Goodbye to Shane

The Boy from County Hell

Lost in the midst of people celebrating the death of war criminal Henry Kissinger, one of our great songwriters, Shane MacGowan, died yesterday at the age of 65.

Best known as the lead singer and songwriter of The Pogues, I had the pleasure of seeing Shane sing twice in my lifetime; once after he’d been kicked out of the Pogues for drinking too much, and once after he’d made good with his old friends and reunited with them to play in New York City on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Both were among the most memorable shows I’ve ever attended, for different reasons.

Shane was drinking hard in 1995, when I saw him in a New Brunswick basement with his band The Popes; we pogoed like mad, crammed like sardines, and the ceiling dripped with condensed sweat. Shane himself hung to the mic stand for dear life and mucked up the lyrics of “Sally MacLennane” but we didn’t care. It looked like he was giving his life for us, like Mick Jagger sings in “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll.”

I was pleasantly surprised when he went clean, popped in a set of dentures, and reunited with his old friends the Pogues thirteen years later for a St. Paddy’s day show in New York City. Sarah and I had a great view from the balcony at Roseland Ballroom and seeing the Pogues together was an epiphany for me. They had only ever existed on vinyl and mix tapes from. “Kitty” was the first song I’d ever heard; it took “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” to hook me.

Afterwards, I special ordered Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, their infamous second album with its grueling war ballads, raucous literary explosions, and interludes of pure beauty. Their songs spoke of a world I wanted to visit, one of worldly jesters winking at us through a glass made darkly by whiskey. Shane is most famous for the duet with the gorgeous-voiced Kirsty MacColl, “A Fairy Tale of New York,” which like Die Hard, has become an unlikely Christmas song. Kirsty died tragically when a rich man in a powerboat hit her and her sons while they swam off Cozumel. She died pushing her sons out of the way.

Shane also sang a duet with Sinéad O’Connor, a couple years after her protest of the Catholic church child sex abuse scandal made her persona non grata in the media. That’s the song I’ll leave you with. Shane was low in ‘95 as well, so it makes me smile that he worked with her when she was hated, and she lifted him up after he’d been kicked out of his band.

I named my second Jay Desmarteaux book after Shane’s song, “The Boys from County Hell.” It fronts as a hard song, but in the end, it’s a sad man wishing for a drink to take away his pain. “Maybe that was dreaming, and maybe that was real, But all I know is I left the place without a penny or fuck all.” If I had to pick a favorite song, it would have to be “Turkish Song of the Damned,” about a former seaman or pirate haunted by the death of his crew. It never fails to spin wild tales in my head.

The Pogues played an instrumental called “Maidrin Rua,” which means “little red dog” in Gaelic, their word for a fox. And I happened to see a red fox the other day, when it was pouring hard rain much like it does in the first lines of “The Boys from County Hell.” The little maidrin rua was taking shelter in our carport, and I felt awful having scared them out with my headlights. I caught them on my dash cam:

I don’t know when my kinship with foxes began. I have a memory of a purple vixen on “The Shirt Tales” who was a teacher or similar; after that I started drawing a comic strip called “Valerie Vixen,” who was sort of a foxy James Bond. Then I saw “The Lords of Hokkaido” on PBS about foxes in Japan, and became a budding naturalist; as I entered teenhood, their persecution and beauty both appealed to me. I’m very happy that my carport can be a haven for one; it’s also sheltered a dove and a baby skunk. I’m afraid to use the firewood, and learning what rodents and/or snakes have made it home.

The winter hasn’t kept me from riding. No snow yet, but I’ve got the gear ready. The aptly named “pogies,” which fit over your handlebars to keep hands warm, and waterproof pants for the snow, if we get any this year.

That’s all for now. I’ve been a bit worn down from work and travel, and our weekends are jam packed with social events. So I may be scarce until the new year, if only to recharge.