In May 2023, six months before Shane MacGowan passed away, Bruce Springsteen visited the former Pogues singer at his home in Dublin. “Shane had been a superfan since he was about 12,” MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clarke tells MOJO. “So the idea that Bruce was going to come to his house, I think it frightened him a little bit. He was like, ‘What am I going to say to him?’
“But it turned out that they had a lot in common… they spent three or four hours just chatting about music, film, about their lives. There wasn’t an atmosphere of doom and gloom because at that point, we had no idea that Shane wasn’t going to make it.”
“He was raw, hilarious, no apologies and profound,” Springsteen writes in an essay to accompany his version of A Rainy Night In Soho, the first track to be released from multi-artist tribute album 20th Century Paddy - The Songs Of Shane MacGowan, due in November. “Shane’s voice was so deeply real, profane and honest,” Springsteen continues. “As I left, I thanked him for his beautiful work, his music, his songs, his life. I stood in his warmth, kissed him and told him I loved him.”
Clarke first had the idea for 20th Century Paddy shortly after MacGowan’s funeral, inspired by its celebratory performances, particularly Fairytale Of New York by Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill, both of whom appear on the tribute record. “The music at the funeral was something that people were talking about for quite a long time afterwards,” says Clarke. “They were saying, ‘That should be recorded.’”
Among the artists who’ve already completed tracks for the album are Steve Earl, David Gray, Kate Moss, The Murder Capital and Tom Waits. “It was amazing because he actually responded very quickly and very positively, and said, ‘Yes, I want to be on it.” Clarke says of Waits’s involvement. “I was really surprised by lots of people who said yes.”
Primal Scream feature with a version of A Pair Of Brown Eyes, which takes its inspiration from the mid-sixties Byrds. “I know that Shane was a big fan of The Byrds, Love and Buffalo Springfield,” Bobby Gillespie tells MOJO. “So I just thought maybe Shane would like his song reinterpreted in this way.”
“There was an authenticity about Shane as a person and a songwriter,” attests Gillespie’s former Jesus And Mary Chain bandmate Jim Reid. “He didn’t care about what other people were going to say. ‘Oh, are you sure you should be having that last quadruple whisky?’ He didn’t give a fuck. It wasn’t your business what he did. And everybody understood that and everybody kind of admired that.”
The Mary Chain’s contribution to 20th Century Paddy, I’ll Be Your Handbag, was a song that MacGowan actually wrote for the Reid brothers back in the early ‘90s and subsequently recorded himself with The Popes for 1994’s The Snake. “We were massive Pogues fans,” says Reid. “It turned out he was into the Mary Chain, and he said, ‘I’ll write you a song.’ He sent an acoustic demo, and we couldn’t figure out how to do it back then.”
Shane was already drunk when he arrived, but he wanted to drink more.
Jim Reid
Instead, MacGowan was invited by the brothers to sing the track God Help Me on the 1994 Jesus And Mary Chain album, Stoned & Dethroned. “It was kind of chaotic, to be honest with you. Shane was already drunk when he arrived, but he wanted to drink more, and we were pretty nervous and drunk. I can hardly remember making the record, but it’s a bloody good song.”
Clarke also reveals to MOJO that there are two unheard Shane MacGowan albums in differing states of completion. The first is already in the can and due for release in 2027. “He’d been working on it for about seven years and that is ready to go,” she says. “So, there will be more music from Shane.”
More esoterically, Clarke is planning a memoir based on her four-decade relationship with MacGowan, which she says will feature transcriptions of her spiritually communicating with her late husband.
“I have channelled him a few times,” she says. “When he’s able to communicate, I can be writing and he’ll just be talking and talking and talking. So I’ll write down everything he says. I feel that if I’m listening to the kind of music that he listened to and if I’m sitting in his chair and if I’m feeling his vibe… if I can tune into that frequency, I can feel him.”
In the meantime, there will be 20th Century Paddy, the title of which was MacGowan’s own. “He had been working on this idea himself since the nineties,” Clarke says. “I think he wanted to celebrate the idea of that character that he embodied – the 20th Century Irish guy. The title stuck with me and I just thought, It’s definitely what he’d want me to call this.
“It’s like extending Shane’s life in a weird way,” she concludes. “It’s like actually giving him this new lease of life he didn’t have.”
20th Century Paddy - The Songs Of Shane MacGowan will be released on November 13 via Rubyworks.
"Shane is the best songwriter of my generation, hands down..."
Get the latest issue of MOJO to read the full version of this feature. More information and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!
.
.
.
.
.
.