Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie has paid tribute to Pogues singer Shane MacGowan.
Gillespie wrote a heartfelt, and lengthy piece in The Guardian, on the day of the singer’s funeral last Friday, where he called him his “Celtic soul brother”.
“we loved him”
Having met in the 1990s, MacGowan and Gillespie performed together at a Primal Scream concert in Glasgow once, which saw MacGowan perform ‘Loaded’, and ‘Rocks’, as well as a cover of The Heartbreakers’ ‘Born To Lose’.
“I remember the full force of his vocal dragging the band behind him as he tore into the verses of the song. When he sang he was a force of nature, all punk power and visceral emotion”, Gillespie wrote.
“A true rock’n’roller – and a Celtic soul brother of the highest order. ‘We’re Gaels!’, he proclaimed to me once. Every time he sang with us, and he did variously in Glasgow, Dublin and London over the years, we were honoured. We loved him. The fact he dug our band meant the world to us”.
The beloved singer was given a beautiful send off in Nenagh, county Tipperary last Friday, following a procession in Dublin that morning.
The funeral also saw singer Nick Cave who collaborated with MacGowan in the past, perform a moving cover of Pogues track ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’.
See that and more here.
“a dark charisma”
Elsewhere in his piece published to The Guardian, Bobby Gillespie wrote about how he first came across MacGowan during the late 1990s.
According to Gillespie, Shane MacGowan had “a dark charisma, he looked tired and sad to me”.
Gillespie continued, “So one night I went up and introduced myself, and we just got on. It was easy. I found him a gentle soul, quite shy actually, not like I’d imagined him at all. I’d admired him as far back as ‘Gabrielle’, by The Nips. That was his first band, but his songs with The Pogues were on another level”.
He also added, “I was always in awe of his talent as a songwriter: his songs were highly literate stories of oppressed and downtrodden people marginalised by society; full of empathy and compassion for ordinary working men and women and their daily struggles – not forgetting the junkies and the drunks”.
Gillespie Hails MacGowan: The Songwriter
Later in the piece, Gillespie paid homage to Shane MacGowan as a songwriter, describing tracks as a “a mix of contemporary street vernacular and a real traditional poetic sensibility”.
Gillespie points to The Pogues ballads, ‘A Rainy Night In Soho’, ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’, ‘The Old Main Drag’, as well as famous Christmas hit ‘Fairytale Of New York’, as particular favourites.
Meanwhile, Gillespie describes other tracks such as ‘Sally MacLennane’, ‘The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn’, ‘Boys From The County Hell’, and ‘Streams Of Whiskey’, as “all riotous celebrations of a life well lived, filled with crazed humour and ecstatic joy. Songs that make you want to get drunk and raise hell. Tom Waits once said The Pogues played like ‘sailors on shore leave’ – a perfect observation”.
“It’s not a competition”
Bobby Gillespie also recalled MacGowan not taking too kindly to being told by the Primal Scream lead singer that he was “best lyricist in contemporary music; that no one, not Nick Cave, Morrissey nor Mark E Smith came close”.
This was met with this reply from MacGowan, “It’s not a competition!”.
Gillespie also hailed Shane MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke as his “rock” and “guardian angel”, while recalling his visit to the singer in hospital back in September.
He wrote, “Underneath the rock’n’roll, rake-at-the-gates-of-hell image, the role of the Brendan Behanesque poète maudit, Shane was a good old-fashioned romantic. He saw the beauty of the spirit and the flaws in people, celebrated them and identified with their struggles”.
Gillespie also added, “He felt too much probably, saw too much with the poet and songwriter’s gift of vision. And maybe that’s what all the drinking and drugging was about. He had to numb himself to get through his life. His greatest songs exist to help the rest of us get through our lives. Thank you, Shane. Thank you for the music and the good times. May God rest your beautiful Gaelic soul”.
Shane MacGowan’s ashes were also scattered along the River Shannon. More here.
