Source: ROCK 'N' REEL
Date: Issue 29 - Autumn/Winter 1997/1998, page 29
Author: Nick Moulton
Contributor: Ingrid Knetsch
Copyright: (c) ROCK 'N' REEL 1998

Papal Indulgence

Poop scoop! Forget free CDs, concert tickets and an unlimited supply of drink... Rolex watches, nights at the Ritz and brown paper envelopes stuffed with £50 notes are all a bit passé. Rock 'n' Reel's Nick Moulton knew he'd really been bribed when Shane McGowan's outfit offered to let the black mongrel sleeping under the table have sex with his leg (if he wrote them a good review). It's doubtful whether the dog in question was capable of delivering on the promise, however , as Nick'd already seen it work its way around the band and most of the other people in the building! Time, then, for a spot of Papal Indulgence.

You're playing without Shane a lot at the moment. How does that work?

Danny Pope: "The band have been going out and working without Shane be cause he doesn't do enough work to keep us alive."
John Myers: "Because Shane doesn't do tours anymore, it would mean that we'd do a couple of gigs with him and get fairly tight, fairly hot, and then we'd all disappear. The buzz'd go away and we'd have to start to get the Ievel of tightness again. But when we started doing our own thing, it kept us all fairly tight and in touch with each other."
Danny Pope: "So when we go back and play again with Shane. we're really red-hot."
John Myers: "I think bands need to spend a bit of time together anyway - not only on a musicaI IeveI, but socially as weIl, in order to get things together."

And are you continuing to cover Shane's songs, or have you branched out?
John Myers "All our own materiaI, apart from maybe three or four of Shane's songs."
Danny Pope: "'FalI from Grace'... you'd be mad not to do some of his songs, because we're his band and we can play them better than anybody on this planet."
PauI McGuinness: "You hear so many people playing covers of our songs or Shane's - you might as welI hear it from the horse's mouth. The influences are the same, but Shane's not there to keep a lid on it. It's a bit wilder, musicaIly, when Shane isn't there."
Danny Pope: "Yeah, he's a dictator."
John Myers: " A total fascist bastard."
Danny Pope: "I wouldn't go quite that far, but he's definitely a musical dictator.."

Is Irish music still the main influence on The Popes' own work?
John Myers: "I think with the Iine up we've got, you can't get away from it."
Danny Pope: "The instruments we use - yeah. lt's not stricly traditionaI and we're not sitting down and stuff like that. We stand up to go a bit crazy ... traditional instruments with a bit of a rock 'n' roll attitude."
John Myers: "I think when you say traditional, what you mean is lrish. The material of The Popes is stilI very Irish. I mean, we're playing the kind of rock 'n' roll that lrish music has influenced."
Paul McGuinness: "The one thing that we're alI into is lrish music. John and Kieran are into roots music John has the most different tastes - John's into hip-hop. We're aIl into completely different things. If there's one thing that keeps us together it's .."
Danny Pope: "The booze ..."
Paul McGuinness: "lrish roots, and our own personaIities .."
Danny Pope: "We experimented with a couple of things in the studio last time round. Because we'd been taIking about hip-hop, Beck and the Beastie Boys, we just decided, one night after we'd been down the pub, to go in there and put a rhythm down and play traditional over the top. It worked really well."
John Myers: "We basicalIy play any kind of music, but somehow , no matter what we play, whether it's messing around with a hip hop beat or messing around with a Cajun beat, the Irish thing always comes into the centre .."
Danny Pope: "It's good fun doing that, but really what the band is all about is lrish rock'n'roll. Those things we've only just started fiddling around with."

The Popes have played a lot of London gigs without Shane. Have you gone any further afield?
Danny Pope: "With The Popes - without Shane - the only place we' ve played, apart from England, is Jersey. We took Jersey by storm. Ireland is obviously somewhere that the band has to go, but there's always other places round Europe that'll Iove it without Shane as welI. Scandinavia, Finland. Sweden."
Paul McGuinness: "Shane's audience in the States is mostly young kids. The amount of stage diving that goes on!"
Danny Pope: "We pIayed the Fleadh in New York. Police wanted us to stop. Apparently about six or eight people had heart massage after being crushed at the front. There were people hanging off scaffoIding .."

So what direction do you see the band going?
Danny Pope: "To the bar - just through that door and out that way..."
Paul McGuinness: "We're working on our own album at the moment. We've just finished recording Shane's album. And that's coming out this side of Christmas. And then, as soon as that comes out and gets loads of recognition, we're going to slip out our aIbum on the back of Shane's .."
John Myers: "UItimateIy. we'lI see how far we can take The Popes, but it is Shane's band, and he started it, and that's the main thing at the moment - going out there, and for the next few months we'Il be promoting his album which, I think, is a total return to form. One of the best albums that he's done, ever. I think it's going to make a lot of people sit up and listen."
Danny Pope: "There're some very controversial lyrics in there. There's already been feedback from America, from the record company. There're one or two tracks where they didn't like the lyrics."
John Myers: "lt's a very politically-correct world at the moment."
Danny Pope "He's telling stories about people. He's singing songs about peopIe. Through somebody else's eyes. But bigwig record company idiots perceive it as Shane' s thoughts his own personal view."
John Myers: "They should give his fans more credit."

So what do, you think of political correctness?
Danny Pope: "Incorrectness - Ioad of oId bollocks, innit? PoIiteness is more important to me than being poIitically correct."

And how is work going on The Popes' own album?
John Myers: "We started doing the album with some people but fell out. And then we decided to record it ourselves. And then we're going to take it to a labeI and get them to license it. Because we want to keep as much control over ourselves as we can. We'll have it finished some time before December, so any record companies out there who are interested in putting this non-politically-correct album out...."

Who does the writing?
Bob Dolan: "The riding?"
Kieran Kiely: "Good question - you're getting the hang of this politcal politeness."
Danny Pope: "We all do our fair share of riding. Especially Arnold, who's the seventh Pope. He rides all of us. And none of us mind. But then again, he has got four legs and a tail. He's ridden my Ieg already tonight. He wears black as well."
John Myers: "Is he going to do his number tonight?"
PauI McGuinness: "He's not. No."
John Myers: "He's got laryngitis! Paul's written quite a Iot of poems for The Popes' aIbum. Tommy's written some instrumentals. Before we started getting into the thing of where we aIl sit around in the rehearsal room, jamming tunes. We originally started doing my tunes and Tommy's tunes. And we had a backlog of songs. I think that'lI change - I think the first album'Il be a lot that way , but there'll be a few tracks, maybe, messing around with dance music and lrish music, together."
Paul McGuinness: "Everyone writes. lt's just a question of sitting there and writing the next one, whereas this one was more or less written."
John Myers: "The first album contains mostly mine and Tommy's tunes, and one or two Shane tunes that he's written for us 'Juke-box' - that's one of Shane's. And an lrish song called 'Gino's Place' And we've written this song with Shane ourselves caIled 'B & I Ferry', which is on Shane's aIbum. There's a Iot of that happening now, where were aII writing together. "
Paul McGuinness: "Riding ... "

The conversation here moved un to an exploration of a duboius concept involving someone who shalI remain nameless - and how they'd choreograph it. An unprintable anecdote about a well known rock musician counting his way through 1001 Great Come Shots followed. Danny Pope: "We need a bit of mad publicity, actually. We'll have to start doing things like marching up Downing Street with false breasts on, as someone did in the Seventies.You can't do that now, 'cause you can't get up Downing Street..." "Even if there're only about twenty five people here, will you write down in the article that it was throbbingly packed? Say a hundred and fifty people got turned away and all that ... we'Il get you another bottle of beer. "
Paul McGuinness: "We'll let Arnold have a go on your leg."
Danny Pope: "Yeah, now you're talking."
Bob Dolan: "And if you're realIy lucky, we'll let you have a go on John's leg. He's game for anything."

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