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It is June and the Pogues and I are all travelling along in a big green tour bus to another gig. All, that is, except for Shane MacGowan, who is teleporting somewhere off the milky seas of Venus as I attempt to interview him in the rear of the tour coach where he sits, alone in all his ruin, not so much removed from the rest of the band as utterly dislocated from the straight world in general. His eyes are mad, conspiratorial beacons and his thoughts are cluttered and half-digested.
"Are you wired for sound?" he keeps asking me, until it isn't even remotely amusing anymore and yet he's still ogling with me that totally meaningful look acid heads give you when they're saying something totally meaningless. "No, Shane, but you're wired for life!" a roadie indusgently ripostes.
It is an appropriate rejoinder just as the condition it indicated is not altogether unexpected. But it's frustrating and a little disheartening to witness because, in between those moments when his brain isn't being swamped out by some oppressive agent of supefaction, it's clear Shane MacGowan has something he wants to tell me. So why do you think you have to torment yourself with all this drinking and drugging you do, I ask him.
He once more laughs his trademark "Kssshh" laugh, the sound of a portable toilet flushing itself. "I don't take drugs to torment myself - ksshh-h-h. I've already got life to do that for me!" But how do you feel when everybody sits you down lectures you about being too out of it?