Poguetry in slow motion

Press, 28 January 1988, Page 10

Poguetry in slow motion

By

COLIN HOGG

Shane MacGowan has bought a pad and a snazzy black pen. He’s sitting in the bar of Auckland International Airport drinking like a legend, and he claims, writing a screenplay for a movie of the life of St Paul. Robert de Niro is, he says, the only man he’d consider for the lead. “Write me in as Paul’s brother,” says the man sitting next to MacGowan, nursing the latest in a series of tequilas - and orange. “I’d like to get my hands on that St Paul.” That one’s name is Terry Woods, and like MacGowan, he is a member of a band called The Pogues — a way of life that involves a little more than merely making records and getting on stages all over the world and playing music. They think the sun shines from the fundament of traditional Irish music'. For hero worship they turn, not to Springsteen or Prince, but to Irish music legends like The Dubliners and Christy Moore and jigs and reels, rebel and drinking songs and sad alcoholic ballads. If musical rules hadn’t been bent, burnt and booted all over the place in recent years, the Pogues would never have won a rock and roll audience. Only their lack of years, their wild-eyed punkish attitude and the fact that they chose to begin operating in trendmaddened London under the eyes of a music media panting for any new sound, and new angle, any new face, won them the sort of following a Dubliner could only dream about. Get the music media panting of course, and you’re going to be lumbered with an “image.” For The Pogues, it centres around a rather predictable hard-drinking rebel Irish punk label that they now carry with them like a bloated liver long overdue for treatment, and the striking looks of Pogue-in-chief, Shane MacGowan. MacGowan is blessed with a face only a mother could love and a set of teeth that could keep a team of dentists busy for at least a week.

In person, he sets those charms off with a staccato vocal delivery high on humidity and low on articulacy, spicing it with the sort of laugh only a blocked drain could emit. MacGowan and his seven fellow Pogues are in transit from Los Angeles to Australia, where they are touring before returning to Auckland for an appearance on Sunday night at Neon Picnic, Pukekawa, and a national tour, including the Christchurch Town Hall on Wednesday. Two Pogues, Terry

Woods and Philip Chevron, have just spent two surprise days in Auckland, unable to join the rest of the band in America due to a shortfall in the visa department. The reunion seems cause enough for celebration in the airport bar, though MacGowan in particular is exhibiting signs that the celebration might have started soon after his plane lifted off from Los Angeles. In the drinking stakes, the man comes on like a Viking, facing as many as three or four glasses. The man’s Catholicism extends to his drinking tastes. At one point he faces a glass of stout, a large gin and tonic, a Kahlua and a tequila and orange. There are Pogues everywhere. Only tin whistler Spider Stacy is missing in action, a little tired and emotional after the Pacific fight and apparently tucked up in a seat on the other side of the “Departure” sign, ready for pouring onto the plane to Melbourne. Exile in a bar seems to be a temporary fate that MacGowan for one is more than happy to cope with.

Exile is an attitude MacGowan might have worn like some badge of courage. After he and other Pogues had, as MacGowan colourfully puts it, “been in bands that had enjoyed varying degrees of failure,” they stumbled gradually together in London, playing their first musical love — the traditional music .they’d grown up hearing in their London Irish homes.

MacGowan never had any qualms about playing a musical form that, on the surface, was hopelessly old-fashioned. Spend any time with MacGowan and you swiftly realise he’s probably never had any qualms about anything. Growing up, first in Ireland and later in London of solid Catholic Irish stock, his musical outlook took a route somewhat left of the trendy pop most aspiring young musicians would be expected to hurl themselves at. "When I was a kid in Ireland, the charts were a mixture of beat music and Irish music,” says MacGowan. “When I was a teenager, I got into rock and roll — punk basically. When I got into playing in bands seriously it was punk. “But it (rock and roll) doesn’t rate really. It’s all three chords and a beat.” The real music for MacGowan and his Pogues is Irish music, inspired by longtime heroes like The Dubliners, Irish musical legends who have had more than a passing acquaintance with the world’s pop charts —

most recently in league with The Pogues on a rendition of “The Irish Rover.” MacGowan agrees that their youth and the punkish, shambolic energy have conspired to help The Pogues bring attention to a musical form previously overlooked by young music fans. "I always thought of The Dubliners as a rock and roll band. “No matter what age they are or whether they do a 200-year-old song or one that was written last year, they’re obviously about vitality and energy and emotion and drive and rebellion. “All we thought was, ‘Why shouldn’t we play this music in a rock club in front, of a bunch of poseurs and see what happens’?" What happened was that The Pogues — MacGowan, with Jem Finer on banjo, James Fearnley (accordian), and Andrew Ranken (drums), Spider Stacey (tin whistle) and Cait O’Riordan (bass) — were, as MacGowan modestly puts it between sips, “a raging success.” Anything out of the norm eventuality gets noticed by the London music media. And news of six young, alcohol-fuelled Irish types doing wild new things with traditional old things to packed bars was bound to reach even the deafest ears. In short, The Pogues — or Pogue Mahone, as they were knwon then — suddenly found themselves trendy. “We were trendy because we were the best live band going, the band people wanted to go and see for a long time. “Then we had to go

slogging about to places where nobody knows what you’re on about. In London it whs always perfectly understood what we were doing, except by journalists. They’re the only people who ever ask questions about it.” In 1984, The Pogues released a debut single, “Dark Streets of London,” and swiftty followed up with an album, “Red Roses For Me,” unleashing on the world the suggestion that rock and roll could happily encompass Irish music too. The critics raved — and with some justification. Not only were The Pogues doing their unlevel best to turn Irish music into something new and exciting for an ignorant audience, they harboured a songwriter of considerable charm in MacGowan. He neatly split his musical approach between hell-for-leather traditional scampers and tear-flecked ballads like “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” a song from the first album that has gone on to become something of a standard, even being covered by Christy Moore, a man who shares the Irish music firmament with The Dubliners. The Pogues won themselves a name patron in the shape of Elvis Costello, who invited them on a month-long British tour as support band and in 1985 produced the second Pogues album, “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.” From then on Poguemania was definitely in vogue. Critical acclaim was matched by sales. The band scored a Top 10 New Zealand hit with their version of “Dirty Old Town,” and found the likes of Faye Dunaway,

Matt Dillon, David Byrne, and Tom Waits catching their shows in America. The band expanded to an eight-piece, adding Terry Woods .and guitarist Philip Chevron and recorded — again with Costello — a four-song EP, “Poguetry in Motion,” which threw the band back into the charts. They contributed songs to the soundtrack of the movie “Sid and Nancy,” and went on to star in “Straight to Hell,” a goofoff pseudo-western by “Sid and Nancy,” director Alex Cox. At the end of ’B6, bassist Cait O’Riordan departed the band, marrying Elvis Costello. The Pogues replaced her with longtime roadie Darryl Hunt. Right now. The Pogues are celebrating the release of their third album, “If I Should Fall From Grace With God.” The new album sees the band work for the first time with a genuine rock and roll producer, Steve Lillywhite, who has previously handled albums by The Rolling Stones, XTC, and U2. Pogues music survived the experience intact — sounding tougher maybe, but no less rootsy. MacGowan enjoyed the new recording experience. “We’re not an acoustic band, we’re a loud band with a big sound. It’s hard to get that in the studio. The Pogues may not be cheery lyrically, but life continues to be a series of “cheers” for The Pogues and their hard-drinking image. The image, says MacGowan, raising one of his glasses, doesn’t bother him.