The unusual Christmas song “Fairytale of New York” will be getting extra airplay this year. That’s because the unusual man who wrote it, Shane MacGowan, died this past November 30 at the age of 65. The song made MacGowan and his band The Pogues famous when it was released in 1988, and was the biggest hit from their album, If I Should Fall from Grace with God. It’s the band’s best album, and from the intro of its first track, its signature sound is on display. Unmistakably rooted in traditional Irish music, it’s at the same time not music from the past. MacGowan’s unpolished voice and tendency to slur his works made him sound different from traditional singers and his songs had a punk rock tinge that gave it its distinctive style. The journalist Matthew Hennessey describes The Pogues as sewing together “the traditional jigging and fiddling you’d hear on a Wednesday evening in a rural Irish pub – and straight-ahead punk rock of the sort that MacGowan was weaned on as a teenager in late 1970s London clubs.”
MacGowan’s family was from County Tipperary, Ireland, and he spent his early childhood living on the small farm of his ancestors in a deeply religious home, where aunts and uncles would gather each evening to pray the rosary. When he was six, he immigrated to England where his parents had been living and working in London. Hennessey writes that “as the child of immigrants, MacGowan grew up between worlds, not fully Irish by virtue of his (London) accent, not fully English because of his last name and, crucially, his (Catholic) religion.” Hennessey quotes MacGowan, saying: “Irish kids my age got split down the middle. They either decided they would never be English… or they became ashamed of their parents or their Irish roots.” Musically, MacGowan would definitively embrace his Irish roots. At the same time, however, he allowed himself to be open to the artistic influences of his new home. These he used to develop upon the beloved traditional music of his ancestors in which he had steeped himself as a young man. You might say that MacGowan had an intuitively Catholic approach to tradition, which on the one hand cherishes what has been received from the past, not allowing it to be discarded for the sake of keeping up with the times. On the other hand, it is also capable of assimilating contemporary influences that would open and reveal new, authentic, and beautiful expressions of what had come before. The result of MacGowan’s musical innovations was a synthesis of the traditional and contemporary that feels fresh and alive, even 40 years later.
Though many of his religious beliefs were unconventional, MacGowan had a deeply Catholic imagination. His songs are filled with references to angels and demons, sin and sacraments. He was also, sadly, a tortured soul whose alcoholism and other addictions wrecked him physically and mentally. It never robbed him, however, of the ability to wonder at the things of God, including the Mass which he described as “one of the most beautiful experiences a human being can be subjected to.” MacGowan, Hennessey writes, “was a true character, his legendary appetites tempered by a rare ability to draw out the sweetness in human frailty. He was the London Irish street urchin of his songs. He drank. He lay in gutters and looked at the stars. He saw beauty in this ugly world.” In a written statement, Shane MacGowan’s family revealed that he received last rites before he died, which is a consolation. May he rest in peace.
posted 12/9/23
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 