Shane MacGowan, who has died aged 65, was the truculent, hard-living lead singer of the Pogues; he was revered as much for his excessive alcohol consumption as for his dark, unsparing but lyrical vision of Irish life.
His growling vocals, drawled through crooked, rotten teeth, explored the dark side of the Irish diaspora. His front teeth, a girlfriend claimed, were lost when he ate a copy of the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits Volume 3 while under the influence of LSD. In October 2006, another two bit the dust when he fell over a wall in Ireland, having got out of a car to be sick.
MacGowan enlivened traditional Irish song with punk-rock attitude, stirring up the stagnant cultural backwater of folk music and inspiring a new generation of Irish musicians to experiment with new musical styles. But the English-born ex-public schoolboy, who became the epitome of the proud, working-class Irishman, diluted his songwriting genius in gallons of Guinness, whiskey and Martini.
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born to Irish parents – but, to his chagrin, in England, at Pembury in Kent – on Christmas Day 1957. His father, Maurice, worked in a department store, while his mother, Therese, was a singer and traditional dancer who had been a model in Dublin.
At three months, he was taken to his mother’s family home in Tipperary while his parents worked in England. He was brought up by his Auntie Nora, who introduced him at an early age to the seminal influences of drink, cigarettes, religion and the Irish Sweepstake. Auntie Nora, he later claimed, turned him into “a religious maniac and a total hedonist”, condemning him to swing between piety and sin for the rest of his life.
When he was six, MacGowan’s Irish idyll ended when he was sent to join his parents in London. He described the years that followed as “a miserable, stinking, boring, useless waste of time”.
MacGowan’s father was a heavy drinker and his mother, who was working as a typist, was often confined to bed with arthritis and depression, forcing their son to take care of himself and his younger sister, Siobhan. At the age of eight, MacGowan was introduced to Powers’ whiskey and by the time he was 14, he was rarely spending a day sober.
He attended Holmewood House prep school, near Tunbridge Wells, then won a scholarship to Westminster School. His prep school headmaster, Robert Bairamian, recalled: “He was very unusual indeed, one of the most unusual personalities I’ve ever, ever met. I thought he would end up in the drama scene. At Westminster School, they asked whether I’d written his English paper. They said they’d never seen anything like this before.”
He spent only a year at Westminster, however, before being expelled for drug use. He then worked illegally as a shelf-filler, warehouseman, maintenance man at the Indian embassy and, inevitably, as a barman. At 17, he had a drink- and drug-induced mental breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for six months. He was diagnosed with acute situational anxiety, which he blamed on living in London.
MacGowan found his musical vocation while working another odd job, at a record shop, where he discovered the shocking new sound of punk rock. He flung himself headlong into London’s emerging punk scene, and in 1976 a picture appeared in a paper of him pouring with blood after his ear was bitten at a gig, He struck up friendships with the Sex Pistols and the Clash and sang (as Shane O’Hooligan) with his own band, the Nipple Erectors (later shortened to the Nips), who supported the Jam and the Clash.
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**From The Telegraph:**
Shane MacGowan, who has died aged 65, was the truculent, hard-living lead singer of the Pogues; he was revered as much for his excessive alcohol consumption as for his dark, unsparing but lyrical vision of Irish life.
His growling vocals, drawled through crooked, rotten teeth, explored the dark side of the Irish diaspora. His front teeth, a girlfriend claimed, were lost when he ate a copy of the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits Volume 3 while under the influence of LSD. In October 2006, another two bit the dust when he fell over a wall in Ireland, having got out of a car to be sick.
MacGowan enlivened traditional Irish song with punk-rock attitude, stirring up the stagnant cultural backwater of folk music and inspiring a new generation of Irish musicians to experiment with new musical styles. But the English-born ex-public schoolboy, who became the epitome of the proud, working-class Irishman, diluted his songwriting genius in gallons of Guinness, whiskey and Martini.
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born to Irish parents – but, to his chagrin, in England, at Pembury in Kent – on Christmas Day 1957. His father, Maurice, worked in a department store, while his mother, Therese, was a singer and traditional dancer who had been a model in Dublin.
At three months, he was taken to his mother’s family home in Tipperary while his parents worked in England. He was brought up by his Auntie Nora, who introduced him at an early age to the seminal influences of drink, cigarettes, religion and the Irish Sweepstake. Auntie Nora, he later claimed, turned him into “a religious maniac and a total hedonist”, condemning him to swing between piety and sin for the rest of his life.
When he was six, MacGowan’s Irish idyll ended when he was sent to join his parents in London. He described the years that followed as “a miserable, stinking, boring, useless waste of time”.
MacGowan’s father was a heavy drinker and his mother, who was working as a typist, was often confined to bed with arthritis and depression, forcing their son to take care of himself and his younger sister, Siobhan. At the age of eight, MacGowan was introduced to Powers’ whiskey and by the time he was 14, he was rarely spending a day sober.
He attended Holmewood House prep school, near Tunbridge Wells, then won a scholarship to Westminster School. His prep school headmaster, Robert Bairamian, recalled: “He was very unusual indeed, one of the most unusual personalities I’ve ever, ever met. I thought he would end up in the drama scene. At Westminster School, they asked whether I’d written his English paper. They said they’d never seen anything like this before.”
He spent only a year at Westminster, however, before being expelled for drug use. He then worked illegally as a shelf-filler, warehouseman, maintenance man at the Indian embassy and, inevitably, as a barman. At 17, he had a drink- and drug-induced mental breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for six months. He was diagnosed with acute situational anxiety, which he blamed on living in London.
MacGowan found his musical vocation while working another odd job, at a record shop, where he discovered the shocking new sound of punk rock. He flung himself headlong into London’s emerging punk scene, and in 1976 a picture appeared in a paper of him pouring with blood after his ear was bitten at a gig, He struck up friendships with the Sex Pistols and the Clash and sang (as Shane O’Hooligan) with his own band, the Nipple Erectors (later shortened to the Nips), who supported the Jam and the Clash.
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[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2023/11/30/hold-shane-macgowan-fast-living-ireland-drinking-songs/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2023/11/30/hold-shane-macgowan-fast-living-ireland-drinking-songs/)