Shane’s concert hit a bum note with me
THERE has been something that has been weighing on my mind all week and it is Shane MacGowan. I would like to state categorically from the off that I think Shane is one of the greatest Irish writers with an extraordinary songbook that should be celebrated. This is not a column designed to hurt or abuse him.
But last week the great and good from the music world opened their hearts at a star-studded bash in Dublin and what unfolded deeply affected me.
The Pogues musician was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award in the National Concert Hall, which resulted in one of the biggest nights in modern Irish music. Bono, Sinead O’Connor, Damien Dempsey, Sharon Shannon, Imelda May, John Sheahan and Camille O’Sullivan were among those performing on the night, with a surprise appearance by Hollywood actor Johnny Depp and President Michael D. Higgins.
The lucky few who were in the audience spent the night posting videos to social media documenting the night for online voyeurs.
But rather than be entertained by the spectacle, I found the whole event deeply troubling. MacGowan is a shell of a man; his body pickled from years of substance abuse, his pallor pale and sickly.
WOULD it be an unfair conclusion to draw that his creative genius has waned in direct proportion to his increase in alcohol and substance abuse? I can’t remember the last new hit he penned and the toll on his body is impossible to ignore. Yet here he was, trundled out on to a stage in a wheelchair, while appearing to nurse a champagne glass with a look of utter ambivalence in his waxy face. When he eventually took the microphone to sing a song all that came out was a guttural utterance.
His version of Will You Go, Lassie Go, was greeted by cheers from the audience but I felt nothing but pity. Gone were the beautiful lyrics that had made him a superstar, replaced by out-of-tune slurs and hisses; the payback for years of systematic substance abuse.
While the intention was always coming from a good place, I fear that placing the troubled singer up on such a pedestal sends out the wrong message.
He has been addicted to various prescription and non-prescription drugs and his first spell in rehab came at just 17, when, after falling foul of Valium, he admitted himself to the notorious Bethlem hospital.
To this day he continues to booze despite the clear and obvious damage it is doing to him. His voice is gone; the great ability to charm the masses now only exists in archive footage or that timeless video with the late Kirsty McColl. He is certainly no role model as, despite being supremely talented, he has taken every wrong turn imaginable but escaped to tell the tale. In my eyes this tale is now a cautionary one, a parable to tell your children to warn them off the dangers of an illicit life as it can take away the talent you have. Getting so many stars on stage to sing his greatest hits was more like a preemptive wake than a celebration of his birthday. On Saturday night, he appeared on the Ray D’Arcy Show alongside partner Victoria Mary Clarke, and looked anything but coherent. Laughing at the beginning of the interview, Victoria instructed Ray: ‘You have to ask a leading question, you can’t ask a yes or no.’ Is that really something you should be laughing at? He is relatively unable to speak let alone sing. This one-time musical genius hasn’t the mental capacity to answer a simple question. We should not be putting this man on television treating his lifestyle choice as the stuff of legend. We are only immortalising his behaviour while compounding his dreadful physical demise as a quirky bad habit. He has an opportunity now to help warn about the dangers of substance abuse, but that message will be lost if all kids see on social media is Johnny Depp hugging him on a stage while Nick Cave serenades him. It is enabling, pure and simple. I feel bad writing about this but I would definitely feel worse if I said nothing at all.