The Pogues have insisted that their late bandmate Shane MacGowan “wasn’t always drunk”.
The Pogues have insisted that Shane MacGowan “wasn’t always drunk”.
The ‘late singer died of pneumonia in November 2023 at the age of 65 after years of struggling with addiction but now his former bandmate Jem Finer has insisted that it is “quite insulting” to reember him for his substance abuse issues.
Jem told The Times: “I think it’s quite insulting anyway, ‘the drunken artist’. It’s not someone who is perpetually drunk: it is someone who enjoys drinking. Shane wasn’t always drunk. He knew how to work rigorously and hard. A Pair of Brown Eyes went through many different stages. It began life as a protest against the Falklands war.”
Jem noted that it all became “impossible” for Shane to be a part of the band, and he was fired mid-tour in 1991.
He said: “It just became impossible. He didn’t want to be doing it any more, and because he didn’t want to let anyone down he wouldn’t say that he needed a break, which was reflected in the way he behaved and it was untenable. But there wasn’t any bad blood. When he joined again [in 2001], we carried on where we left off.”
Meanwhile, fellow bandmate Spdier Stacey has insisted that Shane was actually “quite shy” even at the height of his fame with the ‘Fairytale of New York’ hitmakers.
He said: “Before, it was ‘the Band’. Now Shane was the focus of attention.
“And the fact is, Shane was actually rather shy. He was in a punk band before the Pogues, which was not for the faint of heart, but I think he was shy about doing Irish music because on our first tour of Ireland he was very reticent about how people were going to react, which I understand. I mean, playing the tin whistle to Irish people … it does come with a certain degree of impostor syndrome.”
The Pogues say that Shane MacGowan ‘wasn’t always drunk’ and remember him as a ‘hard worker’
