Shane MacGowan and the responsibilities of talent
Was there another way for Shane?
What are the responsibilities of talent? For those of us who can do things the rest of us can’t – who can cook better, dance better or sing better – do they have a responsibility to preserve that? Is that the asking price of a gift?
I’ve been unexpectedly moved by the death of Shane MacGowan, the Irish singer-songwriter, given that it was very much a death foretold; the decline of the singer’s health in recent years has been well-documented and prolonged. This is in part because I loved his music; MacGowan’s songs are some of the few that I can actually sing, and do so without much encouragement; his records are some which I’ve treasured since I discovered them as a teenager. I’ve tried to think why the death of this very sick man has moved me so. I’ve concluded, as I thought to myself walking along singing The Pogues’ ‘Streams of Whiskey’ to myself the other night, that MacGowan added to the sum of beauty in the world.
But another thought has been troubling me – that the sadness is also in part due to how MacGowan treated himself and his own talent.
The heyday of many artists is brief1. MacGowan’s certainly was. From his debut record with punk group ‘The Nips’ in 1978, he last released a full album in 1997, meaning that, being generous, MacGowan enjoyed two just decades of productive musical life. That’s not a lot for a man who didn’t die young.
I came of age towards the back end of MacGowan’s productive period, having a pleasant impression of him as a ‘working artist’, doing duets with Sinead O’Connor or popping up to sing a few verses on Nick Cave’s ‘Murder Ballads’, the latter surely something like the ultimate album for a teenage boy. As a friend said, It’s nice just having people around, and as I grew up it was nice just having Shane MacGowan around.
Yet the 21st-century weas nothing like that for Shane. His chief artistic activity was popping up with The Pogues as a live act to do existing material, often performing in a state of advance dishevelment. In recent years stories about MacGowan have all been health-related; following his physical decline has been something of a tabloid sport. There have been frequent rumours of more music and even of recording sessions; apparently vocals for a new record have been finished, which I hope sees the light of day.
Now, of course, the MacGowan myth – which is a pretty standard rock ‘n’ roll myth, really, of the kind now somewhat out of fashion in the age of keto diets and public shaming – is that the debauchery and wild lifestyle all contributed to that brief beautiful blaze. It was only MacGowan’s strong constitution which saw him unexpectedly live beyond it. After all, artists who do die young don’t have to go on to live to be compared to their youthful productivity, which might have still worked out as about two decades of productive artistic life for them too.
All I can say is that MacGowan’s creative phase seems to have entirely coincided with the period of life, from early to late youth, where your body is relatively able to recover from alcohol and drug abuse and still keep going. The second half of his existence seems to have in effect been one long hangover, and hangovers are not, however great the night before, fun to live through.
In addition, MacGowan seems to have been unable to make the transition from early to mid-life as an artist. His obsessions and attitudes, of hedonism, romantic love and debauchery, remained those of wild youth. To quote him, ‘Cram as much pleasure as you can into life and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.’ As a philosophy this is utterly hare-brained for a person over the age 35. To have any decent standard of living in middle-age, you need to be doing the opposite; moderating, accepting your limits, and working out what you can do and how you can derive pleasure – real pleasure – from other sources.
Like, it really sucks that life is top-loaded with the fun stuff and that youth is a riotous and bright season that is over in a wave, but not facing up to that state of the affairs only compounds the bitter reality. After all, your body tells you it’s time to stop. It is worth mentioning here that Epicurus, great philosopher of sensual pleasure, was not excessive; he once requested a disciple send him, as a treat, a small pot of cheese. Epicurus advised the enjoyment of static pleasures which did not lead to further pain; by this logic, moderation actually causes greater pleasure than excess, as there is no day after for indulging a moderate vice.
As we have seen, MacGowan’s philosophy was precisely the opposite. Indeed he romanticized his own alcoholism. In his own words, ‘Drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks — they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does me.’
Well, though we shouldn’t take the testimony of a drunk as to drunkenness, for me there’s more courage in trying to hold down a 9-5 than there is in getting pissed and living off the royalties of a Christmas song. Of course, MacGowan was ill; he was an alcoholic, an addict and, whether he romanticized it or not, he didn’t really have a choice about his drinking. It certainly didn’t help MacGowan that every time he went out his fans seem to have bought him drinks although towards the end of his life, he seems to have sobered up entirely without great regret.
It is true, again, that drunkenness does have a certain cracked glamour in youth, but it’s the glamour of being able to imbibe and keep going; the point is the indestructibleness which young people manifest in the presence of alcohol. The nights that keep going from bar to bar as you ‘pack it in’ – the feeling that you’re off on an epic quest to secure more, er, booze. If you keep that going though into a period of encouraged physical decline at a certain point you’re just a drunk old bloke who hasn’t made a record in 26 years. There’s not much ‘heroic’ about that.
I write in compassion, not judgement. I’m aware that MacGowan’s family and friends loved him dearly, and I commiserate their loss. He appears to have been essentially a kind and gentle man, which is of course more important than his recording output. He must have been terribly loved to survive as long as he did. He brought joy to many, and was always a good collaborator with other artists; after all, his most famous song was a duet.
Still, unlike many other musicians who went through periods of severe substance abuse, there’s no late bloom to MacGowan’s oeuvre, at least until that rumoured final album emerges. Meaning to a certain extent the booze won. And that is a great shame for all of us who loved his work; I would like to have heard MacGowan’s ruminations on ageing, or the memory of youth in middle age, or even the responsibilities of the family he chose not to have; he will have been aware that his hero Yeats produced some of his finest works about his kids. Such as:
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.(from ‘A Prayer to My Daughter’, WB Yeats, 1921)
No-one will ever know the extent to which Shane MacGowan achieved greatness in face of his self-destruction or robbed us of great work by indulging it. No-one can judge the extent to the fact we got as much great work as we did was a miracle or to what extent the abuse left huge potential untapped.
But I don’t think we should ever romanticize self-destruction. The secret behind it as a move is that it’s a conservative tendency, which people choose out of fear for going on into the future and getting old. Perhaps also MacGowan was just too tender-hearted for the rapacious music industry, too kind for a world which really isn’t. Part of that kindness perhaps led to his refusal to compromise on the romanticism of youth: ‘You call it chaos,’ MacGowan told Sean O’Hagan. ‘I don’t regard it as chaos. I regard it as natural living.’
Well, alternatives to chaos are available even for artists. Flaubert said that the artist should be orderly in his habits like a bourgeois; Auden dressed like a stockbroker while at university; Anton Chekov was a doctor throughout his life. And this little anecdote about MacGowan neatly folding a guest bed night out indicates that of course had some of this discipline about him too, as anyone who keeps a band on the road has to2.
And yet in the end, what a talent! That feeling of waste does not spoil the warmth that those epic fifteen years will always provoke in those who love the music, the wonders of ‘The Body of an American’ or or ‘The Song With No Name’, the time before the hangovers got too bad. Songs which did not have successors.
It all presents a perhaps unusual lesson on the virtues of persistence. It suggests that bands plugging on past their heyday, aiming for past glories and just occasionally approaching them really is better than just stopping completely, that to refuse to compete with your earlier glories always looks like to some extent like letting the bastards grind you down. Without the music, just having been able to keep your drinking up doesn’t seem enough of an achievement, somehow.
Shane MacGowan 1957-2023
It is worth saying that artists considerably less excessive than MacGowan have also enjoyed only a brief period of productivity; the career of Bill Forsyth, who directed nine films across twenty years and then stopped entirely, comes to mind.
The Pogues were a brilliant live band. A friend whose own heyday was in 1980s London remembers them as absolutely outstanding.