Shane MacGowan, interview: 'I've got a really good constitution'

In Somerset this weekend, one of the most uproarious bands of the Eighties is set to make a rare headline appearance tomorrow night at the Strummer of Love festival. The Pogues, in their heyday, spewed forth a punky, energetic version of Irish traditional music, in stark contrast to the sanitised synth-pop that dominated the era.

Yet, for all their music’s rowdy joys, the Pogues’ success was founded on the shakiest ground. Their frontman, Shane MacGowan, was one of his generation’s finest songwriters. Yet, no sooner had the band’s star ascended to its peak with their 1987 Christmas duet, Fairytale of New York, than MacGowan’s wayward lifestyle began scuppering their progress. Eventually, he was sacked by his own, despairing, group.

Such have been his narcotic and alcoholic excesses in the past quarter-century, that few would have counted on MacGowan still being alive today. But he stumbles gamely into the lounge of a Dublin hotel, albeit two hours late for our appointment, and is soon ensconced on a sofa with an assortment of drinks in front of him, including a pint of Guinness, a glass of red wine, a bottle of rosé, and an extra-large gin and tonic.

It is hard to tell whether he is in the early or latter stages of a binge. Maybe it doesn’t make a difference any more. His skin is deathly white, his hair grey and upward-pointing. He occasionally removes his sunglasses to reveal pale-blue, unfocusing eyes, and when he grins, he displays his gums, now entirely bereft of his once-famous stumpy teeth.

MacGowan grew up between homes in Dagenham and Tipperary. He received a scholarship to Westminster School but was expelled after a year. In his mid-teens, he fell in with the London punk scene’s inner circle: his first band, the Nipple Erectors, supported the Clash and had a single produced by the Jam’s Paul Weller.

By 1982, MacGowan was busking Irish folk numbers around London with the banjo-picker Jem Finer, and gradually the two of them built a group around themselves, in what appeared to be an attempt to inject punk energy into the Emerald Isle’s roots traditions.

“But that energy was already there in Irish music,” MacGowan insists today. “We just added a bass guitar and a very simple drum set, with a very loud drummer, who was stood up in the middle. He was like this,” says MacGowan clenching his fist, “and then we had Spider [Stacy, co-vocalist and tin-whistle player] bashing himself on the head with a beer tray – another traditional Irish instrument.” He punctuates this statement with a death-rattle laugh every bit as infectious as the Pogues’ initial formula.

The band’s ascent was accelerated as much by their frontman’s boozy infamy as by their brilliant albums such as 1985’s Rum, Sodomy & the Lash. In fact, the two appeared inseparable.

For a magical few years, the Pogues carried the torch for hell-raising rock  ’n’ roll values, reaching their peak with 1988’s If I Should Fall From Grace With God, which included Fairytale of New York – a dewy-eyed but foul-mouthed duet between MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl, as an immigrant couple slugging it out in an NYPD drunk tank.

“It was the perfect time, and the perfect female singer,” MacGowan says about the success of that song. “But it was kept off the top of the charts in England by the worst record the Pet Shop Boys ever made”. Back then, MacGowan was praised from all quarters; his fans included Hollywood heavyweights Matt Dillon and Faye Dunaway, and top-flight singers such as Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, who once simply gushed, “Shane has the gift. I believe him.”

According to Here Comes Everybody, a recent memoir by the Pogues’ accordion player, James Fearnley, however, MacGowan’s lifestyle quickly became a major problem. With worldwide success, came pressure, endless tours, and disagreements about money.

“Me and Jem used to write together,” says MacGowan, somewhat modestly – in the beginning, he wrote, and Finer arranged. “But then the musical differences came – when everybody wanted to know why me and Jem got more publishing [money] than the rest.”

And so the Pogues’ star plummeted down again. The following three years were a tailspin of missed flights, abominable live shows, unpredictable rages and, worst of all, mediocre songs.

MacGowan’s band-mates fired him in a hotel room in Japan in 1991, but thereafter, even the Clash’s Joe Strummer could not fill his shoes. As Fearnley observes: “It was a relief to be rid of [Shane] from the stage, but into his place rushed a banality that was crippling.”

MacGowan went into freefall. In 2001, his friend Sinead O’Connor famously had him arrested, in an effort, she claimed, to get him to kick a heroin addiction.

Later that year, it was surely MacGowan’s declining condition that prompted the erstwhile Pogues to swallow their pride and reconvene around him – to give him one last shot at saving himself. To some degree, it worked – he’s still alive, after all. At some gigs, he appears coherent and familiar with his own lyrics, at others hopelessly awash. At one show I saw, he slouched on a bar stool for ages, inert, with a full pint glass balanced on his head.

“If you’re gonna do it, you might as well enjoy it,” he says, about live performance. “Otherwise you’re ripping off the audience, and you’re ripping off yourself.”

Though there remains a wayward, crackling energy to the band with MacGowan on board, their appearances have lately become fewer and farther between. Never ones for an outdoor gig, they presumably agreed to next weekend’s Strummer of Love appearance partly out of a desire to honour the late Joe Strummer at his memorial festival.

Will the band’s return to live performance lead to some new music, written by MacGowan, I ask? He appears to plunge into silent despondency. Presumably, he is fed up with people telling him that he is squandering his talent. As MacGowan pauses to drain his Guinness, I ask if he worries about his health. “Who, me?” he says. “I’ve got a really good constitution.” And with faultless comic timing, he starts coughing.

Does it bother him, I ask, that others might get vicarious pleasure from his excesses? “That’s their problem,” he says. “I’ve certainly never glorified any of the excesses.” Even in song? “It’s impossible to do popular Irish songs, without cataloguing murder, drink, drugs, whatever. But it doesn’t mean,” he drifts into silence. “Are you on an expense account?” No, I reply. “Get me a double gin and tonic,” he says, grinning.

It has been a long and bleary afternoon. I order MacGowan his drink, then try to extract something in return. Come on, Shane, I say, what are the chances of you making another Pogues record? He leans forward, and I prepare myself for a grand announcement.

With a carefree shrug and another toothless grin, he says, simply, “Anything’s possible.” The ongoing life of Shane MacGowan is testament to that.

The Pogues perform next weekend at Strummer of Love festival in the Blackdown Hills, Somerset (strummeroflove.com)

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