‘PEACE AND LOVE’, THE POGUES (1989).

I’ve been thinking a lot about Shane MacGowan. Tonight, Wednesday 13 December, was a long night. I couldn’t sleep and spent the small hours listening to the albums The Pogues and Joe Strummer Live in London (2013), If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988) and Peace and Love (1989). When the playlist reached ‘The Broad Majestic Shannon’, I cried for the loss of the ragged trousered troubadour. When the playlist reached ‘London You’re a Lady’ tears were still on my cheeks, but by now I was smiling. Shane’s songwriting brought so much joy into the world.

One thing that wasn’t really highlighted in the obituaries that appeared after his death in December 2023 was what a great band his fellow Pogues were. One commentator described them as playing like “sailors on shore leave”, which made me laugh out loud and is right on the money. My favourite LP of theirs has always been Peace and Love; most probably a surprising choice among Pogues diehards, it represents a great time in my life.

When the Pogues were at the height of their powers, I was living in London. They played a lot – at this time, the Town and Country club (now the Forum) and the Brixton Academy (now sadly closed) – and they were one of the best live acts in the country. They played a lot of the tracks from Peace and Love in their set prior to recording them, so there was the added thrill of hearing new material before it was released. They had a tremendous single around this time called ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah’, a glorious Northern Soul punk stomp unlike anything they’d done before. The musical experimentation of the single and the album means they belong together as a stylistic pair.

So, Peace and Love came out in 1989. The reason for the year’s gap from the Pogues’ previous album If I Should from Grace… was because of the band’s incessant touring schedule. By now, Shane hated it. The mainstream success of their third album had taken them away from the pubs and clubs where they’d built their live reputation, and into big concert halls which distanced them from audiences. Shane wrote most of the songs and received a healthy income from publishing royalties, but, much as he detested being on the road, he felt obligated to his bandmates. He dulled the pain of this dilemma by imbibing increasingly large amounts of drink and drugs. Inevitably, Shane’s hedonism took a heavy toll on his talent.

Peace and Love sees fellow Pogues Terry Woods and Philip Chevron (below left and middle bottom) gallantly step up and take on half the songwriting duties. The latter had written ‘Thousands are Sailing’ on If I Should Fall from Grace… . On that album, Shane had sung his friend’s seminal, bitter-sweet narrative of Irish immigration to the USA, but on their fourth album, Chevron sang his own compositions. I remember hearing his ‘Lorelei’ for the first time at the Brixton Academy and being surprised by how much it sounded like The Jesus and Mary Chain.

The sonic nihilists had made their mark with Psychocandy in 1985 and had recently released the follow up, Darklands (1987), which included the classic single ‘April Skies’. The riff in ‘Lorelei’ was a cheeky steal but, by God, married to the Pogues’ sound it really worked. To this day, that song moves me to tears. Philip’s other contribution was ‘Blue Heaven’. The better-behaved younger brother of ‘Fiesta’, the song’s party atmosphere quickly made it a live favourite of mine.

Woods went one better with three arresting tunes. ‘Young Ned of the Hill’ was a lacerating attack on Oliver Cromwell’s incursion into Ireland and, live, often ended with an extended, dubby instrumental coda. ‘Tombstones’, on the other hand, was a pulsating slice of acoustic psychedelia detailing an apocalyptic landscape. ‘Gartonley Rats’ was different again, an all-lads-together drinking song in the style of ‘Sally MacLenanne’.

Shane’s seven contributions found the Pogues’ battered leader on equally diverse form. ‘White City’ detailed the demolition of the London community around the dog racing track, while ‘Cottonfields’ was a drunken stumble through Shane’s memories of Electro Convulsive Therapy. ‘Down All the Days’ channeled The Velvet Underground in its portrait of the disabled Irish writer Christy Brown, while ‘USA’ – as well as being the first MacGowan song his life-long friend Johnny Depp played on – described the harrowing journey to self-awareness of a London Irish migrant. ‘Boat Train’, meanwhile, was an old number cataloguing the misadventures of a drunken cruise, allowing Shane and Spider Stacy the opportunity for some John Lydon-like vocal gymnastics. With its Spaghetti Western musical vibe, 'Night Train to Lorca' could have been on the soundtrack to Alex Cox's Straight to Hell (1987).

Shane saved then best until last. ‘London You’re a Lady’ was his love letter to the city that raised him, alluded to in the song as a beaten and bloody but defiant matriarch. The remixed version, released in the 30 Years: The Pogues box set in 2013, ends with the group as a defiantly bombastic marching band, the quiet interlude that slowed down its triumphant momentum on the original release deleted for maximum enjoyment.

The absolute showstopper in the Pogues’ set at this time was the live rendition of ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah’. The song would build and build, peaking in a roof-rattling cacophony as band and audience roared out the song title/chorus.

It was a helluva thing to be in the middle of all that.

‘Hell’s Ditch’ arrived in 1990, another favourite album produced by Pogues collaborator Joe Strummer. It proved to be Shane’s swansong with the band as, exhausted by his increasingly erratic behaviour, they fired him in 1991. (Never one to bear a grudge, Shane and his partner Victoria were guests at a Strummer-fronted Pogues gig at the Town and Country in December of that year. I was there too). Woods, Chevron and Stacy’s musical chops propelled the remaining Pogues through two more albums ­– Waiting for Herb (1992), Pogue Mahone (1993) and their last hit, ‘Tulesday Morning’ (reaching number 18) – and that was it.

Later, there were reunion tours with Shane that would revive the old magic, usually around Christmas time. Apparently, a significant clause in the Pogues’ performing contract was that Shane wasn’t allowed to drink or indulge in recreational chemicals when on tour. Of course, I went to see them then and it was a nostalgic, last hurrah for all concerned.

All these years later, Peace and Love is the album I return to again and again. Like all the great records made by great bands, it conclusively proved that the Pogues could take on any genre of music and make it unquestionably their own.

Sleep well, Shane. RIP x