WE’LL DRINK TO THAT!
The booze flows freely in this look at Shane Macgowan and The Pogues
If ever there was a documentary that could give you contact drunkenness, this portrait of Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan is it. Crock of Gold is as smooth as a single pint of Guinness and as strong as a pint of single malt.
“It's true I'm out of it most of the time,” says Macgowan, who is 62 but looks frightfully older. “But I can write songs when I'm out of it.”
Director Julien Temple — his recent music docs include films about Keith Richards, Wilko Johnson and The Clash — approaches his notoriously touchy subject sidewise, often relying on intermediaries to draw him out. So we see MacGowan hanging with former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams or actor Johnny Depp, who also has a producing credit in the film. There's also a lot of conversation with his wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, who is less likely to tell you off in the middle of a conversation.
If you know one thing about The Pogues, especially at this time of year, it's the band's 1987 hit song, the Christmas-themed Fairytale of New York. Temple gives that tune its due, but spends a great deal of the film's two-plus-hours on Macgowan's picaresque Irish youth, backed by archival footage and re-creations galore. Macgowan says he started drinking at about the age of six and never stopped.
That might explain why his voice these days is so slurred that all his comments are subtitled. He's also in a wheelchair, after a fall several years ago, but the current state of his health is never addressed. Suffice to say the drink hasn't killed him yet, despite decades of predictions to the contrary.
Like most rock-docs — the excellent Zappa, about legendary musical genius Frank Zappa, is a prime example — this stroll through Macgowan's life will appeal most to those who are already fans. They'll learn — if they didn't already know — that The Pogues is a contraction of the band's original name, Pogue Mahone, which sounds like “kiss my arse” in Gaelic.
They'll also hear about MacGowan's on-again, off-again relationship with the Catholic Church, and his more steady commitment to the cause of Irish nationalism. All of it backed by Macgowan's curse-laden speech and weird, breathy laugh, which sounds like Ernie from Sesame Street, except drunker.
Give him this much; the man makes no apologies. “We're better when we're sober,” he says in one of the many archival interviews scattered through the film. “But it's not as much fun.”
However much time he has left, it's clear that's a maxim he won't be letting go until death wrests it away from him.