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  5. I met him outside Manchester Academy on 15th Dec 2001 after they played (Yes I did wait outside!) & he was very lovely. I hugged him & then did cartwheels up Oxford Road back to the car as he was pretty much my all time music hero at that time.

    As a lyricist I think he is well up there. He can convey a feeling in one line that says everything it should & I have read books that don’t even manage that.

    I will be putting on The Pogues today & raising a glass for Shane

    • I don’t normally play music at home, but I have some painting to do this evening so I know ‘If I Should Fall…’ will get an airing at least, maybe ‘RS&TL as well…

  7. At their peak, from around 1985-1988, they were fantastic. If I Should Fall from Grace with God is a five star record that still sounds great today. Fairytale isn’t even the best song on it.

    I saw them at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1988. He introduced Fairytale as “The song you liked almost as much as the Pet Shop Boys” and then started laughing. Brilliant live band.

  8. I come old friend from Hell tonight
    Across the rotting sea
    Nor the nails of the cross
    Nor the blood of Christ
    Can bring you help this eve
    The dead have come to claim a debt from thee
    They stand outside your door
    Four score and three
    Did you keep a watch for the dead man’s wind
    Did you see the woman with the comb in her hand
    Wailing away on the wall on the strand
    As you danced to the Turkish song of the damned

    RIP Shane

  9. The least surprising headline of 2023, but those songs will prove immortal.

    Sad to say I must be on my way
    So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away.
    I’d like to think of me returning when I can
    To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

  11. I expect he’ll be having a rare oul time, meeting up again with old chums like Ronnie Drew, Phil Chevron, Kirsty and Sinead. (And the latter will still give him a bollocking!)

  12. I just read a heartwarming thing: there was never an actual NYPD choir, as per the Fairytale Of NY lyric, but one has been created by NYPD members just to sing Galway Bay.

    • Not quite, as I have read it. This is from the NME site.

      The lyrics mention: “The boys of the NYPD choir still singing ‘Galway Bay’.” The NYPD doesn’t actually have a choir, but it does have an Irish pipe band who are featured in the music video. They didn’t know ‘Galway Bay’, so they played the ‘Mickey Mouse Club March’ instead, and the video was later slowed down to fit the beat.

  13. One of the first bands I became obsessed with. Read a rave review of “If I Could Fall…”, bought it, loved it and picked up their other two albums within a few days.

    First saw them live supporting Elvis Costello and the Attractions at Hammersmith Palais, later I moved to Switzerland and for a few years saw every gig there and in easily accessible parts of Germany. Didn’t keep the ticket stubs and I drank a lot at the time, so I have no idea how many gigs I actually saw, double figures I expect.

    An absolutely magnificent night out, he was drunk every time hanging on the microphone stand, but what a band, what a songwriter. One of my favourite moments being at a gig in May(!) 1988, first time I saw them headline (Volkshaus in Zurich) they played Fairytale of New York and Kirsty MacColl wandered on to the stage to join them. So many wonderful live moments, a shame his recording career had already peaked so early, but they were great for a good few years

  14. A Story from Jake Shillingford of My Life Story … My Life Story were in RAK studios in St John’s Wood, London, recording our string section parts, sometime in ’96 or ’97 can’t exactly remember when. As would often happen, artists who were also booked into the same recording studio complex would see or hear our string section and ask if they could borrow them for their session.
    The Pogues were working on some new material in Studio 2, and invited us in. Sitting in their control room, I noticed a tall, ‘boom’ microphone in the centre. The towering stand set so high as to pick up everybody’s conversation. Now, this is quite unusual, the control room is for the producer to listen and mix the track. Microphones and amps should belong in the live room where the band would be recording.
    Alert to this, I asked if they were recording some ambient noise for their new record, perhaps picking up snippets of the bands conversation, clinking cups of tea, merriment etc.
    The band explained to me that this was not the case, in fact, it was an elaborate and time-consuming system to stop arguments within the group.
    Shane would listen to a string part that we were trying out and give feedback as to whether he liked it or not. Yes, that, thats it, that will work, brilliant! ….Unfortunately, he was so pissed that he would then forget minutes later if he even did, in fact… like it or not.
    Effectively arguing with his less drunk, earlier self. He would then say things like… who came up with that part it’s rubbish! At that point the band would stop the session, and attempt to spool back the DAT tape to the precise point where they had recorded his every comment throughout the day, play him the bit where he said it was a good idea and then crack on with the recording again. It must have taken forrrr….ever.
    Shane would take this all in good grace. My take away from that experience was that the rest of the Pogues clearly loved and respected Shane so much, that they were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to still create with him.
    I like to think that says it all really.

  15. F*ck.
    This one hits hard, regardless of how it’s hardly unexpected.
    What a fantastic lyricist he was, a fact sometimes forgotten besides all the famous carousing & excesses.
    I’m chuffed to have spent a little time in his company & always found him sensitive & charming irrespective of what state he was in – I have a short ditty he wrote & gave to me safely treasured indoors.
    I’m confident that not only will his songs be remembered but they’ll be be *sung* for decades.

  16. Very sad news, irrespective of the life he led, 65 is no age at all. His songs will last, my memories of seeing them many times (1st time with Kirsty, Rico and Joe Strummer) will last a lifetime. He was a compelling front man even when he was falling over. Above all, a great great songwriter – Broad Majestic Shannon for me, if I had to choose just the one song.

  18. The late Mrs Cakes was working on passport control at Heathrow (late80s/early 90s) when SMcG decided he would not, after all, fly somewhere with the rest of the band, despite already being airside. She let him back through and he kissed her hand as he went past. “I’ll never wash again” she said to him. Reader, she scrubbed it very thoroughly indeed.

  19. This morning on the harbour, when I said goodbye to you
    I remember how I swore that I’d come back to you one day
    And as the sunset came to meet, the evening on the hill
    I told you I’d always love you, I always did, I always will

    Body of an American. My favourite, and aposite tonight

  20. One summer evening drunk to hell
    I stood there nearly lifeless
    An old man in the corner sang
    Where the water lilies grow
    And on the jukebox johnny sang
    About a thing called love

    And its how are you kid and whats your name
    And how would you bloody know?

    In blood and death neath a screaming sky
    I lay down on the ground
    And the arms and legs of other men
    Were scattered all around
    Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed
    Then prayed and bled some more

    And the only thing that I could see
    Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me
    But when we got back, labeled parts one to three
    There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me

    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    For a pair of brown eyes

    I looked at him he looked at me
    All I could do was hate him
    While Ray and Philomena sang
    Of my elusive dream
    I saw the streams, the rolling hills
    Where his brown eyes were waiting
    And I thought about a pair of brown eyes
    That waited once for me

    So drunk to hell I left the place
    Sometimes crawling sometimes walking
    A hungry sound came across the breeze
    So I gave the walls a talking
    And I heard the sounds of long ago
    From the old canal
    And the birds were whistling in the trees
    Where the wind was gently laughing

    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    A rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    For a pair of brown eyes
    For a pair of brown eyes

    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
    For a pair of brown eyes
    For a pair of brown eyes

  23. Sad day. Absolutely gutted. Phenomenal lyricist could be both pointed & poetic. Made the young West of Scotland chap from a different tradition, shall we say, think differently about Ireland.
    Saw them a few times at the Brixton Academy from 2001 onwards. Great band, so tight. First time I was perfectly pissed & it was a wonderful evening.
    Played the 2001 live album very loudly on the way home tonight.

      • By birth yes but by choice it’s the mighty St Mirren. Can’t stand what the Ugly Sisters bring to Scottish football coupled with their massive sense of entitlement and I’ve not lived in Scotland for 30+ years.

  24. First time I became properly aware of The Pogues was The Irish Rover with The Dubliners on Channel 4s Saturday Live.
    Red Roses for Me and Rum Sodomy & The Lash were procured the next week (nowhere was open on a Sunday those long forgotten days)
    Rum Sodomy & The Lash remains the most played, but if I had to pick just one song it would be Rainy Night In Soho (from the Poguetry In MotionEP)

  26. Ya know with all the hundreds of gigs you’ve seen , it is often some of the one’s you missed that stick in your memory.

    Pogues St Patricks Day Gig, London. That’s one of them.

    RIP Shane

  28. Very sad news.
    A friend of a friend was a roadie and he did a few tours with The Pogues.
    His daughter joined him for a couple of weekend shows (I think she was home from Uni) and had an evening of post gig revellry with the band.
    The following morning at breakfast her dad came up to her and asked her how she was feeling.
    “I was feeling a bit rough but Shane came over and gave me a hangover cure pill and i feel fine now!”
    He then patiently explained it’s best not to take anything that Shane offers you.
    R.I.P big man

  34. Back in ’88 (or was it ’89?) I was teaching English in a frontesterio on Mykonos. I was aiming to be Leonard Cohen but missed by about six islands. There was one bar that stayed open into November after all the tourists had gone. The owner and DJ was called Hans. Hans the DJ, Hans the DJ, Hans the DJ, as I sang to him as I arrived every night, although being Dutch he’d never heard of The Smiths, and never asked why the fuck I did that.

    Anyway. One night he handed me a homemade tape, which I’m sure I must still have somewhere. He called it Pogy-Pogy and it was Rum, Sodomy and the Lash (I always thought it’s a blessing they’re in that order) on one side and If I Should Fall From Grace With God on the other. I went back to my school-cum-bedsit and put it on, and I never listened to anything else throughout that winter.

    With Shane you knew the obituaries were written twenty years ago, but even so. I thought he was brilliant.

    The next time I see you we’ll be down at the Greeks
    There’ll be whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks
    For it’s stupid to laugh and it’s useless to bawl
    ‘Bout a rusty tin can and an old hurley ball
    Take my hand and dry your tears, babe
    Take my hand, forget your fears, babe
    There’s no pain, there’s no more sorrow
    They’re all gone, gone in the years, babe

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