Of course I chose the alternative cover featuring the Pogues with my favorite author!

I’m not particularly well-versed in Catholic dogma, so may the lord forgive me for not having the slightest idea what it meant to “fall from grace with God.” Since Shane McGowan had enough knowledge of the teachings to engage in debate with members of the hierarchy about the interpretation of this or that, I felt it was important that I understand the meaning of the album’s title before delving into the music. I found the answer in Joseph T. Richardson’s essay “Falling from Grace, and God’s Mercy and Forgiveness” on The Lonely Pilgrim:

When we sin—when we choose consciously and deliberately to reject God and betray His grace to us—we make a decision not to walk by the Spirit; we choose not to love and not to abide in Him. God’s grace, His love, cannot and will not live in a heart that chooses not to love: and so in serious, willful sin, we damage that love, perhaps even choke it out.

And this is what it means to “fall from grace”: to be in a state of grace—the righteous, sanctified state we are in following Baptism, filled with God’s love and grace—and to lose that sanctifying grace through deliberate, grave sin. 

I’ll be darned, but I think I’m warming up to Catholicism. I found the phrase “God’s grace, His love, cannot and will not live in a heart that chooses not to love” quite comforting, as it means that Trump and all the hard-right Catholic haters in his administration and on the Supreme Court will surely burn in hell. I’ll probably be initially slotted for the abyss due to my many erotic adventures involving both sexes, but I think I can make a strong enough case that I spread enough love by spreading my legs that St. Peter will welcome me to heaven with open arms.

*****

Due to constant touring, lineup changes, health issues, the collapse of their record label, and an appearance in one of the worst films ever made, it took three years for the Pogues to release their follow-up to Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. A series of misfortunes like that usually ends with the band announcing its demise, but during that period, the Pogues became one of the most popular bands of the era, wowing crowds in Europe and the USA. The smashing success of Rum, Sodomy and the Lash in Ireland led to a peace agreement between the purists and the punks, confirmed by the Pogues’ appearance on four of the tracks in the Dubliners’ 25th anniversary album. The lineup changes were undoubtedly upgrades, with Daryl Hall filling Cait O’Riordan’s spot on bass (nice voice, but not much of a bass player), Terry Woods expanding the sound with his multi-instrumental talents, and Phil Chevron relieving MacGowan of his guitar responsibilities so the latter could concentrate on vocals.

When they were finally ready to go into the studio, they decided to move on from Elvis Costello and engaged the far more experienced Steve Lillywhite to produce the album, a move that paid off big-time as the Pogues began to diversify their repertoire to include other musical traditions:

Lillywhite was instrumental in expanding the Pogues’ sound. By all accounts Shane got on better with the new producer than he did with Elvis Costello. Lillywhite moved the recording sessions to RAK Studios, a vast improvement over Elephant, the smaller, darker studio where the band had recorded up until that time. Lillywhite suggested abandoning Andrew Rankin’s stripped down drum kit for a full drum set, immediately giving the band a bigger sound. He also brought in more horns and string arrangements.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 74). (Function). Kindle Edition.

As for the state of Mr. McGowan, he continued to lose teeth and drink too much, but when it came to songwriting, he was all business, according to Phil Chevron:

“During the period that we did most of our work, from ‘85 to ‘89, Shane worked furiously hard. You would be walking past his room at three or four in the morning and you would hear this ineloquent guitar playing and you could hear him muttering the melody with sheets of paper everywhere. His process was that whatever it took and whatever frame of mind he was in the songs would come out in a certain way. Very often you would see him on the tour bus or on the van, you would see him there very concentrated and tapping his foot and hands, then you knew that he was working out the tune and maybe the secondary tune that would be the whistle or something. So, quite often he would have the song worked out to that extent. He would quite often come to rehearsal with the full song, but as often as not there was times when stuff didn’t quite land right and required tweaking or adjusting. If something felt like it could be stronger someone would say ‘how about just putting in that chord or this chord.’ That’s not to take away from the fact that Shane was responsible for the main body of the song in almost all cases.”

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (pp. 73-74). (Function). Kindle Edition.

MacGowan’s openness to suggestion exemplifies the collaborative spirit that is beautifully obvious on If I Should Fall From Grace With God. While Shane still had his lyrical chops, over half of his contributions were collaborations: four with Jem Finer and one with Terry Woods. With Finer and Phil Chevron displaying plenty of promise in their two solo compositions, the superficial belief that the Pogues were a one-man show would begin to fade into the ether. As Jem looked back on the experience of recording If I Should Fall From Grace With God in Carol Clerk’s in Pogue Mahone: Kiss My Arse: Story of the Pogues, he described it as “a very cohesive album that drew on a lot of styles. Everything came together and it was very focused. That [album is] really the creative peak for me, in terms of the whole band being on a wavelength.” Shane would always draw the most attention due to his unique presence and status as the front man, but even a cursory run through If I Should Fall From Grace With God will tell you that the Pogues were loaded with across-the-board musical talent.

*****

“If I Should Fall from Grace with God” (MacGowan): And . . . we’re off! The Pogues waste no time stirring up the crowd with a tightly played high-speed reel where James Fearnley’s dominant accordion is supported by Terry Woods on cittern lute, Jem Finer on banjo, Phil Chevron on guitar and three-part harmonies on the rousing chorus. MacGowan spits out his lead vocals with grit and determination, tossing in a few screams here and there to keep the party going. Because “Fairytale of New York” was released before the album came out to capitalize on the Christmas season, “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” became the official lead single, and the Pogues made the right decision to release a live version of the song in the supporting video, where the crowd dances hysterically throughout the performance.

As to whether the decision to release the song as the lead single was a good idea, well, that depends on your perspective. MacGowan vociferously argued against it, insisting that “The Broad Majestic Shannon” was the stronger song. He was outvoted by his mates, which helps explain a brief passage in the foreword to Kiss My Arse, where during a conversation with Carol Clerk, Shane made “his usual complaints about The Pogues’ long-standing policy of democracy.” Biographer Robert Mamrak fully supported McGowan’s preference, justifying his position by noting that the single stalled at #58 on the U.K. charts and arguing that “The Broad Majestic Shannon” was a “MacGowan masterpiece.”

This is one of those situations where everyone is right and everyone is wrong. Mamrak failed to mention that “If I Should Fall From Grace with God” was a huge hit in Ireland, peaking at #4 on the Irish charts, indicating that their recording layover had not weakened the Pogues’ popularity in their spiritual homeland. The music and the lyrics bubble with Irishness, and while that feature in itself might not have damaged the song’s chances with the Brits, there was one verse that probably didn’t sit too well with a populace under attack from the IRA:

This land was always ours
Was the proud land of our fathers
It belongs to us and them
Not to any of the others

Let them go, boys
Let them go, boys
Let them go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

Gee, I wonder who “the others” and “them” are.

Some have claimed that the narrator’s fall from grace involved murdering one of the British occupiers, and while there is no solid evidence to support that view in the lyrics, I can see how a listener might make that assumption, given the centuries-old struggle between the Irish and their overseers (a struggle never far from MacGowan’s mind). The best argument against that view is that BBC radio did not ban the song (as they did one of the later tracks). What I hear in the song is “love of country” and the consolation that if you can’t make it into heaven, at least your body will rot in good old Irish sod or drown in the Irish Sea:

If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried ‘neath the sod
But the angels won’t receive me

Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry . . .

Bury me at sea
Where no murdered ghost can haunt me
If I rock upon the waves
Then no corpse can lie upon me

It’s coming up three, boys
Keeps coming up three, boys
Let them go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

“The Broad Majestic Shannon” may be the better song, but gosh and golly gee, “If I Could Fall From Grace With God” sure is one big barrel of fun.

“Turkish Song of the Damned” (MacGowan-Finer): If for nothing else, this song should earn a place in the Weird Song Inspiration Hall of Fame. From NME via Wikipedia:

The title for “Turkish Song of the Damned” actually came first and inspired the song’s storyline and the music’s Middle Eastern influence, rather than the other way round, as Chevron revealed to the NME: “We were in Germany and this magazine had an article about The Damned—the B-side of one of their singles is called ‘The Turkey Song’ . . . but the mag called it ‘The Turkish Song of the Damned’—it was too good a title to overlook.”

As to what the title inspired, we’ll turn things over to one half of the composing team:

MacGowan explained the lyrics as being a mixture of pirate and ghost story “about a guy on a Turkish island who deserted a sinking ship with all the money and all his mates went down—I’m not totally sure about this—he’s haunted and he’s dancing around with all this Turkish music in his brain . . . Then his best mate comes back, and all the crew, to drag him back down to hell or wherever they are.”

It sounds pretty creepy, but I find myself laughing all the way as I enjoy the sheer brilliance of Shane’s lyrics.

The song combines “music with a Turkish touch” in the verses and Irish folk in the choruses. The Turkish makam system is extraordinarily complex, and I only have access to the mandolin/mandola tabs, but the combination of a C# played over the key of A minor tells me that Finer and Fearnley gave the song the necessary Turkish feel by playing in the hicaz makam with its augmented second interval, which makes sense because the hicaz is the mode most people associate with an “Eastern feel.” In contrast, the chorus is set to good old C major, with Spider Stacy confirming its Irishness with his tin whistle. Throughout the song, you hear howls and wails in the background, which I assume emanate from uncredited spirits.

The best mate serves as the narrator, and he arrives on the island to inform the greedy deserter that his days on earth are numbered:

I come old friend from hell tonight
Across the rotting sea
Nor the nails of the cross, nor the blood of Christ
Can bring you help this eve

The dead have come to claim a debt from thee
They stand outside your door
Four score and three

The band executes a clean key-and-mood transition to the chorus, and hey, you can’t have an Irish death song without your favorite neighborhood banshee!

Did you keep a watch for the dead man’s wind?
Did you see the woman with the comb in her hand?
Wailing away on the wall on the strand
As you danced to the Turkish song of the damned

I should note that there are all sorts of banshees, and though they are largely depicted as old, ghoulish hags whose wails send chills up and down the spine, there are banshee maidens who are quite beautiful and equipped with lovely voices. It’s pretty obvious from the context that the deserter is stuck with the old hag:

You remember when the ship went down
You left me on the deck
The captain’s corpse jumped up
And threw his arms around my neck

For all these years, I’ve had him on my back
This debt cannot be paid with all your jack

Call me a sickie, but I always laugh during that verse because Shane’s lyrics are so vivid and imaginative, and the tone of his voice is so deadly serious. After two rounds of the chorus, we’re treated to an instrumental passage based on the makam, where I really begin to appreciate the presence of the full drum kit and Andrew Ranken’s big, booming beat that highlights the inevitability of the deserter’s eventual demise:

And as I sit and talk to you, I see your face go white
This shadow hanging over me is no trick of the light
The spectra on my back will soon be free
The dead have come to claim a debt from thee

Following three repetitions of the chorus, the band members remove their fezzes and launch into a clipped but lively version of the English folk song ‘The Lark in the Morning” (Roud 151). This may seem like a distraction, but in the context of the song, it feels like a “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” moment, making for a happy ending indeed.

“Bottle of Smoke” (MacGowan-Finer): When I was about ten years old, my Irish grandfather decided it was time to indoctrinate me in an ancient Irish tradition that rivals Catholicism as the national religion: thoroughbred horse racing. He was so insistent about it that he talked my parents into taking me out of school so we could catch the Thursday races at Bay Meadows. I remember that when we were driving down the peninsula, he felt the need to lower my expectations by telling me, “It ain’t Curragh, lass, but it’ll have to do,” but when he said “Curragh,” I thought he was just clearing his throat and completely missed his point. Once we arrived at the track, we headed straight for the betting windows, where he placed bets on all eight races. “You’ll be my lucky charm, lass,” he chortled as we headed for the grandstands. I would soon learn that the Irish were quite superstitious and took their betting very seriously. All his bets came up a cropper, and he never invited me to go to the racetrack again.

The narrator of “Bottle of Smoke” had much better luck. He places a “20 fucking five to one” bet on a horse with the unlikely moniker Bottle of Smoke, and much to his delight, the horse “came up on the left like a streak of light/Like a drunken fuck on a Saturday night” and winds up a winner. After spending a few moments to gloat at the losers, he decides to share his winnings with his family, but his munificence is merely a ruse to allow him to spend a good chunk of his winnings at the local pub:

Bookies cursing, cars reversing
I had the bottle of smoke
Glasses steaming, vessels bursting
I had the bottle of smoke
Slip a 50 to the wife
And for each brat a crisp new five
To give me a break on a Saturday night
When I had the bottle of smoke

He’s obviously not much of a husband or a father, and when he claims “Me gambling days are done,” we can smell the horseshit a mile away. As it turns out, his behavior is sanctioned by fellow drunks and representatives of a higher power:

Priests and maidens drunk as pagans
They had the bottle of smoke
Sins forgiven and celebrations
They had the bottle of smoke

Though he’s on top of the world after finally beating the system, I get the sense from Shane’s tone of cockiness that the guy will blow through his winnings in a jiffy and find himself back in the dumper. This is one song on the album where “bigger” did not translate into “better,” as it’s nearly impossible to make sense of the lyrics with the band at full power and Shane spitting out the lyrics at maximum speed like he’s loaded up on amphetamines. David Fleming of It’s All Academic summed it up thusly: “At best, you hear ‘bottle of smoke’ as the only discernible words, other than f*ck.”

That asterisk is NOT mine.

“Fairytale of New York” (MacGowan-Finer): Before we consider what is certainly one of the most unusual Christmas songs of all-time—and one of the most popular—I thought it would be a good idea to share Shane McGowan’s thoughts on the holiday:

He once told an interviewer, “I think Christmas is a beautiful religious holiday if it is taken in the right spirit because it’s Christ’s birthday and Christ was a wonderful man. I think everyone should get drunk and have a good time and give each other presents if they really want to, although I think that’s just turning it into a consumer load of rubbish. I never believed in Father Christmas because, in Ireland, they didn’t have him, not in the house I was brought up in. They didn’t insult my intelligence by expecting me to believe that a guy all the way from the Arctic Circle came along with flying reindeer and a carriage and came down the bloody chimney and shoved an effing clockwork mouse in my sock, you know what I mean? Christmas never used to be that big a deal in Ireland when I was a kid. It was a big religious festival, with midnight Mass as the highlight. That was a very beautiful thing, watching all the drunks trying to stand up.”

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 75). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Santa Claus was never a part of my upbringing, and my parents made me swear never to expose Santa as a myth when I was around other kids. Out of curiosity, I did attend Midnight Mass at Saint Philip the Apostle once, and yes, it was fun watching all the drunks trying to stand up (and get stuck in the pews when they tried to kneel).

This is one of two songs on the album involving Irish emigration to the United States, and given the reference to “Sinatra swinging,” we can assume that the events depicted in the song are set in the late 1940s. With their large Irish populations, New York and Boston became emigrant magnets. The title was borrowed from J.P. Donleavy’s novel A Fairy Tale of New York, but the book had no influence whatsoever on the song’s story. Finer envisioned a song about an Irish emigrant in New York gazing longingly across the Atlantic where his true love resides. Both he and MacGowan imagined an arrangement centered around a male-female duet, but though they tinkered with the song for a couple of years, they weren’t happy with the lyrics, and the idea of a vocal duet fell by the wayside when Cait O’Riordan left the band.

I didn’t make sense to look for a female singer without a decent song for her to sing, so the first item of business was to change the storyline. Robert Marmak gave MacGowan full credit for the modification, but that’s not how James Fearnley remembered it, as related in a BBC Audio feature on the song recorded on December 22, 2015:

“Jem showed what he’d been working on to his wife Marcia, and Marcia said, ‘Leave it out with the seafaring people going away and missing the love at home. What happens at Christmas a lot of the time—all you have to do is listen to our neighbors—is people argue, so let’s have somebody arguing. Christmas isn’t a happy time for a lot of people.’ Basically, that’s how “Fairytale of New York” became an argument between, I suppose, a straw-clutching loser and the girl he’s trying to impress with the lights and life of New York City.”

The two songwriters completed the picture by further clarifying the status of the two bickerers: “We decided to make it about two Irish immigrants on their way out,” Shane says. “They’d had their glory days.” (Mamrak, ibid)

After rewriting the lyrics to fit the altered narrative, all they needed was a broad who could hold her own in an argument with Shane McGowan. The luck of the Irish came to the rescue, as Steve Lillywhite happened to be married to Kirsty MacColl, daughter of folk singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl (who wrote “Dirty Old Town”) and former vocalist in the punk band Drug Addix. “MacColl was the perfect foil for MacGowan. ‘Kirsty was the magic thing that happened there,’ Shane said in 2006. ‘The final thing was getting Kirsty into the studio and like saying ‘well I’ll have a crack at doing this,’ the way she did that vocal really put the stamp on the song. Fairytale was a proud moment, but it’s to do with the whole band plus Kirsty.” (ibid)

The composition is split into two parts, an introduction and the song proper, and it’s important to understand that the story begins and ends in the same place and time. The introduction is “live-and-in-person,” and the song proper consists of flashbacks. The male character never leaves the cozy confines of a New York City jail; one of his cellmates triggers memories of earlier times, and our hero relives those memories from his bunk. The music of the intro is set to an un-Pogues-like but beautiful arrangement of piano and strings, strengthening the sense of melancholy expressed in the lyrics and in Shane’s vocal:

It was Christmas Eve, babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The “Rare Auld Mountain Dew”
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I’ve got a feeling
This year’s for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

The nostalgic reference to “mountain dew” has nothing to do with the disgusting soda cherished by Americans, but an Irish version of moonshine known as Poitín celebrated in the old man’s song. Long before it became a commercial product, it was distilled in remote areas of Ireland to avoid problems with the authorities, and eventually the pots made their way to the tenements in New York known as “Irishtowns” that popped up during the diasporas of the 19th century. The real problem presented in the intro isn’t his boozing but his gambling habit. One lucky break does not guarantee that dreams will come true, and it’s probably the last lucky break our straw-clutching loser will have in his lifetime. His big win convinced him that things were going his way, and he likely used his newfound confidence to sell his honey on the idea to join him in America, the alleged land of opportunity.

A quick shift to a jaunty Irish music heralds memories of his love’s arrival in Manhattan, where we learn that her version of the American dream involved the bright lights of Broadway and that her companion made several promises he was never likely to keep (Kirsty’s lines in italics, Shane’s in plain type and shared lines underlined):

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City

When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing Galway Bay
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

Welcome to America, honey, where a sucker emigrates every day!

The anal author of the Wikipedia entry on the song felt the need to point out that “In reality, the NYPD (New York City Police Department) does not have a choir, the closest thing being the NYPD Pipes and Drums who are featured in the video for the song.” Oh, for fuck’s sake. The phrase “NYPD choir” has never been published in all caps, which identifies it as a generic reference, and by the way, Mr. Smartypants, “NYPD Pipes and Drums” is a mouthful that doesn’t fit the music! Now, be a good boy and look up the word “artistic license.” Sheesh.

To state the obvious, the best thing about this passage is the vocal duet, which works so well that it’s easy to believe that Shane and Kirsty are man and wife. That belief receives double confirmation in the subsequent passage when Kirsty unleashes one of the greatest streams of vitriol ever recorded and Shane gives it right back:

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

The BBC chose to bleep the word “faggot” because they found it likely to offend some listeners. Well, that decision earns another “oh for fuck’s sake” from yours truly because the Beeb failed to take context into account. This is a wife screaming at her husband in a fit of anger, not some crazy woman shouting at gay males out of hatred for homosexuals. The closest analogy can be found in African-American culture, where blacks use the N-word with each other. From the website Prejudice and Discrimination: “Another explanation for the use of this word is similar to a ‘family’ thing. In the nuclear family, you can criticize or call each other the cruelest of names (fat, ugly, stupid), but no one outside your family can make the same comment or there will be serious consequences. It’s the familial protectiveness that emerges and defends because you know your comments are not truly meant to harm or degrade your family, however anyone else’s comments are automatically suspect. This ‘family’ thing is similar to some blacks’ usage of the “N” word because no true harm is meant.” Appropriation of offensive language is always a slippery slope, but context is everything.

The BBC also censored the word “slut,” a decision I find exceptionally ludicrous and demeaning because I’m a slut and proud of it!

Bile spent, the couple calms down a bit and moves closer to reconciliation in the closing verse. While she’s still feeling enough pain to land a few jabs, our loser friend displays a certain humility regarding his failure to make her Broadway dream come true:

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

The narrative ends with the couple joining voices for another round of the “Galway Bay” chorus, followed by an extremely moving restatement of the song’s lovely melody by the string section, with strong support from Ranken’s full kit.

So . . . this isn’t The Londonderry Boys Choir raising their voices in “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” or Gene Autry singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” so how did a song about a miserable couple, one a drunk and the other an addict, become one of the most loved Christmas songs ever recorded (at least in Ireland and the U.K.)? I’ll let Dorian Lynskey of the Guardian explain this Christmas miracle:

Once upon a time a band set out to make a Christmas song. Not about snow or sleigh rides or mistletoe or miracles, but lost youth and ruined dreams. A song in which Christmas is as much the problem as it is the solution. A kind of anti-Christmas song that ended up being, for a generation, the Christmas song.

That song, “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues, has just been reissued to mark its 25th anniversary; it has already re-entered the Top 20 every December since 2005, and shows no sign of losing its appeal. It is loved because it feels more emotionally “real” than the homesick sentimentality of “White Christmas” or the bullish bonhomie of “Merry Xmas Everybody,” but it contains elements of both and the story it tells is an unreal fantasy of 1940s New York dreamed up in 1980s London.

I agree with the “emotionally real” aspect, but I would add that many people cherish “Fairytale of New York” because it is a real-life song about real people. Had Finer and MacGowan given us a happy ending where the lass becomes a Broadway star and her hubby a Broadway producer, the song would have wound up on the crap pile with all the other bullshit songs that celebrate the American dream or sell the notion that Christmas miracles are available to anyone and everyone. In our celebrity-worship world, we forget about the people who have little chance to catch a big break—and many of those “common people” worship celebrities to give their lives a faux sense of purpose and meaning. When I listen to “Fairytale of New York, ” I laugh, I cry, and I ache for all the people whose lives, in Jarvis Cocker’s words, “slide out of view.” “Fairytale in New York” is an aesthetic experience par excellence.

I should note that while the official video shows MacGowan handling the eighty-eights, James Fearnley plays the piano on the recording. Because Shane couldn’t play the piano, you see Fearnley’s hands tinkling away on the keyboard, wearing Shane’s rings in the close-ups. James was pissed off about the ruse, but in the end, he admitted that it looked good on the video.

“Metropolis” (Finer): This clever instrumental composition from Finer confirms the band’s desire to expand their musical horizons while demonstrating that the trusty Irish reel is simpatico with jazz (if the composer knows what he’s doing). The song opens with Fearnley beating the shit out of the piano and Ranken matching him beat for beat on the drums at blazing speed for a few measures before the band joins in with Spider Stacy blowing a quick, repeated figure on his tin whistle, supported by mandola (or mandolin). I like to think of the first half of the composition as “Morning in the Metropolis” with everyone rushing through the busy streets on their way to work or the bagel joint on the corner.

The second half begins with the band dropping out of the picture to allow Fearnley and Ranken to retake center stage, heralding the shift to nighttime. Seemingly out of nowhere (but actually from Finer’s keen sense of musical compatibility), a horn section appears playing jazz riffs, at which point I start giggling with delight. “Why are you giggling?” you ask. I’m giggling because what’s coming out of the horn section is unexpected and vaguely familiar. Let me put it another way . . . I am shocked—SHOCKED!—that producers of American cop shows have yet to employ the last half of “Metropolis” as a theme song. It’s fucking perfect for the genre, you morons! This half of the composition creates vivid pictures of people packing their favorite drinking holes and strip clubs, with all sorts of shady characters looming in the darkness, nailing down the details of some nefarious scheme. Shit, all the producers would need is a series of hand-held cam shots to complement the music and a few hard-bitten types to play the detectives, and a gazillion crime-TV junkies would turn the show into a mega-hit!

“Thousands Are Sailing” (Chevron): The origins of the song can be traced to the Irish diaspora of the 1980s, when nearly half a million people fled the Emerald Isle for better opportunities elsewhere, including the United States. The wave began while the Gipper was still struggling with inflation and an abnormally high unemployment rate, but the Irish came anyway, rightly concluding that the 7.5 percent unemployment rate in the States was a whole lot better than the 15.6 percent rate in Ireland. An estimated 200,000 entered the States on tourist or student visas and stayed after those visas expired.

This may sound impossible to believe today, but a good chunk of those “illegals” eventually received green cards due to changes to immigration law under two Republican presidents (Reagan and Bush 1).

Though inspired by events in the 80s, Chevron’s song covers the often tragic history of Irish immigration dating back to the Great Famine. As he explained to Carol Clerk, “The heart-sickness in ‘Thousands Are Sailing’ is not so much about missing home as about the alienation of being somewhere else, that sense of not belonging anywhere”. The first two verses make a mockery of “the land of opportunity,” as those who made the trip to Ellis Island during the Great Famine wound up in shit jobs or never made it at all.

The island, it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save
Did you work upon the railroad?
Did you rid the streets of crime?
Were your dollars from the White House?
Were they from the Five-and-Dime?

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?
And did they still make you cry?
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?
“Ah, no”, says he, “it was not to be
On a coffin ship I came here
And I never even got so far
That they could change my name”

Chevron notes that some of those who were fortunate enough to survive the trip made the best of it: “Fortune prevailing/Across the western ocean/Their bellies full/Their spirits free/They’ll break the chains of poverty/And they’ll dance.” The scene then shifts to the latest diaspora, where the immigrants stand in awe of the big city (“We stepped hand in hand on Broadway/Like the first man on the moon”) and celebrate their arrival by toasting Irish-American heroes . . . but when the excitement wears off, alienation rears its ugly head:

Then we said goodnight to Broadway
Giving it our best regards
Tipped our hats to Mister Cohan
Dear old Times Square’s favourite bard
Then we raised a glass to JFK
And a dozen more besides
When I got back to my empty room
I suppose I must have cried

The lyrics to the chorus change as the song proceeds, always opening with “Thousands are sailing/Across the western ocean,” and the version that moved me the most contains the lines “Where the hand of opportunity/Draws tickets in a lottery/Where e’er we go, we celebrate/The land that makes us refugees.” The lines touched my heart because it reminded me of the risks that Irish immigrants faced when they reluctantly left their homeland. Though coffin ships were by this time an ugly reality of the past, an emigrant still had to finance the journey, find work, deal with anti-immigrant bullshit, meet the ever-changing requirements for entry, and hail from ever-changing eligible countries—then wait to see if they made it through the random selection process of the lottery. I admire the emigrants for their grit and their continuing love of their country, even during the 80s diaspora, when they knew that their leaders were partially responsible for their refugee status through their mismanagement of the economy.

The music is set to a compatible pattern of A major in the verses and F# minor in the choruses, with a singer-friendly melody that makes the song a good candidate for a singalong. Unfortunately, MacGowan’s vocals lack his usual commitment, largely because he was pissed off about two lyrical passages: “And in Brendan Behan’s footsteps I danced up and down the street” (which he misunderstood) and “From guilt and weeping effigies” (which he considered blasphemous). In the rare instances when he agreed to perform the song live, he changed the words in those lines to “pissed, puked, crawled, shat, or spewed up and down the street” (Mamrak, ibid). After putting up with that crap for a while, McGowan took a back seat and let Fearnley handle the lead vocals.

“Fiesta” (MacGowan-Finer/Edmund Kötscher-Rudi Lindt): The only positive thing I can say about this party song is that I can understand why it worked as a closing number for concerts when accompanied by a shower of confetti. I could say more, but with all the negativity in our world today, I’d rather not add to the bad vibes. Let’s just say that not all of their attempts to cover non-Irish musical traditions worked out.

“Medley: The Recruiting Sergeant/The Rocky Road to Dublin/The Galway Races” (Traditional): Ah, there’s nothing like a triple jolt of Irish music to clear out the eardrums! The boys have no problem managing the tricky rhythmic structure that moves from a mid-tempo jig to an uptempo slip jig (in 9/8), then closes with an uptempo jig to ensure a thrilling climax. We’ll take a look at each piece in turn; note that these are abridged versions of the original compositions, and the boys did a superb job of capturing the essence of each piece.

“The Recruiting Sergeant”: In my review of Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, I quoted Robert Mamrak’s claim that “Throughout the Pogues’ heyday in the 1980s the band members were at pains to play down their Irishness,” primarily because it was bad business to be associated with the IRA. Well, this album came out in 1988, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that means it is an ’80s album recorded in their heyday. We’ve already seen one small burst of Irish patriotism in the title track (which included a dig at the Brits) and two stories on the subject of Irish immigration. If that isn’t enough to characterize Manrak’s assertion as off the mark, we’re about to see two more bits of Irish pride in response to British deceit, beginning with “The Recruiting Sergeant.” From Mainly Norfolk: “This is an anti-recruiting song and was composed by Seamus O’Farrell in 1915. The tune is that of The Peeler and the Goat. It was branded a ‘treason’ song by the British, and anyone heard singing it in public rendered himself liable to six months’ imprisonment. Anti-recruiting songs were a great vogue in Ireland . . . During World War I, before the Easter Rebellion and after Home Rule was proclaimed, the Irishmen, as subjects to the Crown, were ‘entitled’ to serve in the British Army (they would not be conscripted until 1918). To the more nationalistically aware of the Irish, the whole idea of volunteering to go and fight for ‘King and Empire’ was ludicrous—as ludicrous as this song about a chance meeting with an Irish patriot and a recruiting sergeant for the British Army.”

The song opens with a bit of martial drumming from Ranken, soon joined by Fearnley’s accordion. Terry Woods is paired with MacGowan in another vocal duet, with Woods carrying most of the load in the role of the reluctant recruit. The scene takes place in Ireland during the period when millions were dying in the trenches on the continent in the First World War, and Britain’s leaders were faced with a manpower shortage due to their stupid strategies and tactics. The British Sergeant’s first sally gives one the impression that he must be joking: “A life in Flanders for you then/Would be a fine vacation oh”. The recruit plays along for a bit, then opines, “It may be warm in Flanders/But it’s draughty in the trenches oh.” The sarge assures him that “the sandbags are so warm and high,” but after tossing a wink at a Cailín passing by, the potential recruit decides he’s had enough fun and games:

Come rain or hail or wind or snow
I’m not going out to Flanders oh
There’s fighting in Dublin to be done
Let your sergeants and your commanders go
Let Englishmen fight English wars
It’s nearly time they started oh

The “fighting in Dublin” is a reference to the 1916 Easter Uprising, the insurrection that would kick off a long, bloody struggle that eventually led to Home Rule and independence.

“Rocky Road to Dublin”: This instrumental breezes past just like the gale force winds bashing Ireland as I write. The abridged piece only takes up a minute of recording time, just enough to evoke fond memories for Irish listeners. Its main purpose here is transitional, serving to speed up the tempo for the equally speedy song that follows.

“The Galway Races“: The Dubliners had popularized this song celebrating the festival atmosphere of the Galway Races back in 1967, and the enthusiasm Shane brings to his vocals indicates he must have been dying to sing it himself. Beyond the colors, the crowds, the pipers and fiddlers, and the gambling (of course), the lyrics depict a diverse culture united in spirit and purpose, a land where everyone is welcome:

There were passengers from Limerick
And passengers from Nenagh
The boys of Connemara
And the Clare unmarried maiden
There were people from Cork City
Who were loyal, true and faithful
Who brought home the Fenian prisoners
From dying in foreign nations . . .

There was half a million people there
Of all denominations
The Catholic, the Protestant, the Jew, the Presbyterian
Yet there was no animosity
No matter what persuasion
But failte hospitality
Inducing fresh acquaintance

A couple of explanations are in order. The Fenians were an underground group dedicated to Irish independence who frequently traveled to Europe and North America in search of funding and support. “Failte” literally means “welcome,” applying to both greetings and a general ethos. Just so you don’t think Shane fucked it up, it’s pronounced “faw-CHAH.” When Shane explained that the Pogues’ music was “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,” he could have been thinking about this song.

The best parts come at the end of each verse when the boys switch to Irish scat and sing, “With me wack fol the do fol/The diddle iddle day” in unison. Don’t be afraid to try it at home! It’s the cure for everything!

“Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six” (Woods/MacGowan): Whether it had to do with Irishman Terry Woods tipping the balance or MacGowan’s seething outrage triggered by British tactics during the Troubles, the Pogues threw all caution to the wind and emphatically ended their neutral, “let’s play nice” stance regarding Irish-British relations with this medley. In sync with the priorities of an Irish-American icon, Woods and MacGowan “saw wrong and tried to right it.”

“Streets of Sorrow”: Here’s a tip: always double-check the “information” on any Wikipedia page. In its final form, “Streets of Sorrow” is not about Michael Collins as claimed on the page devoted to the album. Rocking in the Norselands got it right: “Originally it was a longer piece more specifically about Michael Collins, the Irish patriot and revolutionary. It was trimmed down to act as a prelude to ‘Birmingham Six,’ in the process focusing more on describing the pain and sadness on the streets of Northern Ireland at the height of ‘the Troubles.’”

Singing to a background of soft acoustic guitar, Terry mourns those who have lost their lives to the madness in a voice drenched in genuine sorrow, and decides he can no longer take the pain:

Oh, farewell you streets of sorrow
And farewell you streets of pain
I’ll not return to feel more sorrow
Nor to see more young men slain

Through the last six years I’ve lived through terror
And in the darkened streets the pain
Oh, how I’d love to find some solace
In my mind I curse the strain

So farewell you streets of sorrow
And farewell you streets of pain
No, I’ll not return to feel more sorrow
Nor to see more young men slain

You may wonder why he waited six years to leave the hellhole, but it’s hard to leave one’s home, and even harder to believe that no one in power would do everything they could to stop such madness. There were several mass killings in the United States before Sandy Hook made me realize that those in power would never do anything about it.

“Birmingham Six”: Let’s begin with the events that led MacGowan to rain hell on the U.K. government:

The Birmingham Six were Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker. Five of the men were born in Belfast, one in Derry. All six had lived in Birmingham, England, since the 1960s. They were arrested in November of 1974 while attempting to travel to Ireland the same day IRA bombs rocked two Birmingham pubs. All six Irishmen were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for carrying out the bombings. The terrorist attacks were the most deadly in England up until that time. Twenty-one people died and 162 were injured. The six were convicted of the crime on August 15, 1975. When they appeared in court again some three months later, all six were badly bruised and showed signs of having been brutalized in jail. Fourteen British prison officers were charged with assaulting the prisoners, but all were acquitted. MacGowan’s song also referenced The Guilford Four (Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong, and Carole Richardson), convicted of IRA bombings targeting pubs popular with British Army personnel a month before the Birmingham explosions. Four soldiers and one civilian were killed in those attacks. Sixty-five people were injured. The Guilford Four’s convictions were based on confessions that they claimed were extracted through torture. They too were sentenced to life in prison. The judge lamented that they had not been charged with treason so that he could have imposed the death penalty.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 77). (Function). Kindle Edition.

As we all learned from the post 9/11 period, the urge to wreak revenge on those believed to have committed acts of terror—or even look like terrorists—overrides rationality and any sense of justice.

It’s important to note that the song was released before the charges against the Birmingham Six were upheld by a British judge, so MacGowan’s suspicions must have been simmering in his brain for quite some time. It was time to let it all hang out, and over a background of rough, treble-loaded guitar, throbbing bass, pounding drums and the ironic sound of a tin whistle, Shane let the Brits fucking have it:

There were six men in Birmingham
In Guildford there’s four
That were picked up and tortured
And framed by the law
And the filth got promotion
But they’re still doing time
For being Irish in the wrong place and at the wrong time . . .

In Ireland they’ll put you away in the Maze
In England they’ll keep you for seven long days
God help you if ever you’re caught on these shores
The coppers need someone and they walk through that door

You’ll be counting years, first five, then ten
Growing old in a lonely hell
‘Round the yard and the stinking cell
From wall to wall, and back again

A curse on the judges, the coppers and screws
Who tortured the innocent, wrongly accused
For the price of promotion and justice to sell
May the judged by their judges when they rot down in hell

The Maze was a prison and internment camp in Northern Ireland that was used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles (you can read about the Steve McQueen film and all the horrors of the place in The Guardian).

The British had every right to ban the song on both television and radio, as McGowan’s attack could be interpreted as aiding and abetting the still active IRA terrorists. Fortunately, someone working in the British justice system had the guts to pose the question, “What if this guy got it right and we got it wrong?”

In October of 1989 the Guilford Four’s convictions were overturned on appeal. The appeals court ruled that the confessions were obtained through torture and that the police had withheld evidence clearing the four. They were released after spending 15 years in prison. Shortly thereafter, Gerry Conlan of the four was being introduced onstage as a special guest at Pogues’ gigs. Two years later a British court of appeals agreed that the Birmingham Six had indeed been framed and they were released after serving 16 years for a crime they didn’t commit. In 2001, a decade after their release, the six men were awarded compensation ranging from $1.2 to $1.8 million. MacGowan and the Pogues received no apology.

Mamrak, Robert. Rake at the Gates of Hell: Shane MacGowan in Context (p. 78). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Of course, we don’t know for sure if MacGowan’s song turned the trick, but after its release, several articles appeared in the newspapers questioning the convictions. The lesson here is you never know what can happen if you make an effort, and you’ll never change anything by sitting on your ass and doing nothing.

“Lullaby of London” (MacGowan): My first exposure to this song came not from the Pogues, but from June Tabor and the Oysterband, who recorded the song two years after the Pogues’ version. Hell, I didn’t even know who Shane McGowan was back then, but I do know this: when June Tabor decides to cover a song, she only chooses songs written by the best. The Oysterband version is played at a quicker tempo, while the Pogues’ version is noteworthy for its stunning collage of instrumentation: accordion, banjo, bass guitar, cello, concertina, cittern, drums, dulcimer, guitar, mandolin, and tin whistle. I love both versions.

One must wonder why a guy who had no children chose to write a lullaby. Nicki Swift’s research on the subject only raises more questions:

Shane MacGowan spent the majority of his life walking on the dark side, which ultimately formed his decision to never have children. “I wouldn’t wish myself on any kid as a father,” MacGowan reportedly once told The Telegraph (via The Mirror). However, it has to be noted that in their obituary, The Telegraph reports that MacGowan and his longtime partner-turned-wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, never had any kids together, but it’s believed that he “fathered several with other women, though he never knew how many.”

Still, Clarke was adamant that they weren’t made of good parenting stock. She told The Guardian that when their close friend, Johnny Depp, suggested they should have kids, she shot him down in flames. “I said the thing is, if we had children, Shane would probably set fire to them,” Clarke recounted. “I was terrified Shane was going to burn down the house because he was always dropping his cigarettes. He set fire to John Belushi’s bungalow at Chateau Marmont.”

Hah! Another advantage that women have over men: we sure as hell would know if we’d had a baby!

My interpretation of the lyrics is that Shane was thinking of his childhood and remembering a lullaby his mother sang to him at bedtime. The opening verse may take place in London, but his mind is on the place where he grew up: County Tipperary.

As I walked down by the riverside
One evening in the spring
Heard a long gone song
From days gone by
Blown in on the great North wind

The noise of the metropolis has him longing for the “lonesome corncrake’s cry off sorrow and delight” and his mother’s soothing voice telling him not to worry about the spirits:

So I pray now child that you sleep tonight
When you hear this lullaby
May the wind that blows from haunted graves
Never bring you misery
May the angels bright
Watch you tonight
And keep you while you sleep

Hold on to that warm feeling for a while before you proceed to the next track, because Shane is about to leave you with a bad case of insomnia.

“Sit Down by the Fire” (MacGowan): “MacGowan has called ‘Sit Down by the Fire,’ another full speed ahead number, ‘a typical Irish bedtime story.’ If that’s true, nightmares must be rampant in Ireland.” (Mamrak, ibid).

When Shane opens the song with the lines “Sit down by the fire/And I’ll tell you a story/To send you away to your bed,” you may say to yourself, “What the fuck? Another lullaby?” All I can say is “proceed at your own risk.”

The storyteller then warns the kid of creepy things that stop by in the night while on their way to hell, “the things that you see when you wake up and scream,” and there’s only one way to survive the experience:

And if ever you see them . . .

Pretend that you’re dead
Or they’ll bite off your head
They’ll rip out your liver
And dance on your neck
They dance on your head
They dance on your chest
They give you the cramp
And the cholic for jest

All this is set to a jolly reel with a few screams here and there for effect. I’ll sum it up by admitting I will never completely understand how Shane McGowan’s brain worked.

“The Broad Majestic Shannon” (MacGowan): Marmak praised the song to high heavens, and Shane thought it should have been the lead single, but it’s clear to me that the only song on the album worthy of lead single release was “Fairytale in New York.” As the closing song to an album where the Pogues embraced Irishness without feeling guilty about it, the song works like a charm, and though it probably would have been a hit in Ireland, I doubt it would have stirred much interest in Britain. The song lacks a strong hook, is loaded with Irish place names and cultural references that non-Irish would not understand, and you don’t hear a word about the Shannon until the closing line.

Commercial considerations aside, it is a beautiful song that captures not only Shane’s feelings and memories of his childhood in Tipperary but also the feelings and memories of the Irish emigrants longing for their homeland. As the Shannon runs through eleven Irish counties, many inhabitants of Ireland have taken a stroll down its banks or rowed down the river on a sunny day (alas, it takes a left turn before reaching Cork County). The song is most certainly nostalgic, but MacGowan added a qualifier when he spoke about its meaning: “It’s about the good old days and they’re gone, and we’ve got to accept it.” (Songfacts) This need to let go of the past is best expressed in the chorus, but I think it has more impact when coupled with the nostalgic verses:

The last time I saw you was down at the Greeks
There was whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks
You sang me a song that was pure as the breeze
On a road leading up Glenaveigh

I sat for a while at the cross at Finnoe
Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom
Heard the men coming home from the fair at Shinrone
Their hearts in Tipperary wherever they go

Take my hand and dry your tears, babe
Take my hand, forget your fears, babe
There’s no pain, there’s no more sorrow
They’re all gone, gone in the years, babe

The arrangement features Jem Finer’s banjo on one channel and Chevron’s mandolin on the other, with their bright arpeggios supported by Spider Stacy’s tin whistle. The mood mingles joy with wistfulness, almost making me wish I’d emigrated to Ireland as a child and experienced the Ireland of Shane’s youth.

“Worms” (Traditional): Okay! I’m just going to forget that this awful piece of crap is the closing track so I can leave the album with the beauty of “The Broad Majestic Shannon” ringing in my ears.

*****

After a week of fretting about the likelihood of a European war, I found If I Should Fall From Grace with God to be something of an antidote for fear. Laughter always helps to heal the soul, but the displays of courage to call out injustice were deeply inspiring and reminded me that even though I’m just one little person with little power to speak of, I can still raise my voice against evil and perhaps inspire others to do the same. No one person is going to save us from oblivion, but if we join voices in an effort to stop the madness, we just might live long enough to build a brighter future.