"and when I hear the cannons roar and the the bloody shites of war...?" "well my old man was uhh in charge was uhh in apartment around to see about a job in Dublin because they don't even have a store in Dublin... yeah?" "right and what..." "I don't even they was doing some kind of no he was in the same old no but it's the same kind of fucking... nowhere... fucking" "I'm nowhere now and I will be nowhere when I die it's a joke... you know what I mean?" "it's like they said... it's a ?" "you know?" "but I mean like I'm clinically insane" "Shane's decided that he's clinically insane because he has..." "I haven't decided..." "I remembered you know what I mean?" "you remembered you were?" "and I'll be..." "like it's not that... that's just the first time they did it yeah?" "'bout seven countries now... you know?" "you're clinically insane in 7 countries?" "yeah like doing... doing you know like... tests you know... psychological tests on ?" "he had a brilliant brain I mean that's all I know" "just didn't have it a few... a few billion cells later ehh?" "I started off as a healthy, fucking" "Tipperary farm boy you know what I mean?" "I came over here and degenerated into a... into a... into a...?" "and a drunkard and drug user and thief" "it was very very difficult to get employment in Ireland in the 60's you know... it was very difficult indeed uhh... there was very little employment really many many people had to go abroad to either England or somewhere else" "America or somewhere else to actually earn a living and... uhh..." "Maurice was one of those really so we uhh we had to go to London we started off in Ealing which I hated with a great hatred having... coming from Dublin it was a real dreary London suburb" "we tried to leave Shane in Ireland as much as possible when he was young during his holidays he always returned to Ireland the house my mother was brought up in and I was brought up in for a large part of my life" "is a very remote townland yeah... called Carney Commons like... which is in the parish of Finnoe it's near the town of Borrisokane that's my home my official home that's where I live when I'm not" "staying in London because of business and the band being based in London although they're all Irish... yeah?" "and... uhh... whenI'm not touring... youknow... his heart and soul always lay in Ireland in Tipperary that's where his spiritual home was it's where... you know... the whole his heart was there really" "I came from a musical family we always sang and... and most people played an instrument and my mother was... uhh... you know... one of those ?" "for singing and dancing and singing in Irish as well my memory from the earliest days is a house of music and song and story-telling they all... practically all played instruments... youknow...concertina mellodion, piano... what you" "you know... name it they played it and... and so therefore it was also what I would call an open house" "I suppose really it was a house that everybody gravitated to he was singing from a very early age and acting as he was singing songs" "do you know... do you remember the Hole In The Bucket?" "remember that song?" "Oh Lord!" "and he was only two-and-a-half he was that fast and it was a scream to look at him yeah... he's amazing okay when I started going to school in England like... you know like... uhh... that was back in '87" "right... you know..." "like that was a horrific fucking change of... uhh..." "life we moved down to Tunbridge Wells we had quite a nice little place there and after a while there we... we decided to go to London to the famous Barbican where all the trouble broke loose... you know because" "Therese wasn't able to handle the built up aspects of London you know it's on a huge scale and the Barbican was a massive sort of fortress the family all became very emotionally disturbed it was a situational disturbance basically" "we had loads of good times don't get me wrong... right?" "yeah?" "but at a certain stage of the game... right?" "yeah?" "like uhh... yeah..." "I mean I..." "I started doing the normal teenage things... you know and I got knicked... you know?" "he was getting into trouble at his school... you know?" "he was getting into trouble there for various things and then he..." "I think he was doing a bit of drug-taking at that stage the doctor had put me on Valium" "100mg a day because I had a nervous breakdown after my mum had one... yeah?" "that's a heavy dosage it's not as heavy as what he had her on she was on real zombie stuff... yeah?" "I used to go out every morning and kick her to see if she was alive you know what I mean... right?" "I had to go into the drug ward of a mental hospital and uhh..." "I stayed in the hospital called Bethelehem..." "like the main... one of the big ones it's the main one in London" "he overdid the drugs no two ways about that" "I mean that was the case..." "I mean so he rebelled... really... at that stage... you know?" "perhaps he did it a bit earlier than people used to rebel at that time in those days... youknow?" "Shane gave up the formal education system at the invitation of the establishment at around twelve or so he'd been caught with cannabis or some nonsense like that and... umm... we were invited around to the... uhh... headmaster's study" "a fellow called Ray... a right wanker and... uhh... we went down there anyway... the two of us and... uhh... he talked about you know the terrible crime that" "Shane had committed" "I listened to all this... and... uhh and I said, "What do you want to do about it?"" "and he said, "Well, I'd prefer if" "Shane didn't come back next term."" "I said, "Fine, you know," "I don't want him to come back to this stupid, fucking cunt of a place, anyway. " you know?" "that was more or less how it ended and I went off do you want to go back and see your old teacher?" "what do I want to..." "Spellman?" "no I don't think I have to my dad did a pretty good job in there" "I think he's probably exiled himself to somewhere far away... you know?" "well I think he had him up... up on the... fucking thrown against the wall... you know?" "you know shouting and cursing and being a racist prick you know" "I mean he had a happy childhood" "I mean uhh... the education didn't spoil that in any way he just didn't contribute to his development in any way" "we got on basically that" "I got kicked out of school because I was such an outrageous little turd in England... right?" "I was obviously turning into a complete scumbag right... you know what I mean?" "the more time I spent in England right... yeah?" "right... yeah... you know what I mean?" "yeah?" "like... from being a decent person yeah..." "like uhh... you'd notice it tell us about uhh... falling in love... where'd you meet?" "in a pub why did I ask that question..." "why did I ask that question his best friend was a friend of mine" " Spider the tin whistle player - oh I tell ya and it was because of him that we kept meeting and then there was one day" "I just looked at him and saw beauty where before I'd seen hideous" "arrogance and..." " obnoxiousticity" "I think he's such a strong personality and has such a sense of... he's so spirited and he has so much a sense of adventure and so much fearlessness around um... around doing things in public doing things like going on stage" "starting bands umm... going out dressed up in all kinds of weird clothes and getting into all kinds of trouble things that I wouldn't have had the nerve to do myself that's... that's what I find so appealing is" "that you know... umm... the sheer nerve... and the... and the exuberance... and the imagination what makes you happy?" "you do" "how do I make you happy?" "it can't be explained in words... you know maybe in Irish it could be... you know?" "it's a larger vocabulary... you know?" "like" " hmm?" " anything?" "can we go in there?" "hey..." "look at this... this bike this is uhh... a fifty pound bag for a junkie... right?" "all he needs is a hacksaw... right?" "take that bike up sell it tomorrow" "what you wanna be a star?" "i'll pay you back I'll be a star yeah why not?" "I'm all that stands between the fact of fucking Irish culture and like" "and uhh... the life of Irish culture" "when I fell in love with him was when" "I actually saw his sensitive side and that was quite early on that was... you know... ummm umm... maybe I was about 20?" "so it would mean 14 years ago" "sometimes I think he romanticizes me in the same way that he romanticizes Ireland or it's almost like the me that he writes about doesn't really exist and I'm a kind of an imaginary figure like I'm not gonna ?" "or something it's obvious that it's not really me it's a... yeah... romantic ideal" "I think he's an idealist taken to an extreme he's not really as much of a realist as he might like to think" "we knew he was brilliant at writing and English and all that kind of thing and Maurice said, "I suppose you will probably earn your living as a writer. "" "He said, "I will, Dad, but not in the way you're talking about. "" ""I'll earn my living," he said," ""through music, writing through music, because that's the way you communicate with people now-a-days. "" ""It's a much better form of, lighter form of communication. "" "I remember him saying that to me you're a little bit pissed are you?" "a little bit?" "mostly you're enjoying yourself yeah" "I suppose you see I thought it might be more in the book form rather than the... umm... sound form" "but uhh... you know really that's before twelve" "I knew around twelve it wasn't going to be that because there was Bob Dylan blowing one ear out and the Grateful Dead blowing the other" "and so I knew there was something going on there" "well take my number and give me a ring well give us your number then you got a pen and paper?" "yes I have... now here you are i want your phone number do you want me to hold your drink while you're at it?" "I mean once I was out of school I was alright you know and I could use all the things that were good about London like the drugs and the clubs and the loose women and the Pistols were playing really good" "rock and roll, hard rock and roll and what's more they were my generation and what's more they were singing about how boring London was and..." "like... they were being totally nihilistic and that was the way I felt when I go out and see 'em out of the bin you know" "I was working at a shop it wasn't a shop it was a stall a market stall at the end of Gerard Street in Soho, in London and one day Shane walked into the stall and..." "like he was uhh... he was slightly shook looking is what I'd say he had matted long hair down to his shoulders" "and heavily caked with one thing or other" "I don't know what and he looked a bit dazed he said that he had... uhh... been in hospital you know" "I knew he was on pills or something like that but he was lucid whenever we started talking and... uhh... he just started to hang around the shop" "as soon as he discovered what was happening in the punk scene which was, "trust yourself,"" "whatever talent you thought you had and if uhh... you felt you could make get out there and do it and Shane did" "there's one punk... the Sex Pistols the rest of them are rubbish" "I'm not interested what's more I probably wouldn't have been that interested in them if Johnny Rotten hadn't been so bloody obviously Irish you know" "and made a big noise about it and made such anti-English records... yeah?" "no future in England's dreamin'" "punk was speed-fueled which was why everybody was so bloody obnoxious you know spitting in your face and getting aggressive and fighting and all the rest of it but you know that was the scene the youth scene mods punks and so it was all speed" "and that was... that would have been the general drug speed and drink" "God save the queen... she ain't no human being... she's made you a moron" "potential h-bomb he uhh... started producing a fanzine the first I heard of his creative bent and uhh..." "Shane came in with his fanzine and started selling that and then the next thing I knew he was putting a band together" "myself and my partner in the shop at the time decided we would try and manage the Nips as they were then called well actually they were called the Nipple Erectors but we had a problem in that people didn't want" "Nipple Erectors on posters it was supposed to be sexist which I could never understand since everybody's got them but umm... we had to shorten it from the Nipple Erectors to the Nips" "he's well-known as a very good lyricist a poet even for the" "Pogues stuff that he writes but even the stuff that he was writing for the Nips was um... even if you had taken it out of the pop context and put an air to it it still would have been... it could have been a Pogues song you know?" "things like Gabrielle you know?" "let's go down to the old West End you know?" "like we used to do when you were my girlfriend... take the 73 to the city... you sitting there looking so pretty" "the crap I wrote for the Nips" "I could write in my sleep you know it was pop you know" "you know I mean..." "like you know..." "I mean like it was a... it was a teenage anthem you know" "I've never stopped writing adolescent crap" "it's just some people can't tell the real... you know... pop from the real thing you know?" "he always said he wanted to be a pop star always you know and he said he wasn't going to hang around he was going to be a pop star and when he first like... when the Noisey Boyseys first began" "which later became the Pogues" "I remember we went down to see the first gig must have been just about the first gig down in Steve Stanger's club and there was us and one or two others and umm... a bunch of squatties I think" "who were just back from northern" "Ireland who were all eating chips and proceeded to pelt the stage with chips throughout and there was Shane up on the stage sort of singing Paddy Works On The Railroad and and Irish songs" "it should have occurred to me it was so fucking obvious a fucking thing to do to fucking play really good" "Irish songs to a young audience you know the Pogues could never have been an Irish band indigenously it could never have happened in Ireland" "I'm..." "I'm absolutely certain of that it would never have happened from within the island and the Pogues needed to happen from the Diaspora if you like in Mary Robinson's uhh memorable phrase it... it... it uhh needed to happen from... it's like there's two Irelands" "the people who live on the island and there's people who went away or who are second generation and very often uhh... you know that gives a different point of view on the culture on what it is to be Irish" "he affected a lot of Irish people in London at the time for the better in a huge way just by making it possible to kind of claim back umm some sense of pride in being Irish because like putting it into context" "you had the Balcombe street seige you had bombs going off right left and center it was... there was a lot of racism in London at the time and a lot of anti-Irish talk uhh every time there was another bomb" "so for him to turn around and kind of celebrate his Irish culture was a... was a... was a very strange thing and... and to give voice to his experience of it was... like in the lyrics and when he began" "writing the songs and that was what was such a huge revelation with the Pogues all I did was take extremely old-fashioned Irish music proper Irish music paeans or old-fashioned... you know in terms of people like" "Horslips and Clancy and Diarmaid yeah... right and like uhh you know like you know... you know the music you know ceilidh music and you know jigs reels like lyrics about drinking fucking fighting you know like uhh you know romantic lyrics about" "love and rebellion everything else yeah?" "I am going I am going where the streams of whiskey are flowing" "it's not exactly an Erin moor in the county Galway one summer's evening in the month of May" "I met a damsel both fair and handsome she nearly took my breath away is it now?" "the day the record arrived in uhhh... you know it didn't leave the turntable for days it was the most exciting thing that had aired in a long long time you must remember this is the early 80's" "where the charts were full of extremely bland and mechanical music ahh... it looked like you know... after the after the sort of the first uhh... blossom of the punk movement uhhh... it seemed to all go" "horribly wrong very quickly uhh... the music went backward retreated back into its sort of soporific state so it's almost hard really now in retrospect to say just how exciting that was to hear an album played by human beings with" "real instrument and so on it was revolutionary for its time" "the stuff we play like is... is uhh well it's more fucked up basically you know because like... because like you are more fucked up if you live in London than if you live in uhh... you're not more fucked up than if you" "live in Belfast or somewhere like that obviously but you're more fucked up than uhh... if you live in a nice little town in Tipperary or somewhere like that" "Elvis Costello had produced my record Captains and Kings so I brought Elvis to see the Pogues which were obviously the happening band in London at the time and I realize in retrospect actually that what happened that night is that Elvis fell in love twice over" "once with the Pogues and then with the Pogue's bass player all that happened I think instantaneously I realize now and and he went on to produce" "Rum Sodomy and the Lash is it hard to produce uhh... this kind of sound?" "no no uhhh... people got the uhh... have a misapprehension that the band can't play the band can play really well" "the sound's changed because Costello came in and produced it right?" "and the way he produces is like really kind of clinical and kind of like you know?" "the best way to record us is live you know in the studio with as few takes as possible on the vocal but Costello believed in hundreds of takes making me do the vocal hundreds of times and then kind of splitting" "it up from bits of all that to make up a Frankenstein monster yes a word out here and a word out there... youknow?" "he'd drop in between uhh... you know?" "despite the fiddles uhh..." "like" "Frankenstein productions like you know?" "the raw energy comes through you know what I mean?" "it's a great album because it's great fucking music it's a great band you know what I mean?" "it's great music you know what I mean?" "and it wasn't all written by me you know what I mean?" "i mean half was written by me... yeah?" "and like... you know... it's a great band in the peak of their... of their... of their of their uhh... of their uhh... they're in their peak you know what I mean?" "you know?" "when I'm at home... you know?" "I... uhh... watch telly..." "listen to music read books... and play the guitar... yeah?" "and... uhh... every now and then I get an idea you find a riff that sounds good..." "like... yeah and then a melody suggest itself but really... it's just that" "I don't know how it happens it's like Mozart said... it's music from heaven or hell... depending on whether you like it... you know?" "either... uhh... why aren't there shares why hasn't the church got... oh yeah the church have got shares but what are they trading under?" "you know what I mean?" "is it orange juice or uhh..." "light metals err... uhh... uhh... is Bill Gates a fucking front for uhh... for uhh..." "El Papa?" "is Bill Gates the new Jesus Christ?" "after Rum Sodomy and the Lash uhh... the band obviously altered a little in as much as I came in later on in that album and then Terry Woods came in and then uhh Darrel Hunter replaced Cait O'Reardon on bass" "so the sound was changing and developing and and different... different elements were coming into play" "I thought he was an incredible lyric writer great singer and the songs were really beautiful and then the next album came out" "If I Should Fall With Grace... is that right?" "umm... and I just thought some of the lyric writing on that was uhh... was unbelievable umm... kind of head and shoulders above what anyone else was doing umm... it had uhh... a simplicity to it that was just" "and beauty about it was just extraordinary I thought the long gap between" "Rum Sodomy and the Lash and" "If I Should Fall From Grace With God which was a lot to do with uhh record company problems which are far too boring to go into but it delayed recording a new album for awhile but in retrospect that was the best thing" "that could have happened because we had... we'd use that time to develop a kind of new sound well a bigger version of the same sound and to just build confidence in what the band were doing" "there was... uhh... energy in in the way that the way that he wrote uhh from my point of view i was... i was writing very different sorts of lyrics I think and for a lot of different reasons" "from... from as early on as I can remember actually umm I was trying to make an effort in some way... to show that I could write and that was the difference between I think me and Shane and that's what made" "Shane such a great writer was his complete effortlessness umm... it just looked like it just sort of dropped out of him and uhh... and there wasn't a bad line amongst it it's just... just beautiful stuff" "what?" "has Mickey gone home?" "this is where Francis Bacon used to drink he was Irish and queer and a right wanker I think" "hello there!" "Pascal" "C'mere you bastard [speaking Greek?" "]" "this is Michael this is the uhh... proprietor and and this is Pascal... the beautiful proprietoress hostess from... uhh... from Greece what do you want?" "I should never stop telling you the drinks are incredibly wonderful... sorrowful" " shut up you asshole - uhh like singing acting..." "like they invented tragedy they invented comedy" "and tonight's tragi-comedy is just about to commence" "when I was a sponge-diver" "I dived 14 million feet into the sea to pick up a sponge and did you use it?" "I sold it to an American" "his music is very spontaneous and it comes... it seems to just flow through him when he's writing music it seems that he has music in his head and it sort of comes through... and I think that the state of mind" "he's in when hes when he's writing is quite detached from what we would think of as a normal day-to-day way of functioning" "he's not logical... he doesn't umm he doesn't try to write music he allows music to be... to come through him" "I mean I think..." "I think Shane is a kind of master at... uhh the opening lines of songs... are always you know uhh... unbelievably good you know Christmas eve babe in the drunk tank" "every piece got completely erased beginning to end by the media every note okay?" "like I mean apart from a few notes by Jim" "I mean a little riff by Jim you know... okay?" "but I'm saying like the orchestral arrangement was by me... yeah?" "you know?" "Steve Lilywhite was talking about using us uhh... a machine could do it you know what I mean?" "I said, "No way!"" "it's gotta be the real thing yeah we almost had a number one single with" "Fairytale of New York... yeah but the Pet Shop Boys had other ideas with their Elvis Presley cover uhh... but even they would have to have conceded I think that morally we were the number one record that week" "uhh... it's the greatest Christmas song since White Christmas you know uhh and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas those three... they're the alltime greats" "I still think it's an extraordinary record coming as it did out of nothing and even though the first two albums had primed people for kind of what to expect with the Pogues" "I don't think anyone for a second expected the riches of" "Fairytale of New York" "I loved the boat... yeah?" "you don't get treated like a piece of shit like you do on an airplane unless you're a fucking executive you know?" "like... yeah?" "I liked that boat quite a lot... yeah?" "there or there or over there?" "no... how about there or there?" "double gin and tonic lots of ice slice of lemon" "glad to meet you" "I'm so glad you made it how you doing?" "how you doing man?" "you got your hair... your beard cut off aye... sort of... yeah" "the impression I think a lot of people get is that... you know... it's Shane MacGowan... crazy guy there were fifteen crazy guys the crew as well we fell around the world" "I don't know how we got from A to B we were all piss drunk all of the time" "I never envied uhh..." "Joey" "Cashman's job as tour manager" "I thought that was... that must be... what's the worst job you ever had?" "I was the Pogues tour manager yeah... great there's no such thing as the good old days oh no... that's not true..." "Joey no that's not true as tour manager I would be..." "I would organize the rooms and that at reception and uhh guys who were particularly drunk so I asked them to stay outside so that the hotel people wouldn't see them before we could at least get our keys and get into the hotel" "so..." "I was in the middle of doing that and there were quite a few bands staying there and I heard a bit of a commotion" "I turned around and... uhh" "Shane was being umm... helped in by Big Charlie and somebody else they had an arm each over their shoulders and he had uhh... his leather trousers were down around his knees he had no underpants on and they were dragging him along" "his feet were just going like that and uhh..." "I just said to the receptionist you know" ""What kind of a hotel is this?"" "you know... what are these people as if I had nothing to do with them do you want to hear what it says?" "Shane MacGowan and the Pogues and the Pogues is in the same size letters as my name for some reason... right?" "you know Shane MacGowan's influence on" "Irish music cannot be overestimated" "I don't think it's true to say that all of us were drinking too much but certainly for some people in the band alcohol had become a major problem" "MacGowan's deceptively simple songs" "I'd like to know what's so bloody simple about them try and play them... cunt contain worldly words of life and lifetimes of experience and he compresses all manner of human passion into his work desperate DESPERATE to communicate" "everything he has lived and found down to the last ounce of commitment and urgency if you had issues with alcohol there was no better... trust me there was no better place in the world to bury them and hide them" "than in the Pogues you know?" "because the whole culture that built around the band uhh... positively you know... demanded it" "a couple of nice ones when you're that age that's what you want to do you want to um... you want to drink too much and take too many drugs and stay up all night and behave badly" "and of course you... know they were just having a good time" "I knew he drank alot but it wasn't so much that he drank alot but that he seemed to be doing it more out of desperaton at that point more as a way of avoiding people than as a way of joining in" "whereas when I first met him he was a very sociable sort of person and he would drink umm... with people you know with me or with whoever when it got really bad" "I could see him like... put down a bottle of gin before he went on stage just to umm just to make himself feel able to get on stage I think" "I love Them" "I love the dance stuff" "I love the dance stuff..." "Astral Weeks" " I like all the albums" " I love Them stuff" " I like all his music" " Astral Weeks" "I think it was a pivotal moment because they made that move from being in control to being a part of somebody else's agenda and Shane certainly changed at that point he seemed quite disillusioned and cynical about the whole business of" "of being on the road about performing it seemed to have taken a huge toll on his psyche he seemed to have no space to just be himself" "they started to act like rock stars they started to think like rock stars they were great musicians" "I mean..." "like... so what?" "you know what I mean?" "you know?" "I mean... uhh... you know but I mean..." "like... uhh... that doesn't give you any... rights you know what I mean?" "you know?" "above any other human being you know what I mean?" "you know?" "there was a... there was... umm and underlying sort of resentment against Shane in the band because all the media would want to speak to Shane... all right?" "umm... and... of course it was alot more than that let's just say one... one particular subject and they... they liked to think about themselves as a nine piece band where everybody had an equal input" "and equal importance so... sometimes I felt that... umm people were objecting to his opinions not based upon his actual opinions but simply because they just got fed up with it being" "Shane Shane Shane Shane it was never my band we were a democratic band... you know?" "and then in the end like I wasn't involved in the democracy anymore the system was to blame... yeah?" "we thought we could beat the system and we couldn't" "we had set out to beat the system" "they said... you know... we don't really want you to go... you know?" "I mean... we need you" "I mean all this... you know?" "you know... give us a couple more years..." "I mean you know... uhh... you know you know..." "I didn't like... because I don't want to fight or anything you know..." "I mean" "I was easy persuaded to carry on... you know" "things will get better... you know but things got worse" "somehow from the outside there was this farcical idea that the Pogues were allowing" "Shane MacGowan to kill himself that in fact we might even have welcomed the idea and nothing could be farther from the truth we cared very deeply about Shane and still do ultimately we're his best friends" "I mean... you know... he might speak ill of us now all these years later occasionally but he doesn't really mean it it was like a bunch of guys who just cared about each very much but like there" "there always comes a point where you can only help somebody so much" "I wanted to make an Irish album for the Ulsterhouse (?" ") kids so if you get out ?" "and you listen... it's a piece of love you'll find that all my tracks are in the house beat (?" ")" "the touring was getting to me and the... uhh... constant arguments and stuff... you know?" "we were starting to sound tired and... uhh... jaded yes... you know... i mean it was sounding like we should call it a day you know we should have..." "like... called it a day at that stage... yeah if we'd left it at that note we would have got out a bit graciously... you know" "but making Hell's Ditch was a ridiculous mistake basically the problem is..." "like... the singing... the singing isn't as good as it could be the playing isn't either actually but the singing is definitely very... my voice is deteriorating you know I remember seeing the uhh... seeing the Pogues" "in some festival in France the show was falling to... falling to bits umm..." "Shane didn't know what songs they were playing and it was you know it was one of those kind of those kind of classic uhh... moments and the... the worse Shane became the more the audience kind of adored him" "and until the concert was pretty much unlistenable they were playing some horrendous kind of Rolling Stones cover or something like that and... uhh... really pandering to this audience in this way and I found that from a band that could be so great" "quite kind of sickening to watch actually and I find that element..." "I always found" "I always found that element of the Pogues kind of disappointing in a way because they could be so great you know but then again at the sound check of that concert" "Shane was in better form and came on and just sang the song with his hands in his pockets singing this song at the sound check and I've never heard anything so beautiful it was just... youknow..." "it was just unbelievable" "Hell's Ditch was my own sort of uhh crash landing if you like" "I knew at that point that I had a serious problem with it and that it was going to be a tough one to beat because it's the equivalent of being in a brewery and trying to stop drinking being on the road with" "the Pogues... you know but that's not to say that there wasn't personal responsibility involved" "I was prepared to take the personal responsibility but at that point in my life" "I found it very very difficult it was just easier to succummb to the... to the drink... you know" "I was always saying, "We gotta stop touring so much."" "you know what I mean... you know?" "but they wouldn't... they didn't agree with me and so on... you know so they obviously didn't think they were paying a high price you know" "if they think they paid a high price now you know..." "I hate to say I told you so... did we sack Shane MacGowan there is the question no... it's just never as simple as that what actully happened was it was becoming very obvious that the band wanted to carry on playing at something" "like the level we were playing and Shane was getting more and more disenchanted with that and wanted to spend more time at home and mainly the way he was telling us that was by the inconsistency of his behaviour you know Shane's not the sort of a person" "who can tell you in a straight way look I really don't..." "I'm just not digging this so he would have to go around the houses and tell you in some complicated way that you eventually get the message and then he would make it look like you're telling him this... you know?" "so that it would be all you fault... you're telling him he can't do this anymore in fact he'd just gone to extreme lengths to make you understand that that's the case ahh... and Shane is magnificent at" "twisting everything around to that purpose so I think he probably thinks we sacked him yes but he knows in his heart that it's not true" "they fired him..." "I was at the meeting they fired him" "I was venomously against it it was in Japan after a particularly bad couple of years as far as some people were concerned but the reason Shane wasn't performing as well and the reason he withdrew and got as out of it as he did was because of" "the situation that he found himself in they were trying to phase" "Irish music out altogether you know what I mean?" "which is insane you know what I mean?" "I said, "What do you mean?"" "that's what we do... is Irish music you know... that's what we do that's what we do like the Specials do ska and the and the fucking Rolling Stones do R and B you know what I mean?" "what we do is Irish music you know rural Irish music you know emotional guts dance music we got that... bypasses the end like and hits you in the gut... and hits you in the heart... and hits you in the soul" "oh..." "I am" "I've been a babe magnet for quite a while you know" "I gave up trying to impress girls you know what I mean and they started getting interested in me yeah" "just think now... is there a hot tub?" "well I mean with ?" "the tub's gone yeah?" "there's a sauna and swimming pool yeah?" "I told you I'm going to put a jacousi in the barn yeah?" "you cannot become a babe magnet if you're no good know what I mean?" "because girls tell other girls what you're like you know what I mean and like you might be really dishy which I'm not you know what I mean?" "but that wasn't my attraction you know what I mean?" "like you know girls said to other girls yeah?" " do you want to come in the Merc Shane?" " what?" " do you want to come in the Merc?" " yeah" " right I'll go get it" "I'll get my car though" " come in a decent car - come in the Merc right" " come and try a piece of the Merc - yeah come on and have a shot of the Merc" " first decent fucking car we ever had - absolutely i quite agree i quite agree... i couldn't agree more you mean the last decent car" "I've been reading all this stuff about you this very public row between you and Sinead O'Connor she said she was going to shop you for heroin... isn't that so?" "and she did" "I think it's bloody obvious that she's out only for publicity and like... at this stage of the game like she doesn't... she doesn't even view it like you know what I mean like she'll do anything for publicity" "you know what I mean?" "I do believe she did do it because she genuinely felt that our relationship was worth saving and she saw that I love Shane and that Shane loves me and she could see that very clearly even though I couldn't really" "at that point... see it" "I was like ready to give up" "I thought right, well you know I cut my losses and see if I can find some more satisfactory relationship it may well have helped because" "I think it did force Shane to think even if he didn't want to think... about what was going on and what... you know and what I was unhappy about and what he was doing and stuff she's friends with" "friends of my missus Vickie she seems to believe that she whatever did with the best intentions you know?" "so I don't give a fuck or anything she's like you know" "well she's got no right to it's my life you know" "I'm a fucking adult you know" "I'm not the one to take a moral high-ground about drug-taking umm... in any way umm... and what..." "Shane feels is right for him is right for him umm... myself I..." "I guess uhh..." "I don't know... two years ago" "I had to make a... a choice really whether I was going to continue to write and be an artist or whether" "I was going uhh... to be a junkie and that was pretty much the choice that was being made a year had gone by when the piano just sort of sat in the corner of the room staring back at me blankly" "I wasn't doing anything" "I wasn't able to a put a line on... on paper and for me it became necessary to stop and for me since I've stopped" "I've been able to write with much more energy much more dedication and much more concentration than ever before" "what Shane does is completely up to him and has every right to do whatever he wants and believe whatever he wants" "that sounds like a sheep innit?" "people often ask what Shane would be like if he didn't drink but umm... it's funny" "I don't ever really wonder about it" "I don't ever really think about that" "it seems to be so much a part of what he's like it seems almost as though that's his purpose in life is to write about drinking" "I'm not saying that he only writes about drinking but to write about the type of things that he does write about and he encompasses quite alot when I was young I washed the cars when I was older I drank in bars" "I don't know if he could do it in the same way if he was a different kind of person and he lived his life differently" "I don't know whether Shane terms himself an alcoholic or not" "Phil Chevron certainly ended up saying" "I am an alcoholic and getting out of it" "Terry Woods ended up saying" "I am an alcoholic and getting out of it" "Spider ended up saying" "I am an alcoholic and getting out of it" "Shane exhibited all of the characteristics of the other three but just kept on going" " Joey - what?" "don't tell me they haven't stuffed the olives for you there's no gin... there's martini we've survived... we survived the Pogues you know I have been..." "I could easily be dead now if there hadn't come a point where I realized that that was my next option to decide whether or not that was going to happen you know" "you wanna go onstage?" "let's go" "let's go..." "let's go here" "you don't have to spend very long on the road to know that you know like you... you.. you can't be worried about things like your health and fucking like..." "like... uhh... your parents being worried or like you know what I mean?" "or like uhh... the papers telling lies about you whatever... you know what I mean?" "you've got to say shit to all of that you know what I mean?" "I was just... what do I want to do?" "I wanted..." "I want..." "I wanna be a mu... what I always wanted to do was be a professional musician you know" "thank God I've ended up being a professional musician" "if he was out playing and wasn't called in... for the rosary" "there'd be... a bit of a row with him" "Shane... whoever you were like... you know John Jim George... you know you know uhh..." "Bridget whatever you know Maggie..." "Ryan you know uhh yeah... you know?" "it's the rosary... it's the rosary" "and it's over the bed or ahhh... it's gone away" "and he's coming up... he's coming up and aww... he went out" "ahhh... almost there oh yeah... he's coming up he's coming up... he's coming up ahhh... it's gone away" " what's the panic?" " ?" "it's on in fucking Limerick you know what I mean?" "she's... two hours ago it's fucking starting she was supposed to be coming" "?" "here... and you're speaking like that well it's the cinéma vérité you know?" "I mean that's what they call it as the french say that means realistic cinema"