‘One of music’s greatest’: Shane MacGowan, folk-punk Pogues frontman, dies aged 65

The brilliant, complex songwriter and lead singer of Celtic folk-punk band The Pogues, died at the age of 65 after a long illness, his widow announced.

Shane MacGowan performs on stage at the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park in central London, on July 5, 2014. Picture: AFP.

Shane MacGowan, songwriter and lead singer of Celtic folk-punk band The Pogues, died early Thursday at the age of 65 after a long illness, his widow announced.

“Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me … has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese,” wrote MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clarke in an Instagram post.

Later, the band said on its official website that “Shane died peacefully at 3.30am this morning (30 November, 2023) with his wife and sister by his side.” MacGowan, who claimed he had never been sober since he was 14, took no notice of doctors and concerned friends who urged him to give up the drink and drugs, stubbornly defying medical science for years. Sinead O’Connor was so distressed by his heroin addiction she turned police informer and had him arrested “for his own good”. The bust helped to wean him off narcotics but his appetite for binge drinking continued unabated.

He had been in and out of hospital in Dublin since July.

MacGowan had lost all of his teeth by 2015, and a documentary, Shane MacGowan: A Wreck Reborn, followed one Irish dentist as she took on the task of replacing 28 dentures, which she dubbed “the Everest of dentistry”.

Apart from a dissolute and self-destructive lifestyle, MacGowan was famous for penning the Christmas classic Fairytale of New York, a duet sung with Kirsty MacColl in 1987.

Co-formed by MacGowan, the Pogues fused punk and Irish folk music. He was born in England but spent much of his childhood in Ireland with his mother’s family.

Shane MacGowan with wife Victoria Mary Clarke. Picture: victoriamaryclarke/Instagram

The band became an international symbol of Irishness, both at home and for the sprawling diaspora, with MacGowan’s contribution recognised in a slew of tributes from political leaders.

“Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists,” Irish President Michael D. Higgins said in a statement.

“So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them,” he said.

Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar called MacGowan “an amazing musician and artist”.

“His songs beautifully captured the Irish experience, especially the experience of being Irish abroad,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Micheal Martin, Varadkar’s deputy, said he was “devastated” by MacGowan’s death, calling him “iconic”.

“His passing is particularly poignant at this time of year as we listen to Fairytale of New York – a song that resonates with all of us,” he wrote.

There were tributes too from Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army paramilitary group which fought for decades against British rule in Northern Ireland.

The Pogues’ 1988 song “Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six”, which recounted the plight of six Irishmen wrongly imprisoned for deadly pub bombings in Birmingham, was banned from British airwaves.

The 1974 attacks that killed 21 and left scores more injured were blamed on the IRA.

The Birmingham Six saw their convictions quashed on appeal in 1991. Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald called MacGowan “a poet, dreamer and social justice champion”.

“He was a republican and a proud Irish man. Nobody told the Irish story like Shane. He sang to us of dreams and captured stories of emigration,” she said.

Her predecessor Gerry Adams – a central figure in “The Troubles” and a close friend of MacGowan and Clarke – said: “Ireland has lost a great patriot, a poet and friend of the down-trodden and marginalised.”

At Dublin’s Irish Music Wall of Fame, fans paid their respects, noting that his death came after the loss of O’Connor. “When Sinead O’Connor passed a few months ago her mural was up for months and months and I think we’ll see the same reception with Shane MacGowan,” said barman Eoin McLoughlin, 21.

Outside the Olympia Theatre where The Pogues regularly performed, book editor Neil Burkey, 45, said MacGowan was “a pivotal figure” for Irish people, particularly in 1980s London. “That was a bad time to be Irish in many ways, and he gave Irish people a voice,” he said. “It was quite a wild voice, he was a wild person, but he was greatly loved in Ireland, he’ll definitely be missed.”