Shane MacGowan, the The Pogues frontman and beloved Irish rock musician, died early this morning from an infection after a long period of ill health.
“Shane will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life," wrote his wife, author Victoria Mary Clarke, on Instagram. "I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him.”
Born in Kent in 1957 to two Irish immigrants, and raised in Tipperary until he was 6 years old, MacGowan won a scholarship to attend Westminster School, but was expelled in his second year after he was caught smoking weed.
An irascible hell-raiser, he joined English punk rock band The Nips in 1976, when he was in his early 20s, before going onto found the Celtic punk band The Pogues in 1982. The band drew on Irish heritage – its history, myths, literature and Christianity – to create a new kind of rock music.
“It became obvious that everything that could be done with a standard rock format had been done, usually quite badly,” said MacGowan to NME in 1983. "We just wanted to shove music that had roots, and is just generally stronger and has more real anger and emotion, down the throats of a completely pap-orientated pop audience.”
Although The Pogues became best known for their 1987 Christmas banger, Fairytale of New York, they released five albums between 1984 and 1990 for which they enjoyed international acclaim. In 2018 MacGowan won the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award "in recognition of the power of his songwriting to inspire the creative talents of others", and won an Irish Lifetime Achievement Award the same year.
"Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists," said Ireland's president, Michael D. Higgins earlier today. "So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them. 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."
A rock 'n' roll musician of old, MacGowan was known for infrequently washing and for losing all of his teeth by the age of 50. He spent years chain smoking and absolutely caning the drink and drugs: "There is so much to ask him," wrote Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone in 2022. "Not least how he is still alive."
Having had an extraordinary life of ups and downs, here are some of MacGowan's wildest or most revelatory quotes.
On being born on Christmas day: "My ma always made a big effort to make it a special day for me, but it was always more important to me that it was Christmas than that it was my birthday. The concept of my birthday being more important than Christ's was ludicrous to me. I was a very religious child. I might have become a priest if I hadn't been a singer." (The Guardian 2013)
On Christmas: "I don't like Christmas – I think it's gross." (Vice, 2015)
On his childhood: "The family home in Tipperary was a safe house for the old IRA, during the Black and Tans war; my uncle Mick had been the local commandant. It was always an open house – people would come around at all hours and there would be dancing and card-playing and boozing and singing. It was like living in a pub. I was smoking and drinking and gambling before I could talk." (The Guardian 2013)
On drinking throughout his teenage years: "In our family it was like, if the kid likes a drink, let him have a drink – because all the kids who weren't allowed to have a drink turned into raging alcoholics." (The Guardian, 2001)
On being kicked out of Westminster: "I was regarded as a gifted child and I won a scholarship to Westminster school by writing essays. At Westminster, I started doing pills and acid and going to the pub. I didn't last there very long. I got nicked for smoking a joint and was kicked out. My mother was a bit upset, but my father wasn't. He didn't think that I was getting a lot out of school." (The Guardian 2013)
On having a breakdown aged 17: "I was drinking a lot and I'd been put on a heavy prescription of tranquilisers by the GP. This was a big thing in the Seventies – there's thousands of people in mental hospitals who were made zombies by downers. Anyway, they got me off the gear, the drugs that had put me there, and I started drinking again – but then they wouldn't let me drink, which is where the trouble started. It was called Acute Situational Anxiety – which basically meant I didn't like being in London. Perpetual panic – I panic in London." (The Guardian, 2001)
On not joining the IRA: "I always felt guilty because I didn't lay down my life for Ireland. I felt ashamed that I didn't have the guts to join the IRA, so the Pogues was my way of overcoming that guilt." (City Journal, 2015)
On The Pogues (he was ejected from the group in 1991, but the group got back together a decade later): "I don't hate the band at all – they're friends. I like them a lot. We were friends for years before we joined the band. We just got a bit sick of each other. We're friends as long as we don't tour together. I've done a hell of a lot of touring. I've had enough of it." (Vice, 2015)
On failing to save a lot of money he made with The Pogues: "If you hug money, you clog up the cash flow, know what I mean?" (The Guardian, 2001)
On owing his career to his family: "I am very grateful to them and to Christ and His Holy Mother and all the saints. And, of course, I am grateful to Victoria, my muse. Without whom I might well be dead by now." (The Guardian 2013)
On Sinéad O'Connor getting him arrested: "I'm not recommending to people that they should rat their friends out to the police, you know what I mean? At the time I was furious, obviously, but I'm actually very grateful to her now." (Livewire, 2003)
On the 2001 book, A Drink with Shane MacGowan, which was described by one newspaper as "one of the freshest, most original biographies I've ever read": "Yeah, well, that was not written by me, yeah? It was A Drink With Shane MacGowan. Just what it says. It's not an autobiography. It's not a biography. It's just a garbled bunch of tapes of me out of my brains talking to my missus." (Livewire, 2003)
On losing friends to drink and drugs: "I don't think that I've lost any more than anyone else who's played in bands for years. I've lost family to drink. I've lost good friends to drugs. But in concerns of the percent, most of my family and friends either lived to a ripe old age or are still alive. My mother and father are still alive and still drinking. And several of that generation, yeah? The generation before that lasted well into their f**king nineties, most of them, yeah? And there's even some of them that are still murking around, that I run into that I knew as a kid from that generation." (Livewire, 2003)
On having children: "I've got children!" How many? "I don't know. I only know about one. He's a young man. He lives in Scotland. He knows where to get hold of me. I saw him once, when he was three. He knows I'm his father. Years ago, me and Lesley agreed that any time he wanted to come and see me he could come and see me and I'd take him out for a drink, get him whatever he wants. But she married a good man, and he seems to be satisfied with him as his father." (The Guardian, 2001)
On really hating London: "I can only relax when I'm in Ireland or one or two other places – Thailand, Spain, Japan and certain parts of America. I actually feel physically sick when I think of London." (The Guardian, 2001)
On getting a new set of teeth, demanding one of them be gold: "I went to the Greek islands years ago on holiday and I was really impressed with the Greek fishermen. I drank a lot with them," he says. "They had really rotten teeth but they all had one gold tooth – that was their bank account. If they were ever stuck for money they had gold in their mouth." (Vice, 2015)
On Life: "If there’s someone who wants a lot more of life, it’s me." (The New York Times, 2021)
