Josh Homme and Shane MacGowan
Photo: Getty Images, Josh Homme: Jim Dyson, Shane MacGowen, Tristan Fewings. All rights reserved.
During a Queens Of The Stone Age concert in Dublin on Wednesday (November 22), frontman Josh Homme paid tribute to the ailing Shane MacGowan with one of his most famous songs. Before he “I Sat by the Ocean” intoned, he praised The Pogues’ singer: “He’s a damn poet. Everyone should think wonderful thoughts about Shane MacGowan. When we poets are gone, all that’s left is a pile of s***. I think a poet once said that.”
Shane MacGowan released from hospital
At the end of 2022, Shane MacGowan announced that he was suffering from encephalitis – a rare disease that causes the brain to swell. It can be life-threatening and requires urgent treatment. The Pogues singer has been hospitalized since June 2023. On November 22, MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, announced on Twitter that her husband had been released from the hospital. “We are deeply and forever grateful to all the doctors, nurses and staff at St. Vincent’s – it is the best facility,” she wrote alongside the picture of Shane MacGowan wearing a hat and scarf, still in the hospital bed lying down.
In Homme’s thoughts on “The End is Nero” tour
Josh Homme also had to struggle with health problems in 2022, which were even related to cancer. However, he survived this, as he himself said in an interview with “ITV News”: “I’m fine, I’m cancer-free.”
Following the news of MacGowan’s release from hospital, he appears to be a presence on QOTSA’s The End is Nero world tour – if only in Homme’s mind.