The Pop Corporation

If there’s one thing no-one can ever accuse Shane MacGowan of, it’s a boring life. Excessive, sure, but on his own terms – MacGowan may be most famous for a Christmas song, but the real heads know that there’s so much more to him than the ‘Fairytale of New York’.

Big Shane was born in Kent to Irish parents, spending some of his childhood in Tipperary, before moving to England. He’d made Ireland his home eventually, but the young Shane felt like an Irish exile. Good stuff for the stirring rebel in his stomach, no doubt. Intelligent, he won a scholarship to the very fancy Westminster public school, and let’s not feign horror about it – it’s obvious his time there was more fuel to his fire. In fact, he was kicked out at 16, and made a beeline for a world of music, getting jobs in record shops.

And then punk happened.

Shane was snapped at a Clash gig, covered in blood after someone bit his ear. He edited a Punk fanzine called Bondage. He joined the Nipple Erectors/The Nips, and sang on the wonderful and catchy ‘Gabrielle’.

“Let’s down to the old West End
Where we used to go when you were my girlfriend
Take a seven and breeze through the city
With you sitting there, looking so pretty
And though you never once gave it away
I can still remember those crazy days
We’d dance all night and sleep all day
In the old West End everybody was dancing”

Soon enough, he would form his own band where his Irishness would be brought to the fore. Originally Pogue Mahone (you know what that means in Irish Gaelic, we won’t patronise you by telling you), folk and punk would collide, and along with his way with words, they’d be just about the only great folk-punk band that ever existed.

The Irish diaspora loved them. The Irish loved them. People with no link to Ireland at all loved them. It wasn’t sappy. It was folk music that was in a knife fight in a phonebox with itself. Chaotic, joyous, sensitive, rousing – the Pogues had it all. They’d sell millions.

The thing with Shane is that he was a gifted poet, a real deal punk, but he made music that sounded great in a small rowdy pub, but also on a massive stage at Madison Square Garden supporting U2. To MacGowan, it didn’t matter who was in front of him – they were all the same.

Of course, he was fond of the drink, and some naysayers in Ireland would bristle at the mention of him for perpetuating the ‘drunk Paddy’ myth, but we loved Shane for his words and how he lived like an outlaw, rather than a sad drunk. Not to say the bottle and substances didn’t scupper MacGowan – but it feels trite to go into this now. We’re celebrating his life, not his downfalls.

He’d be thrown out of The Pogues and start The Popes. Then rejoin The Pogues. He’d get new teeth. Shane was a survivor for the most part, and despite his extraordinary life, was a real People’s Champ. He wrote of the human condition. He oversaw brawls and mayhem.

Raw and refined. Sacred and profane. We’ll not see his like again, that’s for sure.