Non-War Criminal Shane MacGowan Dies At 65

The Pogues singer did not, to our knowledge, kill three million people.

For most of Shane McGowan’s life, he had a certain amount of guilt over not having joined the Irish Republican Army to fight for a unified Ireland.

“I was ashamed I didn’t have the guts to join the IRA – and the Pogues was my way of overcoming that,” he said in Julien Temple’s 2020 documentary, Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan.

It remains notable, however, that he did not join the Irish Republican Army, and instead started a very good band, in which he sang a lot of songs about Irish nationalism and the Irish diaspora, and co-wrote what many consider to be the best Christmas song of all time.

Imagine what a nice world we would live in if other people chose to deal with things that way.

The Pogues frontman passed away on Wednesday night, following years of ill health, alcoholism and heroin addiction and a diagnosis of viral encephalitis last year.

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While The Pogues were, of course, a seminal punk band — and the first to bring Irish folk music into the mix — they are perhaps best known by wider audiences for “Fairytale of New York,” MacGowan’s 1987 collaboration with singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl.

MacColl herself tragically died herself in 2000 after being hit by a speedboat while scuba diving in Mexico. Notably, MacColl’s father, folk singer Ewan MacColl, wrote “Dirty Old Town,” which was also a big hit for The Pogues. (Sidenote: We do not talk enough in the States about Kirsty or Ewan MacColl, who also wrote “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” … for Peggy Seeger, while he was still married to Kirsty MacColl’s mother. That part isn’t good, but the song is the best of all possible songs.)

In 1987, MacGowan and The Pogues also performed with The Dubliners and Joe Strummer on a cover of “The Irish Rover,” which I am just going to include because it is awesome and I love it so much.

MacGowan was booted from The Pogues in 1991 due to some pretty obnoxious (and naked) alcohol-inspired behavior getting out of hand, and went on to form Shane MacGowan and the Popes. He did a lot of things that maybe were not great at this time, but we can at least confidently say that he had nothing to do with inciting a genocide in Cambodia. So there is that!

He did, however, continue collaborating with a number of Irish folk singers during this time, including the legendary Christy Moore.

He also collaborated with Sinead O’Connor, who reported him to the police for drug possession in an effort to force him to quit heroin, which actually did end up working.

MacGowan finally reunited with The Pogues for touring purposes — I saw them in 2008 at the Chicago Riviera! — but they did not record any new music and eventually ended up breaking up again.

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Whatever guilt MacGowan may have had over the fact that he did not (potentially) sacrifice his life as a young man to the Irish Republican cause ought to have been supplanted by the fact that he brought far more worldwide awareness and understanding of that cause with music than he ever would have with a car bomb.