Given how hard this Shane lived, it’s amazing he made it to 65 before his liver gave out! Shane only outlived Kirsty MacColl, the woman who sang with him on the now politically incorrect Xmas fave “Fairytale of New York,” because she got decapitated by a jet ski 20 years ago.
Still, Shane was the distinctive voice of The Pogues, a real Rock n’ Roll band from Ireland unlike those tax-dodging poseurs U2. I enjoyed many of their hits in college and through my brother who was a bigger fan during they heyday in the late Eighties. I loved how my mother was appalled when 91-X played “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” and his Irish cred fell on deaf ears with my Irish-descended grandma when I would play If I Should Fall from Grace with God in her car. If it were Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, she would’ve crapped her pants and died.
Thanks for everything Shane! You gave the world and the Alternative Rock genre a more genuine sample of what Ireland had to offer in Pop Music!