Review of "A Drink With Shane MacGowan" from Q Magazine.
Fullsize scan of the article.

Shane MacGowan pens his autobiography, with a little help from his girlfriend.

A Drink With Shane MacGowan
Victoria Mary Clarke & Shane MacGowan

Reviwer: Phil Sutcliffe

Awarded with 4 stars

"IRELAND MEANS everything to me," says Shane MacGowan towards the end of the eight long Q&A sessions that make up his autobiography. "I always felt guilty because I didn't lay down my life for Ireland, I didn't join up," he continues, meaning with the IRA. "The Pogues was my way of overcoming that guilt. Looking back on it I think maybe I made the right choice."
It seems probable. Especially as, a few paragraphs later he explains that he doesn't agree with "killing civilians" and so, now wouldn't serve in a republican army "under any circumstances". Although typically MacGowan, this rolling and tumbling farrago of notions would have most dispassionate observers crying "How fascinating!" and "Complete bollocks, Shane!" at every other sentence. As ever, though, MacGowan fails to get a reaction. Once noticed as an artist and public figure, he's hard to ignore or forget.
Pouring out chaotic streams of anecdote and argument, he recalls and imagines and celebrates the great romance of his life, work, faith, family - and his enduring love for Victoria Clarke, his long-time partner and, now amanuensis.
Her role brings an extraordinary degree of intimacy to the enterprise. Surely nobody else could have drawn from such a rich account of his Tipperary childhood, nourished by fags and Guinness from the age of five. Nor is she confined to indulgent nostalgia, instead challenging some of the self.deceptive bullshit with which he excuses his violence and drinking. Sample dialogue-MacGowan: "I hardly ever drink wine with my food." Clarke: "You drink at least wo bottles every day." MacGowan: "I eat every day!"
Yet, almost inevitably, there are passages in which her strength as tough-loving friend and professional scribe dissipates, as she becomes his co-conspirator, and the roaring truth of much of their narrative is lost to self-justification.
This matters little when they're giving a consensual account of MacGowan's blamelessness in the decline of ThePogues. But it tastes worse than sour when they purport to candidly discuss the drink and drugs-related deaths which have occurred within his entourage over the years, then fail to mention the fatal heroin overdose of Robbie O'Neill, the son of Dublin-based rock promoter Terry O'Neill, at MacGowan's flat in May 1999. Nor do they ponder MacGowan's arrest for heroin possession in November of that year, after Sinead O'Connor reported him to the police.
Still, given the relationship involved, this avoidance of a key issue itself emerges as an aspect of the continuing MacGowan comedy and tragedy. A welter of colourful yarn, bombast and lecture based indiscriminately on deep knowledge and fathomless ignorance (for example, his adamant views on Angola feature the belief that it was a British, not Portuguese colony), this book is unbridled and largehearte, but hollow and dishonest at the same time. His lovely talent can't stand up for falling down.
A Drink With Shane MacGowan: as the News Of the World slogan used to say, all human life is here.