Celtic Soul Rebels
PAGE 4

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK IS, OF course, the song that The Pogues are best remembered for. But before long, the tide of the album it came from, If IShould Fall From Grace With God, was proving oddly prophetic. In July 1988, MacGowan embraced acid house with the same passion he had once felt for punk. By the time The Pogues recorded their fourth album, Peace And Love, 12 months later, his personal summer of love was reaching new highs.
   Frank Murray: "Shane turned up at the studio on acid or Es quite a few times and I think I had to get him out of the nick twice during the recording. But that was Shane."
    "We went into Peace And Love with the same attitude that we had on If l Should Fall From Grace With God and then things started falling apart in the studio," says Darryl Hunt. "There was a real Spinal Tap situation going on and Steve Lillywhite didn't know where to look."
   Lillywhite: "Things certainly got worse for Peace And Love. I just didn't understand where Shane's head was at. I always say that I have only worked, with two true bohemians in my career - one is Shane and the other is Keith Richards."
   After Peace And Love, it got worse. Things came to a head in September 1989 when Bob Dylan invited The Pogues to open his Californian shows. Shane failed to show up. "I think even Dylan found that a bit weird," says Philip Chevron. "You could see the con- versations, 'What, he's still not here?' 'He's still at an air-port? Not even I got away with this shit' (laughs). That was a turning point."
   MacGowan: "I tried three times to get on the plane, but the airline insisted that I was too out of it. I mean, I was out of my head on cough mixture and booze and acid but I wasn't being at all violent or aggressive. After the third time I got a taxi back to my landlady's, with the intention of trying to get a flight the next day. But I suddenly felt really ill and fell on the floor. Vicky [his girl- friend] and my old man came over and they brought me Thai beer, Mekong whiskey and other things, and I decided that I didn't really want to go to America anyway. I wanted to leave The Pogues - I'd already asked to leave a few times - and I certainly wasn't going to support bloody Bob Dylan." MacGowan eventuafly joined the tour when the Dylan dates were over. "By that stage, Shane's commitment to the band had really narrowed," says The Pogues' Irish publicist, Terry O'Neill, who was given the job of accompanying him to Dallas, Texas. "He had always felt a great deal of responsibility to the rest of the band, but as time went on he constantly spoke about being trapped and there were only a couple of people that he could be bothered to speak to." By the time they recorded their fifth alburn, Hell's Ditch, in 1990, it was obvious that Shane no longer wanted to be in the band. Luckily, they had a sympathetic producer in Joe Strummer, who lovingly recorded Shane's vocals on the veranda of Rockfield Studio.
   Andrew Ranken: "Shane was there for about a week. Then he disappeared. We didn't see him again for the rest of the recording." The parting of the ways eventually came in September 1991. After several erratic performances and a few days on the sake, MacGowan fell out of the back of the tour van in Japan. Concerned for his health, the band told him they could no longer allow the situation to continue. For Shane, this was a huge relief
   "In the end there were so many people around that I didn't know half of them," he says. "I mean, in the end I didn't know half the people on stage (laughs), which is a bit different from six people who'd gone drinking together every night. We took it to the limit. We were a to-the-liniit band - all or nothing."
   MacGowan's replacement was the man who had already become "the ninth Pogue", Joe Strummer. When Strummer left in 1992, Spider took over on vocals, while MacGowan started rehearsing with his long-time mates Bernie France and Mo O'Hagan, who later evolved into The Popes. The Pogues continued on until July 1996, having a Top 30 hit in 1993 with Spider's classy pop ballad Tuesday Morning, and their relationship with MacGowan remained good enough for both Spider and Jem Finer to play on The Popes' 1994 debut album, The Snake.
   In December 2001, all eight Pogues got back together for a reunion tour, including three nights at Brixton Academy. It was a series of great shows and there are more dates due later this year (see below). "I think Shane has an awful lot of unfinished business within himself, musically", says Terry Woods. "I tell people that Shane is Shane,without drink or drugs. He's always had a mad vision of things and when that was expanded by the band it was as if The Pogues had their own language."
   And indeed the last word on The Pogues belongs to Shane MacGowan in his own language.
   "I'm really proud of what we achieved and what the audience achieved," hegrins. "I think we gave alot of pride to people,who had natural pride anyway. I'm not going to get really heavy about this, but once you realise that you're as good as anybody else - I'm not just talking about us but any Irish person who's been given some kind of crap in another country - you can turn round and say, 'Well, what have you got? You've got Take That and Roll Out The Barrel.' The best of My Old Man's A Dustman is bloody good and he [Lonnie Donegan) was a Paddy anyway (laughs).