If I Should Fall from Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story Page #3

stage with chips throughout

and there was Shane up on the stage

sort of singing Paddy Works On The Railroad

and and Irish songs

it should have occurred to me

it was so f***ing obvious

a f***ing thing to do

to f***ing play really good

Irish songs to a young audience

you know the Pogues could never

have been an Irish band indigenously

it could never have happened in Ireland

I'm... I'm absolutely certain of that

it would never have happened from

within the island

and the Pogues needed to happen

from the Diaspora if you like

in Mary Robinson's uhh memorable phrase

it... it... it uhh needed to happen from...

it's like there's two Irelands

the people who live on the island

and there's people who went away

or who are second generation

and very often uhh... you know

that gives a different point of view

on the culture

on what it is to be Irish

he affected a lot of Irish

people in London at the time

for the better in a huge way

just by making it possible

to kind of claim back

umm some sense of pride in being Irish

because like putting it into context

you had the Balcombe street seige

you had bombs going off

right left and center

it was... there was a lot of

racism in London at the time

and a lot of anti-Irish talk

uhh every time there was another bomb

so for him to turn around and

kind of celebrate his Irish culture

was a... was a... was a very strange thing

and... and to give voice to

his experience of it was...

like in the lyrics and when he began

writing the songs and that was what was

such a huge revelation with the Pogues

all I did was take extremely

old-fashioned Irish music

proper Irish music

paeans or old-fashioned... you know

in terms of people like

Horslips and Clancy

and Diarmaid yeah... right

and like uhh you know

like you know... you know the music you know

ceilidh music and you know jigs reels

like lyrics about

drinking f***ing fighting you know

like uhh you know romantic lyrics about

love and rebellion everything else yeah?

I am going I am going where the

streams of whiskey are flowing

it's not exactly an Erin moor

in the county Galway

one summer's evening

in the month of May

I met a damsel

both fair and handsome

she nearly took my breath away

is it now?

the day the record arrived

in uhhh... you know

it didn't leave the turntable for days

it was the most exciting thing that

had aired in a long long time

you must remember this is the early 80's

where the charts were full of

extremely bland and mechanical music

ahh... it looked like you know... after the

after the sort of the first

uhh... blossom of the punk movement

uhhh... it seemed to all go

horribly wrong very quickly

uhh... the music went backward

retreated back into its

sort of soporific state

so it's almost hard

really now in retrospect to say just

how exciting that was to hear an album

played by human beings with

real instrument and so on

it was revolutionary for its time

the stuff we play like is... is uhh

well it's more f***ed up basically

you know because like... because like

you are more f***ed up

if you live in London than

if you live in uhh...

you're not more f***ed up than if you

live in Belfast or

somewhere like that obviously

but you're more f***ed up than uhh...

if you live in a nice little town

in Tipperary or somewhere like that

Elvis Costello had produced

my record Captains and Kings

so I brought Elvis to see the Pogues

which were obviously the

happening band in London at the time

and I realize in retrospect actually

that what happened that night is

that Elvis fell in love twice over

once with the Pogues and then

with the Pogue's bass player

all that happened I think

instantaneously I realize now and

and he went on to produce

Rum Sodomy and the Lash

is it hard to produce uhh...

this kind of sound?

no no uhhh... people

got the uhh... have a

misapprehension that the band can't play

the band can play really well

the sound's changed because Costello

came in and produced it right?

and the way he produces is like

really kind of clinical

and kind of like you know?

the best way to record us is

live you know in the studio

with as few takes as possible on the vocal

but Costello believed in hundreds of takes

making me do the vocal hundreds of times

and then kind of splitting

it up from bits of all that

to make up a Frankenstein monster

yes a word out here and

a word out there. . . you know?

he'd drop in between uhh... you know?

despite the fiddles uhh. . . like

Frankenstein productions like you know?

the raw energy comes through

you know what I mean?

it's a great album because

it's great f***ing music

it's a great band you know what I mean?

it's great music you know what I mean?

and it wasn't all written

by me you know what I mean?

i mean half was written by me... yeah?

and like... you know... it's a great band

in the peak of their... of their... of their

of their uhh... of their uhh...

they're in their peak

you know what I mean? you know?

when I'm at home... you know?

I... uhh... watch telly... listen to music

read books... and play the guitar... yeah?

and... uhh... every now

and then I get an idea

you find a riff that

sounds good... like... yeah

and then a melody suggest itself

but really... it's just that

I don't know how it happens

it's like Mozart said...

it's music from heaven

or hell... depending on whether you

like it... you know?

either... uhh... why aren't there shares

why hasn't the church got...

oh yeah the church have got shares

but what are they trading under?

you know what I mean?

is it orange juice or uhh... light metals

err... uhh... uhh... is Bill Gates a

f***ing front for uhh... for uhh... El Papa?

is Bill Gates the new Jesus Christ?

after Rum Sodomy and the Lash uhh...

the band obviously altered a little

in as much as I came

in later on in that album

and then Terry Woods came in

and then uhh Darrel Hunter

replaced Cait O'Reardon on bass

so the sound was changing

and developing and

and different... different elements

were coming into play

I thought he was an

incredible lyric writer

great singer

and the songs were really beautiful

and then the next album came out

If I Should Fall With Grace...

is that right?

umm... and I just thought some

of the lyric writing on

that was uhh... was unbelievable

umm... kind of head and shoulders above

what anyone else was doing

umm... it had uhh... a simplicity

to it that was just

and beauty about it was

just extraordinary I thought

the long gap between

Rum Sodomy and the Lash and

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

which was a lot to do with

uhh record company problems

which are far too boring to go into

but it delayed recording

a new album for awhile

but in retrospect that was the best thing

that could have happened

because we had... we'd use that time

to develop a kind of new sound

well a bigger version of the same sound

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