Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Shane MacGowan film is a treat — much of it is even true
An image from Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan, which is now available to view online.
Riddle me this: He was born on Christmas Day, appears to have come back from the dead (possibly a few times) and has followers all over the world. People argue over his words, a lot! Who is he? No, it’s actually Shane MacGowan! And he’d be the first to tell you, he is not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy!
Exactly how naughty is the subject a new Julien Temple biopic, Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan. It is available online now and is brilliant. You will marvel at The Pogues, you will cry during Fairytale and you will sign up for ‘Dry January’ with religious zeal. You might even throw in February, and March and…
But how much is true? Temple places Shane at the centre of a mythic Ireland populated by animations of Fionn MacCumhaill and leprechauns. In its midst, a boy, aged 6 is already drinking Guinness and standing on tables to sing rebel songs. All present hail his innate talent. He is the carrier of the flame made flesh. But is this any more credible than the Fish of Knowledge?
The Tipperary he is brought up in seems an unlikely place, more Brigadoon than a town in 1960s Ireland. Not many cars, flushing toilets, heating or indeed it would seem, running water or electricity. They are poor but they are happy and luckily have a very talented six-year-old balladeer in their midst.
Sadly the bliss can’t last and the family emigrate to the UK. In the London of ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’, he is bullied but is exceptionally bright and wins a scholarship to a posh school where he, possibly, deals drugs. So far, so mythic.
It does not look good for teenage Shane but then punk rock changes his life, giving him direction and purpose. This part of the story is well documented but still at times seems even more fanciful. Is that really him at the front of the crowd at a Clash gig? Did Sounds magazine really declare him to be the 'face of' 1976? (Yes and Yes).
When his band, The Nips, don’t make it and as Shane ponders his future and unsuitability to the New Romantic movement, an idea begins to form: What if you combined the traditional music he loves - The Dubliners, Luke Kelly, rebel songs - with the energy of punk? He meets like-minded people, and almost by accident, as if just for a laugh, The Pogues are formed.
What follows next is heady stuff. The sheer energy of the band leaps from the screen. Their image, late 20th century IRA Flying Squad chic is inspired. And at its centre Shane, the ultimate Irish everyman. Pigeon-hole him, or us, at your peril.
This new vision of the Irish abroad chimed massively with the Irish diaspora. Yes, it seemed to say, we are these things: we drink, we carouse, we like a party. But we are also these things: we are educated, we are well read, we work in the professions and we are increasingly your top comedians, writers and presenters.
Fairytale stands proud in all this. The video for the best Christmas song ever written inhabits the screen with the impact of The Godfather. Its simple contrast between what we initially hope for our lives and what we end up with, and how Christmas will cruelly illuminate the shortfall was rarely so masterfully told. How it communicates so much, so powerfully, is utter genius.
It’s arrival marks the end of Shane version 1. By the end of the mammoth tour that followed its success Shane has been fired and would later be committed to a psychiatric ward by his own sister. It’s not myth anymore, it is all too painfully real. Shane version 2 starts to emerge, the one we know now: wheelchair-bound, clutching a drink and so incomprehensible he is subtitled through-out the film.
There’s a lot of other madness here too: Gerry Adams fawning at the altar of Shane, Johnny Depp starring as the man you’d least like to drink with, Bobby Gillespie failing to get a question in. And, bizarrely, Shane stating that one of his great regrets is not having been able to die for Ireland like so many of his heroes!
Myth and truth trade places frequently here but the story is still a great one.
