With the ragged voice of a drunk, Shane MacGowan sang traditional Irish folk with the raw, fast energy of punk. In the band The Pogues in the 1980s he sang about the bohemian life, love for the motherland, and gave Irish folk music a new audience. The band alternated traditionals such as ‘Dirty Old Town’ with their own work such as the protest song ‘Birmingham Six’, the party song ‘Fiesta’, and one of the most beautiful Christmas albums of all time, ‘Fairytale of New York’.
Shane MacGowan died on Thursday in Dublin at the age of 65 from brain inflammation. The Irish president praised MacGowan’s poetic power and his great contribution to the spread of Irish popular culture.
The Pogues’ success was largely based on their compelling concerts – steaming beer parties bordering on riots. MacGowan, with his pale face and ratty teeth, was the great pacesetter, but his other two loves, drink and heroin, got in the way of his musical career. In 1991 he was kicked out of the band due to frequent failure to show up for performances. In the new century he returned to the band.
MacGowan was born in 1957, in a southern English village. His parents were Irish immigrants. Father was a director at the C&A department store, mother was a former Irish folk dancer and typist in a monastery. It was his childhood as an Irish migrant child, with all the discrimination and feelings of inferiority that this entailed, that inspired his music. His compositions sang about life in the Irish diaspora.
Priest
“Too shy” to serve the Northern Irish terrorist group IRA, as he himself said, he considered becoming a priest in his youth. MacGowan loved literature, reading Ulysses when he was twelve. You can see those literary influences in his lyrics. He suffered from depression and “nameless fears”, spent some time in an institution during his adolescence, until punk became his calling. He first appeared in the newspaper as a profusely bleeding visitor to a Clash concert. His girlfriend had cut his earlobe with a beer bottle. “Cannibalism at Clash Gig” was the headline in the local newspaper. He first played in the punk band Nipple Erectors and then founded Pogue Mahone – Irish for ‘lick my ass’. At the request of the BBC the name was changed to The Pogues.
The Pogues were primarily a London band: only half had Irish roots, none of the band members were born in Ireland. The band initially played traditional Irish songs, but more and more of their own compositions were added. The sound also drifted more towards pop music. With albums Rum Sodomy & the Lash (1985) and esp If I Should Fall from Grace of God (1988) the success came. The Christmas single ‘Fairytale of New York’, a duet with Kirsty MacColl, reached the British top 40 and became an evergreen. As the band’s reputation grew, MacGowan dropped out more and more often. He was partly replaced on tour by Joe Strummer of The Clash. After leaving The Pogues in the 1990s, MacGowan recorded two more solo albums, on which he shifted more towards rock.
MacGowan started drinking when he was five years old. His parents gave him Guinness beer to keep him calm. LSD and heroin were added later in life. Singer friend Sinéad O’Connor reported him to the police in 2000 for heroin possession, in the hope of getting him to kick the habit. MacGowan was furious, but later thanked her because he had indeed managed to get off drugs. Booze was harder. Stopping touring helped: for him the drink was linked to the concerts and touring. Due to several falls, he broke his hip and knee, meaning he has been in a wheelchair since 2015. In the hospital he also gave up drinking. Depression and anxiety continued to plague him. The repairs to his famously bad teeth were the subject of the TV program Shane MacGowan: A Wreck Reborn.
When The Guardian interviewed him two years ago, little more came out of it. He did say that he had no death wish, he was clinging to life. “Is Life Good?” the interviewer asked. MacGowan replied: “Working on it.”