Shane MacGowan: The Great Hunger

March 6th, 2008 · or link to (permalink)

bbc
59 min 54 sec Mar 1, 2008 myspace.com

I’ll just repeat what I said about MacGowan in the Nick Cave post:

“The Pogues front man, although Irish, is a once preppy schoolboy from one of the most exclusive private schools in England, who created a fake persona of an Irish drunk, in the name of authenticity - to the point where it actually became real. MacGowan is, no doubt, both a genuinely troubled genius and self-indulgent, racist, self-parody of an Irishman.”

And that’s about someone I really like.

BBC Documentary Shane MacGowan

tags: biography music

4 responses so far »

liam : Mar 6, 2008 at 3:39 pm

Love the site. However noticed your Nick Cave post and now you’ve re-iterated it!
Shane MacGowan is most definitely not a ‘fake persona’ created by a ‘preppy schoolboy’ and repeating this tired and patronising cliche does the man a great disservice.

He spent much of his childhood shuttling between his Irish family in London and Ireland, both parents were not wealthy and he got a free scholarship to Westminster school which only lasted a couple of months before he was expelled for drug possession.

Whilst the myth of the alcohol soaked Irish poet genius is just that, in his case he is the realest of deals. It was my fortune to drink in the same London pub as him and I can attest to his pordigious appetites. He is a man who has lived his life being incredibly true to his own self, regardless of the damage it has caused.

Again, love the site, just had to try to correct the myth.

A good article about him is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/21/folk.music
admin : Mar 8, 2008 at 11:07 pm

Fair comment, although I do think that despite the fact that MacGowan is a great man, the image is a sham - a great sham, like Bob Dylan as a boxcar-riding hobo folksinger.

I actually think that people put too much store in authenticity and that both Dylan and MacGowan are so creative that the personas that they reworked have become something in their own right.

But the problem with MacGowan, who, when I saw him perform last St. Patrick’s day, was in a wheelchair, is that he is both literally killing himself for his art, and in a way that glamorizes a stereotypical view of Irish people, in an era when Upper East Side New York condos are being advertised in Dublin as cheaper property than the local stuff.

For what its worth, and not much, I’ll say this as a Celt who used to think playing this suffering drunk poet persona was cool and convincing.
Wolfe Tone : Mar 15, 2008 at 6:40 pm

A Admin a chara (diaspora celt to diaspora celt),

May I begin by saying that i like the site a lot. Thank you and well done. I am glad that I have an internet connection to your site, amongst others, rather than a TV.

Can I just ask, have you watched this film?

Do chara buan,
Theobald Wolfe Tone
Tom Foremski : May 4, 2008 at 3:23 am

I wish somebody would say that about me except change a few words and sentences.