A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan

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Fairytale of New York" (featuring Kirsty MacColl) – No. 2 UK; reissued in 1991 (No. 24 UK), 2005 (No. 3 UK) and 2007 (No. 4 UK)

Like most good movies from my youth, this is definitely a tale of two halves. The first half tells the story of Shanes life up until he wrote Fairy Tale of New York. Growing up around London with Irish parents during the height of the troubles Shane was an outsider from the very beginning, espeically at the private Westminster School, which he attended due to his precocity with English literature. He was reading the likes of James Joyce by the time he was 10, encouraged by his Dad. Whilst encouraging him to read his Dad is accussed of lax parenting that landed Shane in rehab as a teenager after he had been expelled from school. Costello would go on to produce the band’s sophomore album Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash, and the Pogues started headlining their own tours. Frank Murray, who had managed the storied Irish band Thin Lizzy, became the Pogues manager and a “battle of wills commenced” between him and MacGowan that would not subside until Shane’s departure. MacGowan’s writing was getting better and becoming more multi-dimensional, evident on songs like “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” which was heavily steeped in allusions to traditional Irish music. Talented people who don’t develop their own talents, man, they should be ashamed of themselves. And I’m speaking as someone who, between 1975 and 1985, was exactly that person. That’s something I feel ashamed about. I don’t feel ashamed about being a junkie. I don’t feel ashamed about the moral aspects of my behaviour during those years so much. I’m not happy about it, but...Shane MacGowan and Ed Sheeran win Ivor Novello awards". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 29 October 2020 . Retrieved 10 May 2020. Cooper, Leonie (24 December 2015). " "I Don't Like Christmas, It's Gross": An Interview With Shane MacGowan". Vice Magazine. Archived from the original on 10 December 2016 . Retrieved 24 December 2015. I enjoyed this telling of MacGowan's life; it is well written and easy to consume. It is clear that Balls has set out to provide a "warts and all" narrative and there is plenty of material here, that's for sure. I do think that it must be a particular challenge to write a bio of a subject still alive since it necessitates spending time getting material not only from those that know him, but also from the horses mouth so to speak. What often happened is that the author and the subject become friends and therefore I wonder if objectivity suffers. We are told, time and again, how shy Shane is and what a overall "good guy" he is whilst at the same time, being informed about his claims to violence, temper and general proclivity for being obnoxious. Now, it is not up to me to judge any one's lifestyle and I have absolutely no problem with hedonism, in fact I often wish I had lived a life more along those lines. However, it does seem to have been so central to his life that the negatives, although mentioned frequently, seem a little understated to me, at least until the final chapter. I Don't Like Christmas, It's Gross': An Interview with Shane MacGowan (by Leonie Cooper)". Vice Magazine. 24 December 2015. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 5 March 2016. Disalvo, Tom (6 December 2022). "Shane MacGowan of The Pogues admitted to hospital". NME . Retrieved 12 December 2022.

President Higgins presents Shane MacGowan with lifetime achievement award". The Irish Times. 16 January 2018. Archived from the original on 25 December 2019 . Retrieved 6 May 2020.

Special edition of The Eternal Buzz and The Crock of Gold #1

Shane was heavily involved in the London punk scene in the 70s and was friends with The Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer and others in the scene. His first band, The Nipple Erectors, was a punk band but never got off the ground. It was after the broke up that he formed the Pogues and decided the style would combine his 2 loves Irish music and punk. Shane loved Ireland from a young age where he would spend lots of time with his mothers family on a farm near Nenagh in County Tipperary. A fascinating portrait of ex-Pogue and folk-punk pioneer Shane MacGowan', Great books for Christmas selection, Choice Magazine Johnny Depp, who collects MacGowan’s art, writes in a foreword for The Eternal Buzz…: “It’s rare for a creative genius like Shane to have one avenue of output. Such an incendiary talent is likely to have a multitude of facilities whereby his talent might infiltrate the atmosphere and change the climate as we know it. All I see in Shane MacGowan is a guy getting older and now in a wheelchair, and it's heartbreaking, man, it's f***ing heartbreaking. People are being way too indulgent with him

I was always into drawing and painting, and I used to do all sorts of things,” he says, “hurlers, IRA men, teenage punks hanging around in cafes, you name it…when I was about 11 or 12 I got heavily into studying history of art and looking at old paintings and modern paintings, I knew a lot about art. It’s one of the only O Levels I got, was in art.I have noticed that if you allow yourself to cry and to feel all of the fear and even to collapse, and you don’t judge yourself for your feelings and you have compassion for yourself and everyone else around you even in the really dark moments, it’s like that is the real meaning of going with the flow. Rogan, Johny (26 September 1998). "Rebel yell". The Irish Post. Archived from the original on 27 January 2007 . Retrieved 13 February 2007. Irish Post, 2020 https://www.irishpost.com/news/the-pogues-controversially-branded-english-rather-than-irish-on-wikipedia-189680 Peter Walker (20 December 2015). " 'Everest of dentistry': Shane MacGowan gets new teeth in TV special". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 December 2015 . Retrieved 20 December 2015. It's amazing MacGowan is still alive. He has seen many of his friends and peers succumb to the drink and drugs lifestyle he has somehow survived, albeit in a state of greatly diminished health. When one sees him performing on videos from the Pogues heyday, drunk, almost slurring his words, rotting teeth in his mouth and cigarette in hand he doesn't look long for this world yet he is still here. I am not really qualified to rank him in a pantheon of songwriters but he was undoubtedly very gifted in this area, his classic, unorthodox Christmas "Fairly Tale of New York" being deservedly his best known and evocative work.

MacGowan has used a wheelchair following a fall as he was leaving a Dublin studio in the summer of 2015, which fractured his pelvis. [24] He said in an interview with Vice later that year, "It was a fall and I fell the wrong way. I broke my pelvis, which is the worst thing you can do. I'm lame in one leg, I can't walk around the room without a crutch. I am getting better, but it's taking a very long time. It's the longest I've ever taken to recover from an injury. And I've had a lot of injuries." [33] As of December 2020 [update], he continues to use a wheelchair. [34] MacGowan drew upon his Irish heritage when founding The Pogues and changed his early punk style for a more traditional sound with tutoring from his extended family. Many of his 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. These influences are documented in the biography Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context. He has often cited the 19th-century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan and playwright Brendan Behan as influences. Between 1985 and 1987, he co-wrote " Fairytale of New York", which he performed with Kirsty MacColl. In the following years MacGowan and The Pogues released several albums. The natural reaction for most of us when we are in a scary situation and a loved one is in danger of dying is to totally freak out and imagine the worst," she shared. When pop stars like Bob Dylan, Ronnie Wood, and Lou Reed become artists, they lose touch with the wildness within. They forget they are rebels, and get all respectable on us. They want to be taken seriously. At least most of them do. So…is this also true of Shane MacGowan? Don’t be an eejit! Of course not! Art cannot tame Shane for the same sorts of reasons that no one has ever tamed a Tasmanian devil. It can’t be done.”

‘I knew a lot about art’

RTÉ Archives". Stills Library. 5 July 2012. Archived from the original on 21 February 2014 . Retrieved 19 April 2014. When hearing that this book was to be published my first thought was, is this really the first? I’d read A Drink With Shane MacGowan by the man himself and his then long term partner, Victoria, when it came out in 2001, a great book, which is Shane telling his story, but this is genuinely the first official time the tale has been told in print.