Shane MacGowan is dead. He was 65. If I’m honest I’m equally surprised he lasted this long, and that he didn’t pull a Keith Richards and live forever in spite of it all. As far as I’m concerned Shane was the greatest living Irish poet, which would put him high on the list of greatest contemporary poets period. He would argue that poetry and songwriting are the same thing and I wouldn’t argue with that.
His songs were simultaneously beautiful and horrific, heartbreaking and lustful. From The Nips, to The Pogues, to The Popes. Glorious. Disgusting. The picture that he painted of life, from the down trodden to the rebels to the lovers to the adventurers, was more vivid and authentic than anything his peers were doing at the time.
Contrast “A Pair of Brown Eyes” with “Boys From The County Hell” with “Old Main Drag” with “Sunny Side of the Street” and try to find that musical and topical range anywhere else. I dare you. Shane could write in a way that made a homeless drunk sound glamorous and aspirational, effortlessly bouncing between politics to religion to sex to every other aspect of the human experience. Poppy upbeat songs about the broken underbelly of it all right into slow beautiful songs about lost love. He could make straight edge kids want to drink whiskey with a song. God I fucking loved this guy. His ‘Friends of Shane’ is the only fanclub I ever joined, and in hindsight regret how many times I wrote in asking if Shane had been to a dentist recently.
I was introduced to The Pogues with “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” and it shattered my entire idea of what punk rock was and could be, and set me off on a journey that would lead to from Gainesville Florida to decrepit pubs in the back alleys of Cork, and basement record stores in Dublin. It’s possible that I may have taken some of the same roads that I did if I’d never heard of Shane but I think it would have been far less likely. I have all of his records, I hunted them down long ago and have listened to and sung them all a million times. I know all the lyrics by heart. And this has lead to wonderful moments like hearing “Sunnyside of the Street” in a random car commercial, delicately edited to make people think buying a car will make them happy, but knowing that the song is actually so much darker.
“Seen the carnival at Rome. Had the women and I had the booze. All that I can remember now is little kids without no shoes. So I saw that train and I got on it, with a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit.
Now I’m walking on, the sunnyside of the street”
I was going to embed the perfectly recorded album version of the song, but decided this 1990 live version, at the height of his wreckage was more fitting. If you think punk rock is leather and spikes and mohawks you haven’t seen anything. There’s a tin flute in this motherfucker:
I could spend all day talking about his different albums and the songs and the impact each one had on me at different points, like the best writers he touched me with his words and imagination and helped me understand and see things in ways I never would have. This is what poetry should be. This is what punk rock should be. But I think some of that is meaningful only to me, and should stay that way. I will just take this moment to say say Goodbye Shane, and thank you for all the beauty and chaos you brought into this world. Your legacy will live forever.
Long live Shane MacGowan.
“Cram as much pleasure as you can into life, and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.”
