The Band, Christmas Must Be Tonight. Shane MacGowan and Jem Finer had other thoughts.

Finer says, "We thought, 'If we're going to do a Christmas song, let's write one. I'd written this duet with crap words. It was a miserable song about a sailor being away from home. My wife Marcia said the sailor romance thing was naff, that it didn't ring true.

"She suggested a couple having a row at the time of peace and goodwill, trying to crank up some Christmas spirit but failing. But she warned that there should be some kind of redemption. It should end in a weird romantic truce, a little glimmer of hope amidst the torture of packaged party time.

"I wrote a second song which had that plot. It was based on the people who lived across the street from us. Shane wrote Fairytale of New York using the melody of the first song I'd written and the storyline of the second, which he transposed to New York, and he made it into what it is now.

"So we had this embryonic Fairytale which we tried to record with Cait singing, and it just didn't work. The arrangement was all wrong. We just couldn't play it well enough and the lyrics needed more juggling around."

Eventually it was producer Steve Lillywhite and his wife, Kirsty MacColl, who brought the song bursting to life. MacGowan says: "My part in the duet is the man who's got kicked out of the drunk tank on Christmas Eve night. His wife's in hospital, she's ill and he's just out of his skull.

"They're both right and they're both wrong. But in the end they start getting sentimental and thinking about this and that, like old people do."

Pogues' guitarist Philip Chevron says the song is one of the great "universal songs of disappointment and loss".

In 2005, The Pogues recruited a number of female singers for Fairytale as the tour went from city to city. The single was re-released and was voted the best seasonal song ever by VH1 viewers.

"That song is like a great wine," says Lillywhite. "It seems to improve with age." </blockquote>