In a moving tribute to his friend Shane MacGowan, who died at the end of November, Nick Cave has written down his memories of the Irish musician. Cave had already paid him his last respects at his funeral and covered the Pogues song “A Rainy Night in Soho” for him, performed in a church. Now the singer shares deep insight into the beginnings of their unlikely friendship, which began in a truly chaotic “summit meeting” with The Fall’s Mark E. Smith. A meeting that turned out to be anything but ideal for Cave’s first day after his own rehab, but laid the foundation for a deeper bond.
“Not exactly the best start to a friendship”
“Unfortunately, it was my first day out of rehab, and spending the day with two people who weren’t known for their moderation probably wasn’t the best idea. It was pure chaos from the start. Not exactly the best start to a friendship, but Shane and I soon became close friends,” begins Nick Cave in his recent article for “The Guardian”.
He continues: “What I really envied about Shane’s lyric writing was that he did something extraordinary with the classic form of songwriting. His style of writing was deeply rooted in the tradition of the Irish ballad. She wasn’t modern in any way, whereas my songs back then were more of their time: darker, more broken and more experimental. They contained little compassion. No real understanding of the ‘ordinary’. I don’t think I can write a lyric like ‘The wind goes right through you/ It’s no place for the old’ [aus Fairytale of New York] could have written. That speaks volumes. You can feel the wind and the ice in the air, but also the learned empathy and deep compassion that Shane had for people.”
“He is a genius we should remember”
Nick Cave also briefly addresses the problems MacGowan faced during his lifetime, but asks not to let this overshadow the fond memories of the singer: “At the end of the day, it is his genius that we should remember, and not all the other things… He had something that us less good writers have to work hard to even come close to. An effortless, God-given talent.”
Also on his website “Red Hand Files” Cave had recently recalled Shane’s 60th birthday performance, at which Sinead O’Connor also performed: “Sinead once said of Shane: ‘He’s an angel. A true angel’. Whether that’s true or not, who knows? But Shane was blessed with an uncommon spirit of kindness and a deep sense of truth that was strangely enhanced by his brokenness, his humanity. We can say with certainty that he was loved on earth, and so is Sinéad – both are truly loved and greatly missed.”