The Pogues
The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish[a] Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in King's Cross, London, in 1982,[1] as Pogue Mahone—an anglicisation by James Joyce of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse". Fusing punk influences with instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin and accordion, the Pogues were initially poorly received in traditional Irish music circles—the noted musician Tommy Makem called them "the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music"—but were subsequently credited with reinvigorating the genre.[2] The band later incorporated influences from other musical traditions, including jazz, flamenco, and Middle Eastern music.
The Pogues
Pogue Mahone (1982–1984)
King's Cross, London, England
1982–1996, 2001–2014
- Shane MacGowan
- Spider Stacy
- Jem Finer
- Darryl Hunt
- Andrew Ranken
- James Fearnley
- Terry Woods
- Cait O'Riordan
- Philip Chevron
- Joe Strummer
- Dave Coulter
- James McNally
- Jamie Clarke
The band started off playing in London pubs and clubs, and became known for their energetic, raucous live shows.[2] After gaining wider attention as an opening act for The Clash on their 1984 tour, and shortening their name to the Pogues—to circumvent BBC censorship, following complaints from Scottish Gaelic speakers—they released their first studio album, Red Roses for Me, in October 1984. Named after the 1942 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey,[3] the album featured a mix of traditional Irish songs and original compositions by MacGowan, including "Dark Streets of London", "Streams of Whiskey", and "Boys from the County Hell". Produced by Elvis Costello, the Pogues' second studio album, Rum Sodomy & the Lash—titled after a quotation attributed to Winston Churchill—was released in August 1985, including the MacGowan compositions "A Pair of Brown Eyes", "Sally MacLennane", and "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn", as well as versions of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" and Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda". In 1986, they released the EP Poguetry in Motion, also produced by Costello, containing the songs "The Body of an American" and "A Rainy Night in Soho".
In 1987, the Pogues' arrangement of the folk song "The Irish Rover", a collaboration with the Dubliners, reached number one in Ireland and number eight in the UK; the two bands performed the song on Ireland's The Late Late Show and the UK's Top of the Pops. Later in 1987, the Pogues released the Christmas single "Fairytale of New York", co-written by MacGowan and Jem Finer and recorded as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, which reached number one in Ireland and number two in the UK. The song remains a perennial Christmas favourite in the UK and Ireland; in December 2022, it was certified quintuple platinum in the UK, having achieved three million combined sales.[4] It featured on the band's critically acclaimed and commercially successful third studio album, If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988), which also included "Thousands Are Sailing", "Fiesta", and the political protest song "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six". The Pogues recorded two more albums featuring MacGowan—Peace and Love (1989), including "White City" and "Misty Morning, Albert Bridge", and Hell's Ditch (1990), featuring "Sunny Side of the Street" and "Summer in Siam"—before sacking him during a 1991 tour as his drug and alcohol dependency increasingly impacted their ability to perform live.
The band continued after MacGowan's departure, first with Joe Strummer and then with longtime band member Spider Stacy as frontmen, releasing new material on Waiting for Herb (1993). They broke up following the critical and commercial failure of their seventh and last studio album, Pogue Mahone (1996).[5] The band—once again including MacGowan—re-formed for a reunion tour in late 2001. They continued playing regularly across the UK and Ireland; they also toured on the East Coast of the United States and in mainland Europe. To mark the 30th anniversary of their founding, they released the live album and concert video The Pogues in Paris: 30th Anniversary and the box set Pogues 30, containing remastered versions of all their studio albums, plus a previously unreleased live album. Longtime guitarist Philip Chevron died in October 2013. The Pogues played their final live shows in summer 2014, before dissolving. Longtime bassist Darryl Hunt died in August 2022 and MacGowan died in November 2023.
Band history[edit]
Pre-Pogues years: 1977–1982[edit]
The future members of the Pogues first met when MacGowan (vocals), Peter "Spider" Stacy (tin whistle), and Jem Finer (banjo) were together in an occasional band called The Millwall Chainsaws in the late 1970s after MacGowan and Stacy met in the toilets at a Ramones gig at The Roundhouse in London in 1977.[6] MacGowan was already with The Nips, though when they broke up in 1980 he concentrated more on Stacy's Millwall Chainsaws, who changed their name to The New Republicans.. Shane and Stacy performed their first gig as The New Republicans at Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura in London's Rupert Street Soho in the early months of 1981. Also on the bill that night were Soft Cell.
Early years: 1982–1986[edit]
In 1982, James Fearnley (accordion), who had been a guitarist with The Nips, joined MacGowan, Stacy, and Finer, forming the band, then known as Pogue Mahone. Fearnley notes that Stacy suggested the band's original name, taken from a sentence in James Joyce's Ulysses,[7] where the character Buck Mulligan exclaims: "Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day! It’s destroyed we are surely!"[8][9] "Pogue mahone" is an anglicisation of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse".[10] The new group played their first gig at The Pindar of Wakefield on 4 October 1982.[11]
By their show on Friday 29 October 1982 at 100 Club in London, Cait O'Riordan (bass) and Andrew Ranken (drums) had already joined the band.[12] Pogue Mahone appeared on Thursday 3 November 1983 at Gossips in Dean Street Soho with Trash Trash Trash and The Stingrays.
The band played London pubs and clubs,[13] and released a single, "Dark Streets of London",[14] on their own, self-named label, gaining a small reputation – especially for their live performances, and national airplay on BBC Radio 1. They came to the attention of the media and Stiff Records when they opened for The Clash on their 1984 tour.[15] Shortening their name to The Pogues (partly due to BBC censorship following complaints from Gaelic speakers in Scotland) they released their first album, Red Roses for Me, on Stiff Records that October.
The band gained more attention when the UK Channel 4's music show The Tube made a video of their version of "Waxie's Dargle" for the show. The performance, featuring Spider Stacy repeatedly smashing himself over the head with a beer tray, became a favourite with the viewers, but Stiff Records refused to release it as a single, feeling it was too late for it to help Red Roses for Me. Nevertheless, it remained a favourite request for the show for many years.
With the aid of producer Elvis Costello, they recorded the follow-up, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, in 1985 during which time guitarist Philip Chevron joined. The album title is a famous comment falsely attributed to Winston Churchill who was supposedly describing the "true" traditions of the British Royal Navy.[16] The album cover featured The Raft of the Medusa, with the faces of the characters in Théodore Géricault's painting replaced with those of the band members. The album shows the band moving away from covers to original material. Shane MacGowan came into his own as a songwriter with this disc, offering up poetic storytelling, such as "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn" and "The Old Main Drag", as well as definitive interpretations of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" and Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (this had previously been covered by Shane's fellow punk contemporaries Skids in 1981).
The band failed to take advantage of the momentum created by the strong artistic and commercial success of their second album. They first refused to record another album (offering up the four-track EP Poguetry in Motion instead); O'Riordan married Costello and left the band, to be replaced by bassist Darryl Hunt, formerly of Plummet Airlines and Pride of the Cross; and they added a multi-instrumentalist in Terry Woods, formerly of Steeleye Span. Looming over the band at this period (as throughout their entire career) was the increasingly erratic behaviour of their vocalist and principal songwriter, Shane MacGowan. Their record label, Stiff Records, went bankrupt soon after the 1987 release of the single "The Irish Rover" (with The Dubliners). Members of the band, including O'Riordan, acted in Alex Cox's Straight to Hell, and five songs by the band were included on the film's soundtrack album.
Mainstream success and break-up: 1987–1996[edit]
The band remained stable enough to record If I Should Fall from Grace with God with its Christmas hit duet with Kirsty MacColl "Fairytale of New York". "Fairytale of New York" was released as a single in 1987 and reached No. 1 in the Irish charts and No. 2 in the British charts over Christmas (the time of peak sales). The song has become a festive classic in the UK and Ireland over the years, and was voted the best Christmas song of all time three years running in 2004,[17] 2005,[18] and 2006 in polls by music channel VH1 UK, despite not achieving Christmas Number One when it was released. It was also voted as the 27th greatest song never to reach UK#1 in another VH1 poll, and also voted as the 84th greatest song of all time by BBC Radio 2 listeners in the "Sold on Song" top 100 poll. In 2007 the record was briefly censored by the BBC because of the word "faggot" being deemed potentially offensive to homosexual people. Following protests from listeners, including the mother of Kirsty MacColl, the censorship was lifted.
In 1989, the band released Peace and Love, a jazzier record featuring six tracks written by MacGowan, as well as eight tracks written by band members Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Andrew Ranken, and Philip Chevron. As Mark Deming wrote in AllMusic, "It does make clear that MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band -- though the fact that the set's most memorable songs were written by others did not bode well for the group's future."[19]
The band was at the peak of its commercial success, with both albums making the top 5 in the UK (numbers 3 and 5 respectively), but MacGowan was increasingly unreliable. He failed to turn up for the opening dates of their 1988 tour of America, and prevented the band from promoting their 1990 album Hell's Ditch, so in 1991 the band sacked him following a chaotic live performance at the WOMAD Festival held in Japan[20][21].[22] Vocal duties were for a time handled by Joe Strummer. Spider Stacy took over permanently after Strummer left in the winter of 1991. After Strummer's departure, the remaining seven Pogues recorded in 1993 Waiting for Herb, which contained the band's third and final top twenty single, "Tuesday Morning", which became their best-selling single internationally.
Terry Woods and James Fearnley subsequently left the band and were replaced by David Coulter and James McNally respectively. Within months of their departures, ill health forced Phil Chevron to leave the band; he was replaced by his former guitar technician, Jamie Clarke. This line-up recorded the band's seventh and final studio album, Pogue Mahone. The album was a commercial failure, and, following Jem Finer's decision to leave the band in 1996, the remaining members decided it was time to quit. According to Shane MacGowan, among the reasons of the break-up was disagreement concerning the political orientation of his songs, the band not wanting to sing too obvious pro-Republican songs[23] – though some of their previous songs were already politically engaged: for instance, Streams of Whiskey is about the poet and IRA member Brendan Behan. Soon after the break-up Shane MacGowan recorded a song titled Paddy Public Enemy Number One as a tribute to the Republican leader Dominic McGlinchey, a former leader of the INLA killed a few years before.
Post-breakup[edit]
After the Pogues's break-up, the three remaining long-term members (Spider Stacy, Andrew Ranken and Darryl Hunt) played together briefly as The Vendettas. They played mainly new Stacy-penned tracks, though Darryl Hunt also contributed songs, and the band's live set included a few Pogues songs. First Ranken then Hunt left the band, the latter going on to become singer/songwriter in an indie band called Bish, whose self-titled debut album was released in 2001. Ranken later performed with a number of other bands, including Kippers, The Municipal Waterboard and, most recently, The Mysterious Wheels. In addition to The Vendettas, who Stacy freely admits lost all attraction when the Pogues reformed, Spider continued to write and record music with various bands, including the James Walbourne, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Dropkick Murphys and Astral Social Club.
Shane MacGowan founded Shane MacGowan and The Popes in 1992. They released two studio albums and broke up in 2006 once The Pogues' reunion had become official.[24] His autobiography A Drink With Shane MacGowan, co-written with his journalist girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, was released in 2001. Jem Finer went into experimental music, playing a big part in a project known as "Longplayer", a piece of music designed to play continuously for 1,000 years without repeating itself. In 2005, Finer released the album Bum Steer with DB Bob (as DM Bob and Country Jem).
James Fearnley moved to the United States shortly before leaving the Pogues. He was a member of The Low And Sweet Orchestra and later the Cranky George Trio. Philip Chevron reformed his former band The Radiators, which briefly included former Pogue Cait O'Riordan. Terry Woods formed The Bucks with Ron Kavana, releasing the album Dancin' To The Ceili Band in 1994. Later, he formed The Woods Band, releasing the album Music From The Four Corners of Hell in 2002.