What Makes a Legend: Shane MacGowan

What Makes a Legend: Shane MacGowan: "

Classic track: “Fairytale of New York.” Likely or not, Shane MacGowan was born December 25, 1957, in Kent, England to parents of apparently strong Irish stock: Despite the dental challenges and healthy thirst for alcohol he claims struck him at the age of four, the poetic singer-songwriter of the Nipple Erectors and the Pogues is still going strong. He’s currently collaborating with three singing clerics known professionally as the Priests.

Career High: It’s not often one’s best known and loved song is also a holiday classic, but Christmas baby Shane’s record charted at number one in Ireland upon its debut in 1987 and has hit the international charts on a seasonal basis almost every year since.

Career Low: Getting sacked from his own band, for behaving “unprofessionally”; after rejoining in 2001, an incident involving onstage vomit spilling into the front row of the audience exists for the public record.

Essential Listening: The third Pogues album, If I Should Fall From Grace With God, featuring the aforementioned “Fairytale of New York”, also sports the high watermarks like the political “Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six” and the mariachi-inspired “Fiesta.” Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, the Pogues’ second album, includes their Irish folk-punk standards, “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “Sally MacLennane” alongside covers of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” and “Dirty Old Town”, both songs inextricably linked to Poguetry in motion.

And if you like those you might like: The Pogues’ first punky Irish party album, Red Roses for Me, and the stylistic departure, “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah”, a single from 1989. The Snake, the MacGowan solo debut with his group the Popes, and featuring guest appearances by Sinead O’Connor and Johnny Depp, is much like you’d expect; whistles and pipes accompany the slurred but romantic visions.

What he’s doing now: Smack in the middle of a Christmas run of Pogues shows ending at the Brixton Academy Dec 20, 21, and 22, MacGowan’s holiday single with the Priests, “The Little Drummer Boy”/”Peace on Earth” is the most unlikely pairing of voices since mellow crooner Bing Crosby cut his hit with David Bowie in 1982. With a wing and a prayer, the Priests and MacGowan just might score a Christmas Number One, an important UK broadcast tradition.

Watch the action then: “Dirty Old Town”

And now: “Little Drummer Boy”/”Peace on Earth”

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