The Pogues frontman Shane McGowan has passed away today at the age of 65.
“Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much.“
Shane MacGowan was an Irish-English frontman and founder with the Celtic folk punk band The Pogues. MacGowan’s distinctive craggy voice, lyrics, and rebellious spirit made him one of rock’n’roll’s great frontmen.
His whiskey-soaked hymns allowed MacGowan to bury himself into the Irish psyche by writing spirited barstool songs along with insightful lyrics informed by Celtic emigrant romanticism.
His lyrics often explored themes of love, loss, Irish nationalism, and the struggles of the working class.
The unique way The Pogues brought punk rock and folk together with albums like Rum Sodomy & the Lash (1985) and If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988), and songs like ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’, ‘Fairytale of New York’, ‘Sally MacLennane’, his Sinead O’Connor (RIP) duet ‘Haunted’ and ‘Dirty Old Town’ became well-known classic songs. MacGowan has battled addiction and health issues over the last number of years, but his influence was never far away from the music in the world.
The news was revealed by his wife Victoria Mary Clarke on Instagram with the following words:
“Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.
I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures.
There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world. Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music. You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much. You meant the world to me.
"The genius of Shane’s contribution includes that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from"
— President of Ireland (@PresidentIRL) November 30, 2023
