“Discrimination was rife,” the author writes. Balls notes that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were at a critical stage and the IRA was still conducting bombing campaigns in London and other parts of Britain. Punk might have been a free-for-all, but the early Eighties was a hard time to be Irish in London. In Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan, an affecting and sometimes hard-to-watch documentary about the musician released last year by filmmaker Julien Temple, MacGowan riposted that Lydon had failed to see the “IRA” emblazoned on his forehead. Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols would question MacGowan’s Irish bona fides, writing in his memoir that Shane conveniently traded in the Union Jack garb he wore at Pistols shows for an Irish tricolour when he joined the Pogues. Soon, he formed his first band, the Nipple Erectors (or Nips), with girlfriend Shanne Bradley. He put out a fanzine and was frequently interviewed by the establishment press, achieving national notoriety after his ear was bitten off at a Clash gig, an incident that was written up in NME. Balls recounts how the young MacGowan, after his release from a psychiatric ward around the age of 19, found his calling living and breathing punk during the Sex Pistols’ ascent. Some of the first traditionalists to hear the Pogues amalgamations might have been shocked, even appalled, but other icons of traditional Irish music such as the Dubliners and Christy Moore understood the power of MacGowan’s writing early on.īefore joining the Pogues in the mid-1980s, MacGowan had been a fixture on London’s punk scene he could be seen pogoing in the front row at endless gigs and going by the alias Shane O’Hooligan. Now residing in Dublin, he still speaks with an English accent, but maintains that he is Irish, for it was those experiences in Ireland that MacGowan says formed his musical and spiritual core. The son of Irish émigré parents, MacGowan was born and raised in England and spent childhood summers and holidays in rural County Tipperary, Ireland, with his mother’s extended family of staunch Irish republicans.
“Some of these never get resolved and probably never will be, but I am determined not to give up in my quest to sort the myths from the truths and better understand this shy and complex man,” Balls writes.
18 in the U.S., Balls has attempted through extensive interviews and research to do what has proved so difficult through the years - to parse where the facts end and the myth begins. A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan by British journalist Richard Balls serves up the most thorough account of the man - and myth - to date. When it comes to the story of MacGowan’s life, it has never been about “just the facts.” However, an attempt has now been made. To further complicate the matter, Shane MacGowan’s hatred of interviews is almost as notorious as his long and sophisticated affair with drugs and alcohol.
Writing the biography of the man best known for marrying traditional Irish music with British punk - a sound once described by concertina player Noel Hill of the band Planxty as a “terrible abortion” of Irish music - was never going to be easy.