Bellying Up to the Bard: A Chat With Shane MacGowan

Perhaps once in a career, you get to interview someone who's inspired you.

I got to sit with Shane MacGowan, poet and punk icon, in 2001. 

I'd already wanted to be a writer, but he inspired me to write something good that may just stuck around after I'm dead and gone. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it did help me get my first novel done and out the door.

Shane, former singer in the iconic Irish trad/punk band the Pogues, was performing with his new outfit, the Popes, at Webster Hall. Employed at the time by Playboy.com, I was to meet with him after.

Like that teen scribe in Almost Famous, I lugged a large, heavy digital recorder--cutting edge technology at the time--to Webster Hall. We'd planned to feature an audio file on the Playboy site that people could click on, and hear a bit of Shane's boozy rasp themselves. I don't fully recall what happened that night, but when the show ended, MacGowan was nowhere to be found.

Fairly typical Shane MacGowan stuff. I once stood under a packed tent on Randalls Island, waiting for Shane to take the stage. Someone knew someone who had a line in to Shane, who apparently was drinking in some hole in the wall in Woodside, Queens, resisting the efforts of his handlers to pull him out.

So I never got actual face time with Shane, but we did do a phoner a few days later while he was still in New York. I recall he'd been kicked out of his hotel, and was holed up in a Best Western in Hells Kitchen. He was in bed when he spoke.

The rock star life.

Here's a snippet of our chat.

Do you ever have to pay for a drink anymore?
SM: I very rarely have to pay for a drink these days. D’ya know what I mean? The bars I go to, there are so many people there who will buy me a drink, or it’s on the house. If we’re in Ireland, people buy me drinks, and when we’re on the road, a lot of times fans will see me and buy me a drink. Occasionally, I’ll buy myself a drink, or I’ll buy other people drinks, ya know? Yeah? But I do get a lot of drinks bought for me, if that’s what you mean. That’s how I get a reputation as such a big drinker — I always have these glasses in front of me, people always putting them on the table, know what I mean?

I guess your fans feel like it’s an affirmation for them, buying you a drink.
SM: Yeah, and that’s very nice of them. I’m not complaining at all.