Scorning predictions of his demise, year upon year, Shane MacGowan finally left us in November last year. What he leaves, in terms of his spirit and the music of The Pogues – its poetry of defiance, devotion and degradation – is unlikely ever to be matched. But was there enough of it? “He wrote so many great songs in a short space of time,” argues his friend and chronicler Ann Scanlon in the latest issue of MOJO. “How many songwriters can say that?” Indeed, and as testament to MacGowan’s singular genius, MOJO has compiled his 20 greatest songs…
"Heroes live forever..." Spider Stacy pays tribute to Shane MacGowan
20. Gabrielle
(The Nips single, Soho/Chiswick, 1979)
Summer-of-’76 ace face ‘Shane O’Hooligan’ was hardly seen as a song writerly prospect, until November 1979 when his band The Nips (nés Nipple Erectors) served up this well-constructed slice of reincarnated ’50s rock’n’roll. Its transmission of central London’s buzz is offset against Shane’s baleful yearning for the titular ex. In the mid-2010s, the song’s publishers were reputedly touting Gabrielle for inclusion in Pop Idol. AP
19. Transmetropolitan
(from Red Roses For Me, Stiff, 1984)
First track on their debut LP, Transmetropolitan was The Pogues’ mission statement. Sulphate-paced accordions and violins ride a tub-thumping punk-folk groove as pie-eyed piper MacGowan machine guns not-quite expletives, leading his down-at-heel troops through a riotous London junket. Gloriously unrefined to its last defiant cry of “I ain’t going home tonight!” AC
18. Dark Streets Of London
(from Red Roses For Me, Stiff, 1984)
Scrapping Ralph McTell-style sentiment, MacGowan maps the purgatory of poverty on The Pogues’ full-pelt debut single. Denied the warmth of Hammersmith’s pubs and bookies, he’s instead chilled by memories of “the place where they gave ECT”. Yet heart-breaking nihilism is undercut by the song’s animal heat, an unextinguishable blaze in the dark. VS
17. Boys From The County Hell
(from Red Roses For Me, Stiff, 1984)
Often dismissed as a mere drinking song, this rip-roaring Dubliners-esque romp was darkness itself. Set against a bleak, rainy backdrop, it’s an unsettling celebration of ultra-violent retribution narrated by the amoral son of a blueshirt (Ireland’s fascist party) whose brother participated in My Lai. JA
16. The Sick Bed Of Cúchulainn
(from Rum, Sodomy &The Lash, Stiff, 1985)
The roistering life given mythical heft, as MacGowan takes the Irish warrior demi-god of the title carousing through time and space. Heroic battles are fought against blackshirts; Irish Republican heroes are encountered during the Spanish Civil War; drink flows, relentlessly. Written in 1985, it proved a manifesto for MacGowan’s next 37 years, a quest to challenge the limits of apparent indestructibility. JM
15. The Old Main Drag
(from Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, Stiff, 1985)
A ruined life crunched into three minutes, this pitiless tale of Piccadilly rent boys and police brutality expresses a very physical humanity: alleyway sex, bloody violence, slow death. What startles beyond the Tuinal-spiked narrative, though, is how MacGowan suddenly stops singing, delivering his last words with a trapdoor snap. No consolation, no hope. VS
14. A Pair Of Brown Eyes
(from Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, Stiff, 1985)
Broken-hearted and drunk, our hero is cornered by an old soldier inflicting his tale of still greater loss when, invalided home, he finds no pair of brown eyes awaiting him – anecdotally not a sweetheart’s but his dog’s. Framing its vivid narrative weave, the poignant tune derives from Francis McPeake’s Wild Mountain Thyme. MS
13. Sally MacLennane
(from Rum, Sodomy &The Lash, Stiff, 1985)
This rollicking jig was inspired by Shane’s uncle’s pub in Dagenham, which served Sally MacLennane stout to Ford workers. With its twisted tale of prodigal Jimmy croaking on his pint, the track became an indie disco staple, coaxing student revellers to dance to punk’d Irish traditional music, and thereafter delve into the deep, dark world of MacGowan. AP
12. A Rainy Night In Soho
(from Poguetry In Motion EP, Stiff, 1986)
One of MacGowan’s great London songs, but the location isn’t as important as the deeper message of enduring love and the consolations of the uncanny – a romance that leans into the word’s original supernatural connotations. The singer considers his place in the great scheme of things with tender fortitude: “I’m not talking of the first time/I never think about the last.” JM
11. The Body Of An American
(from Poguetry In Motion EP, Stiff, 1986)
MacGowan at his most adventurous, mixing the poetic stage-Irish of Seán O’Casey with the Baroque melodicism of Turlough O’Carolan. Musically, it’s constructed for the parlour, a funereal waltz leading to a celebratory drunken chorus, but the narrative – centred around the wake of an Irish American boxer – is elusive. A song that simultaneously resists analysis yet demands it. AM
10. Fairytale Of New York
(single, Pogue Mahone, 1987)
Not many can boast to have written a genuine standard, let alone a seasonal one. Shane and Jem Finer’s bid for immortality works across time and generations, its rejection of sentimental baubles for a fierce balance of defiance and decay its true wonder. Finer credited Shane for the song’s Broadway melody; Kirsty MacColl is the perfect foil. DE
9. If I Should Fall From Grace With God
(from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Pogue Mahone,1988)
Later, MacGowan would regret the sophistication that came with the addition of Philip Chevron (guitar) and Terry Woods (mandolin etc), but who can deny the epic woosh and seamless instrumental mesh of this relentless snarl in the face of death, and maybe even damnation? Let him go, boys. Let him go. DE
8. Thousands Are Sailing
(from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Pogue Mahone, 1988)
Like Horslips and U2, The Pogues were haunted by the Irish diaspora, its voyage “across the Western Ocean/To a land of opportunity” never more rousingly dramatised than by Thousands…’s writer, former Radiator From Space Philip Chevron. Though no Luke Kelly, lead voice MacGowan utterly owns his bandmate’s poetic panorama. MS
7. Lullaby Of London
(from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Pogue Mahone,1988)
Even in The Nips, MacGowan was London-Irish rather than merely Irish. Lullaby Of London isn’t an overt ode to MacGowan’s city – London is never mentioned – but it couldn’t be set anywhere else. It is, though, unquestionably a lullaby, a sibling for Forever Young, a prayer for the child MacGowan would never sire. JA
6. The Broad Majestic Shannon
(from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, Pogue Mahone,1988)
This hymn to Ireland’s great river offered classic MacGowan elements: musicians playing old Irish airs, birds singing, booze, existential sorrow. Yet here the place names along the Shannon lend the song an epic, watery sweep, while the “rusty tin can” and “old hurley ball” possess an intangible Rosebud significance. Not just about a river, but the melancholy flow of life itself. PG
5. White City
(from Peace And Love, Pogue Mahone, 1989)
Originally intended by MacGowan as an acid house rave-up, then reworked into a Trad Arr salute to the once grand West London dog-track (demolished in 1985) this galloping jig is also a valedictory lament for the loss of a working-class Atlantis and its heady culture of “speed, skill and schemes”. AM
4. Summer In Siam
(single, Pogue Mahone, 1990)
Conceived as a four-line miniature with just vocals and rippling light-on-water piano, Summer In Siam is the sound of MacGowan reaching for a state of Zen-like peace. As such, the finished version, with additional harp glissandos and strings, has a bittersweet unease, MacGowan’s lyrical purity chivvied into a more conventional state of romantic bliss. AM
3. The Church Of The Holy Spook
(from Shane MacGowan And The Popes’ The Snake, ZTT, 1994)
A banjo-driven testament of mum-was-a-saint guilt and good-old-ways redemption, like I Fought The Law and White Lightning reverse-engineered into London-Irish country pub-punk. It’s also charged with Catholicism and Buddhism, and the claim that “rock’n’roll you crucified me” is no joke. His first post-Pogues chart entry, it boded so well. IH
2. Haunted
(Shane MacGowan And Sinéad O’Connor single, ZTT, 1995)
This re-recorded Pogues song (the original’s on the OST of Alex Cox’s 1986 Sid And Nancy movie) is a golden imagining of punk’s sacrificial couple simply being young and in love. Sinéad sounds beatific, Shane’s as vulnerable as he ever got, and then love conquers death. No need to remember that it appeared in a Sandra Bullock art-heist rom-com. IH
Sinéad O’Connor Remembered: “I hope to God I’m not a pussy…”
1. Rock’n’Roll Paddy
(from Shane MacGowan And The Popes’ The Crock Of Gold, ZTT, 1997)
His mojo all but spent, MacGowan unexpectedly rediscovers the lunatic, vengeful inner-Shane of Boys From The County Hell et al. As a Tex-Mex backing bops jauntily along, punctuated with a stolen Eddie Cochran riff, he threatens crime and violence, glorying for the last time in his low-life Pogues anima. Dark, brilliant fun. PG
Compiled by: John Aizlewood, Andy Cowan, Danny Eccleston, Pat Gilbert, Ian Harrison, Andrew Male, John Mulvey, Andrew Perry, Victoria Segal, Mat Snow
"I'm not interested in whiter someone plays a bum note, as long as the audience scream and they mean it..." Read MOJO's full tribute to Shane MacGowan only in the latest issue. More information and to order a copy HERE.
