Shane MacGowan, iconic frontman of the Irish punk group the Pogues and the voice of Irish angst, has passed away following a long battle with ill health. He was 65.
MacGowan’s songs were heavily influenced by Irish history, Irish nationalism, the Irish diaspora and MacGowan’s own life in London. A hard-living and hard-drinking man with a mouthful of rotting teeth, MacGowan nonetheless had the voice of an angel and this greatly enhanced the politically charged songs that the Pogues released.
He was born Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan in Pembury, Kent, England on Christmas Day in 1957 to Irish parents. He spent his early years in Tipperary, Ireland, before returning to England at six and a half.
MacGowan had an enduring love affair with Ireland and traditional Irish music, which the ABC described as ‘the lifelong centre of his imagination and his yearning’.
Nowhere is this more evident than in MacGowan’s deeply heartfelt version of ‘Danny Boy’.
MacGowan also loved reggae, jazz, Motown and old-school rock and roll.
While he was bright enough to win a scholarship to a prestigious public school, MacGowan was expelled at 16 for possession of drugs. He also spent some time in a psychiatric hospital in his teens.
In 1977, MacGowan joined a punk band called the Nipple Erectors, affectionately known as the Nips, under the stage name of Shane O’Hooligan. Greatly inspired by the anti-establishment stance of Iggy Pop and The Stooges, the Nips incorporated 1960s garage punk and elements of rockabilly in the four singles they released. ‘All The Time In The World’ is a ballsy hunk of rock and roll that features MacGowan at his absolute best.
A live album called Only The End Of The Beginning was released on Soho Records in 1980, made from a bootleg recording while the Nips were touring with an English mod revival band called Purple Hearts.
In 1982, MacGowan founded the Pogues, alongside musicians Jem Finer and Spider Stacy. The band fused the filth and the fury of punk with traditional Irish melodies and instruments including banjo, tin whistle and accordion.
The ABC said:
‘His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to snapshots of life in the gutter to unexpectedly tender love songs.’
In his 2001 memoir, A Drink With Shane MacGowan, the musician wrote:
‘It never occurred to me that you could play Irish music to a rock audience. Then it finally clicked. Start a London Irish band playing Irish music with a rock and roll beat. The original idea was just to rock up old ones but then I started writing.’
MacGowan added:
‘I wanted to make pure music that could be from any time, to make time irrelevant, to make generations and decades irrelevant.’
One person who was baffled by the complexity of MacGowan’s personality was fellow bandmate James Fearnley, who was both touched by the sensitivity of some of MacGowan’s lyrics and the underlying brutality that MacGowan brought to his live performances, which often stirred crowds to violence and anarchy.
In a memoir about his time with the Pogues called Here Comes Everybody, Fearnley recalled his shock at a brawl that broke out at a gig in Carlow, Ireland, and MacGowan’s reaction to it.
MacGowan turned to his bandmates and said:
“People are just this much away from murdering each other, this much away from raping each other, this much away from knifing, shooting, massacring, garrotting... it’s fucking dog eat dog everywhere you look. It’s what they want to do and if it’s what they want to do, they’re going to do it anyway no matter how much whingeing you do.”
MacGowan’s songwriting and vocals appear on the Pogues’ first five studio albums, which included the critically acclaimed ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’, released in 1988.
One of the Pogues’ standout tracks was ‘Dirty Old Town’, which appeared on their Rum, Sodomy and Lash album, released in 1985.
The song was written by Ewan MacColl in 1949. John Leland at Spin magazine described the Pogues’ version as ‘a sparse, melancholy reminiscence of love in an industrial sewer. The Pogues are crudely affecting a bunch of romantics’.
The band's most famous song, ‘Fairytale of New York’, was released in 1987. It is a stunning duet with Kirsty MacColl, an English singer probably best known for the novelty classic, ‘There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Who Swears He’s Elvis’ (released in 1981).
‘Fairytale of New York’ is a bittersweet Christmas song that opens with the decidedly unfestive words: “It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank.”
At their peak, the Pogues were performing sold-out shows and making triumphant appearances on U.S. television. However, in later years, MacGowan was firmly in the grip of the grog and became infamous for his sozzled performances. During a 1991 tour, MacGowan got sacked from the Pogues because of his increasingly evident alcoholism.
In an interview with Melody Maker in 1991, MacGowan said:
“The most important thing to remember about drunks is drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks. They spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their heads like a drunk does.”
He formed a new band called Shane MacGowan and The Popes with Paul “Mad Dog” McGuiness on guitar and Tommy McManamon on tenor banjo. The band released two studio albums and one live album.
MacGowan rejoined the Pogues for reunion shows in 2001 and remained with the group until its dissolution in 2014. He also collaborated with a stunning array of fellow musicians including Joe Strummer of The Clash, Steve Earle, fellow Irish performer Sinéad O'Connor, Ronnie Drew and Nick Cave.
In 2018, MacGowan won an Ivor Novello Inspiration Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award at a glittering ceremony at the National Concert Hall in Dublin that included performances from Bono, Nick Cave, Sinéad O'Connor and Johnny Depp. However, his health was failing fast, forcing him to curtail his touring and recording commitments.
MacGowan used a wheelchair after breaking his pelvis. He was also famous for his broken, rotten teeth until he received a full set of implants in 2015 from a dental surgeon who described the procedure as “the Everest of dentistry”.
MacGowan had been hospitalised in Dublin for several months after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis in late 2022. Shortly after being discharged ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day, MacGowan died peacefully at home, surrounded by family. The official cause of death was pneumonia.
MacGowan’s wife Victoria Clarke, sister Siobhan and father Maurice released a joint statement, which read:
‘It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved Shane MacGowan.’
MacGowan also received heartfelt tributes from a range of other people including Irish President Michael D Higgins, who called MacGowan “one of music’s greatest lyricists”.
‘Shane was one of my all-time favourite writers. The passion and deep intensity of his music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock and roll canon. I don’t know about the rest of us but they’ll be singing Shane’s songs 100 years from now.’
‘Shane MacGowan’s torrid and mighty voice is mud and roses punched out with swaggering stagger, ancient longing that is blasted all to hell. A Bard’s bard, may he cast his spell upon us forevermore.’
One of the best tributes came from Keith Walker, drummer with the Irish rock band Power Of Dreams, who shared his experience with Shane MacGowan in the recording studio on his band’s Facebook page.
The encounter happened while the band was recording Become Yourself at Marcus Studios in Fulham, London, a residential studio with multiple studios and guest rooms.
Walker recalled:
One morning, about 9 AM, Mick [Lennox, bass player] and I arrived into the lounge/restaurant for breakfast. As we approached the counter to place our order, we noticed Shane was sitting there. He was staring into a large glass of gin (no ice). He looked like he'd been on one, and appeared to be unaware of our presence, until he heard our Irish accents.
[We said] “Two beans and toast with rashers, no eggs!” He perked right up and got really chatty with us. He was funny and articulate, despite being three sheets to the wind! Power Of Dreams had played a bunch of festivals with The Pogues over the years and while we had never met Shane previously, we had shared some Irish roadcrew.
It wasn’t long until all three of us were in fits of laughter. He surprised us when he wandered over to the white grand piano, which was badly/sadly out of tune. Regardless, he started singing all sorts of random songs, from ‘My Way’ to ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’
Every time he sang the line “should I stay or should I go?” along with the horrendously out-of-tune piano in the mix, he would stop suddenly... pause for a second and erupt into the most amazing and unique laugh. He was hilarious and brilliant! A very special kind of human and he has left us with much to remember him by.
Jenny LeComte is a Canberra-based journalist and freelance writer.
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