The Official Shane MacGowan Bio Cometh
“FAME AND celebrity, his own or anyone else’s, hold absolutely zero interest for him,” says Richard Balls, author of a new biography of The Pogues’ holy drinker and songwriter of genius, Shane MacGowan. “If Bill Clinton or a Hollywood A-lister walked into the pub, he’d rather talk about hurling to a complete stranger sitting across the bar.”
Yet he’s still agreed to co-operate with writing his story. Balls met MacGowan properly when writing his admired 2014 book Be Stiff: The Stiff Records Story. Two and a half years ago, after being contacted by MacGowan pal Paul Ronan, he started work on illuminating his subject’s life from early years in Ireland and Tunbridge Wells, via punk, to the glorious Pogues years and the later, largely music-free decades of living legend-dom. Making four trips to Dublin and Tipperary, he admits, wasn’t always easy.
“You don’t choose when to talk to Shane, or what you’ll talk to him about,” says Balls. “You just have to go with the flow. Kipping in his flat means you’re on hand, so if he decides to talk, even if you’re about to go to bed, you’re there.”
More than 60 significant others – many have never spoken before – provide more
easily assimilated structure. The book has the full cooperation of Shane’s sister Siobhan and 90-year-old father Maurice, and the author’s also interviewed ex-girlfriends, old pals, bandmates and peers including Sinéad O’Connor. Shane’s old English teacher speaks too. “No one was off-limits,” says Balls. “People have been united in their respect for Shane, but it’s not a hagiography and it’s not a whitewash. These are first-hand accounts by people who know him, and a lot of this information has never been in the public domain.”
Though MacGowan likes to sip white wine – and tea – Balls says that he’s quite different from the boozehound of popular repute: “He’s very shy, not a raucous or intimidating person, with an extraordinary brain. He’s brilliant company.”
A bio-pic of Shane is also in production. Directed by Julien Temple and scripted by Victoria Mary Clarke, AKA Mrs MacGowan, it will star Barry Keoghan in the lead role. “Victoria was saying Shane doesn’t want the film to be a Hugh Grant type of thing,” says Balls. “He wants it to be warts and all. And that’s what this book will be.”
“It’s not a hagiography and it’s not a whitewash.” RICHARD BALLS
The yet-to-be titled biography will be published by Omnibus in autumn 2020.