Updated: 9th December 2023

Shane MacGowan’s family and friends held a “monster hooley” at his funeral in County Tipperary on Friday, 8th December – dancing to Fairytale of New York.

Hundreds of people gathered inside and outside the church in Nenagh to say their farewells to the songwriter, who died last week aged 65. Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, and Bob Geldof, among other luminaries, were there to sing MacGowan over to the other side.

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Updated: 8th December 2023

From Dublin-Born Author, Kevin Holohan . . .

I was in a public house yesterday evening — more of a rarity these days than in years past. It was filled with the boisterous, pre-Christmas, after-work, bonhomie: that cozy sense of being warm and indoors intensified by the chilly New York evening outside. The Guinness was good, the pint glasses Imperial size. The playlist in the background was decidedly seasonal: Slade, Last Christmas I GEV you my heart, Mariah Carey…

“Can’t be long now,” I remarked to one of my companions. No sooner had I picked up my pint again than there it was:

It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank

An old man said to me, “Won’t see another one”

I knew it was coming, but it somehow stopped me in my tracks. I waited to see what would happen. Would the hubbub in the room soften? Alter? Steer itself in a different direction to acknowledge that it was THAT song, THIS week? I scanned the room and listened more intently to the white noise around me. Nothing changed. Though the trappings of the bar were Irish, the crowd was the crowd you find in any bar in the Financial District of Manhattan: from everywhere, soon to depart back to everywhere on the 4, 5, A, C, N, PATH, 7:27 Metro North, 7:32 LIRR, 6:53 NJ Transit. It was just one more Christmas song to be talked over. My hopes of the place spontaneously joining in with the chorus were dashed on the rocks of their volubility.

Then I noticed her, the bartender who had served me, and apologized for my pint dripping down the sides. I think she was from Galway. I’d bantered that a good full pint was better than an over-generous bishop’s collar any day. She chuckled politely. Now she was at the taps again pulling a pint. Staring off into the middle distance toward the door with a wistful look on her face, you could see her lips move as she sang quietly along:

The boys of the NYPD choir

Were singing, “Galway Bay”

And the bells were ringing out

For Christmas Day

That was somehow enough, somehow perfect. You could see it in her face. The song touched her and she knew full well that it was THAT song THIS particular week.

_{KEVIN HOLOHAN’s debut novel, the critically acclaimed The Brothers’ Lot is a “witty, brilliant, devastating expression of outrage.” (Times Literary Supplement). His stories and essays have appeared in the Sunday Tribune, Whispers and Shouts, writing.ie, and the Irish Echo. His latest novel So You Wanna Run a Country? launches March 5, 2024}

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Original post – 30th November: 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…

The Pogues – The Old Main Dragwww.youtube.com

“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

The Pogues – A Rainy Night In Sohowww.youtube.com

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.