Such a model of abandonment had Shane become that on stage he barely moved. Now and again he would lift a hand up to the microphone, the fingers curled so stiffly that we wondered if he might have had a stroke. When he sang, his mouth hardly opened. The decrepitude of his voice required his microphone to be set to such a level that I feared at any moment the screaming of feedback would rend the air and damage my ears. If Shane had nothing to do, during an instrumental break or between songs, he either bent down to pick up one of the plastic pint glasses of vodka and tonic which Charlie stationed at the foot of his mike stand, or stood with his arms hanging limply by his sides, staring across the stage. When Terry or Philip or Spider sang, Charlie came to get him, to escort him into the wings. It was a relief to be rid of him from the stage, but despite our best efforts, into his place rushed a banality that was crippling.
If an omen were needed for the imminence of the end, I had only to look out of the window of the tour bus as it inched down Parnell Street away from the Féile Festival at Semple Stadium in Thurles, County Tipperary – not fifty miles from Shane’s hometown. A post-apocalyptic twilight had descended on the town centre. The bus threaded through knots of the staggering drunk, around a pile of burning rubbish, past a shattered phone box and a bus stop the roof of which was bent and twisted out of shape. It was the beginning of August, three weeks before what would turn out to be our determinative tour to Japan.
Thirty-One
Tragically, we filed out of our meeting in Jem’s hotel room in Yokohama, in time for a couple of minutes’ reflection in our own rooms before going down to the van to take us across to Seaside Park, and to our evening performance at the WOMAD festival. With grave ceremony, in my darkening room, I rolled up my stage trousers and shirt in one of the bath towels. I stood for a second or two, wondering if and how I should mark the event, but ended up, as was my custom, patting my pockets for picks, pass, fags and lighter, tucking the rolled towel under my arm and leaving the room.
Throughout the gig I was torn between, on the one hand, solemnising the occasion of firing our singer by keeping my movements to a mournful minimum and, on the other, in deference to the audience, pretending that nothing had changed and showboating as normal. Either way, I was incapable of not stamping my foot, jerking my body to recapture a wayward accordion strap, or wobbling my head in time to the music. Whenever I did, though, I thought everyone else in the group might think I was faking it or was just crassly insensitive. In the end, I thought, fuck it. Despite having little desire to loft the accordion skyward or descend to my knees at the final flourish of any of the songs, I did it anyway. I wasn’t indulging in the occasion. I wasn’t pandering to the audience. I wasn’t rallying the troops. I wasn’t unaware of the significance of what we’d done. I flung the accordion up and twitched my head. I pounded the boards with my heels and tried things on – ridiculous and inapposite Tex-Mex lines, couplets reminiscent of music hall, slathering glissandi with my fingernails – because I made the assumption that these last remaining gigs in Tokyo, with Osaka and Nagoya yet to get through, were the last I was going to do with the band.
On stage, we could barely look at one another. Darryl, in his youthfully stripy T-shirt, half of it tucked into his jeans, stepped back and forward with his bass, avoiding looking at Shane. His hair was long now and fell over his face in tatty ringlets from the swimming pool. The expression on his face was one of brooding anger. Despite our concerns that he simply had not been cool enough to replace Cait as our bass player, a nobility seemed to have attached itself to Darryl. I loved his authority and kindness, his indefatigable enthusiasm and his quintessentially English eccentricity.
Now that he had grown his hair long, Andrew, sweating behind his drum kit, looked like someone from the Iron Age. He had tied his hair into a rudimentary ponytail. He stared too at nothing, distracted and dissociated, but played with just as much heft as he always had, the sticks held awkwardly in his otherwise craftsmanly hands. I could have wept at the tribulations he had suffered and still did and would likely for years to come, but he looked indomitable, elemental, hewn from granite. I loved his dependability, the ruminative rhythm of his utterances and the pastoral tranquillity which came with him wherever he went.
Spider, in a shirt open to his waist, cast sidelong looks at Shane, full of betrayal and anger, but regret too. I remembered Spider and Shane’s riotous exchanges in the kitchen at Burton Street, their explosive cackling in dressing rooms, on buses, on stage. I lamented their broken brotherhood. Though I hated the way Spider had exempted himself again and again from the bother of the consequences of what he did, I cherished him. I looked at his blotchy and swollen face. Part of me feared that before long – in the next couple of years – I’d get a phone call from Jem to tell me of Spider’s death. Another part of me knew, though, that Spider was too inventive a guy for such an outcome.
Terry at first seemed to have been untouched by the events of the afternoon. He stood where he always had, in his cheap black suit. He played as he always had, lifting his head now and again to a patrician angle. When he wasn’t looking at his tiny fingers on the frets of his cittern, he studied, with the intensity of a shill, what my fingers were doing on my keyboard. Throughout our set he avoided looking at Shane. If he happened to, I saw him look away.
Despite having barbarously lashed my ears for years and maddened me with the sanctimony of his experience, I loved Terry too. It might have infuriated me that he never played the same thing twice, was incapable of keeping to the book and made a meal out of the simplest lines, but I loved to play with him, so attentive was he to what I played. I basked in his sometimes lofty and avuncular goodwill towards me.
Philip, in a misshapen blue suit and plantation tie, hair tousled by the wind coming in off the Pacific Ocean, stared most of the time at the floor. He played his guitar with little exaggeration and avoided throwing shapes. I owed so much to Philip. If it hadn’t been for him I would have stayed cemented to my position at the far side of the stage like a post, resentful of the attention I wasn’t getting. Despite his hangdog yearning for me and his virtual imprisonment of me during those first couple of years, I admired his perseverance and his loyalty.
Jem hung back behind the line of microphones next to the flight case on which his hurdy-gurdy stood. Though often detached at the far side of the stage, he and I, now and again, in the course of a gig, would exchange a look prolonged both by the distraction of playing our instruments and by our fondness for each another. Tonight though, Jem had isolated himself behind Darryl. When I looked over at him he was staring into the middle ground, his eyes wide and sad, his lips protruding. He played gazing out, seeming not to take in the audience, which bounced in front of us, impulsively ebbing and flowing, orange from the lights: the bobbing black heads of hair, the seemingly uniform faces. It was an expression I had seen on Jem’s face many times when the unpredictability of circumstances and people conspired to frustrate his idealism and inventiveness. Tonight, his face was unbearably sad, resigned, full of fear, angry and resolute.
Guessing that circumstances would prevent me afterwards, I longed for the opportunity to convey to him how grateful I was to him – my best man, my counterpart – to let him know how much I loved him. He did not look back at me. I looked away.
Philip came up to sing ‘Thousands Are Sailing’. He stood sad and stern at the microphone. A frown knitted his brow. His scutiform face was handsome, his lashes lush. Behind him, the blue vaguely zebra-print banners began to snap in the wind.
I had always adored his song. Now, the events of the afternoon imbued it with such significance that tears filled my eyes. I knew the song was not specifically about the band’s circumstances, nor about those of any particular member, not Shane’s, nor mine. The fact, though, that in a couple of days, like the addressee in the song, I would be making a similar transformative trip to America caused the lines to turn round to address me and my circumstances.
The words of the song a
lways had, but tonight they devastated me with their ghosts haunting the waves, the old songs taunting or cheering or making you cry. I knew, when it came time to go to my empty room at the end of the night, I would close the door behind me and look out over the lights of Yokohama Bay and the ocean beyond. I supposed I would cry too.
As Philip sang ‘Thousands Are Sailing’ I caught sight of Shane, sitting next to Charlie McLennan on a flight case in the darkness in the wings. His arms lay slack on his lap. His crippled hands clutched a plastic glass. His face in dark glasses was inscrutable.
I didn’t know much about Jewish teaching but I did know of the creation myth. As Adonai contracted to make room for the physical world, the vessels containing the divine light broke, letting the light out. It crossed my mind that my life with Shane so far had been a matter of watching his breakage. The gratitude I felt for him at that moment outweighed my feeling that, on his path of self-destruction, he had just betrayed us.
Author’s Note
I have known most of the characters in this book for as long as it has taken to write. Jem pointed out that I have lived with the Pogues longer than I lived with my own family. The people in the book are my family. My dreams have featured Shane more often than my dad for some time now.
This book is a work of creative non-fiction. I have tried to revivify the events and characters in it using the tools and the sensibilities of a fiction writer. According to the demands of the narrative I have recreated episodes, conversations and environments. In order to reproduce the spirit of an event, I have conflated a number of similar, recurring situations and exchanges.
Above all, it is a memoir. It is how I have remembered the twelve years of my life it covers.
Acknowledgements
I would not have been able to write this memoir without the patience and abstention from judgement of my wife, Danielle von Zerneck. I would like also to thank my daughters, Martha and Irene, for their unfailing enthusiasm for what I have been doing up in our home office for months, years on end.
Much of the material found form under the inimitable guidance of my mentor Nancy Bacal and the members of her writers’ group ‘The Writer’s Way’. I would like to thank Marisa Silver for helping me further shape it.
I am more than grateful for the generosity of the following: Bob Ahern, Terri Cheney, Ron Comley, Dave Cripps, DzM, Adam Evans, Marcia Farquhar, Gill Ford, Andrea Gibb, J. Maizlish Mole, Biddy Mulligan, Deirdre O’Mahony, Steve Pyke, Tom Sheehan, Neil Titman and Debsey Wykes.
I would like to thank my agent, Caroline Wood, and my editor, Lee Brackstone, along with Dave Watkins and Ruth Atkins at Faber and Faber.
I am wholly indebted to all my raw materials: Stan Brennan, Philip Chevron, Jem Finer, Darryl Hunt, Shane MacGowan, Frank Murray, Cait O’Riordan, Andrew Ranken, Paul Scully, Spider Stacy and Terry Woods. I wish David Jordan, Kirsty MacColl, Charlie McLennan, Joe Strummer and Paul Verner were still around to thank.
Index
Addis, Anthony 331, 352
‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ 88, 93, 145, 171
Apollo (Manchester) 320
Arlington Theater, The (Santa Barbara) 308
‘Auld Triangle, The’ 61
Australia: Pogues’ tours of 315, 363
Balgobin, Jennifer 269, 271, 274, 312
Bamba, La (film) 309, 310
Barcelona: shooting of ‘Fiesta’ video at 323
Barrowland Ballroom 193
‘Bastard Landlord’ 362
‘Battle of Brisbane, The’ 100, 103
Behan, Brendan 49, 140
Belfast 111, 113
Belfast, HMS 177
Benagh, Henry 147
Big Country 86
‘Billy’s Bones’ 145
Birmingham Six 296, 326
Blair, Michael 202
‘Boat Train’ 343
‘Body of an American, The’ 220,
221
Bondi Beach 315
Bono 297
Boomtown Rats, the 180
Boothill Foot-Tappers, the 86, 90
Bothy Band, the 118
‘Bottle of Smoke’ 336
‘Boys from the County Hell, The’ 100, 103, 111, 174
B. P. Fallon Orchestra (radio show) 184
Bradley, Shanne 11, 12, 16, 23, 30, 34, 82, 86
Brennan, Stan 67, 88, 96, 100, 104, 105, 107, 129
Brighton Centre 320
Brixton Academy 90
‘Broad Majestic Shannon, The’ 212, 296
Buell, Bebe 122
Burke, Kathy 267, 270
Butcher, Bleddyn 231
Campbell, Ali 349
Campbell, Eamonn 241, 278
Cannon, Sean 278, 293
Carlow 134
Carroll, Ted 67
Cashman, Joey 248, 325, 385, 387
Cheltenham Racecourse 175
Chevron, Philip 5, 88, 155, 158, 159, 160, 165, 168, 195, 253, 282, 289, 296, 303, 318, 335, 344, 346, 391
Chieftains, the 184
Chrysalis Records 41
Cibeal Cincise festival (Kenmare) 168
City Hall (Newcastle) 320
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, the 118, 120, 187, 212
Clarendon Ballroom (Hammersmith) 148
Clarke, Victoria 322
Clash, the 90, 94
Coach House (Orange County) 311
Cobbold, Paul 380, 382
Cohen, Howard 15, 25, 33, 40, 42
Comic Strip Presents, The 323
Conneff, Kevin 184
‘Connemara Let’s Go’ see ‘Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go’
Corn Exchange (Cambridge) 320
Costello, Elvis (Declan MacManus) 105, 111, 143, 146, 149, 158, 171, 195, 204, 206, 219, 227, 231, 233, 234, 241, 277, 279
‘Cotton Fields’ 344, 355
Cox, Alex 149, 237, 261, 262, 265, 272, 273, 290
Cricketers Arms (Kennington) 130, 133
Cropper, Steve 14
Culture Club 39;
‘Karma Chameleon’ 87
Cuthell, Dick 171
‘Dark Streets of London, The’ 88, 89, 93, 96, 99
Das Boot (film) 157
De Montfort Hall (Leicester) 319
Debsey see Wykes, Debsey
Dexys Midnight Runners: Too-Rye-Ay 86
Dickey, Chris 296
Dillon, Matt 304
Dingwalls (Camden Market) 26, 87
‘Dirty Old Town’ 146, 147, 171, 172, 175, 245
D.J. see Jordan, David
Dolly Mixture 40, 41, 45, 79, 131, 175; Demonstration Tapes 79; Fireside EP 131
Dominion Theatre 158
Dougherty, Peter 305, 306
‘Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go’ 80, 82, 103
Drew, Ronnie 277, 290, 291, 293
Dublin 119, 139
Dubliners, the 118, 119, 178, 179, 187, 276, 277, 290, 292, 302
Dylan, Bob 353, 356
Earle, Steve 322
Edge, the 297
Edmondson, Adrian 323, 325, 326
Electric Ballroom (Camden) 302
Elephant Recording Studios 88, 102
Elgard, Richard 89
Ellis, James 291
Elton, Ben 90, 94, 326
Empire Rooms (Tottenham Court Road) 87
Fairley, Colin 144
Fairways Hotel (Dundalk) 217
‘Fairytale of New York’ 220, 298, 303, 304, 313, 319, 320, 321
Fallon, B. P. 184, 220
Farquhar, Marcia 68, 87, 128, 163
Fearnley, James 10, 17, 19, 20, 23, 31, 34, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 55, 67, 79, 81, 84, 117, 133, 160, 163, 173, 195, 227, 236, 237, 246, 253, 256, 262, 282, 287, 301, 303, 317, 324, 326, 328, 332, 336, 337, 341, 347, 359, 386, 389
Fellner, Eric 261
‘Fiesta’ 294, 321; video for 323
Finer, Ella Jean 87, 333
Finer, Jem 6, 8, 22, 25, 31, 46, 52, 67, 68, 81, 85, 87, 128, 132, 155, 163, 167, 172, 178, 294, 303, 334, 335, 359, 362, 280, 391
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Finer, Kitty 167
‘Five Green Queens and Jean’ 363, 379
Flanagan, Bill 227, 231
Foxton, Bruce 33
France: Pogues’ tour of 242
Friday Night Live 326
Fridge (Brixton) 261
Fun Boy Three 70
Furey, Finbar 276
Gaston, Phil 67, 145, 196
Geldof, Bob 241, 242
Gen X 13
‘Gentleman Soldier, The’ 146
Géricault, Théodore: Le Radeau de la Méduse 176
Germany: Pogues’ tour of 155, 159, 167, 173
Giants, the 39, 98
Glastonbury Festival 175, 248
Golding, Lynval 70, 321
Gorham, Scott 241
Gray, Paul 41
‘Green Green Grass of Home, The’ 83
Green, Mick 14
‘Greenland Whale Fisheries’ 80, 82, 100, 140, 316
Griffin, Dale 39, 98
Haçienda (Manchester) 189
Hackney Five-O 86
Hall, Terry 70
Halligan’s rehearsal studio 10
Hammersmith Odeon 214
Hammersmith Palais 234
Harris, Ed 290
Harris, Rolf: ‘Sun Arise’ 17
Hasler, John 15, 24, 33, 36, 50, 52, 63, 86
Hasler, Shanne see Bradley, Shanne
‘Haunted’ 239, 240
Headon, Topper 91
Heather see Woodbury, Heather
‘Hell’s Ditch’ (single) 378
Hell’s Ditch (album) 376
Here Comes Everybody Page 35
