SPIDER STACEY first encountred Shane MacGowan in the bogs at Camden Roundhouse during a Damned gig. MacGowan was talking to two other blokes about his fanzine, Bondage. It was a labour of love that featured, uniquely for the time, lots of graphics. Its sole issue featured an article, written by MacGowan, on The jam. Stacey recognised MacGowan as a'face'on the punk scene. He had entered punk history when he was photographed at a Clash gig in 1976, blood pouring from his ear. He and a female friend had been sufficiently moved by the proceedings to start clawing lumps out of each other. 

Jim Jarmusch remembers that vintage Shane, too. His earliest Pogue 'relic" comes from 'a scrap of super-8 film shot by the ubiquitous Don Letts in the mid to late-'70s. It's a pre-Pogues image of the young Shane MacGowan, wearing a shirt cut from the Union-Jack, and pogoing wildly in a grim London punk club.' 

After The Damned gig, Stacey and MacGowan got to talking outside as MacGowan relieved himself. "Are you having fun?" MacGowan asked Stacey. 
"Yeah." "That's what it's all about", replied MacGowan, while pissing over Stacey's shoes. "Accidental", MacGowan clarified all these years later. 

The second time they met was in Euston when they both had houses in a street full of squats. At the time Stacey was lead singer with The Millwall Chainsaws, while MacGowan was in The Nips, née The Nipple Erectors. They shared a rehearsal space, and once occupied the same bill at a film college in Camden. Madness, then known as the North London Invaders, were headlining. 
Stacey: "But The Nips didn't turn up." 
MacGowan: "The story of our career was not turning up." 

As MacGowan tells it, what would become The Pogues began life when Ollie Watts, the Chainsaws' drummer, approached Richard Strange, promoter of a trendy club called Cabaret Futura. "Ollie grabbed him by the neck and said, 'we're playing here next week, OK? We do Irish rebel songs'. Well, he didn't grab him by the neck, but he was a very demonstrative guy, shekekslesheleke.'The new band, christened The New Republicans, duly took the stage. Their set was composed of covers of traditional Irish songs. By all accounts it was a chaotic night. 

MacGowan: "For some reason that night there were 15 squaddies in the audience. And they started pelting us with chips and stuff, we started pelting them back..." 
Stacey: "My memories are a bit of a haze." 

The gig was a riot, and has entered Pogues lore. "There was about several hundred thousand people at that gig!" a chuckling Darryl Hunt would tell me the following week. Ranken: "And there was one disabled British squaddie who threw one chip!" 

The New Republicans were finished as quickly as they had begun. But Jem Finer, a fellow King's Cross squatter and musician pal of MacGowan's, spotted that Stacey and MacGowan had hit on something special and persuaded them to carry on. The new band was christened Pogue Mahone and, with Finer on guitar Nips alumnus James Fearnley on accordion, the band made their debut at a King's Cross pub called The Pindar Of Wakefield in October i987.. Darryl Hunt saw them at the same venue early the following year. "I thought it was great. I really liked The Dubliners when I was little, and it reminded me of a punk Dubliners." 

Over the following year the line-up solidified. Pogue Mahone began to make a name for themselves. Initially, it was about having a good time and popularising Irish music by giving it a hefty boot up the arse courtesy of a bunch of London-Irish hedonists. 
MacGowan: 'We didn't start out with any intention of anybody writing any songs." 
Stacey: "It was just covers, then [Shane] came up with Streams of Whiskey and Dark Streets of London." In early 1984 they released Dark Streets Of London as a one-off single on a label set up by Stan Brennan, who had employed MacGowan in his Soho record shop and produced the first of the Nipple Erectors'three singles (the final one of which was produced by Paul Weller). Stiff picked up on it and signed Pogue Mahone... on the condition that they shortened the name. BBC Radio Djs had cottoned on to its meaning, making airplay problematic. A more onerous compromise was the need to modify their behaviour, at least a bit.

"When we first signed to Stiff we had to pretend we'd stopped drinking," said MacGowan in The Lost Decade, Ann Scanlons 1988 book covering the Pogues'early years. 'So in the photo sessions, we had to hide our drinks. And in the pictures we look really miserable and uncomfortable because we're sitting on our beer cans." 

No matter, The Pogues had lift-off A record deal secured, the writing, recording and gigging - and the hellraising - could begin in earnest. For the next seven or so years they barely stopped. Their debut album Red Roses For Me was swiftly followed by Rum Sodomy And Tbe Lash. Their live shows were legendary and incendiary, with fights occurring onstage as much as they did off. 

MacGowan: "We knew each other as friends for years before we made the horrible mistake of joining a band together, shekkelsse! The chemistry was based on intense friendship. The other side of that is intense hatred. It was there from the start. That's the kind of energy you need in a fucking band." 

For a while, they rode the rollercoaster, touring the world time and again. The Pogues were the archetypal People's Band, a huge live draw across the Celtic diaspora - ie, most places in the world. But other songwriters recognised the artistry in the band's music, too. In Chicago they hooked up with Tom Waits, a big favourite on the Pogues' tourbus. The feeling was mutual, and Waits took them on a memorable night on the lash in the Windy City. They always wanted Waits to produce them, but it wasn't to be. At an early New York show in '86, Matt Dillon came backstage. He was effusive in his praise, and would later star in the video for Fairy Tale Of New York. Darryl Hunt remembers that the actor had some "rather strong substances". Andrew Ranken remembers that night for different - and similar - reasons. 

Hunt: "That was the night he walked offstage because he didn't want to hurt his drums!" On tour in America The Pogues had been hearing about this new wonder drug called Ecstasy. They couldn't get any anywhere. But a short while before showtime in New York, a consignment appeared. 

Ranken: "Me, being the drummer, I thought,'oh I'll take mine before the gig...'I'd heard so many great things about it I thought, 'it can't do any harm ...... 

Ranken duly came up just as he came onstage. "I thought,'this is fantastic!'Then I realised, 'I can't do this. It's really barbaric! 'The savagery" I was feeling all lovey-dovey and playing drums was much too aggressive. So I stopped...'Ranken walked away from his kit, to the puzzlement of the band, then jumped into the audience and started dancing. "I thought they sounded magnificent. They did cajole me back onstage from time to time..." 

In 1988 they released their masterpiece, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, which featured Fairy Tale Of New York. The single reached Number Two in the charts that Christmas. For a brief moment The Pogues were pop stars too. How did commercial success impact on the band? 

Hunt: "Very positively and in some ways negatively. We were thrust with this responsibility and that put pressure on. And unless you're looking after yourself you can start to go a bit Libertines..." 

The Pogues were beginning to get bent out of shape. Huge gigs with U2 - who had always been loud supporters of the band - were a thrill, but sat ill with MacGowan. He hadn't got into this to be part of a stadium rock band playing Wembley. The excess-all-areas spun out of control. On the one hand, The Pogues were being pushed out on the road all the time. Fearnley remembers being in Rak recording studios and overhearing The Cure talking about their next batch of touring. 

"We were so jealous of them, that Robert Smith could say,we're not going there, we're going there...'We never had the opportunity to say to our manager we didn't want to do something. One thing you can say about The Pogues was that individually we were very clever but collectively we were very stupid. I remember the manager saying, "lads, give us the next two years of your lives and we'll make successes of you'. That turned into four, six, eight years... but once your head's jammed so far in the railings, it's hard to get it out." 

Pressure, too, was put on Shane. He'd been in need of time off but was told that he'd be letting the rest of the band down if he took a break. "Divide and conquer" was their advisers'tactic, says Chevron. So the Pogues rolled on. Something had to give. And it wasn't just MacGowan whose health and behaviour deteriorated. Terry Woods, Philip Chevron and Spider Stacey all developed alcohol problems. But at least they could escape the spotlight. For MacGowan it was more difficult. 

In 1989 The Pogues landed a week of shows supporting Bob Dylan in America. But when MacGowan, the worse for wear, tried to get on a plane in London he was refused permission to board. Three times. The rest of the band, over in California, waited. Each day they thought their singer would turn up; he never appeared. Spider Stacey was forced to step up to the mike. MacGowan missed the stint with Dylan, and spent the time in his London flat, "[lying] on the floor being supplied with Mekong whiskey and Thai Singha beer, tended by my old man and my loving, live-in love Victoria and my landlady." 

Hunt: "I think Dylan was a little bit disappointed. I think he was quite looking forward to seeing the full shilling. 'Cause he'd been listening to the records and had made some connection with the songwriting or the attitude, or with the band-yness of the group."
Stacey acquitted himself well - it wasn't the first time he'd had to step into the breach. Still, it must have been disappointing for The Pogues too. 
Ranken: "But we were used to it." The writing was on the wall. 

SHANE MACGOWANS exit from the band was obviously a body blow to the rest of The Pogues. Both personally - they'd been friends for years, and for all the fights and letdowns and contrary behaviour, they still cared about his wellbeing - and professionally. He wasn't the only songwriter, nor even the only singer, in the band, but he was the public face of - the folk hero at the heart of -The Pogues. Wouldn't if have been better if they'd disbanded the band there and then? 

Hunt: "Yeah, in a way. It might have been better to do a Rolling Stones. Quit for three years then get back together. But at the time we had to do this tour. We were committed. By the time a group gets to that stage your diarys filled up with a whole year of tour contracts to go here, there and everywhere. That's when Joe Strummer came in and helped us out for six months." 
Stacey: "If we had to lose Shane I cannot think of a better person who could have possibly taken his place." 

Hunt: "It was marvellous the way [Joe] took it on the chin. It must have been hard for him to fill Shane's shoes. Even though he's Joe Strummer, there were all these people who might think he was an impostor. But it was fabulous. And some of the versions of his songs we did, like Straight To Hell, were great. Then by the time he had his own thing to do, we were in a situation where we were rolling. On to the next thing, see what happens..." 

Woods: 'The Pogues for me were too important to let it dwindle away." 

Chevron: "The more unreliable Shane got, the more we had been forced to operate as a unit. If you know there's an element you can't depend upon you compensate in other ways. We became one of the best playing, tighest bands around - we were used to having to cover up the errors and the fuck-ups. We had to busk a whole Bob Dylan tour without a singer! That gave us a lot of confidence to continue. There would always be limits to what we could do without Shane but we wanted to explore those limits. And we weren't as mentally and physically fucked as he was. We weren't far behind him, but we didn't know that at the time." 

Fearnley: "A part of me retrospectively thinks, maybe we should have [split]. But a bigger part thought, for the sacrifice of one, why should we spoil it for the rest of us? I had six other friends there. I love those guys, always have done, always will." 

But gradually they too peeled away. By the time 1996 rolled around The Pogues were a ghost of their former selves. "I was fucking sick of it," said Andrew Ranken. "So many people had left. It's like what Rod Stewart said when Ronnie Lane left The Faces - all the bollocks went out of it." 


IN THE REISSUES' sleevenotes, Jim Jarmusch is great on the Pogues'appeal, and is worth quoting at length: "The Pogues: definitely one of the most soulful rock bands Britain has ever produced. But the Pogues aren't just a punk band, or a soul group, or an 'Irish band rooted in a folk tradition. They're all those things and a hell of a lot more. The Pogues made ancient songs sound new, and new songs sound somehow ancient. I don't think they were even concerned with where their inspirations came from, but instead were driven by where their own very particular musical flow could carry them. For me, and all Pogues fans, that music has taken us to so many places - darkened back streets of London, old factory towns, cotton fields, Summer In Siam, New York City engulfed in snow and melancholy; poetic, cinematic voyages into Irish social history, or deep inside a Pair of Brown eyes'or 'a ghost of a smile"...

"Hats off to all The Pogues - for music the colour of tobacco smoke and alcohol, sad dreams, underdogs and lost love. Their deep connection to Irish music isn't a reinventions exactly, but more like an uncontrollable channelling and celebration of its resilience. I love the Pogues. I always will .... They may have disbanded some years ago, but you couldn't kill the soul of their music with a fucking shovel." 

And now they've re-banded. There seem to be no hard feelings: they were never a group for nursing grievances or letting resentment simmer. Arguments would explode and subside. That's all whiskey under the bridge. The rest of them understand MacGowan, and have long ago reached an accommodation with his "ways" - Fearnley knows that he and the rest of the band get the rough end of MacGowan's tongue in A Drink With... but has blithely elected not to read it. "We're too old, life's too short" say the forty- and fiftysomethings. 

Chevron: "Ultimately we had stayed friends all those years. There was never any great severance. Even with the more dramatic partings and we bandied insults across the newsprint, it was all just good showbiz.' 

Hunt: "The last time we got together we all seemed to have got rid of a lot of the attitudes that cluttered up the group. Everyone did their job and had respect for the other." 

At the gigs in late 2001, Shane MacGowan was still chasing the heroin out of his system. By the two shows the following summer he was off it completely. "Sinead did me a favour. I was furious at the time, but I'm eternally grateful to her now." 
Was heroin any use for writing songs? 

"Not really. Um, except, you know, when I sing about junkies, pimps, whores - at least I've done 'em A, sheekles shselekse! I write about what I know." 

Will there be another studio album? 
Stacey: "I duano. Who knows?" 
MacGowan: "I'm not a fortune teller." 
You wouldn't rule it out? 
MacGowan: "I wouldn't rule anything out." 
Stacey: "It's not on the cards. But that doesn't mean anything. Five years ago a Pogues reunion wouldn't have been on the cards. Even three years ago a reunion wouldn't have necessarily been on the cards." 
MacGowan: "We did one three years ago!" 
Stacey: "Oh yeah..." 
So: is it an older, wiser, cleaner Pogues that is abroad this late 2004? 
Ranken: "Oh it is." 
Hunt: "If it wasn't half of us would be dead. So it's a good job it is." 
MacGowan: "Next question! Shekeskdlsses." 

The Pogues seven studio albums are released in remastered versions with extra tracks in December The band play Glasgow, London, Manchester and Dublin between December 13 and 23.