Time to change things up a bit. Let’s talk about The Pogues.
Figure 10: Quite possibly the second most popular Christmas act besides Mariah Carey
So far I have been focused on the 1991 - 1996 time frame or as I prefer to call it “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to “Wannabe”. This is partly due to the fact that I feel it really is the peak of Gen X being the primary force in pop music but mainly it is due to the fact that I was born in 1973, so this time period covers college and the immediate aftermath. But obviously generations are messy things that make confining them to specific time periods a lost cause.
Since I am focused on music in this exercise I care less about when people are born and more of the essence of where they sit in the musical landscape. For example, Madonna first moved to New York in 1978 at 20 years old just after Studio 54 opened. I consider disco and the entire Studio 54 scene to be tied to Baby Boomers so that makes Madonna more of a Baby Boomer than Gen X. From a demographic argument you have to really stretch to call Henry Rollins a member of Gen X but he fits neatly into that category of second wave punk artists: the people who were influenced by Iggy Pop and The Ramones but weren’t playing alongside them in the early days of CBGB’s.
(On a side note, I am still owed a brick from CBGB’s by the guy who was in charge of converting the club to an upscale clothing store. It’s kind of like being promised Lincoln’s ear by the guy in charge of converting the Lincoln Memorial to the Trump Memorial, Day Spa, and Off-Track Betting Parlor.)
Figure 11: What once was and no longer will be
Anyway, this is just my way of saying that while everyone in The Pogues would technically be considered Baby Boomers I consider the band to fall firmly in Gen X as part of that second wave of punk music. And on that front we have to figure out how an Irish punk band ended up with a) a song that was used in a commercial promoting a minivan for hockey moms, b) the only hit Christmas song that starts out with “It was Christmas evening in the drunk tank”, c) a Saturday Night Live appearance, and d) a legacy that might be unmatched.
(And yes, they did appear on Saturday Night Live in 1990 with Rob Lowe as the host. I use this point to cement my argument that The Pogues had mainstream popularity.)
I have to admit that I was not a fan of The Pogues when they were at their peak. To be honest, they scared me. I was just old enough to remember punk rock being portrayed solely as mohawks, piercings, mosh pit brawls, and just pure anarchy. The entire scene in the mainstream wasn’t presented as music, no one gave a damn about the lyrics, and all people focused on was the seeming violence. But while even I could see past some of that I have to be honest, Shane MacGowan was the most frightening front man I had ever seen.
Figure 12: Shane MacGowan at his most calm
Thankfully some of my friends in high school were fans so I was at least aware of them. They were one of those bands that you found out about from an older sibling; a “you have to hear this” type of thing. Looking back now I see a lot of similarities to the alternative country movement that I became a massive fan of years later. That scene was founded by people who combined their love of punk rock with classic country music. The Pogues did the same with traditional Irish music. They were an Irish band in a way that U2 wasn’t, made stranger by the fact that they were mainly British by birth.
But I think there are three songs that I can point to in particular that explain their timelessness, their popularity, and their pure brilliance.
“If I Should Fall from Grace with God” is one of their best-known songs, if only due to a car commercial. The song (and video) shows the raw energy and talent of the band. You have traditional Irish instruments played at punk rock speed. It’s like The Dubliners being played at 3x. Everything is pure passion and expression. As a live act the band walked that fine line between transcendence and complete incoherence, usually dependent of Shane’s level of drunkenness. The crowd could be simultaneously doing a traditional Irish dance and a mosh pit. It’s a song of defiance and pride done with a wry smile.
It is impossible to talk about The Pogues without spending so much time talking about Shane MacGowan. There just was no one like him. My first impression was the same as many: a complete drunk with rotten teeth and more attitude than talent. How wrong I was. As a songwriter he is in the top tier. He won a literary scholarship to the Westminster School (the image of Shane as a boy in a choir robe at Westminster Abbey is an incredible thought). His lyrics are pure poetry. And there is one song that when I truly heard it made me realize that he had written a ballad worthy of Joyce.
“A Pair of Brown Eyes” is as close to James Joyce as anything I have read. It is a song with multiple narrators and moments where it is unclear which one is singing. Or maybe they both are singing the same words but with different perspectives. It’s about the loss of love and the loss of hope. About connection and the inability to connect. “So drunk to hell I left the place, sometimes crawling, sometimes walking.” The remembrance of a person who once looked forward to seeing you. “And the birds were whispering in the trees where the wind was gently laughing.” That never-ending search for what once was.
To everyone’s surprise (particularly his own) Shane lived until 2023 when he passed away at the age of 65. His passing was a case of national mourning in Ireland. They paraded his coffin through the streets of Dublin and people stood on the sidewalks singing Pogues songs. It reminded me of the stories of the funerals of Brendan Behan and Charles Parnell. And I think there was a reason to it that touches on what a good life means to my generation.
Shane MacGowan was a fuck up, no doubt about. A drunk and a drug addict. He would be the first to admit it. But he was also our fuck up. And we appreciated the honesty. There was no posing, no false front to make for a better story for the press. Just purely being his true self even if that meant constantly teetering between brilliance and total destruction. Shane MacGowan led a life well lived. Not a perfect life, not a saintly one, but one that was lived to the fullest.
There is only one way to end this post. At Shane’s funeral Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill performed “Fairytale of New York”: the only Christmas song I know that has a Wikipedia entry featuring multiple paragraphs about lyrical controversy. Probably because no other Christmas song features a bickering, drunken couple insulting one another in a beautiful melody. By the end of the song people were dancing in the aisles of the church. There can be no more praise than that.
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