If I Should Fall from Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story Page #5

pop star always you know and he

said he wasn't going to hang around

he was going to be a pop star

and when he first like... when

the Noisey Boyseys first began

which later became the Pogues

I remember we went down

to see the first gig

must have been just about the

first gig down in Steve Stanger's club

and there was us and one or two others

and umm... a bunch of squatties I think

who were just back from northern

Ireland who were all eating chips

and proceeded to pelt the

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

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