{"id":24704,"date":"2014-03-17T08:46:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24704"},"modified":"2014-03-17T08:49:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T13:49:11","slug":"shane-mcgowan-amazingly-still-not-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/17\/shane-mcgowan-amazingly-still-not-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Shane McGowan – amazingly still not dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

In City Journal<\/em>, Matthew Hennessey<\/a> reports the unbelievable news that Shane McGowan is still alive:<\/p>\n

They say God takes care of fools and drunks. If so, he\u2019s been working overtime the last few decades taking care of Shane MacGowan. As the frontman and principal songwriter of the Irish rock band the Pogues, MacGowan is as famous for his lyrics and whiskey-timbered voice as for his unlikely longevity, despite a Homeric appetite for intoxicating substances, especially, but not limited to, alcohol. Though he cuts a shambolic figure, MacGowan is still upright at 56, a feat many view as a minor miracle. His rheumy eyes and distinctive throat-clearing cackle suggest not genius, necessarily, but late-stage dipsomania; there is nary a tooth left in his head. God or something like God must be taking care of MacGowan. He\u2019s not been doing the job himself.<\/p>\n

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, reports of MacGowan\u2019s impending demise were so frequent that English author Tim Bradford felt compelled to write a book called Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?<\/em> No one, not even MacGowan, takes talk of his mortality seriously anymore. \u201cFor the last 35 years I\u2019ve supposed to have been dead in six months,\u201d he has said. \u201cBut when all these bastards say you\u2019re going to be dead in six months it tends to give you an incentive not to be. . . . Let\u2019s face it, I\u2019ve got a charmed life. I\u2019m a lucky bastard, know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether luck, God, or some combination of the two is responsible for MacGowan\u2019s Promethean tolerance for self-abuse, he has nonetheless been deservedly celebrated for the vivid originality of his songwriting, for which he has often been called Ireland\u2019s greatest living poet. Indeed, his best writing evokes the poetry of William Blake, whose claim that \u201cthe road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom\u201d has served as a road-map for MacGowan\u2019s public career. \u201cIf you\u2019re asking whether drink and drugs have worked for me,\u201d he told an interviewer in 1994, \u201cI\u2019ve got to say they have. I\u2019m one with William Blake on this one. Drink and drugs and all that shit, it\u2019s a short cut to the subconscious.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fans and critics could be forgiven for thinking that MacGowan\u2019s subconscious is a place of darkness, an insane asylum, a prison cell, or a congress of libertine Irish nationalists and saucy fair maidens groping their way toward alcoholic oblivion like Earth-bound fallen angels. But it is also a religious bouillabaisse of Celtic paganism, Catholic mysticism, and \u201cdrunken Zen.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A perfect description: “Listening to the Pogues is like getting a punk-rock telegram from Brendan Behan.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In City Journal, Matthew Hennessey reports the unbelievable news that Shane McGowan is still alive: They say God takes care of fools and drunks. If so, he\u2019s been working overtime the last few decades taking care of Shane MacGowan. As the frontman and principal songwriter of the Irish rock band the Pogues, MacGowan is as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[33,200],"class_list":["post-24704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6qs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24706,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24704\/revisions\/24706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}