An All-Nighter With Shane MacGowan
My most memorable music interview lasted till dawn
Irish songwriter, Pogues founder and frontman, poet and punk, Shane MacGowan died peacefully today at the age of 65.
His wife Victoria Mary Clark, who has been posting hospital updates on social media, said the cause of death was complications with pneumonia. McGowan had recently been diagnosed with encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, and has long battled ill health and alcoholism. Tributes to the music trailblazer poured out all day.
A lifetime ago, when MuchMusic played music, I was a senior producer at its sister channel upstairs, MuchMoreMusic. The best part of the gig was that I had first dibs on all the artists no one else had interest in interviewing. The good artists. So while the staff clamoured for a chance to be part of a J.Lo or Matchbox Twenty interview, I quietly snuck out with ‘cameraman’ to spend time with other musicians passing through Toronto. Artists that a new all-hits-agenda only deemed worthy of a quick news piece. Artists that were my heroes. Artists like Joe Strummer, David Byrne, Lucinda Williams, and Shane MacGowan.
In 2002, McGowan came to Lee’s Palace with The Popes, the Irish-punk band he formed after his expulsion from the Pogues—The Irish-punk band. It made zero editorial or financial sense to book time and resources to cover this show—a late weekday night, an un-promotable Toronto-only club gig, and an artist we didn’t even play, except a couple times at Christmas, when the Fairytale of New York video was dusted off.
It made even less sense when, three hours after Cameraman Dave’s shift rolled into forbidden overtime, we were still waiting at the club for The Popes to cross the border. At 11:00pm the tour bus pulled up, but still no movement was detected. Finally, Popes guitarist Tom McManamon bound out to tell me Shane “might have time” after the show. The interview was supposed to be at 4:00, seven hours prior.
I begged Cameraman Dave to stay and capture the show. Any other shooter would have complained, clocked-out, and be in bed hours before. But the magic of those Much days was our common passion for the music and the moment. Dave was one of the originals from the music station’s inception, and he knew this wasn’t merely a Maroon 5 story. A Shane McGowan interview was as rare as a sober Shane MacGowan concert.
Finally after midnight, when Shane and The Popes took the stage, they delivered the most locomotive rock set in all its drunken, deafening glory. McGowan wavered like an inflatable tube man, chugging pints(!) of peach schnapps(!) while spitting inarticulate—yet still kinda profound— poetry, through his infamous rotten teeth.
Shane and the band delivered the raucous club-crowd blow after blow of Popes goodies like Donegal Express and Rock ‘N’ Roll Paddy, but they knew that we knew we were there for the proper Pogues masterworks. When Shane launched into If I Should Fall From Grace With God and The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn, it railroaded any recent Pogues-Minus-MacGowan versions poor concertgoers settled for.
Dave and I waited in a seedy back room of Lee’s Palace for another hour or more after the show wrapped. The staff of MuchMoreMusic and both our wives were long asleep, but we were determined to see the night through.
Yet another hour or so passed. Then. In plodded Shane, a pint of whatever-proof in hand. Our interview lasted about fifteen minutes, and he was everything I hoped he would be—belligerent, funny, aloof, grandiose, and loaded. He was so iconic and unrivalled that he outdid, out-spoke, and outdrank any cartoon version of himself that threatened his cool. The wheezy laugh. Those teeth. Streams of feck-offs.
(Somewhere in the forgotten Much archives is the entire video. After the hours and hours of footage I gathered there, if there was only one tape I’d want to see again, it would be this one).
It was almost 3:00am. Dave finally went home. I was invited to join the Shane, a few insiders, and the band for more drinks at a little ma-and-pa pub someone wrangled to secretly serve us. Of course I would go. Being asked to drink with Shane MacGowan is like being asked to throw the pigskin with Tom Brady, only slightly less athletic.
The wee hours flew by. I chatted with everyone, but it was drinking Guinness on the barstool next to McGowan I remember most, particularly his loving rants about shite music, shite food, and the shite show he just wanked off. He signed a bar napkin for me, because it could only be a bar napkin in this story.
When the sun came rising and we were kicked out, all bleary-eyed and bloated, I witnessed the most remarkable thing. Shane walked up to his manager, and as if jolting himself from sloshed to sober, he suddenly conducted a business-like conversation about the logistics of the next day. It was almost as if he could turn Shane MacGowan off and on like a light switch. Was the blitzed Shane a subtle shift in showbiz persona? A tiny bit of shtick? With the rivers of booze he guzzled—just in my presence alone— there was no chance he wasn’t gooned. But to see it toggled off so dramatically, so soberly, was jarring at the time. It messed with the myth, ever-so-slightly. Anyone can drink a lot. Only a few pros can do that trick.
I stumbled in the house just as my wife was getting ready for work. The signed napkin I gave her was my pass, as she too was a Pogues fan. Isn’t everyone?
When I rolled into MuchMoreMusic, beaten and bruised, an on-air host asked me why I would waste my time staying up all night for such a tiny story. If I could answer her now, still having the fond memory decades later, I think she’d understand.
Bloody brilliant!
Another great story, like all the others. I raise my non-alcoholic glass!