A requiem for Shane MacGowan

My love for Shane MacGowan and his immense, gutter-and-stars music

This week I had been planning on finally getting around to analysing the ‘man in the dress’ furore from the Genspect conference a few weeks ago, but then Shane MacGowan died. This afternoon, I was driving home in the brittle early winter sunshine, surrounded (I’m not making this up) by rolling green fields and herds of sheep, when I turned on the radio, found myself delighted that they were playing song after song by the Pogues. Then I heard the news. I burst into tears — surprising even myself. 

Flashback to 14 year old me. Sitting on a regional bus in Italy, on my way to or perhaps from my American high school in Rome, I was reading an article about my new obsession — a band called the Pogues and their rag-tag lead singer Shane MacGowan that I only just discovered thanks to the Italian bootleg version of MTV. According to the article, Shane had been given a year to live, due to his raging drink problem. The year was 1989.¹

I loved the Pogues from the minute I first heard them when I was about 13. As a sort-of Irish kid living in Italy, a fish out of water, I thirsted for any connection to the place that had shaped my father; a place that gripped my imagination in girlish, romantic ways. In an era when pop music was soulless and mechanised, their majestic and totally unique sound fostered my incipient identity as an outsider who did not go along with the teeny-bopper crowd. It’s pretty crazy to think that the most heart-breaking song of all time, The Old Main Drag, came out the same year as the execrable We Built this City by Starship. 

It was a dream of mine, in my teen years, to see the Pogues play live. I never got the chance. But in the late 1990’s, I went to see him play a gig with his band the Popes, in Manhattan, with a dear friend whose love for the Pogues had cemented our friendship when we met in Dublin at university. That friend and I texted today upon hearing the news — and had the same recollection of the show. The gig started late, with Shane appearing in a state of total disrepair, barely alive, seemingly carried to the stage by his handlers. But when he stepped up to the mic, he transformed into a highly functioning showman and gave a barnstorming performance. Not even a bottle of beer thrown at him (in my memory, it whacked him on the head, in my friend’s telling, he caught it) caused him to break his stride. 

Shane MacGowan and his immense, gutter-and-stars music just may have been the thing that activated my inner bar fly. In my 20’s, I spent my spare time in the dive bars of New York City. Even in the flush of youth, I was drawn to the crusty old drinkers and disdainful of the strivers and the hipsters who — on paper, anyway —  were my more natural demographic. What, exactly, was the hold over me that these types and those places had, I’m still not sure. But I know that every time I hear the opening bars of The Body of an American the hairs on my arm stand up, every vibration goes straight through my heart, and the melody floods my brain with emotion. 

Is this the hands-down best use of a song in any TV show or film? Yes. Yes it is.

MacGowan’s songs about hobos and derelicts reflected what was real about them — their sweary rage, their impolitic opinions, their grotesque physical decay, their central, starring role in their own misfortune. Middle class hand-wringers can never engage with people like that honestly, because the truth of the hobos and booze hounds is they don’t really want to be saved. And thus they deny the middle class hand-wringers their opportunity to play saviour. 

MacGowan’s death just hours after Henry Kissinger is surely proof that there is a God, and he has a sense of humour. However, his death in the same year as that other famous Irish musical rebel Sinead O’Connor, is poignant, not ironic. I wasn’t so moved when Sinead O’Connor died a few months ago. I loved her when I was 14, and I still love her, from afar, like you love an old friend who fell to her demons. But I’m sorry, she was just not as talented as MacGowan. A beautiful woman with an incredible voice, she was not a gifted songwriter. Had she not been in possession of an ethereal face and a mesmerisingly broken charm when she was young, she would have been just another very talented Irish pub singer. They are thick on the ground here, believe me.

And what I’m about to say next might seem like a titanic reach, but hear me out: MacGowan’s death a week after the Dublin school stabbings and ensuing riots is yet another reminder of what is, in my humble opinion, the core conflict in Ireland: between the “respectable” and the wild. Ireland has ever been thus. It has been in the clutches of one oppressor or another for a long time now, and that oppressor (whether it was the colonial British or the priest class that sold Irish babies to rich Americans) has always been upheld by a cadre of “respectable” people, with “respectable” opinions, who did the dirty work of casting out those with a bit of spark, or a wild streak, or a connection to the ghosts and fairies, or the ones who saw through the lies. It’s not for nothing that Shane McGowan was not just a tragic alcoholic, but an immigrant one at that. 

I don’t mean to romanticise any of it. The wild streak I have seen in so many Irish people — and that might be lurking in myself —  comes with a high cost. Chaos is fun, and good for thrills, but stick with it too long and it kills you.

The war between wild Ireland and respectable Ireland may be moving up a gear, but it’s always been there. Shane McGowan did a better job than anyone in telling that story. In a nation of storytellers, that’s no mean feat. 

So here I am, watching the crows fly over the fields, jet black against the purple twilight, fighting the urge to go on an almighty bender in Shane’s honour. I guess in spite of lurking inclinations, the respectable side of me has won the battle — for now. Thanks for everything, Shane, you bohemian bastard of a bard. 

When I first came to London, I was only sixteen

With a fiver in my pocket and my old dancing bag

I went down to the 'dilly

 to check out the scene

But I soon ended up upon the old main drag

There the he-males and the she-males paraded in style

And the old man with the money would flash you a smile

In the dark of an alley, you would work for a five

For a swift one off the wrist down on the old main drag

In the cold winter nights, the old town, it was chill

But there were boys in the cafés who'd give you cheap pills

If you didn't have the money, you'd cajole and you'd beg

There was always lots of Tuinal on the old main drag

One evening as I was lying down in Leicester Square

I was picked up by the coppers and kicked in the balls

Between the metal doors at Vine Street, I was beaten and mauled

And they ruined my good looks for the old main drag

In the tube station, the old ones who were on the way out

Would dribble and vomit and grovel and shout

And the coppers would come along and push them about

And I wished I could escape from the old main drag

And now I'm lying here, I have had too much booze

I've been spat on and shat on and raped and abused

I know that I am dying and I wish I could beg

For some money to take me from the old main drag

1. Memory being what it is, it’s possible that this memory of me reading of his imminent death in 1989 is conflated with confirmed news reports that he had been given a short time to live, that were from much later in the 1990’s. To quote Queen Elizabeth, recollections may vary.