SHANE MACGOWAN, THE PUNK IRISH POET & SINGER

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music written, composed and sung by Shane MacGowan, the Irish musician and member of The Pogues, who has passed away today.

Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan (25 December 1957-30 November 2023) was an English-born Irish musician, best known as the co-founder, lead vocalist and songwriter of Celtic punk band the Pogues. 

MacGowan's songs were influenced by Irish history, Irish nationalism, the Irish diaspora, and London life.

Born in Kent, England, to Irish parents, MacGowan spent his early childhood in Tipperary before returning to England aged six and a half. He won a scholarship to Westminster School (a public school) but, at 16, was expelled for possession of drugs. Three years later (1977), he joined the punk band the Nipple Erectors.

In 1982, he co-founded the Pogues, which fused punk with influences from traditional Irish music; his songwriting and vocals appear on the band's first five studio albums, released between 1984 and 1990, of which the critically acclaimed If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988) was the most commercially successful. He co-wrote Fairytale of New York (1987) and recorded it as a duet with Kirsty MacColl; the song has become a perennial Christmas favourite.

During a 1991 tour, MacGowan was dismissed from the Pogues for behaviour relating to his alcohol dependency. He subsequently formed a new band, Shane MacGowan and The Popes, with which he recorded two studio albums.

In 2001, MacGowan rejoined the Pogues for reunion shows, remaining with the group until it dissolved in 2014. He also produced solo material and collaborated with artists such as Joe Strummer, Nick Cave, Steve Earle, Sinéad O'Connor, and Ronnie Drew.

He received a 2018 Ivor Novello Inspiration Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award.

More information: Shane MacGowan

MacGowan was born on 25 December 1957 in Pembury, Kent, England, the son of Irish immigrants.

MacGowan drew upon his Irish heritage when founding the Pogues and changed his early punk style for a more traditional sound with tutoring from his extended family. Many of his songs were influenced by Irish nationalism, Irish history, the experiences of the Irish diaspora (particularly in England and the United States), and London life in general. These influences were documented in the biography Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context. He often cited the 19th-century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan and playwright Brendan Behan as influences.

The Pogues' most critically acclaimed album was If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988), which also marked the high point of the band's commercial success. Between 1985 and 1987, MacGowan co-wrote Fairytale of New York, which he performed with Kirsty MacColl, and remains a perennial Christmas favourite. 

In 2004, 2005 and 2006, it was voted favourite Christmas song in a poll by music video channel VH1. Other notable songs he performed with The Pogues include Dirty Old Town, Sally MacLennane and The Irish Rover (featuring the Dubliners). In the following years MacGowan and the Pogues released several albums.

In 1988, he co-wrote Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, a song by the Pogues which proved highly controversial and was banned on British TV and radio.

After MacGowan had been dismissed from the Pogues, he formed a new band, Shane MacGowan and The Popes. The new band recorded two studio albums, a live album, three tracks on the Popes Outlaw Heaven (2010) and a live DVD; the band also toured internationally.

In 1997, MacGowan appeared on Lou Reed's Perfect Day, covered by numerous artists in aid of Children in Need. It was the UK's number one single for three weeks, in two separate spells. Selling over a million copies, the record contributed £2,125,000 to the charity's highest fundraising total in six years.

From December 2003 up to May 2005, Shane MacGowan and the Popes toured extensively in the UK, Ireland and Europe.

The Pogues and MacGowan reformed for a sell-out tour in 2001 and each year from 2004 to 2009 for further tours, including headline slots at Guilfest in England and the Azkena Rock Festival in the Basque Country.

In May 2005, MacGowan rejoined the Pogues permanently. That same year, the Pogues re-released Fairytale of New York to raise funds for the Justice For Kirsty Campaign and Crisis at Christmas. The single was the best-selling Christmas-themed single of 2005, reaching number 3 in the UK Charts that year.

In 2010, MacGowan played impromptu shows in Dublin with a new five-piece backing band, the Shane Gang, including In Tua Nua rhythm section Paul Byrne (drums) and Jack Dublin (bass), with manager Joey Cashman on whistle.

In November 2010, this lineup went to Lanzarote to record a new album. MacGowan and the Shane Gang performed at the Red Hand Rocks music festival in the Patrician Hall, Carrickmore County Tyrone in June 2011.

It was reported in July 2023 that MacGowan was hospitalised in an intensive care unit. He made his last public statement on 16 November 2023, complimenting Travis Kelce's cover of Fairytale of New York.

On 30 November 2023, after receiving last rites, MacGowan died at his home in Dublin with his wife by his side; he was 65.

More information: Instagram-Shane MacGowan

When I'm writing a song,
it gives me more actual pleasure
to hear someone else sing it
than do it meself.

 

Shane MacGowan

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK, AN IRISH IMMIGRATION STORY

Today, The Grangers & The Grandma have been listening to some music. They have chosen Fairytale of New York, a song written by The Pogues.

Fairytale of New York is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band The Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals.

The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with The Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl the female character. 

It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on The Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. Originally begun in 1985, the song had a troubled two-year development history, undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987.

Although the single has never been the UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of Always on My Mind, it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on 18 separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year at Christmas since 2005.

As of September 2017, it had sold 1.2 million copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1.5 million combined sales.

In December 2020, the song was certified quadruple platinum in the UK for 2.4 million combined sales.

More information: Pogues

In the UK, Fairytale of New York is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century. It is frequently cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in the UK and Ireland, including the UK television special on ITV in December 2012 where it was voted The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.

The song follows an Irish immigrant's Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank. When an inebriated old man also in the cell sings a passage from the Irish ballad The Rare Old Mountain Dew, the narrator (MacGowan) begins to dream of a former lover.

The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) takes the form of a call and response between the couple, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, as they reminisce and bicker on Christmas Eve. The lyrics Sinatra was swinging and cars big as bars seem to place the song in the late 1940s, although the music video clearly depicts a contemporary 1980s New York.

The video for the song was directed by Peter Dougherty and filmed in New York during a bitterly cold week in November 1987.

The video opens with MacGowan sitting at a piano as if playing the song's opening refrain: however, as MacGowan could not actually play the instrument, the close-up shot featured the hands of the band's pianist Fearnley wearing MacGowan's rings on his fingers. Fearnley later said that he found the experience humiliating but accepted the idea that it looked better in the video to show MacGowan seated at the piano.

More information: Twitter-The Pogues

Part of the video was filmed inside a real police station on the Lower East Side. Actor Matt Dillon plays a police officer who arrests MacGowan and takes him to the cells. Dillon recalled that he had been afraid to handle MacGowan roughly, and had to be encouraged by Dougherty and MacGowan to use force.

MacGowan and the rest of the band were drinking throughout the shoot, and the police became concerned about their increasingly rowdy behaviour in the cells. Dillon, who was sober, had to intervene and reassure the police that there would be no problems.

The chorus of the song includes the line The boys of the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay. In reality, the NYPD (New York City Police Department) does not have a choir, the closest thing being the NYPD Pipes and Drums who are featured in the video for the song.

The NYPD Pipes and Drums did not know Galway Bay and so sang a song that all of them knew the words to -the Mickey Mouse March, the theme tune for The Mickey Mouse Club television series.

The footage was then slowed down and shown in brief sections to disguise the fact the Pipes and Drums were singing a different song. Murray recalled that the Pipes and Drums had been drinking on the coach that brought them to the video shoot, and by the time they arrived they were more drunk than the band, refusing to work unless they were supplied with more alcohol.

More information: Shane MacGowan

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas day.

The Pogues

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK, AN IRISH IMMIGRATION STORY

Today, The Newtons & The Grandma have been listening to some music. They have chosen Fairytale of New York, a song written by The Pogues.

 

Before this, they have been studying Present Continuous.

More information: Present Continuous

Fairytale of New York is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band The Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals.

The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with The Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on The Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God.

Originally begun in 1985, the song had a troubled two-year development history, undergoing rewrites and aborted attempts at recording, and losing its original female vocalist along the way, before finally being completed in August 1987.

Although the single has never been the UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover of Always on My Mind, it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on 18 separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year at Christmas since 2005.

As of September 2017, it had sold 1.2 million copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1.5 million combined sales.

In December 2020, the song was certified quadruple platinum in the UK for 2.4 million combined sales.

More information: Pogues

In the UK, Fairytale of New York is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century. It is frequently cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in the UK and Ireland, including the UK television special on ITV in December 2012 where it was voted The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.

The song follows an Irish immigrant's Christmas Eve reverie about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank. When an inebriated old man also in the cell sings a passage from the Irish ballad The Rare Old Mountain Dew, the narrator (MacGowan) begins to dream of a former lover.

The remainder of the song (which may be an internal monologue) takes the form of a call and response between the couple, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, as they reminisce and bicker on Christmas Eve. The lyrics Sinatra was swinging and cars big as bars seem to place the song in the late 1940s, although the music video clearly depicts a contemporary 1980s New York.

The video for the song was directed by Peter Dougherty and filmed in New York during a bitterly cold week in November 1987.

The video opens with MacGowan sitting at a piano as if playing the song's opening refrain: however, as MacGowan could not actually play the instrument, the close-up shot featured the hands of the band's pianist Fearnley wearing MacGowan's rings on his fingers. Fearnley later said that he found the experience humiliating but accepted the idea that it looked better in the video to show MacGowan seated at the piano.

More information: Twitter-The Pogues

Part of the video was filmed inside a real police station on the Lower East Side. Actor Matt Dillon plays a police officer who arrests MacGowan and takes him to the cells. Dillon recalled that he had been afraid to handle MacGowan roughly, and had to be encouraged by Dougherty and MacGowan to use force.

MacGowan and the rest of the band were drinking throughout the shoot, and the police became concerned about their increasingly rowdy behaviour in the cells. Dillon, who was sober, had to intervene and reassure the police that there would be no problems.

The chorus of the song includes the line The boys of the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay. In reality, the NYPD (New York City Police Department) does not have a choir, the closest thing being the NYPD Pipes and Drums who are featured in the video for the song.

The NYPD Pipes and Drums did not know Galway Bay and so sang a song that all of them knew the words to -the Mickey Mouse March, the theme tune for The Mickey Mouse Club television series.

The footage was then slowed down and shown in brief sections to disguise the fact the Pipes and Drums were singing a different song. Murray recalled that the Pipes and Drums had been drinking on the coach that brought them to the video shoot, and by the time they arrived they were more drunk than the band, refusing to work unless they were supplied with more alcohol.

More information: Shane MacGowan

 The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing Galway Bay
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas day.

The Pogues