Devastating news Shane Macgowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and frontman of brilliant"Celtic Punk" band The Pogues, died this morning, his family said. He was 65.although many would have been forgiven for wondering how he made it that far. I was still shocked and utterly saddened though.I really loved his music and songwriting and it has meant a lot to me over the years,
His wife Victoria Mary Clarke broke the news today (30th November), sharing a post on Instagram, which read: "I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love ❤️ of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese. I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love ❤️ and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures. There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world. Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your musicYou will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ You meant the world to me.. "https://www.instagram.com/p/C0RN60nstwc/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=67b6de40-1339-40fe-bf04-c634d6d06d25 The singer died peacefully with his family by his side.
Tributes have since flooded in with celebrities and public figures taking to social media to pay their condolences.
Irish President Michael D Higgins described his “great sadness” at hearing of Shane MacGowan’s death. “Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists,” he said. “So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them.”
Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said MacGowan told “the Irish story” like no other. “Shane was a poet, a dreamer and a champion of social justice. He was a dedicated Republican and a proud Irishman. “Nobody told the Irish story like Shane – stories of emigration, heartache, dislocation, redemption, love and joy.
Musician Nick Cave called him “a true friend and the greatest songwriter of his generation.”
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was actually born in Pembury Kent on Christmas Day 1957 to Irish parents and was raised in Tipperary, Ireland, from the age of six before the family moved back to London. Ireland remained the lifelong center of his imagination and his yearning. He grew up steeped in Irish music absorbed from family and neighbors, along with the sounds of rock, Motown, reggae and jazz. He claimed that as a five year-old he was given two bottles of Guinness a night.
The young MacGowan was noted for his literary gifts and received a scholarship to the elite Westminster School in London, but was expelled after being caught in possession of drugs.and spent time in a psychiatric hospital after a breakdown in his teens. MacGowan embraced the punk scene that exploded in Britain in the mid-1970s. In 1970s London, he became a well-known face on the punk scene.Aged 18, he graced the cover of the local papers after his ear was bloodied during a concert by the Clash. and soon found a role as frontman for the band The Nipple Erectors, later rebranded as The Nips. performing under the name Shane O'Hooligan,.
After the original line-up of The Nips broke up in 1980, Macgowan formed Pogue Mahone, fusing fused punk's furious energy with traditional Irish melodies and instruments including banjo, tin whistle and accordion. They were named named after the Irish Gaelic phrase "póg mo thóin" ("kiss my arse")
The singer changed his early punk style for a more traditional sound when founding The Pogues in 1982, drawing upon his Irish heritage. The new group, then known as Pogue Mahone, played their first gig at The Pindar of Wakefield on October 4, 1982. Many of the Celtic punk band's songs are influenced by Irish nationalism, Irish history, the experiences of the Irish diaspora (particularly in England and the United States), and London life in general.
They drew the attention of the media and Stiff Records when they opened for The Clash on their 1984 tour.The Pogues debut album, "Red Roses for Me," was released in 1984 and featured raucous versions of Irish folk songs alongside originals including "Boys from the County Hell," "Dark Streets of London" and "Streams of Whisky." MacGowan wrote many of the songs on the next two albums, "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" (1985) and "If I Should Fall from Grace with God" (1988), ranging from rollicking rousers like the latter album's title track to ballads like "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "The Broad Majestic Shannon."
The band also released a 1986 EP, "Poguetry in Motion," which contained two of MacGowan's finest songs, "A Rainy Night in Soho" and "The Body of an American." The latter featured prominently in early-2000s TV series "The Wire," sung at the wakes of Baltimore police officers. "I wanted to make pure music that could be from any time, to make time irrelevant, to make generations and decades irrelevant," he recalled in his memoir.
But it was The Pogues collaboration with Kirsty MacColl at Christmas that year that gave them eternal fame. "Fairytale of New York" a bittersweet Christmas classic that opens with the decidedly unfestive words: "It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank."
The Pogues reinvigorated folk music in the early 80s and their success came in the midst of "The Troubles" sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and as an upstart punk group, The Pogues had a distinctly political edge. Their 1988 song "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six" recounted the plight of six Irishmen wrongly imprisoned for deadly bombings at two pubs in the central English city. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) were widely suspected of perpetrating the 1974 attack that killed 21 and left scores more injured. "They're still doing time/For being Irish in the wrong place/And at the wrong time," MacGowan sang. The tune fell foul of a UK government ban that covered the broadcast of the voices of pro-Irish republican paramilitaries and their political representatives. However the band was vindicated in 1991 when all six men saw their convictions quashed on appeal, in what remains one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice.
Their legendary bacchanalian antics, on and off stage, were as much a part of the band’s philosophy as the music. As MacGowan told Melody Maker in 1991, “The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks. They spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.”
The Pogues were briefly on top of the world, with sold-out tours,I was blessed to see some fiery performance by them back in the day. but the band's output and appearances grew more erratic, due in part to MacGowan's struggles with alcohol and drugs. He was fired by the other band members in 1991.In 2004, MacGowan said he "was glad to get out alive".
In 2016, MacGowan's wife Victoria reported he was finally sober, if a shadow of his former self, and even had his trademark rotten teeth restored. The dentist responsible, Darragh Mulrooney, gave the singer 28 teeth on a titanium frame in a procedure that took nine hours and was dubbed "the Everest of dentistry".
As lead singer of The Pogues and as a solo artist, Shane MacGowan was s a defining figure of modern Irish music. Among the greatest songwriters of his generation, he infused traditional Irish folk with the spirit of punk and a bleary-eyed romanticism to create a compelling and unique intoxicating musical brew,.sometimes sad, sometimes wonderful, and often soaked in a mixture of alcohol and genius. MacGowan became as famous for his sozzled, slurred performances as for his powerful songwriting. His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to defiant ballads of the downtrodden and the doomed to unexpectedly tender love songs. A man of great talent and humanity as well as being a wild, creative and talented maverick. .
"It never occurred to me that you could play Irish music to a rock audience," MacGowan recalled in "A Drink with Shane MacGowan," a 2001 memoir co-authored with Clarke. "Then it finally clicked. Start a London Irish band playing Irish music with a rock and roll beat. The original idea was just to rock up old ones but then I started writing."
He continued performing with a new group as Shane MacGowan and The Popes, before reuniting with The Pogues in 2001 for a series of concerts and tours.He also enjoyed a minor career as an actor, appearing in the films Straight To Hell and Eat The Rich..However his public reputation remained sealed as a heavy-drinking, drug-using rebel.
MacGowan had years of health problems and used a wheelchair after breaking his pelvis a decade ago.In 2016, MacGowan's wife Victoria reported he was finally sober, if a shadow of his former self, and even had his trademark broken rotten teeth restored. The dentist responsible, Darragh Mulrooney, gave the singer 28 teeth on a titanium frame in a procedure that took nine hours and was dubbed "the Everest of dentistry".
MacGowan received a lifetime achievement award from Irish President Michael D. Higgins on his 60th birthday. The occasion was marked with with performers including Bono, Nick Cave, Sinead O'Connor and Johnny Depp.
The musician was hospitalised in Dublin in December 2022 with encephalitis - a condition in which the brain becomes inflamed and often needs urgent treatment - and taken into intensive care again in July 2023, but had returned home shortly before his death. Shane MacGowan would have celebrated his 66th birthday this Christmas Day.
Thank you Shane for your songs maestro, your genius and sensitivity, I''ve been playing your fine timeless records today and long I hope will continue to do so and have been raising a few glasses in your honour. The likes of you we will not see again. My deepest sympathies go out to your wife and family. Taisteal go maith dul milis / Travel well go gentle.. Rest in Peace.
The Pogues live at the Town and Country Club London '88
The Pogues - Misty Morning Albert Bridge
Shane MacGowan and the Popes - Church of the Holy Spook
