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With another successful reunion tour wrapped up, lead singer Shane MacGowan, took his traditional pilgrimage to North-West Tipperary to spend Christmas with this family and close friends. It is remarkable to see this oftentimes-doomed singer back selling out the top venues with his original band The Pogues. The rocker has been reunited with The Pogues for the past few years, touring with a live show of their greatest hits, and by all accounts, this reunion is working well. Here, MacGowan speaks about being back with the band and his ambition for the coming year:
"I'm better than ever, and so is everyone actually…. and that's old age…-laugh-…experience and the fact that I've never stopped playing live and all the rest of it, where the rest of them were doing other things I carried it on, but then it fell to bits gradually, you know what I mean ?…..and without Tommy the whole thing was over. But I will be doing my own stuff with various remnants of The Popes and there will probably be some new Pogues stuff coming out, but at the moment the only definite thing is that The Pogues are playing live, and I am going to try and persuade them to hopefully do Europe and get back to Germany, yeah? I've also been trying to persuade them to do Belfast, but the thing is I try not to get involved in the politics of it; I'm going to try and do Belfast as soon as possible. I'm sure we could sell Belfast and sell out The Point. I've tried to suggest one than more gig, it's to do with having a paying gig, not that I am that worried but it's the business people, yeah?! We used to play the King's Hall, the Queen's Hall and we also used to do the West Belfast Festival, but that's gone a bit different now. What's the nearest thing to The Point in Belfast? The Waterfront? How many would that hold, the same as The Point? So there is no reason not to do Belfast yeah! We don't play as many gigs these days, and we have all grown up a bit and learned to co-operate a bit better. So I don't do anything I don't want to do, and I don't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do, and I think we form a united front as a general rule, but at the end of the day we have to make it pay, right?! I was certainly grinding down at end of The Pogues, you know the first time, yeah! And we now have had 10 years off from each other now, but it's certainly not a nostalgia trip at all because we have a huge repertoire and everyone has got better. It's an endless repertoire; there is hundreds of stuff there really. New material could easily be done, yeah. I haven't made a studio album for almost 10 years, and the other guys haven't made one for the same time, but there is a backlog of stuff there. It's fun to play again the classics again like Dirty Old Town, Sally McLennane and also the ballads too. Off course in The Pogues I was doing all the main singing, but also The Pogues have also had Phil, Terry, Spider Andrew, so it's a good mix for the show."
Although The Pogues seem to be back on the live circuit for the foreseeable future, the question still remains regarding the doomed fate of MacGowan's former backup band. During his ten-year interlude away from The Pogues, MacGowan spent a long period with The Popes. This was the band that helped the singer make his comeback in the early 90's and provided a platform to launch two critically acclaimed albums. However, The Popes project gradually grinded to a halt last year and December 2006 seen the tragic death of Tommy MacManaman (founder member and banjo player). MacGowan now takes us through the reasons why The Popes ran to ground:
"I mean I did my best for year's to make The Popes pay, but at the end it couldn't possibly pay. All sorts of things happened in the end, shit happens, you know?!. We used to play two or three nights at The Olympia, and we were losing money because it wasn't The Pogues, yeah? It's the name itself, I'm not saying that me and The Popes are the exact same thing as me and The Pogues, but its just the magic of the name or whatever, right yeah, plus the fact that playing two gigs at the Olympia, yeah, doesn't making you as much money as playing one as The Pogues at The Point. Everyone wants to really go back to play in Germany somehow, there is a huge fanbase there, that all went down the drain because people at the top started saying you are going to get this much tax taken off you, but the point is that The Popes could not afford to play Germany at a point. The final stage was that Tommy had to leave cause he got really ill. We made three really good albums I thought yeah?! The third one being the live album, which was never distributed properly, but for a live album, it's not bad. Off course, nowadays there are so many bootlegs and downloading and all that kind of thing its hard to get it going. I mean the Crock of Gold was never given any proper promotion by ZTT, and of course they were always a bit notorious for paying on time. We got the publishing alright, The Crock Of Gold turned out alright in the end. The first album was much more successful, and all sorts of things went wrong with The Crock Of Gold, and then people started dying, yeah!? Like Big Charlie and people like that, real demoralising stuff. That had been also starting to happen in the Pogues."
As already mentioned, the all too tragic passing of Tom MacManaman came as very sad news to all the fans that have seen the band play, or indeed had the chance to meet Tom after gigs. Tom was a great character of the band and had the talent and flair to gain a strong reputation in the music business, here MacGowan gives tribute to his former bandmate :
"…he gained a lot of personal problems and it's none of my business to discuss them, stuff like his parents dying when he was young and stuff like that, yeah. The most brilliant banjo player I have ever played with, yeah….along with Barney McKenna, yeah, and Jem is a different type of banjo player. He was undoubtedly one of the nicest guys, he was always brilliant, but there was a high emotional price to pay, that sort of genius comes with a price, and he drank too much basically! Tommy took a sabbatical, to try and get healthy, cause the last thing I wanted was for another person to die, for the sake of us playing gigs. He went of and we made an agreement that we would all try and get ourselves together, and I wouldn't see him and he wouldn't see me until he was ok, and it seem to be working, and it certainly worked for me and the rest of the gang, but the band broke up eventually, but Tommy was already very ill by the time, it was only meant to be a sabbatical he was taking, he never left the band or we never threw him out or anything. Unquestionably in the banjo stakes he was in the same category as Terry Woods, a really inspired musician. I mean a lot of people fell by the wayside over the years, it's a bad business the heavy touring and all the rest of it yeah! But Tommy never played a bad gig, he was absolutely brilliant, and a brilliant human being, it's a pity that staying off the road didn't work.
It is reasonable to claim that Shane MacGowan may be as famous for his lifestyle and teeth as he is for his work. Okay, everyone knows him as the guy that wrote Fairytale of New York, but it is the purist that is aware of the true scope of the man's work. Although fair to say his finest work was done in the 80's, his songs have lived on and still remain favourites right into the 21st century. We now hear from the singer how he went along the creative process and hear how the ideas for some of his songs came:
"I would just bang around on the guitar or whatever I have in my hand, there is generally an instrument close by. Or I might be in a boozer, and the general idea forms, sometimes they just come, and sometimes they take ages and sometimes I collaborate with one of the others and it's usually Jem in the Pogues. You may not believe this but Body Of An American was the result of me thinking of the line 'Everyone there was pisskey' -laugh- and I got obsessed with the idea of a song with that line in it. Pisskey means pissed, yeah!? Then I thought of various stories from Ireland in my formative years, like the Cadillac outside the house, the American coming home dead, the boxers….there all mixtures of people and things yeah! Fairytale Of NewYork, was a bit like that yeah!, Jem had a tune and I had a tune and we had a basic idea of doing a duet, a Christmas song, but not like the usual bollocks, something with a Pogues feel yeah. At a certain point we developed to a point, then Kirsty was the magic thing that happened there, although Cait did a great job with it, but she left and that buggered it up, then we had label problems for two years, then we came out with the third album which we had been playing in for a long time, then the final thing was getting Kirsty into the studio and like saying 'well I'll have a crack at doing this', the way she did that vocal really put the stamp on the song. Fairytale was a proud moment, but it's to do with the whole band plus Kirsty, and Cait and all the people who were involved, and it all fell together without me really thinking about it. I couldn't just sit down and write it yeah, I mean I have done some like that, you know like bets, you know! Like I'll Be Your Handbag….-laugh- but someone give me a bet to use that as the title.
I remember a German said to me once, 'do you know the Turkish song by the Dammed', and I said 'what did you say?' and he said 'DO YOU KNOW THE TURKISH SONG OF DAMNED?', and I thought that's amazing, the Turkish Song Of The Dammed and we were playing around with bouzoukis and things and I had been to Greece and Turkey, and Terry and Jem used different sound to come up with a mixture of Eastern and Irish"
"Another example is Lullaby Of London, when we first moved to London my dad used to come up to my room when he came home from the boozer pissed, and sing a lullaby, well he wouldn't sing a lullaby he would be telling me things would be ok and work out ok, yeah ?!"
"In terms of singing and playing music it was always around, and in my day you weren't allowed to say you cant sing, its having a go is the thing, I'd be singing anyway no matter what was going on, and playing. We just got lucky yeah, I mean one minute their throwing us out of these bars and the next minute they are paying us to play in them, you know what I mean. There is loads of great people out there that never get that break, Iv seen hundreds of great bands over the years that never made it, there was always plenty of influences. The best compliment we ever got was that The Pogues was that we were 'like The Dubliners on-speed' -laugh-. That is the original Dubliners, with Luke and Ciaron yeah. I never had the chance of meeting or talking to Luke. He was a huge influence, like Liam Clancy too…that whole thing was a big thing when I was a kid, Luke was gone by the time we got together to do the Irish Rover. Ronnie's got the throat cancer, I've rang him a few times and it sounds that he was alright, I mean he sounded ok, yeah?! He always sounded like he had throat cancer, the way he talks -laughs-. I think he will be fine. He is a fighter. It's really a matter of will I think, and getting it reasonably earlier. I think they must be close to getting a cure with that stem cell stuff. It's terrible Jim McCann lost his voice, but he is bloody lucky he didn't die with it. He is a great guy, Id rather have him around without the voice than not, and we have recordings of his beautiful voice. That group has had so many great singers. I mean Ciaron sang, played the whistle mandolin, was a fluent Gaelic speaker; he was kind of the Gaelic soul of the group. If you remember the 25th anniversary show, where we did the Irish Rover, Ciaron got up in the audience and recited a poem in Irish, and maybe some English, and he was dying on his feet when he done that.
In the final section of the interview Shane now talks about how he spent Christmas, his plans for a New Year gathering in the old homestead and plans to celebrate his 50th birthday:
"I've been down in Tipp since Christmas day. We had a lot of drink over Christmas, a few rows with the old man, and it has been mainly friendly so far. I heard about Mark Radcliffe doing the Stars In Your Eyes, did you see it? How does dressing up like me go anyway? -laugh-…. I suppose he had the bad teeth, yeah? I mean I'm a very hard person to take the piss out of anyhow, because I do such a good job of it myself, -laugh-, but I'd love to see that clip sometime.
I am looking forward to New Year's Eve, that will be a good one. We are going to spend it at the old house, which is right out in the country where I was brought up, her mother and her mother you know yeah? It's nearly 400 hundred years old. It's where I got it all from, obviously I didn't scrap it off the floor year!? I should be a good night, what's left of the family will be there we will have a few drink, and sing and play music. I still mess around on guitar or whatever is there, but on New Year's will be more type of Sean Nos thing mixed with playing the old records like Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll."
The 50th will be a good excuse for a bit of a party next year, for the fortieth I tried to ignore it but I think we will have a big thing for the 50th. But off course I only have six months to live if you listen to the media, they got that one wrong didn't they -laugh-. Every-time someone says I have six months to live I say fuck you, but that's media yeah! It's been a while since they said I have six months left to live but unfortunately old Tommy has gone, however life must go on yeah"
Before I go can you mention to Ingrid that I will get the blog I started sorted so it is on ShaneMacGowan.com, I know she is going through personal stuff now, but that's no-one's business, but can you tell her I will get the Blog sent to her site anymore, yeah?, Cheers and happy new year!.
© Martin Roddy, 2007