Keeping it reel
UNCUT Reissue of the month.
Copyright: Jon Wilde
Author: Jon Wilde

Q&A Spider Stacy and Shane MacGowan on The Pogues' upcoming reunion.  UNCUT. How did you arrive at the idea of marrying traditional Irish music and punk rock?  STACY: Shane and myself had been performing rebel songs in clubs. But the Pogues sound was really born when I was round a friend's house with Shane. He picked up an acoustic guitar and started performing "Paddy On The Railway" like it was a punk song, really thrashing away at it. MacGOWAN: It made sense to play it fast. To me, it was Irish rock'n'roll. That stuff is 300 years old. I was just picking up on that. One of the highlights of your early shows was Spider repeatedly hitting himself with a metal tray...  STACY: I had to stop that 'cos I was getting ill. We did a video for "Waxie's Dargle" for The Tube and, because of all the re-takes, I hit my head with the tray more than 300 times. Then it came out that I've got an allergy to certain kinds of metal that explained all the disgusting rashes I was getting on my forehead. How much was Red Roses For Me a reaction to the music of the time?  MacGOWAN: It was totally a reaction to all the shite that was about. Nobody else was doing it so we did it. What we had on those first two albums was great chemistry and a gift for chaos. And we were all pointed in the same direction. Then came Fall From Grace...  ... which you once remarked was the beginning of a move away from your Irish sound to what you described as "fusion shite".  MacGOWAN: Yeah, but we were still making great music. For me, it didn't go wrong with the third album. It went very wrong with the fifth album. I got lazy, I got bored, I got tired of the road. But I was never disenchanted. The chemistry went wrong and that was largely my fault,  STACY: All bands change. We couldn't have gone on churning out a Red Roses For Me every 18 months. But, looking back, there was a sense that we were losing our identity around the third album. Touring took a huge toll on us, particularly on Shane, It was physically debilitating. And you can hear that on the fourth and fifth albums we did. By Hell's Ditch, the vocals more or less had to be recorded line by line because Shane wasn't in the best of health. After he left, we kept on making albums, but I can see now we were on a hiding to nothing.  What are the chances of  The Pogues making one last album after the upcoming reunion tour?  MacGOWAN: A comeback album? Yeah, it's a possibility. Never say never.  STACY: ff the songs were there, I'd see no reason not to do another album. Personally, I'd love to have a shot at it.

Keeping it reel
Rich, pungent back catalogue of the Anglo-Irish hellions gets the deluxe remix treatment, bonus tracks and all.

RED ROSES FOR ME
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RUM SODOMY AND THE LASH
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IF I SHOULD FALL FROM GRACE WITH GOD
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PEACE AND LOVE
* * 

HELL'S DITCH
* * 

WAITING FOR HERB
*

POGUE MAHONE
* * 

MAKE NO MISTAKE, 1984 was a vile time to be young and alive and British. The miner's strike and the Brighton bomb instilled an all-pervasive atmosphere of despondency and craven foreboding. The nauseatingly fragrant Sade wafted from the doors of high-street wine bars, The pseudo-operatic bleat of Spandau Ballet spewed from the windows of BMWs driven by bear-pit barrow boys. if further proof was needed that the country was in the grip of bootstrap conservatism, remember that the main custodian of outrage and rebellion was one Trevor Horn, former member of Yes and the man behind the ubiquitous Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

    It wasn't all bad, of course. Morrissey's mordant wit and Marr's blinding melodies gave us something to warm our hands over. But not since the cultural doldrums of the early'60s had there been such an overwhelming need for a band possessed of both snarling irreverence and insurrectionist zeal to happen along and remind us that the punk wars were not fought completely in vain. In the event we got two such bands. There was The Jesus & Mary Chain, who forced Spector through a punk blender. And The Pogues, who arranged an inflammable heathen marriage between punk and trad Irish that sounded for all the world like a call to arms, a new kind of rallying point. Between them, the Mary Chain and The Pogues boldly succeded in bottling the mutinous bolt of lightning that had long threatened to break through the mid-'80s gloom. 

    A motley crew of Anglo-Irish degenerates, led by the former Shane O'Hooligan of Nips and ear-bitten-off-at-Pistols-gig notoriety, The Pogues hit the ground running with 1984's Red Roses For Me. Along with the Mary Chain's Psychocandy (which arrived the following year), it ranks right up there with the most supernaturally confident of debut albums. A roaring mix of rollicking tavern brawls, gutter balladry and pie-eyed prayers to the bottom of the glass, it harnessed the unruly energies of their live shows and introduced an unguarded world to a lyricist (MacGowan) who spiked songs with the pockmarked poetry of a young Behan and the anarchic comedy of Flann O'Brien.

    MacGowan spat out his lines with the impatience of a man who has just caught on that his skin is on fire and, incited by The Pogues at full throttle, it made for ebullient listening to say the least. Twenty years on, songs like the frenzied "Transmetropolitan" or the death-rattling, Behan-penned "Auld Triangle" have lost not a whiskey-drop of their corrupting charm. It couldn't get much better, but it just has. This remastered CD edition weighs in with six priceless bonus tracks including the splenetic "Muirshin Durkin" and a gorgeously pared-down version of "Waltzing Matilda". Joy is unconfined, therefore, from blessed start to blessed finish. 

    For 1985's Rum, Sodomy& The Lash, Elvis Costello was roped in on production and any fears that he would shave off their rough edges were dispelled by the opening cavalry charge of "The Sickbed Of Cuchulainn", as manic an opening to any album as there's ever been, the first Stooges LP notwithstanding. The crucial edge was still in place but their sound had expanded, given added heft with the recruitment of guitarist Phil Chevron. While "Billy's Bones" and "Wild Cats Of Kilkenny" proved they could still discharge the kind of accelerated punk jigs that were tailor-made for a pub tear-up, the most startling thing about their second album was the steep ascendancy of MacGowan's songwriting, as evidenced by both "The Old Main Drag" and the peerless "Pair Of Brown Eyes".A masterpiece? Absolutely. Now improved upon with the inclusion here of their "Poguetry In Motion" EP in its rich entirety. 

    For 1987's If I Should Fall From Grace With God, they added multi-instrumentalist Terry Woods to their line-up, hired producer Steve Lillywhite and returned with an album that begged comparison with London Calling for its "weddings, parties, anything" approach. There's no doubting the vaulting musical ambition of their third album, veering as it does between the ultimate Christmas singalong ("Fairytale Of New York"), brassy carnival swing ("Fiesta"), epic pop ("Thousands Are Sailing"), Mediterranean party stomp ("Turkish Song Of The Damned") and the kind of stroppy paddywhackery we'd come to know, love and get legless to. But, even at its far-reaching best, there lurked a suspicion thatthe Pogues were starting to lose that edge. 

    Quite how much was palpable with the release of 1989's Peace And Love. Jem Finer's "Misty Morning Albert Bridge" might have been a "Waterloo Sunset" for the post-punk set, and "White City" recaptured some of the hooligan thrust of old. But there was little else worth raising a tankard to. Most worrying was the diminishing input of a toured-out MacGowan. Not only were songwriting duties becoming more democratically shared, but that once imperative rock'n'roll voice had become a worn counterfeit of itself. There were vocals on Peace And Love that, for all their impact, Shane may as well have faxed through to the studio. With a reputed daily intake of three bottles of the hard stuff and 50 tabs of acid, The Pogues' frontman no longer seemed to be slumming it; he was the slums. And his vast talent appeared to be dribbling down the drain along with the rest of him. 

    A slight upturn in form came with the Strummer-produced Hell's Ditch (I 990), largely thanks to the inclusion of the stomping "Rain Street" and the frisky, flarnenco-style "Lorca's Novena". But even a generous helping of bonus tracks (notably the hilarious "Bastard Landlord") on this extended reissue makes it firmly resistant to money-over-counter recommendation. 

    After that, MacGowan either jumped ship or was forced to walk the plank and, either bravely or foolishly, The Pogues kept on keeping on with Spider Stacy cattle-prodded up front. They were, of course, on a hiding to nothing. As it proved with 1993's truly dire Waiting For Herb and 1996's only slightly superior Pogue Mahone. If ever there was a band who deserved a decent send-off, it was this one. In which case, anyone who was ever touched by their natural-born berserkness and their timeless shabby beauty will hop that the upcoming reunion tour will light the touchpaper and lead to one last-gasp Pogues album worthy of the name.