Stefan Cush

A Man They Couldn’t Hang BORN 1960

Born in Llandeilo in south Wales, Stefan Cush was roadieing for The Pogues when he met Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers, his future co-singer/ guitarist in folk-punks The Men They Couldn’t Hang, in 1983. After honing their skills busking in the capital, and with the addition of guitarist/songwriter Paul Simmonds, the band’s debut single – a cover of Eric Bogle’s The Green Fields Of France – and 1985’s debut album Night Of A Thousand Candles became indie chart hits and favourites of John Peel. Always on the side of the working people, over five roots-rocking albums the group’s oeuvre took in the miners’ strike, the World Wars, football hooliganism, Napoleon, the Battle of Cable Street and matters of the heart: they broached the Top 40 with 1989’s Silver Town, supported Bowie at the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1990 (they delighted the crowd with their cover of verboten song The Laughing Gnome), disbanded in 1991 and returned to gigging and recording in 1996. Cush also played with The Feral Family, whose album Brough Superior was released in 2012. The Men They Couldn’t Hang were planning a new album when Cush (below) died suddenly: in tribute, Odgers called him, “a passionate soul who cared deeply about music and politics and people… he could ruffle feathers too, but he was always forgiven.”