There are many things I love about living in Ireland: the cool weather (22ºC is considered a heat wave!), the literary tradition, the top-notch journalism and the fact that Ireland is the seventh strongest democracy in the world. But what I love most are the people, who are friendly, polite, blessed with a delightfully wicked sense of humor and seem ready to break into song at a moment’s notice.

Yes, there are a few assholes, but nowhere near as many in my former places of residence. And there’s the Nanny State thing, but that’s pretty much everywhere in Europe. The housing crisis is real, and health care could be better, but all in all, I’m pretty happy here.

In some of my earlier reviews, I mentioned the family sing-alongs that took place at my Irish grandparents’ home on all the important holidays: New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of the songs came from the Beatles for two reasons: everyone knew them and they had plenty of songs with great harmonies. At first I found it a bit odd that my grandparents appreciated the Beatles because my grandfather never missed an opportunity to express his hatred of the British and my grandmother always referred to them as “divils,” but when I finally asked them about it, they explained that John, Paul and George were half-Irish, which gave them a pass.

The sing-alongs would always end with my grandparents singing some of their favorite Irish traditional tunes from County Cork. My grandfather loved to sing “Muirsheen Durkin,” a song about an Irishman determined to make his way to California and get rich during the days of the Gold Rush, which mirrored his own experience of leaving Ireland and building a successful business in San Francisco. Granny’s favorite was “Bantry Girl’s Lament,” a sad story about the struggles of women left behind when the menfolk went off to Spain to do battle in one of the Napoleonic wars. The evening often ended with a rousing version of “Boys of County Cork,” celebrating victories over the Black and Tans during the Irish Civil War.

While I liked listening to my grandparents raising their voices in song, I have to confess that I wasn’t all that interested in learning more about Irish traditional music because I had other priorities during my teens. My musical tastes at the time leaned heavily toward punk and Britpop. The only folk music I cared for came from the Brits (Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and June Tabor) and the only Irish musicians I followed were Sinéad O’Connor and the Cranberries.

Now, if I had heard the Pogues during that phase, I would have been much more likely to embrace Irish music, but I didn’t even know the Pogues existed. I never heard them on the radio in the ’90s, and they weren’t all that popular in the USA: only one of their albums made the Billboard charts (#87) back in the ’80s, and only one single made the Top 20. As my grandparents stayed in touch with friends and family back home, they might have heard about the Pogues in the context of the initially negative reaction of Irish traditionalists in response to the band’s punk-folk offerings and use of foul language, and I’m 100% sure they would have agreed with traditionalist musician Tommy Makem, who labeled the band “the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music.” It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit to hear Shane MacGowan sing “And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids,” but my grandmother might have had a heart attack.

My first encounter with the Pogues came when I decided to leave the USA in 2012 and began researching the two countries most likely to accept me as an immigrant: France and Ireland. I listened to some of their songs as part of my study of Irish history and culture, and I loved MacGowan’s crusty vocals and his unusually rich lyrics. I was also excited when I learned they were originally known as Pogue Mahone because I recognized the phrase that means “kiss my arse” from Ulysses, but I had to bid them adieu when the company I worked for offered me a job in Paris.

After we had decided to abandon the sweltering heat and right-wing leanings of the French Riviera, I started boning up on Irish history, mythology and music—and found out I had plenty of holes to fill. The first thing I learned was that the meager helping of Irish history presented in American high school AP World History was total bullshit. I was also surprised to discover that despite their general loathing of the Brits, many Irish frequently packed up and headed for the U.K. whenever the Irish economy tanked (and it tanked frequently). I was vaguely aware that Liverpool was a magnet, but I was unaware of the frequency of emigration over the centuries. It will take me years to get through all the cycles of Irish mythology and history, but I’ve already learned a lot by immersing myself in Irish music and literature. While I still have much to explore, the music and literature capture the indomitable spirit of the Irish people, who have had more than their fair share of troubles and setbacks over the centuries.

*****

The Pogues have made significant contributions to my education with two albums in particular: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash and If I Should Fall from Grace with God. Though the music mostly qualifies as Irish, of the seven official members who appeared on Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, only one was born in Ireland: Philip Chevron.  Some of the others had Irish roots, but the band was wise to avoid mentioning their Irish connections in 1980s Britain:

Throughout the Pogues’ heyday in the 1980s the band members were at pains to play down their Irishness. Given that the IRA was setting off bombs in Belfast and England at the time, that is understandable. Jem Finer told the late Carol Clerk, “To be perceived as an IRA propaganda tool, self-appointed or otherwise, would have been a terrible thing. I mean, it would have been complete rubbish, but it would have been quite a liability to life and limb. I think we were at all pains to point that out.”

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 9). (Function). Kindle Edition.

That sensitivity to their surroundings was manifested in the album cover for their first album, Red Roses for Me:

MacGowan has said that the Pogues, who flew Republican banners at their gigs, made a conscious decision not to use any IRA imagery on the album cover. Instead, the band posed around the most Irish of icons, an image that could have been taken directly from above any mantle in County Tipperary: a portrait of John F. Kennedy. It was probably not coincidence that Red Roses for Me is also the title of a play by the Irish Republican playwright, Sean O’Casey. And there was certainly no mistaking the music as Irish.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 52). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Irish and English folk music do share common roots, and both traditions shine when it comes to storytelling. The most notable difference between the two (and the reason why punk was the perfect partner for Irish traditional music) can be heard in the high-speed rhythms of Irish reels and jigs. What is most important to remember is that Shane MacGowan’s vision for the Pogues turned Irish music into World music, potentially accessible to everyone on the planet.

MacGowan, for his part, did his best to straddle the fence. He told Melody Maker, “The thing is, the people who tar us with this big nationalist thing and the people who beat us up over it are really the ones with the problem. At the same time, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I don’t believe in a 32-county Irish Republic. But that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the Pogues, or what happens when we’re up on stage. It’s nothing at all to do with the music. Yet despite that, we have to run all these risks. The risk of being called posers, the risk of being seen as Paddy parodies, the danger of being labeled some sort of IRA support team. God only knows where people get those sorts of ideas. What we are is a good night out, something that’s anti-establishment for sure, and a threat to the new Toryism of the Duran Durans of the world. Musically, we’re playing an urban representation of a really brilliant form of music that has been ignored for far too long. And lyrically, it’s a form of humanism, expressing the belief in the right of every human being to lead a decent life, without anyone else shitting down on them. And that goes just the same for a protestant Orangeman as it does for a black in Soweto. We are not putting forward any big solution to the Irish problem, because the only people who do that are people who just don’t think.”

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 56). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Despite the problematic nature of Irish-British relations, the British music press hailed their arrival on the music scene as a breath of fresh air. In his role as frontman and lead songwriter, MacGowan drew the lion’s share of attention, with NME noting that MacGowan’s “faith in the power of positive drinking-music has paid premiums.” Though it took some time for MacGowan’s approach to Irish music to gain acceptance in Ireland, Mamrak noted in his 2011 biography that “He is a living legend in Ireland, a national treasure, an icon, a household name. In a poll taken to determine what people like most about Ireland, he topped the list, beating out James Joyce, Jameson whiskey, and Guinness.”

While it may seem odd that such an honor would be bestowed on a guy who was born in England, moved to County Tipperary at the age of three months and spent only six years on the Emerald Isle before his family returned to England, MacGowan was more than justified in claiming that Tipperary was “me spiritual home.” The family lived on a farm owned by his mother’s uncle, “a ‘ramblin’ house’ where people would stop by all hours of the day or night to kick back, enjoy themselves, and play music.” (ibid) His mother was a marvelous singer of traditional songs who had dreamed of a professional career before her marriage, and passed her musical genes onto her unusally gifted son.

By all accounts Shane MacGowan was a precocious child. He remembers conversing intelligently with adults at the age of two. He was a young sponge, soaking up songs and stories. Rebel songs like the “Boys of Kilmichael.” Irish Diaspora songs like “Muirsheen Durkin.” It wasn’t long before he was contributing to the kitchen sessions. By the age of three he was up on the table singing “Kevin Barry” and “The Foggy Dew.” He later recalled, “I heard a lot of traditional stuff…I’m talking about real Irish folk music. There would be a lot of unaccompanied singing of all sorts of songs like ‘Kevin Barry.’ You got to remember that this was the late 1950s, early 1960s. So I built up a repertoire of old famous Irish songs that were made famous later by the Dubliners and the Clancys.”

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (pp. 19-20). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Shane slept on the couch because it was next to the radio and tuned to Irish music courtesy of Radio Eireann (ibid). Naturally, he was indoctrinated in Catholicism by an aunt whom Mamrak tagged as “a religious fanatic,” but it’s also important to note that Irish Catholicism had long been associated with resistance to British rule, and in that sense, it likely strengthened MacGowan’s attachment to “rebel culture.” If all that weren’t enough to give him credibility as an Irishman, “He came from a long line of drinkers. His Uncle John would regularly bring the boy a bottle of Guinness on his way home from Ryan’s pub each night. MacGowan claims to have been downing two bottles of stout each night before bed by the time he was five years old. ‘We’d never even heard of alcoholism,’ he says. ‘We’d have thought it was some kind of weird religion.'” (ibid)

Mamrak tells us that “For the first several weeks in England, young Shane MacGowan cried himself to sleep thinking about Ireland.” He continued to immerse himself in Irish culture and music as a means of dealing with culture shock and cherished his summer holidays in Ireland. Though he may have been one of the tens of millions involved in the Irish Diaspora and many of his songs can be interpreted through the eyes of an emigrant, his heart and soul always had a home in Tipperary.

*****

While preparing to record their second album, The Pogues were fortunate to find a producer whose father was part of the Diaspora and had the hots for their bass player: Declan Patrick MacManus, aka Elvis Costello. Because their maiden effort had suffered from producer excess that dampened the essential rebellioness of the band, Philip Chevron felt that “The Pogues needed, more than anything, not to be not so much as produced as facilitated. Recording the band as live as possible, but with a great deal of natural acoustic presence in the instruments—was quite a revolutionary thing to do in 1985.” Elvis Costello was in full agreement with those sentiments, as noted in Jeffrey T. Roesgen’s study of the album for 33/1/3: “I saw my task was to capture them in their dilapidated glory before some more professional producer fucked them up.”

The strategy worked like a charm. Rum, Sodomy & the Lash could have been subtitled “Pogues Unbound.” The band is tight and fully engaged, the arrangements are well-designed, and though MacGowan’s voice is far from melodious, it is exceptionally expressive, possessing the charm of the Everyman and the ability to wring every bit of meaning from the lyrics. His compositions display a remarkable knowledge of history and tradition, and he performs the cover songs as if they were his own.

Drummer Andrew Ranken came up with the title because “it seemed to sum up life in our band.” I was surprised to learn that the source was Winston Churchill because I’ve read his histories and he always came across as the ultimate champion of the British Navy. I never would have thought he would expose the buggery that likely took place on long voyages, where the only suitable hole belonged to one of your shipmates:

“Churchill’s description of the Royal Navy is included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as having appeared in the book Former Navy Person, by Sir Peter Gretton. The Oxford Dictionary suggests that Churchill’s phrase should be compared with naval phrases dating from the 19th century—‘Rum, bum and bacca’ and ‘Ashore, it’s wine, women and song, aboard it’s rum, bum and concertina’.

It looks as though here, as elsewhere, Churchill took an earlier quotation and improved upon it. In The Irrepressible Churchill, compiled by Kay Halle (Robson Books, 1985), Churchill is said to have used the phrase in 1913, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. According to ‘an ear-witness’, he was having trouble with some of his admirals at a strategy meeting. One of them accused him of having impugned the traditions of the Royal Navy, provoking the reply: ‘And what are they? They are rum, sodomy and the lash’.” (Edward Hewlett, Bexhill-on-Sea, E Sussex)

How utterly kinky of him.

Before we begin the analysis, I want to announce a major breakthrough in my struggle against prejudice and thank Jem Finer for temporarily curing me of banjophobia. I’m not sure that this drastic change will survive in other musical contexts, but it works beautifully in Irish music.

*****

“The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn” (MacGowan): From a literal perspective, the song is not about Cúchulainn, but you’ll need to know a little bit about the guy to appreciate the song. From Wikipedia:

Cúchulainn, a central figure in Irish mythology, is a legendary warrior and demigod known for his exceptional strength, skill, and bravery. He is a prominent character in the Ulster Cycle, a collection of Irish myths. Originally named Sétanta, he earned the name Cúchulainn after killing the fierce guard dog of a smith named Culann, and offering to take its place until a replacement could be trained.

A bronze sculpture of the dying Cú Chulainn by Oliver Sheppard stands in the Dublin General Post Office (GPO) in commemoration of the Easter Rising of 1916. Éamon de Valera unveiled the statue in 1935 as President of the Executive Council (Prime Minister) and described Sheppard’s work as “symbolising the dauntless courage and abiding constancy of our people.”

Cúchulainn was frequently evoked by Irish Nationalists during the Gaelic Revival that coincided with the Irish Revolutionary period in the 1910s and 1920s. He was also a seriously horny dude and one hell of a hurler. Since he never really existed, you may wonder why the Irish felt the need to honor him with a statue when they had plenty of heroes who led real lives to choose from. Joseph Campbell explained it all in his Four Functions of Myth, but only two of the functions are relevant to this story:

• The sociological function validates, supports, and imprints on the individual the norms of that society.
• The psychological (or pedagogical) function serves to guide each individual through the stages of life, within the context of that culture.

After centuries of often harsh rule under the British, manifesting courage in the fight against oppression in any form became a much-admired value in Irish culture. Though the fight may involve violence in one form or another, the Irish have other weapons at their disposal: literature, poetry, song, a never-say-die attitude and plenty of humor. MacGowan’s composition covers all six forms of resistance.

Our story begins at the deathbed, but contrary to the song’s title, it’s not Cúchulainn who is about to croak off but “an old dosser dying. You always get old dodgers dying in the street, but the people don’t think that they lived through a whole century and was at war and all.” (ibid) Surrounded by two great Irish tenors, biblical figures and booze, our friend prepares to take stock of his life. Meanwhile, the band engages in what feels like tongue-in-cheek formality suitably played at a slow waltz tempo, with Jem Finer picking the main melody on the banjo, strummed guitar, rolling drums from Andrew Ranken, plenty of bass from Cait O’Riordan and faint accordion from James Fearnley. Shane’s vocal mirrors the faux formality, but also conveys a certain respect for a man who (as it turns out) embodied the spirit of Cúchulainn:

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There’s a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign lands

After a brief pause and a hearty countdown, the band shifts into high gear at a tempo close to the speed of an Irish reel in 4/4 time. The geezer’s first trip back in time places him in Germany in the early stages of Hitler’s reign, followed by a stint in Frank Ryan’s Connolly Column, a group of eighty Irishmen who joined the International Brigade in the defense of the duly elected Spanish Republican government under siege by Franco’s fascists:

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

The uptempo passages all end with hearty screams and yells, but while it may seem inappropriate to link triumphant music to a guy who once suffered from syphllis and is currently at death’s door, it will become clear as the story unfolds that the dosser was imbued with the spirit of Cúchulainn, ready and willing to face any challenges coming his way, even a nasty case of the clap.

After the band gives a thoroughly tight and spirited reprise of the central theme, we find our friend in London, where he is now a “paddy,” scarcely welcome in Britain at any time. This verse is based on a true story Shane related to his biographer:

Me and my Dad were drinking in the Euston Tavern and a small wiry Irish guy walks in. You know the kind, a really pissed up Irish guy, really small, small but well built, black greasy hair. Very determined, very angry, and very drunk. They wouldn’t serve him. He was actually offering to buy the bar a round of drink.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 67). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Here’s how the Irish guy was repaid for his generous offer and his response:

And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn’t give you service so you kicked the windows out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again

You gotta love that never-say-die attitude! This verse triggered my Irish humor gene, because I couldn’t suppress my laughter when he “did it all again.”

Now we return to the “funereal music” of the intro, where we learn that his current situation isn’t the first time he’s had contact with the Irish harbinger of death. Fortunately for him, his companions take him to a place that provides hope of ultimate redemption:

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing “Billy In The Bowl”
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church

When I first heard this verse back in 2012, I had just taken a sip of coffee and wound up spewing it through my nose and all over my pants. I was laughing so hard I missed the rest of the song! Eventually I pulled myself together, listened to it again, tissue in hand, then looked up “Billy In The Bowl,” a legless robber and would-be murderer who earned sufficient infamy to have a song written about his exploits (and a life sentence).

Once our hero is done spewing, the band makes a quick shift to hyper-speed for the final verse, combining empathy for the oppressed with a stirring validation of Irish perseverance in the face of the most difficult of challenges:

Now you’ll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and jocks
And they’ll take you from this dump you’re in and stick you in a box
Then they’ll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground
But you’ll stick your head back out and shout “We’ll have another round”
At the graveside of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel around and pray
And God is in His heaven, and Billy’s down by the bay

It’s possible that Shane was envisioning his own demise here, given the reference to “song of liberty” and the fact that Cloughprior is close to where he lived in Tipperary, and the cemetery there is where most of his ancestors are buried. Of course, there was only one possible response to that possibility: “We’ll have another round!” This ode to the spirit of Cúchulainn has everything you want in an Irish song: a great story, a rousing beat in the verses, a band delivering the goods, and a vocalist-lyricist with a solid understanding of tradition and a great sense of humor.

“The Old Main Drag” (MacGowan): Shane MacGowan had a rough time of it in London, and he holds nothing back in this song about the dark underbelly of life in the city.

“The Old Main Drag,” a slow poignant number, is a seamy slice of life tale of a 16-year-old immigrant’s attempts to cope with London’s underbelly. MacGowan has claimed that the song isn’t autobiographical, not surprising given the teenager’s involvement with male prostitution, but much of the lyrics’ power is surely born of experience. MacGowan told a reporter, “Trash is what we’re really all about. I’ve always lived around the Soho part of London. The side that’s full of pimps, whores and junkies and New York must be the same, but every fucking record you hear on the radio is the sound of California. There are no records that really capture the trashiness of London.” At least there wasn’t until Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash was released. Nearly 25 years after its release “The Old Main Drag” had lost none of its power and has remained a concert favorite.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 67). (Function). Kindle Edition.

The song begins with a lengthy held note on the Uilleann Pipes from guest artist Tommy Keane, followed by the entry of Finer’s banjo and Fearney’s accordion. Once the song proper begins, Cait enters with deep bass while Andrew provides rhythm on sticks. This simple arrangement continues for much of the song, allowing Shane all the room he needs to make the dark imagery of life on the streets come alive. I feel the need to quote the lyrics in their entirety because Shane describes a reality that exists in many cities throughout the world, a reality that most people refuse to deal with . . . and that’s part of the problem:

When I first came to London I was only sixteen
With a fiver in my pocket and my ole dancing bag
I went down to the dilly to check out the scene (note: dilly = Picadilly Square)
And I soon ended up on the old main drag

There the he-males and the she-males paraded in style
And the old men with the money would flash you a smile
In the dark of an alley you’d work for a five
For a swift one of the wrist down on the old main drag

In the cold winter nights the old town it was chill
But there were boys in the cafes who’d give you cheap pills
If you didn’t have the money you’d cajole or you’d beg
There was always lots of tuinol on the old main drag

One evening as I was lying down in Leicester Square
I was picked up by the coppers and kicked in the balls
Between the metal doors at Vine Street I was beaten and mauled
And they ruined my good looks for the old main drag

In the tube station the old ones who were on the way out
Would dribble and vomit and grovel and shout
And the coppers would come along and push them about
And I wished I could escape from the old main drag

And now I’m lying here I’ve had too much booze
I’ve been shat on and spat on and raped and abused
I know that I am dying and I wish I could beg
For some money to take me from the old main drag

Shane departs from melodic expression on the last rendition of “the old main drag,” his conversational tone marked by disgust and hopelessness. He is said to have written the song from a journalistic perspective, which makes me wish we had more journalists like him. Like Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives, Shane told the truth about the squalid conditions in the backstreets of the city; unlike Riis, his song did not inspire action on the part of politicians or the voting public. Most people just want the cops to get rid of these bums and perverts and couldn’t care less if they die on the streets.

The good news is that the song resonated strongly with the Pogues’ fan base. I watched a live version of the song on YouTube and the crowd sang along with Shane throughout the performance and never missed a word . . . so at least there are a few people out there who get it.

“The Wild Cats of Kilkenny” (MacGowan-Finer): My initial reaction to this instrumental was, “Hey, haven’t I heard this before?” I scoured my brain for a few days and came up empty, so I started scrolling through my music library and found both the answer and the reason for drawing a blank: the main motif bears an eerie resemblance to Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days.” Fully aware that Pink Floyd was the band most hated by punk aficionados in the early days of the genre, I must have subconsciously eliminated them from consideration. Just to make sure I heard it right, I played the song for my parents and both shouted, “That’s Pink Floyd!” in about twenty seconds.

Pinkiness aside, the best part of the song takes place when the song shifts from progressive rock to Irish reel, led by Spider Stacy and James Fearnley. I had never really cottoned to the tin whistle until I heard Spider; I had lumped the instrument with the kazoo as unserious and comic. In addition to his set of nimble fingers, Spider manages to coax some rich and beautiful tones out of the instrument (quite an admission from a flute snob). The duets featuring Stacy and Fearnley are quite a treat, with the latter providing harmony, rhythmic support and equally gorgeous tones.

“I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” (traditional, Roud 975): According to Mainly Norfolk, this old tune that also goes by the title “Jock Stewart” is “An Irish narrative ballad that has been shortened to an Aberdeenshire drinking song,” as noted in the liner notes for the song on Archie Fisher’s album The Man with the Rhyme. Though the narrator is a wealthy man willing to buy all the rounds, some of the best-known versions were sung by women—Scottish folksingers Jeannie Robertson and Sheila Stewart, and Cait O’Riordan of the Pogues.

Cait’s breathy vocal and unbridled accent make for a pleasant listening experience, but she seriously blew it with the lyrics by adhering to Jeannie Robertson’s version. Both Sheila and Archie had the good sense to modify the lyrics and correct the original song’s major flaw:

• Archie: “Now, I took out my gun/With my dog I did shoot/All down by the River Kildare.”
• Sheila: “I go out with my dog/And my gun for to shoot/All along by the banks of the Tee.”
• Cait: “Well, I took out my dog/And him I did shoot/All down in the county Kildare”

Shoot the dog? What the fuck? I’m shocked that the Pogues weren’t subject to a PETA boycott!

“A Pair of Brown Eyes” (MacGowan): Mamrak tells us that Shane MacGowan was extraordinarily well-read. “Shane had always been a reader. The isolation and alienation he felt in London, however, seems to have turned what was a pleasant pastime into a lifelong passion. He devoured Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Orwell. His Aunt Catherine loaned him books by Behan, Joyce, and Russian authors.” (ibid) Several of his songs have been lauded for their literary qualities, and as N.M. Reinholdt noted in her essay on “A Pair of Brown Eyes” on Medium, “any serious investigation into his lyrics reveals a profound grasp of literary tradition.”

Some music critics recognized MacGowen’s literary talent, but had a hard time figuring out who says what in the song. Hmm. Maybe they should have asked the guy who wrote it:

“It’s just about a guy getting pissed at a bar round here,” says Shane nonchalantly. “He’s getting pissed because he’s broken up with this bird and . . . you know how it is when you just go into a pub on your own to drink and it’s really quiet and you get this old nutter who comes over and starts rambling on you. So this old guy starts on about how he came back from the war, the First World War. Or the Second. One of them anyway. And he tells him about the ship he had out there and how he got out and came back and this girl had fucked off with someone else, a girl with a pair of brown eyes. Which is the same situation as the young guy sitting there listening to all this rubbish and the juke box playing Johnny Cash and Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley, classic London juke box tracks. And in the end he gets to the stage where he says fuck it, and he goes stumbling out of the pub and he walks along the canal and starts feeling really bad, on the verge of tears, and he starts realising that the old guy has had a whole fucking lifetime of that feeling, going through the war and everything, but his original reaction is to hate him and despise him.” (poguetry.com)

Ms. Reinholdt also observed, “One of the many things that distinguishes Shane MacGowan’s songwriting is his abiding sympathy for the elderly.” We’ll see that sympathy again a few songs down the road.

The music is loosely based on the modern folk song “Wild Mountain Thyme,” set to a slow waltz rhythm. The lyrical passages feature an arrangement of drums, accordion, banjo, fiddle and Uilleann Pipes; Elvis Costello steps down from the booth during the instrumental passages and acquits himself fairly well on the mandolin while Spider’s tin whistle becomes more prominent as the song goes on. The story is pretty much as described by Shane, but it isn’t the story that gives the song its stunning emotional power; but the words Shane used in his rendering of the tale:

One summer evening drunk to hell
I stood there nearly lifeless
An old man in the corner sang
“Where the Water Lilies Grow”
And on the jukebox Johnny sang
About a thing called love
And its how are you kid and what’s your name
And how would you bloody know?

In blood and death neath a screaming sky
I lay down on the ground
And the arms and legs of other men
Were scattered all around
Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed
Then prayed and bled some more
And the only thing that I could see
Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me

But when we got back, labeled parts one to three
There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me
And a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go
For a pair of brown eyes

Few phrases capture the dehumanization of war than “labeled parts one to three.” On hearing the song for the first time, most of the band members were brought to tears—except Spider Stacy. “When he first played the band ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’, guitarist Spider Stacy’s initial response was: You sick fuck! Labelled parts one to three? What sort of a twisted, fucked-up sort of mind comes up with lyrics like that?’ “Mine,” said Shane. Truth is often ugly, and Shane was right to keep the gruesome image intact.

The younger man isn’t moved by the old man’s experience; at present, all he can think about is his loss. The epiphany occurs halfway through the third verse, where he finally begins to see the pain of loneliness through the old man’s eyes:

I looked at him he looked at me
All I could do was hate him
While Ray and Philomena sang
Of my elusive dream
I saw the streams, the rolling hills
Where his brown eyes were waiting
And I thought about a pair of brown eyes
That waited once for me

I can understand why Ms. Reinholdt opined, “A Pair of Brown Eyes” is nothing if not a portrait of loneliness,” as both men might well spend the rest of their lives “a rovin, a rovin, a rovin I’ll go,” searching for what they lost or using travel as a sure path to forgetfulness. I would also argue that it is a song about empathy and the lack thereof. While the younger man eventually realized that his experience mirrored the old man’s, the latter showed no empathy for the younger man’s troubles, ending his introduction with “And how would you bloody know?” Human beings have never been very good at looking at the world through another person’s eyes, especially if there are generational, cultural, racial or gender-based differences. “A Pair of Brown Eyes” is more than a song about loneliness and empathy, but a timeless and brilliant exposé of human nature.

When asked about the Pogues’ future, Jem Finer was understandably non-committal with one exception: “I think I’ll always be singing ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ ’til I die.” In a metaphorical sense, I think we all will.

“Sally MacLennane” (MacGowan):

It’s almost a full-time job trying to find accurate information on the internet.

90% of the “sources” I consulted insisted that the song was named after an Irish stout with Sally’s name. Google’s stupid AI Overview straddled the issue, confirming the claim and rejecting it depending on how I worded the query. Frustrated, I decided to consult an expert. “Dad, have you ever had a Sally MacLennane Irish stout?” “Never heard of it.”

It turns out that there is a Sally MacLennane Irish stout, but it’s brewed in Orlando, Florida, by the Redlight Redlight Beer Parlor—which did not open its doors until 2005, twenty years after the song was released as a single.

Songfacts fell for the bullshit regarding Sally as well, but they did manage to provide a factual account of the song’s origins:

This song was inspired by the legendary early 1980s drinking sessions that Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan would take part in with his friends around the bars at Euston railway station before boarding the boat train to Holyhead for the ferry to Dun Laoghaire. “I was always a little envious of Shane, it was almost this ritualistic thing where he’d get stocious and his friends would put him on the train to Ireland,” accordion player James Fearnley recalled to The Irish Post December 16, 2013. “A lot from that song had also come from being a barman himself at the Great Ormond Street hospital bar. He knew about watering whiskey down from that I’m sure.”

BTW, “stocious” is Irish and Scottish slang for “dead drunk.”

This high-speed Irish reel is a great drinking song more than suitable for impromptu sing-alongs in the pub. Shane expands the tale to include the character of Billy, who played harmonica in a pub and “soothed the psychos and the men who had the horn (i.e, horny).” Alas, he feels the need to leave for “God knows” because of the violence in the pub caused by “elephant men” when they “had too many Powers” (Irish whisky). The double-stanza chorus is a rousing bit of song, applicable to Billy and the many who left Ireland in the ongoing diaspora:

We walked him to the station in the rain
We kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we’d be seeing him again

Sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away (far away)
I’d like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

With Billy journeying into the unknown, Shane steps in to share his experience as a bartender:

The years passed by the times had changed I grew to be a man
I learned to love the virtues of sweet Sally MacLennane
I took the jeers and drank the beers and crawled back home at dawn
And ended up a barman in the morning

I played the pump and took the hump and watered whiskey down
I talked of whores and horses to the men who drank the brown
I heard them say that Jimmy’s making money far away
And some people left for heaven without warning

It seems that sweet Sally MacLennane is a metaphor for booze rather than a real person or a stout—“The Patron Saint of the Drinker.” Talking about the recently departed is a common practice in Ireland, but it’s important to keep in mind that the funniest passage in Ulysses is Bloom’s internal dialogue during a funeral. This seemingly casual acceptance of mortality is best expressed in the conclusion of Billy’s story and his response to learning that many of the people he knew had bit the dust:

When Jimmy came back home, he was surprised that they were gone
He asked me all the details of the train that they went on
Some people they are scared to croak but Jimmy drank until he choked
And he took the road for heaven in the morning

We walked him to the station in the rain
And we kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we’d be seeing him again

Up in heaven, of course. Due to the multiple scandals involving sexual abuse and cruel treatment of unwed mothers and their children, the Catholic Church isn’t quite as revered as it once was, but the priests and nuns did manage to mitigate fears of death and separation by expressing confidence in an afterlife where we will see each other again.

“A Pistol for Paddy Garcia” (Finer): Jem Finer said about this instrumental, “I wrote this during the period in which I became obsessed with Sergio Leone!” If you’re into spaghetti westerns, this song is for you.

“Dirty Old Town” (Ewan MacColl): The Scots-Irish connection to the music of Appalachia is on display here in the loping rhythm and combination of harmonica, banjo, fiddle and pipes. McColl wrote this song for the play Landscape with Chimneys. In a BBC radio documentary on the song, Professor Ben Harker said the song “captures the movement from dreamy optimism and romance to militancy, frustration and anger. That’s the trajectory of the song and of the play.” (Wikipedia) The specific setting is Salford in Greater Manchester, but the story could have taken place in any Rust Belt city where most people work in the factory because there ain’t much else.

I don’t entirely agree with the Professor when he argues that the song begins with “dreamy optimism.” I think the narrator is fully aware that he lives in a smoky, stinky shithole and isn’t dreaming about a romantic honeymoon in Paris (which he couldn’t afford anyway). The resentment that will turn into “frustration and anger” is apparent from the get-go:

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
I kissed my girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Soon we learn that the place is a haven for cats, which means there must be plenty of rats around to justify their nighttime prowling—and the cats aren’t the only living beings on the prowl. The line “Spring’s a girl on the streets at night” not only tells us that flowers have a hard time blooming in this dump, but that it’s warm enough for the prostitutes to come out of hiding, adding additional meaning to the word “dirty.” In the subsequent verse, we find out that even if the roses were abloom, our factory worker wouldn’t have been able to smell them anyway:

I heard a siren from the docks
Saw a train set the night on fire
I smelled the spring on the smoky wind
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Now seething with anger, the narrator decides it’s time for action. We can be thankful that the story ends here, because it’s one hundred percent likely that either the coppers or the factory’s security force will send him to heaven with no regrets.

I’m gonna make me a good sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
I’ll chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

The song is a perfect fit for Shane’s Everyman voice and his empathy for the oppressed, and it breaks my heart that the working class always gets the bum end of the deal. Special kudos go to Henry Benagh for heightening the emotional impact with his performance on the fiddle.

“Jesse James” (traditional): This piece of crap doesn’t belong on this album or any other. Spider Stacy (who sings the tune) must have bought into the myth of Jesse James without performing a reality check. Jesse James never stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He was a racist pig who served as a pro-slavery guerrilla for the Confederates (a “bushwacker”) and cried when the Confederates lost the war. He murdered at least seventeen people, not counting the twenty-four who died in the Centralia Massacre, in which he was an active participant. Yeah, he was a rebel all right, but he didn’t rebel against oppression, but for oppression. Fuck Jesse James and fuck Brad Pitt.

Spider should have known that Americans have never been very good at creating mythologies. Whenever you base your myths on real people, any idiot can punch holes in their mythological status in a few seconds.

“Navigator” (Phil Gaston): Phil Gaston wasn’t thinking of Lieutenant Sulu when he wrote “Navigator,” nor was he attempting to depict those who do their best to tell the captain where the hell they are on ships, airplanes and spacecraft. Nope, he used the term’s alternative meaning that popped up in early 19th-century England: “a laborer employed in excavating a canal . . . later extended to those engaged in making railroads.”

When the Great Famine hit Ireland in the 1840s, many Irishmen and their families made their way to England, and the men found work in the effort to expand the rail system. Irishcentral.com estimates that “Of the 250,000 Navigators, or ‘Navvies’ operating in Britain at the height of railway expansion, 1/3 were Irishmen.”

And the British exploited the hell out of them. Factory workers had it rough, but the navigator’s experience went far beyond rough:

The canals and the bridges, the embankments and cuts
They blasted and dug with their sweat and their guts
They never drank water but whiskey by pints
And the shanty towns rang with their songs and their fights

Navigator, navigator, rise up and be strong
The morning is here and there’s work to be done
Take your pick, and your shovel, and the bold dynamite
For to shift a few tons of this earthly delight
Yes, to shift a few tons of this earthly delight

They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where
Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur
By landslide and rock-blast, they got buried so deep
That in death if not life they’ll have peace while they sleep

I was very surprised by the lyrics in the final verse and their subversive nature. Why? Phil Gaston hailed from Ulster, making him a British citizen at the time. As we already know, the Pogues were careful to avoid anti-British sentiments.

Their mark on this land is still seen and still laid
The way for a commerce where vast fortunes were made
The supply of an Empire where the sun never set
Which is now deep in darkness, but the railway’s there yet

The Iron Lady might have appreciated the line congratulating the fat cats, but she would have blown her top to learn that anyone would describe her realm as “now deep in darkness.” I guess the Pogues decided the verse was a manageable risk because they knew Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t buy their albums anyway.

The instrumentation on this song comes fully loaded with guitars, banjo, fiddle, tin whistle, mandolin, accordion and best of all, the bodhrán and its clear thumping sound.

“Billy’s Bones” (MacGowan): There are some great lines in this anti-war song, like “Billy went away with the peacekeeping force/’Cause he liked a bloody good fight of course,” but the hypersonic rhythm ensures that you’ll miss half of what Shane is going on about. I will give the Pogues credit for taking things down several notches when Shane delivers the verse featuring the song’s core message:

Now Billy’s out there in the desert sun
And his mother cries when the morning comes
And there’s mothers crying all over this world
For their poor dead darling boys and girls

Have no fear—the Pogues will make you forget about this mismatch between music and lyrics and adopt the proper tone for an anti-war song in the closing number.

“The Gentleman Soldier” (traditional, Roud 178): Having covered a few betrayal songs last week in my review of June Tabor’s Abyssinians, I hereby claim I am now an expert on the subject, ready to review another tale of male exploitation of women. I will say upfront that listening to this song makes me want to jump into the music and kick this guy in the nuts with my stilettos, but I also have to admit that the maiden in question is partially responsible for the outcome.

The arrangement is light and bouncy, despite the unfortunate ending, and the band is as tight as ever. Shane plays three parts, modulating his voice accordingly. He handles the narrative in his natural voice; shifts to the creep you never want to encounter in a dark alley to portray the gentleman; and uses falsetto to represent Polly, making her sound like the innocent (and clueless) lass she is.

The gentleman (who is no gentleman at all) is a sentry who espies Polly, waves her over and . . .

So then he boldly kissed her
And he passed it off as a joke
He drilled her up in the sentry box
Wrapped up in a soldier’s cloak

The chorus hints at the inevitable outcome, with Andrew Ranken whacking the hell out of his snare to the rap-a-taps, echoing the sound of bullets:

And the drums are going a rap a tap tap
And the fifes they loudly play
Fare you well polly my dear
I must be going away

After spending the entire night fucking her brains out, the soldier stands up, puts his clothes on without washing his dick and bids her adieu, leaving her with a few tips on how to handle the next guy who comes along: don’t tell him you’re used goods. Polly raises her voice in protest (and in italics):

Now come you gentleman soldier,
Won’t you marry me?
Oh no my dearest polly
Such things can never be
For I’ve a wife already
Children i have three
Two wives are allowed in the army
But one’s too many for me

Polly’s response is “Why didn’t you tell me so?” My response is “Why didn’t you ask, birdbrain?!” The full verse tells the end to this sad story:

Oh, come my gentleman soldier,
Why didn’t you tell me so? my parents will be angry
When this they come to know when nine months had been and gone
The poor girl she brought shame
She had a little militia boy
And she didn’t know his name

We can only hope that the Sisters didn’t bury him in the septic tank.

“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (Eric Bogle): I never thought anyone could top June Tabor’s rendition of this song on her maiden album, but Shane proved me wrong. The song is much more poignant when sung by a man, for it was the men who were sent to battle in WWI, and it was the men who endured the suffering. June captured the horrors and the sheer absurdity of war, but when Shane sings it, it feels like you’re sitting in the room with the veteran, completely wrapped up in his story. As promised, the arrangement is suitably set to a slow, reflective tempo, and most of the supporting music is minimalist, moving from banjo only to light support from the band.

As I’ve already covered the song in depth in my review of Airs and Graces, I will be borrowing some of the narrative for those who may be unfamiliar with the song.

The narrator is a young Aussie in the year 1915, a self-described rover with no aim in life except to ramble and dance with Matilda. That life ends with Australia’s entry into World War I, and the young man is drafted into service. He boards a ship to the sound of an excited, patriotic group of well-wishers, “And amidst all the cheers, the flag-waving and tears, we sailed off to Gallipoli.”

Where disaster awaited. “The Gallipoli campaign has been described as one of the greatest military blunders of World War I.” The thousands of young recruits never had a chance, as vividly described in Eric Bogle’s lyrics:

How well I remember that terrible day
When the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He showered us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
And we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again

He manages to survive the continuing battle for a while, but his luck would soon run out.

And for seven long weeks I kept myself alive
While the corpses around me piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, Christ, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying

And no more I’ll go waltzing Matilda
To the green bushes so far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

When Shane sings “And saw what it had done, Christ, I wished I was dead/Never knew there were worse things than dying,” it doesn’t sound like he’s acting—he has become the wounded veteran who has not only lost his legs but the very essence of his being. His voice captures the fear and embarrassment of the newly disabled and the pall of resignation.

At this point, an instrumental passage featuring French Horn and accordion allows us to reflect on the veteran’s unwanted fate. The next verse covers his return home, a combination of heartbreak for what he has lost and relief from those who would drown him in pity:

So they collected the cripples, the wounded and maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The legless, the armless, the blind and insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into circular quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

The final passage of the song describes a typical ANZAC Day celebration where bands play and crowds gather to honor their heroes. The veteran watches it all with tragic but healthy skepticism:

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving the or their dreams of past glory
I see the old men, all twisted and torn
The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask me, “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question

The song ends with the veteran signing the line, “And who’ll go waltzin’ matilda with me?” He doesn’t need to supply us with an answer.

*****

The Pogues would not release another album for three years, limiting their recorded work to the EP Pougetry in Motion and a few singles. Those years were also marked by lineup changes, erratic behavior on the part of the lead singer and the demise of their record label. They finally pulled it together long enough to record If I Should Fall from Grace with God, which I’ll review in a few weeks.

As much as I love Rum, Sodomy & the Lash and June Tabor’s Abyssinians, both contain some pretty heavy content, and with all the bullshit going on in the world, I could use a shot of positivity. Ergo, I moved the Moody Blues up in the schedule and will review In Search of a Lost Chord next week.

Cheers!