A biography, The Pogues: The Lost Decade, is rife with tales of brawling, passing out, throwing up and falling down stairs. Stacy was best known for keeping time by banging his head with a beer tray the band would openly fight onstage over which songs to play. The early performances were daredevil escapades bordering on slapstick, featuring speedy instrumental led by Stacy’s tin whistle, Fearnley’s runs across the stage and MacGowan’s surly vocals. Taking the name Pogue Mahone (Gaelic for “kiss my ass”), the group added James Fearnley, the Nips’ guitarist, who was persuaded to lug about and learn to play a 25-pound piano accordion 17-year-old Cait O’Riordan, who owned a bass but had never played one and pub-rocker Andrew Ranken, who was told to drum standing up with only a tom-tom and a snare. In a time when pop hits were slick and synthesized and underground music was all grinding guitars, the traditional instruments suddenly seemed pure the old Brendan Behan and Dubliners songs, politically relevant. Though pelted with patrons’ chips, they were onto something. In 1981, MacGowan, who had fronted a punk band called the Nipple Erectors (“the Nips”), Peter “Spider” Stacy, a car salesman on the dole, and Finer, who was teaching computers to adults, found themselves onstage in a London bar called Cabaret Futura, playing Sex Pistols-inspired versions of traditional folk songs. Their origins couldn’t have been more dubious. All in all, a rare island of humanity in the music business.
The pogues band tv#
The Pogues, a collection of grammar-school dropouts and art-school graduates, are an unusual success story: a democratic group in which the members divvy up song-writing royalties and take turns concocting each night’s set list a nearly egoless band that candidly voices disappointment with its work a constantly touring group that passed up important TV appearances to spend time with loved ones (many of the members are happily married). Never knowing what might happen is an apt description of the Pogues’ fun-loving performances, which zigzag between tender ballads and thrashing jigs. Because you never know what could happen, you know?” The scruffy-bearded MacGowan, 31, contends that the only reason he didn’t make the Dylan dates was “they wouldn’t let me on the plane.” As for his mates carrying on without him, he says, “It made me feel good. We’re all part of each other’s problems, whether we like it or not.” Other bands in a situation like that would’ve either said, ‘Let’s get rid of the guy,’ or ‘Let’s split up,'” Chevron continues. We would have had to continue anyway, but we would have wanted to. “But he came the next day, and he was fine. “We thought the worst,” says Philip Chevron, 32, the guitar and banjo player. And MacGowan didn’t appear the day he was expected.
The pogues band full#
These shows were to run a full two hours, not the 45-minute set of an opening act. I think they learned something about themselves.”Īfter the Dylan dates, the band was to start a three-week tour headlining at theaters. “No other band in the world would do that, would have that character. “By any standard, the Pogues have bollocks,” says manager Murray with pride. “We did this gig with Mickey Mouse equipment, without Shane,” says Jem Finer, 34, the group’s banjo and mandola player, “and got a standing ovation.” The training served them well, since MacGowan’s recovery took 10 days and he missed all the Dylan shows. The seven remaining Pogues assembled in San Francisco, only to learn that their equipment was locked in storage for the duration of the Labor Day weekend. So in order to play the first show, they had to scour the city to borrow instruments and amps the accordion arrived onstage during the second song.Įven though the laid-back West Coast had previously been lukewarm to the Pogues’ poetic raucousness, the crowd went wild. The band’s manager, Frank Murray, booked MacGowan a hotel room and expected him out on the next flight. MacGowan, a nonstop boozer who had also been dabbling with LSD during the making of the Pogues’ latest album, Peace and Love, collapsed in the terminal and was not allowed on the plane. MacGowan’s joke proved less charming, however, when the Irish and English roots band assembled at London’s Heathrow Airport en route to the first Dylan gig, in San Francisco. Dylan and the Pogues–Dylan and the Nearly Dead!” “I’d really like to get him to sing a song with us,” lead singer Shane MacGowan had told a British magazine. The Pogues had been thrilled by the plum prospect of opening for Bob Dylan on the California leg of his tour this fall.