|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is this ... fucking ... SHIT?''
Shane MacGowan bellows from the bathroom of his Dublin hotel room. At first sight, his alarm seems well-founded. An unsavoury looking, greenish-brown mess is oozing down the side of the washbasin and onto the floor.
``That's my herbal toothpaste, dear,'' Victoria Clarke, his long-time partner, responds. ``Bloody disgusting,'' he mutters but, apparently reassured, he ambles out and settles down on the bed.
The television is blaring in the background, a teenage angst movie featuring Christina Ricci. ``Do you want a blackberry muffin?'' she asks. MacGowan seizes on the innocuous line. ``Do you want a blackberry muffin?'' he enquires, perfectly mimicking her high-pitched schoolgirl voice. He repeats the line several times, piling on more menace each time until the banal little entreaty has assumed sinister proportions.
When he has built it to a suitably psychotic crescendo, he swings around, eyes rolling around his head and roars ``DO YOU WANT a blackberry muffin?'' Then abruptly he drops his voice to a meek waitress level and adds ``Or maybe a cup of tea?'' before emitting a slow, blood-curdling hiss of laughter.
The room is less than pristine. Clothes, magazines, letters and faxes are strewn on the bed. Around a dozen books on topics from self-help to spirituality -- what he goodnaturedly refers to as Clarke's ``library of bullshit'' -- are scattered on the floor. The ubiquitous bottle of Martini and half-full teacups occupy any remaining surfaces.
They make an endearing, if odd, couple. He is a big guy, over six feet and sturdily built. He ambles around the room like a large shaggy animal, shrugging when he knocks things over. Clarke, tanned and slight, fairly bristles with vitality and good health. A virtual teetotaller, she has an avid interest in alternative medicine, eastern religions and spirituality. She carries a bewildering array of herbal treatments and homoeopathic medicines for every ailment imaginable.
MacGowan patiently acquiesces in her application of various remedies and vitamin supplements for travel fatigue. While St John's Wort and vitamin B may not be his first choice of pick-me-up, he endures her ministrations in much the same way as a child might endure a scrubbing before being allowed out to play. It is only when she accidentally upends a whole bottle of health supplement over his shirt that he emits a sustained, ear-splitting screech.
Some time ago, Clarke says, a spiritualist told her Shane came from a different planet, hence his non-conformity to conventional codes of behaviour. She may have had a point. MacGowan certainly is a law unto himself.
It is late afternoon, his least favourite time of day and, he informs me, this is least favourite pastime. Of all the trappings of fame or notoriety, he singles out interviews as the one he loathes the most.
``I don't like being asked questions.'' Why not? ``Because I have to think of answers. It's work,'' he says, adding pointedly ``and I'm not being paid for it.''
When I make no move to remedy this omission he grins and adds: ``I like talking like now but usually the questions I get asked, like the `have you got a death wish?' bollocks are just boring. It's just the same crap all the time. Of course I haven't got a death wish. If I had I'd be dead. It's pathetic. I just live like I want to and it upsets some people.''
He has been known to turn up days, even weeks, late for interviews, to treat journalists with an icy contempt, to respond to their questions with a withering indifference or outright hostility. So it comes as a surprise, not to say a relief, when Joey Cashman, his manager and sparring partner, delivers him at exactly the appointed time, and in remarkably good spirits.
He has a low opinion of the fourth estate's rock music division, holding the view that most of its hacks are just too lazy or stupid to go beyond the shock-rocker image. A recent BBC 2 documentary was probably the first serious analysis of his work, although he has been the focus of other tribute programmes and countless interviews and profiles.
It could be argued that it was his own penchant for excess and erratic behaviour that so obfuscated the music press. There is an enduring fascination with someone who not so much bends the rules as blithely ignores them. Since his photo first appeared with blood pouring from an ear gashed during a Clash gig, MacGowan has always made good copy.
The dishevelled appearance, the broken teeth, the drunken slur and the audacious comments were effective red herrings.
``We didn't drink any more than lots of other bands but we were put in a box. `Drunken Irish Paddies'. Rock and roll is an amoral business. It has always involved drinking and partying. We didn't invent it,'' he reasons.
Nonetheless, his capacity for hard living has placed him up there with legendary survivors like Keith Richards, who appear to teeter perpetually on the brink while the rest of us watch with an appalled fascination.
The irony is, of course, that although MacGowan has slowed down his frenetic lifestyle, the myth persists. He has long since packed in the hard stuff; a generous Martini is now his tipple and while he is never without a drink, the same drink remains barely touched during a conversation exceeding two hours.
He is enjoying something of a second coming. A consensus of sorts has emerged that he is the most significant creative Irish force in decades. His dogged refusal to compromise over the years has earned him street cred in spades and legions of devoted fans. His two albums with the Popes, the band he formed after his departure from the Pogues, have been widely acclaimed and his concerts are attracting new audiences who would have been pre-school when the Pogues first exploded on to the music scene.
A Patrick's Night concert the previous evening went well; he is heading to Belfast later as part of a short European tour. Although he hated the relentless touring that characterised his former days with the Pogues, he still gets a kick out of performing. He reasons that when touring is not just an endless, mindless treadmill, the chances of a good show are pretty high.
``We always get young kids. We've had a few generations of fans now. I'm using the royal we,'' he says, before adding deadpan, ``but I mean me, of course.''
Like everything else about MacGowan, his performances are unpredictable. On a bad night, a MacGowan gig is an utter shambles. On form he is almost untouchable, spitting out lyrics with a blistering ferocity, inciting his fans to near euphoria with a mixture of frantic folk punk interspersed with hauntingly beautiful ballads.
Like a demented alchemist, he still revels in his ability to conjure up scenes of chaos and gleeful abandon. There is a spiritual dimension to getting out of your head, he believes. It is, he says, a necessary release.
A hybrid of Behan, Baudelaire and Bukowski, he is immensely likeable and occasionally punchable. He can be alternately foul-mouthed and articulate, obnoxious and charming, irascible and amiable, wickedly funny and brutally honest. Indeed, he is capable of displaying all of the above traits within seconds of each other.
Depending on his mood he will emit surly monosyllables or cogent, considered, witty responses on a wide variety of questions. He is enormously well-read and ferociously intelligent, with astonishing powers of recall. He shifts from analyses of Jung, Laing or Joyce one minute to The Bill or Coronation Street the next.
He has just been told members of Dominic McGlinchey's family want to meet him. `Paddy Public Enemy No 1', a song from his recently released album, is ``sort of'' about McGlinchey, the paramilitary leader who was shot in Drogheda. He is not sure whether the family members are impressed or offended by the song, but he reckons he'll find out soon enough.
People always want to meet MacGowan. Performances from London to New York to Tokyo attract a bewildering array of fans: clatters of supermodels, actresses, musicians and celebrities are permanent post-gig fixtures, `wanting to meet' MacGowan afterwards. Whether it is a celebrity or a semi-inebriated fan who wangles a pass, the response is more or less the same. A gruff handshake, a few words and maybe a shared drink.
Back in his room he turns his attention from the TV to the view from the hotel window. ``Look at all this ... poncey shit,'' he says, gesticulating in the Temple Bar direction. ``It's destroying Irish culture. What the British couldn't do in 800 years, we've done in 10.''
As a young lad growing up in Tipperary, MacGowan was steeped in Irish culture, the twin traditions of storytelling and music. Dozens of locals would gather nightly in his family home, where there would be music, dancing and tales told until the small hours. By the age of eight, MacGowan had amassed a formidable collection of ballads and rebel songs which he would belt out from his perch on the kitchen table. Those first performances whetted his appetite for Irish music and applause.
His childhood was idyllic, full of music, hurling matches and the affection of a large extended family, the antithesis of the poverty and casual cruelty of The Butcher Boy or Angela's Ashes. But when his family moved to London, it triggered feelings of isolation and alienation, which inspired some of his most poignant songs.
Although he has been hailed as a spokesman for generations of downtrodden Irish emigrants and ghettoised minorities everywhere, his background was not one of deprivation. His father came from a middle class Dublin family, his mother from a farming background. While in primary school he devoured the works of Joyce, Behan, and James Mangan. An essay on the works of Blake secured him a place at Westminster public school, but his penchant for non-conformist behaviour led to his expulsion.
For a time he combined his two favourite pastimes, drinking and music, by working in record shops and pubs. The punk movement provided a perfect antidote to the blandness of mid-1970s music and MacGowan revelled in its excess. When he formed the Pogues, they fairly stunned a jaded music press with their chaotic performances. Their first three albums were hailed as masterpieces and MacGowan as a peerless songwriter. Although the self-appointed guardians of Irish traditional music were outraged by his unconventional approach, he was quickly championed by Christy Moore and the Dubliners, who hailed the emergence of a formidable new talent.
This respect was mutual and MacGowan is still scornful of elitism among traditional purists.
``I think purism stifles creativity,'' he says. ``I just mixed it all in. You have to go backwards to go forward. I'm regressive. That's what the Rolling Stones did. They went back to Robert Johnson. That's what I did with Irish music. But I'm not into all that traditional purist shite. I think Joe Dolan has just as much right to be considered a part of Irish music as anyone else. He's much more part of it than all that Riverdance bollocks.''
Riverdance, he reflects with exaggerated concern, is not healthy at all.
So what's wrong with Riverdance? ``What's wrong with Riverdance? What's wrong with Riverdance? he splutters. ``Well it's obvious, it's just crap. It's not what Irish music and dance is about. It's not ... raw. It's not real.
``The early Pogues and what I do now is raw. It's like what Irish music is really about, which is straightforward, no bullshit, raw, raunchy and quite messy. Or else slow beautiful ballads. Sort of melancholy. But it gets you in the gut. And the heart.
``Audiences don't want some soulless sophisticated crap, some faggot with a synthesiser,'' he continues. ``They want headbanging stuff that gets you in the gut. And the heart. That's why the younger ones come to our concerts now.''
He is dismissive of the much-vaunted Irish cultural Renaissance. There is no new Irish writing that particularly inspires him, he says. What about Martin MacDonagh, Conor MacPherson?
``Martin MacDonagh is a load of crap,'' he announces cheerfully with another hiss of laughter. ``I've never seen any of his plays but I've read bits of them.''
Later, he concedes he may need to revise this opinion.
As the revisionism of his own work continues, cultural commentators have pronounced him a genius, an astonishingly articulate if wayward creative force. Others, however, deride him as a caricature, a stage Irishman hellbent on self destruction.
For 15 years now he has graced the covers of countless magazines and arts sections of newspapers. He has been praised and pilloried, in roughly equal measure. He seems to excite every emotion save indifference. Tales of his legendary excesses were faithfully reported and, according to MacGowan, grossly exaggerated. But he does concede he has a capacity for creating mayhem, whether intentional or not.
When the Pogues self-combusted after five albums no one was surprised, least of all MacGowan.
``Part of the Pogues' mission was to drag them back into the bog. And for a while it worked. Then we lost that vision. So it stopped working. Now I'm back to doing what I wanted.''
Thatcher's Britain was not the most hospitable climate for a bunch of punks singing Irish rebel songs. The possible subversive effect of MacGowan's lyrics prompted questions in the House of Commons in the mid-1980s, something which amused him greatly. The tabloids denounced him as an IRA supporter; he has nationalist sympathies but does not regard himself as political. Unlike Bono or Bob Geldof or Sinead O'Connor, MacGowan has never felt inclined towards messianic statements or voicing opinions on political controversies.
But he maintains a keen interest in Irish politics. He regards the recent political upheavals in Ireland, the unearthing of corruption and backhanders, with a sort of detached bemusement.
``We inherited a British set of laws unsuited to the Irish temperament, which is essentially inclined towards lawlessness,'' he says.
``The Irish are pragmatic, not dogmatic. We're not averse to lying or cheating to get what we want. It goes back to the Famine and before it: when your first instinct is survival, it doesn't leave much room for questions of morality.''
The fact that survival is no longer an issue, he observes drily, hasn't necessarily led to a higher moral standards. ``I shouldn't say it, but I'm not too worried that we're not a bunch of fucking wimps like the English,'' he concludes. British standards of justice and fair play haven't overly impressed him during his 30-odd years in London.
Recently he seems to have acquired a new maturity. Onstage at the Point on Tuesday night he was more like a younger Johnny Cash or Ronnie Drew: the ragged t-shirt and scruffy jeans have been replaced by a smart black suit and shirt. His gait is steadier, the frenetic spitting out of lyrics has been replaced by the sort of deliberate self-confidence of someone whose place in the rock 'n' roll hierarchy is assured.
``In terms of experience and stuff I know a lot of stuff. I suppose I've always written adult songs but I still feel young.''
Curiously, he believes his songs are not really his, they are mystic elements which float around. Anyone can do it.
``Christy Moore summed it up beautifully. He said there are all these songs floating around the air and if you don't reach out and catch one then someone else, I dunno, Paul Simon or someone, will grab it instead.''
When I suggest that he may be better tuned in than most, he insists that anyone who opens their mind or ``tunes their transmitter properly'' can absorb the necessary frequency to create music, or art or whatever. ``You just leave your self open to it. Drink,'' he says seriously, ``can help quite a bit in the mind-opening process. It helps me, anyway.''
In mid-conversation or the small hours he will scribble a few lines down on a beermat or a scrap of paper. But such an unorthodox songwriting method carries a high rate of attrition.
Legend has it that many of his finest songs, like `Rainy Night In Soho', were penned on drink-sodden beermats. Nick Cave, a close friend, says that MacGowan has lost or forgotten more classic songs than any of his peers have written. Is he worried that much of his work has been lost?
``I'm not worried but it's happened, yeah. Some great songs have gone down the can because I couldn't remember the lyrics the next day, because I lost the bits of paper they were on. But if I forget a tune, that doesn't bother me, because if a tune is good, you can't get it out of your head.''
MacGowan does not write or live vicariously; whether they deal with loneliness or love, alienation or celebration, drunkenness or despair, his songs have an unshakeable authenticity about them. But he regards himself mainly as a storyteller; songs like `The Sickbed of Cuchulainn' and `Bottle of Smoke' rattle along at breakneck speed, packed with vivid, unforgettable images.
Although his songs deal with death in a way that is graphic and sometimes grotesquely funny, it is not a subject he is comfortable talking about or, he admits, even thinking about. He has lost friends prematurely, and turning 40 last Christmas Day makes him an unlikely elder statesman in a business where youth is frequently the first casualty.
``I don't like to do a lot of heavy thinking about death. I don't like to talk about it really, either.''
He carries Catholic paraphernalia everywhere with him, an assortment of rosary beads, scapulars and holy medals.
``I'm a Catholic, I always believed in Jesus, but I believe his words have been corrupted by the Catholic institutions, by the Vatican. And it has filtered right down. I think it's a good thing that the church has lost its grip.''
Notwithstanding his beliefs, some songs contain fairly scathing descriptions of the clergy. But he says they are not an indictment of the church in general. ```Donegal Express' is just a funny song about a dirty priest,'' he says.
Regardless of musical whims, MacGowan is very much a songwriter's songwriter. David Bowie, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Van Morrison, Nick Cave, Johnny Cash and Tom Waits are among those who have lauded his music. His songs have appeared in acclaimed films by Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi and others.
``I suppose if they all think it's good I haven't been wasting my time. But I'm a people's songwriter, not a songwriter's songwriter,'' he says.
At this point, Clarke returns with a cousin in tow. The conversation drifts into general chat.
``If I wasn't here now you'd all be talking about sex,'' he observes nonchalantly. He seems more amused than offended when he is assured that his presence doesn't impinge on the conversational content one way or another. ``Oh, well, I'll stay anyway,'' he volunteers. ``Just in case.''