by Shane MacGowan, who has died aged 65, was the truculent, tough lead singer of the Pogues; He was revered as much for his heavy drinking as for his dark, ruthless but lyrical vision of Irish life.
His growling voice, drawn through crooked and rotting teeth, explored the dark side of the Irish diaspora. Her front teeth, a girlfriend claimed, were lost when she ate a copy of the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits Volume 3 while under the influence of LSD. In October 2006, two others fell down a wall in Ireland after getting out of a car to fall ill.
MacGowan enlivened traditional Irish song with a punk-rock attitude, stirring up the stagnant cultural backwater of folk music and inspiring a new generation of Irish musicians to experiment with new musical styles. But the English-born former public schoolboy, who became the epitome of the proud working-class Irishman, diluted his genius as a songwriter in gallons of Guinness, whiskey and Martini.
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born to Irish parents (but, to his chagrin, in England, in Pembury, Kent), on Christmas Day 1957. His father, Maurice, worked in a department store, while his mother, Therese, was a singer and traditional dancer who had been a model in Dublin.
At three months, he was taken to his mother’s family home in Tipperary while his parents worked in England. He was raised by his aunt Nora, who introduced him at an early age to the fundamental influences of drinking, cigarettes, religion and the Irish draw. His aunt Nora, he later claimed, turned him into “a religious maniac and a total hedonist,” condemning him to oscillate between piety and sin for the rest of his life.
When he was six, MacGowan’s Irish love affair ended when he was sent to join his parents in London. He described the years that followed as “a miserable, stinking, boring, useless waste of time.”
MacGowan’s father drank heavily and his mother, who worked as a typist, was often confined to bed due to arthritis and depression, forcing her son to care for himself and his younger sister, Siobhan. At the age of eight, MacGowan was introduced to Powers whiskey and, when he was 14, he rarely spent a day sober.
He attended Holmewood House Preparatory School, near Tunbridge Wells, and later won a scholarship to Westminster School. The principal of her high school, Robert Bairamian, recalled: “She was really very unusual, one of the most unusual personalities I have ever met. I thought she would end up in the drama scene. At Westminster School I was asked if she had written her work in English. “They said they had never seen anything like it before.”
However, he only spent a year at Westminster before being expelled for drug use. He then worked illegally as a shelf filler, warehouseman, maintenance man at the Indian embassy and, inevitably, as a bartender. At 17, he suffered a drink- and drug-induced mental breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for six months. He was diagnosed with acute situational anxiety, which he attributed to living in London.
MacGowan found his musical calling while working another odd job, in a record store, where he discovered the shocking new sound of punk rock. He threw himself headlong into London’s emerging punk scene, and in 1976 a photo appeared in a newspaper of him covered in blood after his ear was bitten off at a concert. He became friends with the Sex Pistols and the Clash and sang (as Shane O. ‘Hooligan) with his own band, the Nipple Erectors (later shortened to The Nips), who supported Jam and the Clash.
He met Spider Stacy at a Ramones concert and occasionally performed with Stacy’s band, Millwall Chainsaws, who renamed themselves the New Republicans. They played a concert as part of Richard Strange’s Cabaret Futura, but their Irish rebel songs were largely unappreciated: the audience started throwing chips at them, so the management pulled the plug.
MacGowan also played in another band with Jem Finer, and the pair began rehearsing their songs together; at one point they applied to busk in Covent Garden, but were turned down. They were joined by Stacy and former Nips guitarist James Fearnley.
When searching for a name, Stacey came up with Pogue Mahone (“kiss my ass” in Gaelic); They played their first gig in October 1982 and were soon joined by Cait O’Riordan on bass. In 1984, the band released their first single, The Dark Streets of London. His name was diplomatically shortened when David “Kid” Jensen started calling them the Pogues on his radio show after being told he was saying “kiss my ass” on live radio.
Their first album, Red Roses for Me, angered purists who accused them of degrading Irish music. But by injecting it with punk verve and irreverence, they brought it to a new audience and inspired an Irish musical renaissance.
MacGowan was the primary lyricist on the Pogues’ two best albums, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash in 1985 (the title was Sir Winston Churchill’s succinct summary of Navy life) and If I Should Fall From Grace With God ( 1987), which included the chart-topping Christmas song Fairy Tale of New York, a duet with Kirsty MacColl, which has become a standard performed wherever Irish people gather around the world.
Despite their recording success, the Pogues remained essentially a live band and MacGowan’s captivating drunken and bumbling antics on stage became legendary. But by the late 1980s he had begun to suffer from his excesses. In 1988, he collapsed at Heathrow airport and missed the first 10 days of a US tour.
He began forgetting lyrics on stage, vomiting profusely, and having difficulty locating the microphone. Rumors circulated that he had six months to live, that he had 25 percent of his liver left, and that he lived on pure alcohol. At the height of the speculation, a book appeared titled Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?
Tensions within the band peaked in 1991 during a tour of Japan. A sake binge left MacGowan unable to sing, and after falling off the tour bus, damaging his already mangled face, he was fired. Over the following year, he recuperated in a Martello Tower in Bray, a guest of its owner, U2 lead singer Bono. He also traveled, spending long periods in Thailand, Portugal and Spain.
In 1994, MacGowan formed The Popes, whose first two albums, The Snake (1994) and The Crock of Gold (1997), met with moderate success. MacGowan made several attempts to address his addictions, becoming a regular client of the Priory clinic in London and the Dublin drying clinic, St John of God.
However, he continued to take large doses of prescription tranquilizers and drink entire pints of Martinis. In 1999, his fellow singer, Sinead O’Connor, reported him to the police after finding him in a heroin-induced coma. She claimed he was lounging on his couch, drinking gin and tonic, and no charges were filed.
By the late 1990s, MacGowan’s musical gifts seemed to have been overshadowed by his drunken reputation. He felt uncomfortable in the new economically prosperous Ireland, which was at odds with the alcohol and bonhomie of his songs. He became a nostalgic figure, the last link in the story of Ireland’s drunken bards, whose distinctive voice was drowned out by the roar of the “Celtic Tiger”.
In 2001, however, the Pogues reformed and remained together until 2014; The following year, MacGowan, when asked if they were still together, replied: “No, no… we went back to hating each other… We’ll be friends as long as we’re not on tour together.” .”
In 2015, MacGowan fell while leaving a Dublin studio and broke his pelvis, leaving him wheelchair-bound. That year they had his teeth fixed, including, at his insistence, a gold tooth. The dentist who carried out this herculean task described the treatment as “the Everest of dentistry”. The following year he announced that he had finally stopped drinking.
In 1999, MacGowan had published Poguetry, his collection of lyrics, and in 2001 a memoir, A Drink With Shane MacGowan, written with his long-time girlfriend, the journalist and writer Victoria Mary Clarke. They finally got married in 2018 in a ceremony in Copenhagen. Town hall where his friend Johnny Depp played the guitar.
MacGowan’s 60th birthday was celebrated at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, where Irish President Michael Higgins presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, Depp appeared in Julien Temple’s documentary, Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan, which also featured Gerry Adams and Tony Blair.
Shane MacGowan is survived by his wife Victoria. They had no children, although it is believed that he had several with other women, although he never knew how many.
Shane MacGowan, born December 25, 1957, death announced November 30, 2023
