Pogues to Popes

MacGowan Still Doing the Moooo-sic Thing 
 
By Peter Schmidtke

Shane MacGowan, the former front man for the 1980's punk folk band the Pogues, lets out a guttural "moooo" as the camera follows him shuffling unsteadily along a verdant cow pasture in rural Ireland. With a half-filled bottle of gin in one hand and his raven-haired girlfriend Victoria in the other, MacGowan chortles and hisses his characteristic alligator snort. 

A preview of If I Should Fall From Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story, a 200 Emdee Production, is an unflinching reflection on the life of both MacGowan and the Pogues, a band that secured cult-like status through its style of combining traditional Irish folk ballads with raucous '70's punk. 

This documentary will be broadcast on the Sundance Channel on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 2003

Director Sarah Share weaves 90 minutes of vintage concert footage and interviews to create a rich portrait of a talented writer and performer whose excesses both defined and derailed his music.

"He had a brilliant brain," says MacGowan's bearded father early in the film. "And he still does, a few billion brain cells later." 
 
MacGowan, who was born in England but spent the majority of his childhood in Ireland, reacted with rage and confusion when the family moved back to England in the mid-60s to find steady employment.

"I came over here (to London) and degenerated into a drunk and a drug user," MacGowan says into the camera, muttering inaudibly.

Although he enjoyed writing and won several poetry contests, MacGowan's formal education ended soon after. At age 14, the headmaster at school caught him with drugs. MacGowan's father wanted him to use his gift as a wordsmith to write literature, but his son gravitated towards the punk music scene of 1970s' London.

"There was Bob Dylan blowing into one ear and the Grateful Dead into the other," his father says with a sigh. 

Director Share includes footage of a young MacGowan crooning with his first band, the Nips (short for the Nipple Erectors) along with interviews of the band's manager, Philip Gaston.

"In walked this guy, his hair long and matted and caked with one thing or another," says Gaston about the first time he saw MacGowan saunter into his London record shop. 

Interspersed with the live music footage are contemporary scenes of a bedraggled MacGowan innocently prowling the streets for mischief with his long-time girlfriend Victoria Clarke after a night at a pub. 

"What makes you happy," Clarke asks MacGowan after he drops a chunk of change into a beggar's hands. "It can't be explained," MacGowan retorts. "Maybe in Irish, it could."

Moments later, the camera struggles to follow the 44-year-old ex-Pogues icon shimmying up a flight of stairs to another pub, where he compliments the proprietor and giggles as he hysterically announces to all present: "When I was a sponge diver, I dove 14 million miles into the sea to find a sponge."

The hard-living MacGowan at times appears to be more fragile than his elderly parents and seems to be inebriated in every scene. This
would turn off most viewers were it not for Share's inclusion of full-length performance videos and cuts from the band's five albums that showcase the Pogues' unique sound.

MacGowan's rich, haunting vocals on both "Summer in Siam" (from the 1990s' Hell's Ditch album) and "Fairytale of New York" beg comparison to blues greats Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong. 

"He affected a lot of people in England," claims a long-time friend. "Celebrating being Irish was such an unpopular thing then, with bombs going off in the streets! It was a revelation."

"It could never have happened in Ireland," claims ex-Pogues' guitarist Philip Chevron about the band's successful melding of punk and traditional Irish. "It's like there are two Irelands: the people on the island and the people who went away. And when you go away, that gives you a different view on what it is to be Irish."
 
The film follows the ebb and flow of the Pogues' success up until the gradual disintegration of the band in the early 1990s.
 

"We felt like we could beat the system that said bands had to fall apart," MacGowan says, looking away from the camera. "But we couldn't." 

Ten years after the Pogues fired him from the band, MacGowan does not mince words to Sharon about his disdain for what he believes was the band's all-consuming desire to "become rock stars." While MacGowan says he simply wanted to "go home to the country," his friends and former band mates still openly point to his use of alcohol and drugs as an overriding factor.

"All I wanted was to play old-fashioned, proper Irish music," MacGowan says with a chuckle. "The kind that's emotional, that hits you in the gut and the soul." MacGowan now performs with his new band Shane
MacGowan and the Popes.
 
MacGowan's self-destructive lifestyle in this realistic documentary will surely raise more than a few eyebrows from viewers, but those unfamiliar with the Pogues' music may actually be surprised to find themselves clamoring to their local record shop for an album or two from the wild men of Irish music.