admin It’s almost 11 p.m. on Halloween in Los Angeles, the openers are done, and there’s a tension in the air, this electric hum: Is he going to make it? Is he even in this city? Nobody really knows. You look at the roadies for clues—first to figure out if your ticket was worth buying, then to figure out if the man you came to see is actually alive. This isn’t theater, some communion between performer and audience; it’s legitimate anxiety. Middle-aged Irishmen, Londoners, and Boston transplants are all nervously chatting about it. This ticket is—uniquely, even within rock music—a gamble. The sitter, the parking garage, the nine-dollar beers—it’s all a dice roll. It could all be for nothing.
The lights dim. The house music comes on: “Straight to Hell,” by The Clash. The crowd starts optimistically stomping to the beat. The band emerges, in full mariachi costume, which doesn’t stop them from looking like (sorry, but they did) undead pirates. Possibly the most grizzled band to ever exist. Deep breath. Is it really gonna happen?
And suddenly, there he is, lightly swaying to center stage. He’s wearing a sombrero and a bathrobe, lit cigarette in one hand and a glass of bourbon in the other. Not that he’s trying or cares, but he doesn’t look good. He looks like he’s off his ass, yeah—but more importantly, he looks sick. Is this gonna work? Am I complicit in something?
Then he barrels into “Streams of Whiskey” with his full-throated roar, as powerful as ever, and the crowd pops like a balloon. The tension’s gone. This is a Pogues show, and Shane MacGowan is singing. The Ramones are gone. Joe Strummer’s gone. Yet Shane MacGowan is here, verifiably alive. And he kills.
It was my first concert. I convinced my mom to drive me and my brothers to L.A. because it was a cultural emergency. There’s no way Shane MacGowan, one of the great Irish songwriters, will see another year.
That was 16 years ago.
Shane MacGowan died this past Thursday, in Dublin, following a long illness. So many jokes about him, for decades, that he was about to die. And he stubbornly outlived the entire bit. The book Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? was published in the year 2000. The next year, the Pogues got back together and toured until 2014. In his way, he proved everybody wrong. Maybe furiously gossiping about an artist’s health isn’t the best way to talk about an artist.
