Most of these are missing from THE POGUES as they stagger across Europe on tour. “Even if I drink myself to death doing this,” says SHANE MACGOWAN, “I’d still prefer that to the boring, horrible jobs I had to do before this band.”
You’ve got Guinness on your breath
IT was somewhere near old Checkpoint Charlie that we first caught sight of the thin white droog. He is dressed in black from head to toe and has somehow managed to get half a toilet roll wrapped around his left shoe. His shirt is covered in a mixture of horrible stains from last night’s gargantuan intake of all things liquid and the residue from the messiest laugh in show business.
It is in fact this latter noise, more of a gush really than anything else, which finally convinces the keen-eared photographer that we do indeed have the man we are looking for. Hey you, you with the bog roll on your feet and the Guinness on your breath, you must be the singer and chief songwriter with the very wonderful Pogues. I say you are Shane MacGowan and I hereby claim my long-awaited lost weekend.
Who do you think you are kidding, Mister Hitler?
SERIOUS? LET’S GET that way right now and talk for a while about the rather unsavoury events that took place in a venue way out in the American part of town, in a three-tiered building called The Loft. Looking back on it now, we should all perhaps have paid a little bit more attention to the guy in the dressing room who casually happened to mention that today was, ah, Hitler’s birthday and a few of his spiritual descendants might just take this very public opportunity to let the locals know that the old goosestepper may be gone but is certainly not forgotten.
The end result of this piece of particularly bad timing was that the sheer unadulterated thrill of seeing The Pogues play live to a foreign audience for an the first time was tarnished by the very different sensation of wondering what the best form of torture would be for the vile bunch of Nazis down the front, who were making a very good job out of ruining the fun fun fun for everyone else.
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