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Shane MacGowan will tour the U.S. this month with the reformed Pogues, who haven't been together for 10 years. During a turbulent
4 a.m. interview on
Tuesday morning, he talks to SEAN O'DRISCOLL about reforming the band, the recent Dublin riots, his support for the Kirsty
MacColl campaign and his thoughts on his own career.
SHANE MacGowan has had a lot of hangers-on and time wasters in his life. Luckily, his supervisor and cousin, Sean, is
not one of them. He lives near Shane in their home county of Tipperary and protects Shane for interviews like a mother goose
protecting a wandering gosling.
He opts for an Irish Voice interview on Monday of this week, just after Shane went to the American Embassy in Dublin for
a face to face interview, a prerequisite before getting his visa to tour the U.S. with the reformed Pogues.
The band has sold out in New York with virtually no advertising and have had to add new shows.Sean knows that Shane has
to stay sober and alert for the embassy interview.The timing of the Irish Voice interview doesn't go quite to plan and eventually,
itıs agreed that I should call Shane at his hotel room at 4 a.m. Dublin time on Tuesday morning.
Shane is wide awake.
" Do I know him? Do I know him? " he asks Sean before he picks up the phone.
"I was just refreshing what I was going to say!" he says with a loud, hissing laugh.
So how are you, Shane MacGowan?
""The finest!" he says. His voice is slurred, as it is always these days, but he is coherent and alert.
There is a lot of noise in the background. I canıt make out if he is having the best party ever or has a TV blaring really
loud. "Am I having a party here? No! No!" he says. "It's Mel Brooks playing on the computer. No wait, he's
turned into Batman!" Shane is commuting between Tipperary and Dublin these days. His home in Tipp is close to where he
spent the first six years of his life before moving to England.
For most of his life, he has had an uneasy relationship with Tipperary, but he has now reconciled himself with it, he
says.
"I've got a house in Tipperary, yeah! What the f*** can I say? I've been back for years. It's great."
He says something inaudible that ends with the words "the Geese!" but moves on to the Pogues reputation in the
U.S. Shane becomes very articulate and excited.
"Did you know that weıre releasing all the albums over there? The whole catalogue of the Pogues. You can go and buy
any Pogues album and it doesn't have to be on import. And yeah, you go and download them if you like, but you can't download
it all because it hasn't all been set up yet!"
Shane pauses after this explanation.
"Is someone going to ask me a question or what?"
Okay. What do you think of Flogging Molly, the Dropkick Murphys and all the other U.S-based Celtic punk bands that draw
inspiration from the Pogues? "I was guest vocalist on the first album by the Dropkick Murphys!"
Are they good?
"Compared to most of the crap that's coming out, they are, yeah." Shane seems much more enamored with the New
York/Celtic country band
Lancaster County Prison.
"I sang for them as well. The Dropkicks are all good blokes but I prefer Lancaster County Prison are really good,
yeah?"
I tell him that the Pogues-inspired U.S.-Irish group Flogging Molly reached the Top 20 in the Billboard album charts.
"Well, I mean my memory stopping working about 20 years ago," says Shane, with only a half-laugh this time.
It's clear that there are large parts of his story that come to him only as a blur.
Of all the U.S. bands, Shane likes Chris Byrneıs Seanchai the most, but struggles to articulate it.
"Chris, am, you know, Rocky Sullivan's. Chris Byrne who runs Rocky Sullivan's, who used to be in am" Black 47?
I suggest. "Yeah," returns Shane, "His band is really good. The Dropkick Murphys are all right but there are
lots of bands.
"Use your discretion!" he says in a tone of a government health advisor before breaking into an enormous laugh.
"As long as people are trying who gives a f***," he adds.
I'm very curious about Shane's comments when he received a lifetime achievement award at an Irish music awards ceremony
and said that is was good to be a legend while still alive.I ask if he thinks about his place in music history.
"I do my best not to think at all," he says.
When I laugh, he cuts in.
"No. I'm serious. When you start to think, you start worrying, you start giving a f*** and then you just go from
there."
After the doldrums in his 90's career when he drank and pursued dead-end projects, Shane is more focused on his singing
and will also to star in a film version of J.P. Donleavyıs classic book, The Ginger Man, in which he
will play hard-drinking Irish writer Brendan Behan.
"Yeah, that's the beginning of next year," he says. "So, I've got to get sober enough to play a drunk!"
He gives a long laugh but pulls himself back, knowing that playing up to his wild man image has cost him dearly.
"I'm talking bulls***. I'll just go and do the film, obviously!" Again, Shane has trouble following his narrative.
"Brendan Behan is the basis of." He pauses. "Yeah, itıs going to be good," he offers belatedly.During
his wilderness years after he was thrown out of the Pogues, Shane set up his own band, Shane MacGowan and the Popes.
He recently did a powerful live version of one of the Popes songs, "Cracklin' Rose," and I'm curious if all
this material can be used on the Pogues tour.
It is one of those moments when the sharpest of his mind shines through the slurred speech and half-started conversations.
"It's been discussed for this tour but it doesnıt look hopeful at the moment," he says.
So how are the Pogues getting along?
"Famously. Youıre getting along famously," he says with a laugh.
I see.
"No, no we are," he says quickly. "It's fun, you know."
And then, as a tangent, he launches into his thoughts on America.
"I mean like, you know what William Burroughs said about America? He said that the evil was there even before the
genocide of the Indians. You know the Indians were given the Spanish flu and all that. But Burroughs said that there's some
evil incarnate in the place itself. Maybe it's the fact that "
He is struggling to find the answer to what he is trying to say but ends the sentence with a disappointed, "I don't
know." To help, I ask if his comments about the latent evil in America is a statement about the Pogues, that the band
was innately troubled from the beginning and just needed some way for the bad feelings to come out.
"No, I'm talking about America, not the bloody Pogues!" he says.
Okay, so those really were two separate subjects first the Pogues relationship with each other, which blended effortless
into William Burroughs thoughts on America.
I ask about the classic song "Fairytale of New York." It's on every jukebox in New York, and thereıs even been
an RTE documentary on the making of the song.
"Yeah, I've seen it, yeah," says Shane. "The song is played a lot in Ireland as well."
So, are you tired of playing it?
"No, weıre not tired of the song," he says quickly. "We play it every night!"
The Pogues had a major hit with a re-released version of the song last Christmas, to raise funds for the family of Kirsty
MacColl, Shane's original partner on the duet, who was killed in boating accident while swimming off the Mexican coast.
Nobody has ever been charged with the death, although it has since emerged that the owner of the boat that ran into her
is a very prominent Mexican businessman with strong ties to the government.
As a result of the publicity raised by the Pogues, the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, recently said that the case would
be investigated and justice dispensed.
Again, it is one of those important moments in the interview, when Shane straightens up and focuses on what he wants to
say.
"We're doing everything we can," he says. "It's really down to Kirsty's mother, Jean, and her children
about what happens next. But, I mean, we gave a massive injection of bread into taking the guy to court." Shane is keeping
a close watch on the case, he says. "Don't you get (Irish Republican newspaper) An Phoblacht over there?" he
adds. "You must have read about the owner of the boat and all that. I think they can get it sorted out."
Talk of "Fairytale of New York" eventually leads back to favorite New York bars, at my prompting.
"I really like The Irish Rover (in Astoria) but I gather it's moved," he says. "Barry O'Reilly from Galway,
the owner, is a really nice guy. Then there's Rocky Sullivan's and P.J. Clarke's. There's no problem getting a drink in New
York."
Shane gives out another soft hissing laugh.
I'm curious about this Pogues reunion. Is this just a way of paying tax bills or does Shane MacGowan have more to achieve?
"I just want to have a good time with the rest of my life," he says.
Does he still want to achieve something new with his songwriting?
"Achieve?" he says, seizing on the word. "Not really no. I mean ... I'll just see what happens, you know?"
Shane broke up with his long-term partner, Victoria Mary Clarke, whom he has described as his "anam cara" (soul
friend in Gaelic).
Who does he now rely on for emotional support?
The question elicits the longest pause of the interview. It lasts so long, I'm afraid he has fallen asleep. Eventually,
he bounces back in.
"Emotional support? God, Our Lady, President F***ing de Valera, Machiavelli and Stalin."
He laughs loud again. "And Alexander the Great! Colin F***ing Farrell. He was born to play Alexander the Great. It
had just changed the hair color. If he had got rid of that problem, it would have been great.
"What was the question?"
I ask him who gives him support and how he spends his days.
"Oh, sometimes I'm here, sometimes I'm there. Sometimes
I'm somewhere else," he says.
And what does Shane do with his days in Tipperary?
"I drink for a start, and I socialize with people who donıt ask me stupid questions!" he says.
I tell him I didn't mean to ask stupid questions but...
"It's just a joke!" he interjects. "Don't worry about it."
Then follows an extraordinary confused conversation about where I'm from and if I met Shane, which involved confusion
over my name, and that of his cousin, Sean.
"What the f*** is going on?" says Shane eventually. "Have you noticed that the Shane's and Sean's are multiplying
like f***ing rabbits?"
Sean takes the phone and says that I should steer Shane onto immigration reform for the undocumented Irish in the U.S.,
which Shane strongly supports. Sean hands back the phone.
"People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the f***ing thing. It's all fucking crap. Weıre
all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. F***ing borders are just such a pain in the f***ing
arse."
What did you think of the Dublin riots last Saturday, Shane?
"I thought they were brilliant!" he says with another loud laugh. "It's democracy as work, isn't it boy?"
The interview is coming to an end.
"I'm just a bit f***ing tired. Holding phones is not really my scene," says Shane apologetically.
Thanks for talking to us, Shane.
"The pleasure is all mine," says Shane, laughing loudly. "No really," he adds. "Godspeed."
"Do you want to know what I'm going to have put on my monument when I'm dead?" he adds. "It's going to
be plain flat stone and its going to be engraved with the words, 'Lazy Sod.'"
With his pronunciation, I think he says "Lady Thug."
"Sod. Like the f***ing earth," says Shane.
"Me. A lazy fucking sod."
And a lost legend.
(For Pogues show information, including a Brooklyn deejay set by MacGowan on St. Patrick's night, check out www.shanemacgowan.net)
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