Remembering Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan

Shane MacGowan, singer-songwriter for The Pogues, died Nov. 30 at 65 years old. His wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, told the New York Times that his cause of death was pneumonia. Among the myriad tributes pouring in was an Instagram post from Bruce Springsteen, who called the Irish musician  “one of my all-time favorite writers. The passion and deep intensity of his music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock and roll canon.”

With The Pogues, MacGowan brought a sound and instrumentation that borrowed heavily from Irish traditional music but played with a thoroughly modern punk-rock fury. And with his lyrics, MacGowan wove stories that mixed misadventure, confrontation and celebration. Or as Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer put it in a Facebook post, there was “the interplay of large-heartedness and nihilism.” It was a genre that really didn’t exist until MacGowan landed there.

Years ago, Joe Strummer, the late Clash singer-guitarist, said of MacGowan: “One of the finest writers of the century. [People] just have no idea of how great he is.”

Probably more so now.

I first met MacGowan in London, April of 1985, three years after The Pogues formed. He was walking down the steps of Filthy McNasty’s, the band’s de facto clubhouse, grasping a tall beverage in each hand — one whiskey, one beer — beaming out his jack-o’-lantern smile.

We were both in our late 20s. That first meet-up with MacGowan and the other five Pogues was everything you think it might have been. There was drink, there was craic, there was inclusiveness. It was my first exposure to MacGowan’s distinctive and frequent laughter, a startling cackle-hiss.

One of the first songs MacGowan wrote was “Streams of Whiskey” about following those streams wherever they might take him. Soon after came “Transmetropolitan,” where MacGowan and his mates promised to “kick up bloody murder in the town I know so well.” And “Boys from the County Hell,” where after beating up a mean landlord, he’s sitting on the veranda watching “the junkies, the drunks, the pimps, the whores.” Around him are “five green bottles sitting on the floor” and the addition, “I wish to Christ, I wish to Christ that I had 15 more.” All of these came from The Pogues 1984 debut album “Red Roses for Me.”

It was fair to say there wasn’t much separation between the singer-songwriter and the character in those songs. It’s not wrong to suggest, that given his lifestyle, he lived a lot longer than anyone expected. Indeed, many people ascribed the term “self-destructive” to MacGowan’s lifestyle. His take, as shown in Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan,” was this: “I’m just following the Irish way of life: Cram as much pleasure as you can in your life and rile against the pain that you have to suffer as a result and then wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure.”

At that first meeting, I asked MacGowan about his rabid fans. “They’re absolutely devoted the way I used to be with the Sex Pistols,” he said. “I think they’re mad but I understand what it’s like to be that age.”

Indeed. A few nights later, I’d see The Pogues at the packed Mean Fiddler club, headlining an anti-heroin benefit. “Half the people [in London] are junkies,” MacGowan told me. “It’s cheap, you can get it anywhere. Smack is a f---ing killer. You see your friends turn into completely boring berks who’ll anything for a hit.”

What MacGowan said about the music and the fans was spot-on: It was one of the most boisterous and bonding gigs of my life, the music rip-sawing through the room, bodies banging against each other with aggressive affection as these helter-skelter tales of hijinks and hilarity unspooled. Their mostly acoustic, but adrenaline-powered music would prove to be strangely sinuous, a mashup of Irish traditional music and punk rock.

“Most people thought we were completely nuts,” said MacGowan, who’d previously fronted a punk band called the Nips. “I don’t think there’s that much of a contradiction. They’re both about complete and total emotion blasting out. The people that come to see us, they like having a good time but they got enough brains to know there’s a lot of s--- and that’s part of it. There’s a certain desperation.”

Vivid imagery, sweeping melodies, pulsing tempos and unvarnished emotion given a Celtic lilt via accordion, banjo and tin whistle. It wasn’t all blood, guts and glory. There was tenderness, yearning, tragic Irish history. Over time, The Pogues’ best-known song became 1987’s “Fairytale of New York,” a breakup duet with the late Kirsty MacColl, a rough-and-tumble tale of Christmas Eve in the drunk tank, a romance on the rocks, with clever insults and slurs hurled at each other.

After five albums, MacGowan was booted from the band in 1991. His unreliability on tour and substance abuse became too much for the rest to handle. Strummer filled his spot in concert. Later, his best friend, tin whistle player Spider Stacy, took over for tours and two more albums. MacGowan formed the Popes and steered it in an early Pogues direction, eschewing the world-music expansion of latter-day Pogues. (There were several Pogues reunion gigs and tours over the years, which MacGowan joined, ending in France on July 9, 2014.)

MacGowan’s performance style was, essentially non-performance: Hold onto the mic stand with a cigarette in that hand, grasp a cup of booze in the other while barking out the songs and appearing as diffident as a statue. One time at a gig at New York’s Randalls Island, I saw the roadies carrying MacGowan to the stage. But once propped up, the strange magic kicked in and he did his job.

The Pogues packed the Boston club Spit the first time they played town in 1986. The following year, they played the stadium in Foxborough — at the time called Sullivan Stadium — opening for U2 and an audience that had few clues as to who these raggle-taggle misfits were. (Bono would sometimes work The Pogues’ “A Rainy Night in Soho” into “Beautiful Day.” On Dec. 1 at Las Vegas’ Sphere, U2 covered the entire song, in tribute to MacGowan.)

Then, there was the Popes 2000 show at The Harp, where MacGowan was two hours late and the crowd was so jam-packed no one could move to the bar or the bathroom. Fans passed drinks hand-over-head; hitting the loo presented a severe challenge.

The last time I talked with MacGowan was in 2007, after a Pogues reunion gig at Boston’s Avalon club. After the set, we were backstage with MacGowan’s manager, Joey Cashman. Cashman was talking effusively about how both he and MacGowan had gone through a detox program together and had kicked heroin. Cashman was proud of his hard-fought sobriety.

MacGowan had been pretty quiet. I turned to him and politely asked how kicking heroin had gone for him. With a look, he said, “If you had some, I’d do it.” That was a bit of a conversation-stopper.

After MacGowan’s death, I rang up Dropkick Murphys leader Ken Casey. No band has had as much commercial success merging Irish trad and punk as this Boston bunch. And in an email back to me, Casey said, “Needless to say, there would be no Dropkick Murphys if it weren’t for Shane. Shane definitely changed the trajectory of my life. His interpretation of Irish music let me know that my grandparents’ music could actually be cool.

“From the many times seeing The Pogues before I was in a band to the many memories I have of Dropkick Murphys collaborating and touring with him, I’m just grateful that a lyrical genius and a talented performer came along during my lifetime.”