Nick Cave has written a eulogy in The Guardian for his longtime friend Shane MacGowan, who died last month at the age of 65. Cave first met the Pogues frontman in 1989, when NME called a “summit meeting” of the two artists along with the Fall’s Mark E Smith. “I was excited because I was a fan, completely in awe of Shane’s songwriting,” Cave writes in The Guardian.
Cave goes on to discuss the ensuing years when he and MacGowan grew closer and he reveled in his friend’s natural talent for songwriting. “To me, his songs were such precious things, deep works of art, really, but he didn’t treat them like that,” Cave writes. “While I laboured away at my desk, day after day, to produce what I could, Shane’s words were delivered to him on a beer tray with a whiskey chaser.”
“I loved his voice, too. It was the perfect vehicle for his chaotic, poetic soul,” Cave added, remembering a time he watched the Pogues soundchecking at a festival in France: “He just walked up to the mic and sang A Pair of Brown Eyes with his hands shoved in his pockets, this gorgeous, racked voice coming out of him like he was a cypher for the angels.” Cave added that, while he was first a fan of MacGowan’s unparalleled talent, it was his “great love for the man himself” at the heart of their enduring friendship.
Following the news of his death, countless artists paid tribute to MacGowan, including Billy Bragg, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. Cave wrote about MacGowan’s kindness and musical brilliance in an installment of The Red Hand Files, and performed a cover of the Pogues’ 1986 ballad “A Rainy Night in Soho” at the musician’s funeral.
It should be no surprise. Shane MacGowan, erstwhile songwriter and singer for the Pogues, had over the years downed oceans of whiskey and porter and ingested enough recreational drugs to get the whole bloody EU bolloxed.
Although news of his death was long expected, it was still a shock to learn that MacGowan died today. And even more so because it came not four months on the heels of the majestic Sinead O’Connor‘s death. The cause of Shane’s death wasn’t specified, but decades of abuse surely played a part. One is reminded of the famous description of Bob Dylan in the 1960s: “He wasn’t burning the candle at both ends. He was using a blowtorch on the middle.”
Dylan’s famous motorcycle accident in 1966 afforded him the chance to step away from his incendiary habits. MacGowan never found – or didn’t take advantage of – such an opportunity. The tales of wretched excess are legendary and play all-too-neatly into the “drunken Irish poet” cliché epitomized by Brendan Behan and, latterly, by Mister MacGowan. Genius is often used as an excuse for addiction and the damage to oneself and to others that follows in its wake. MacGowan’s descent was a long, slow, and painful one to observe.
Born in Kent, England on Christmas Day, 1957, MacGowan’s parents were Irish. He spent a portion of his boyhood in Tipperary. Back in England as a young man, he was one of many inspired by the punk movement to start a band. One thing led to another and the eventual result was the Pogues. (As their fans know, Pogue Mahone, the band’s original name, is Irish for “kiss my arse.”)
Much ink will be spilled recounting epic tales of the Pogues and MacGowan’s atrocious habits and even worse behavior. Such as quotes from Neil McCormick of The Telegraph, who describes Shane’s songs as “succinct narratives of the Irish diaspora in Britain and America that drew on the poetry and culture of his homeland. His songs were peppered with finely observed details, and had, at their heart, a bittersweet romantic longing for a shattered community clinging to its historical identity, and a beautiful empathy for outsiders and the downtrodden.” And the best description of that snicker, “he laughed frequently, emitting a sound halfway between white noise and an industrial accident.”
I could go onnn, but let’s focus instead on the reasons we loved – and worried about – Our Shane in the first place.
MacGowan and company officiated at the shotgun wedding of Irish Trad and Punk Rock. He brought a cold eye and a gift for the vivid detail to his lyrics, evoking the listeners’ sympathy for the rebels, runaways, and misfits who live on the rough margins of cities. “The Old Main Drag” is about a rent boy’s decline and fall:
In the cold winter nights the old town it was chill But there were boys in the cafes who’d give you cheap pills If you didn’t have the money you’d cajole or you’d beg There was always lots of Tuinol on the old main drag
One evening as I was lying down by 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…
“A Rainy Night in Soho” offers a far more tender remembrance:
I’m not singing for the future I’m not dreaming of the past I’m not talking of the first times I never think about the last
Now the song is nearly over We may never find out what it means Still, there’s a light I hold before me You’re the measure of my dreams The measure of my dreams
Years of hard living exacted a toll on MacGowan. His notoriously rotten teeth were (finally!) replaced in 2015. A fall that same year resulted in a hip injury that put him into a wheelchair. In December 2022 he was hospitalized with viral encephalitis. He’d been released from another hospital stay shortly before his death. He’s survived by his wife, the journalist Victoria Clarke, his sister, Siobhan, and his father, Maurice MacGowan.
We at Popdust adore Shane. He was one raucous lad. And this one’s for…the Mighty Kevin.
The legendary musician was in poor health and had been recently hospitalized. MacGowan was receiving treatment for a diagnosis of encephalitis, a dangerous infection that causes swelling of the brain.
MacGowan’s wife, Irish writer Victoria Mary Clarke, announced his death on Instagram Thursday morning.
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“I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it,” Clarke wrote. “Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life.”
Clarke wrote that MacGowan “has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.”
She said she was “blessed” to have loved MacGowan and to have been loved by him in return.
“There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world,” she continued. “You gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music.”
“You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much,” Clarke concluded. “You meant the world to me.”
A spokesperson for MacGowan confirmed news of his death on his social media account and said the musician “died peacefully” around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 30, with his wife and sister at his side. The spokesperson said prayers and last rites were read during MacGowan’s death.
MacGowan breathed new life into the Celtic music scene in the 1980s, and with The Pogues, created rousing, emotionally charged folk tunes about Irish life.
Originally named Pogue Mahone (a jab at the Gaelic phrase “póg mo thóin” meaning “kiss my arse”), the band later became simply The Pogues and released seven studio albums.
Fairytale Of New York, a sombre tale of alcoholism, went on to become one of the band’s biggest hits, and a seminal, moody Christmas classic.
MacGowan was the frontman of The Pogues from 1982 until he was removed from the band in 2014. (The band earlier split up in 1996 but reformed in 2001.)
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His struggles with alcohol and drugs have been well-documented throughout his career, earning MacGowan a reputation as a rowdy, often difficult-to-control star.
During his years away from The Pogues, he formed the band Shane MacGowan & the Popes, which played Irish folk and rock music together until 2005.
Since 2015, as his health gradually declined, MacGowan was working on an album of cover songs in collaboration with the Irish band Cronin.
He is survived by Clarke, who he married in 2018, his sister Siobhan and his father Maurice.
MacGowan reportedly also fathered a child around 1991, but later told British tabloid The Telegraph he “wouldn’t wish myself on any kid as a father.” (It’s unclear if he did actually have any children.)
Tributes to MacGowan have flooded social media, with many high-profile admirers paying their respects to the late musician.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins called MacGowan one of “music’s greatest lyricists.”
“The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from,” Higgins wrote.
“His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways.”
“The genius of Shane’s contribution includes that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from”
He was a poet in a tradition of poets who lived their art, for good and for bad. But the integrity in his work was the result, and it will last forever. RIP Shane MacGowan
Farewell Shane MacGowan. A life lived to the full. A lyrical genius. An inspiration to so many of us who wanted to be in bands. I followed The Pogues to far flung places, met Shane a few times and watched some of the most exhilarating shows I’ve ever witnessed
Dirty Old Town, made famous by the Pogues. So sad to hear of the passing of the great Shane MacGowan, he will be sorely missed pic.twitter.com/43hehiky4D
