When tQ meets Spider Stacy in his north London home, the Pogue is in contemplative mood. As we speak, tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of his former bandmate Shane MacGowan. “This time last year we were in Ireland,” he says, pouring a pot of black coffee for us both. “We were in the Clayton Hotel in Ballsbridge, and were going to go and see him. For whatever reason we thought ‘we’ll go in the evening’, but then Victoria [Clarke, writer and MacGowan’s wife] called to say, ‘it’s probably better if you don’t, the doctors want to conserve his strength.’ It was very clear that he wasn’t going to come back from it. We got a call from Siobhan, Shane’s sister, the next morning at about 9 o’clock, and he’d died.” A funeral was held eight days later in Nenagh, Tipperary, and made international headlines after scenes of raucous celebration of MacGowan’s life and performances by the surviving Pogues as well as Nick Cave, Lisa O’Neill and Glenn Hansard. “There was a cortege through Dublin, the president was at the funeral in Nenagh… I knew it was going to be a big deal in Ireland, but I didn’t realise just exactly how big…”
It was only a month after that that Stacy received an email from Broadside Hacks, the upstart London collective at the centre of the city’s current folk resurgence, asking whether the surviving Pogues would be interested in marking 40 years of their debut album, Red Roses For Me, as part of their weekend of Irish-centred programming at the MOTH Club in Hackney. With scant details of what the show would entail, it nevertheless sold out almost immediately, so was moved across the road to the Hackney Empire – five times the size – where it sold out again. It’s far from unprecedented that The Pogues should’ve performed without their mercurial frontman – Joe Strummer, then Stacy himself stepped in throughout the 1990s – but their first gig following his death was still uncertain territory, however overwhelming the demand.
Stacy and fellow founders James Fearnley and Jem Finer were to back a revolving cast of guest vocalists – including Nadine Shah, Jim Scavlunos and Lankum’s Daragh Lynch among many others. There was a risk, therefore, that the gig might simply resemble a kind of glorified Pogues karaoke. Conversely, with MacGowan’s death still fresh in the memory, there also a risk the show might be weighed down. “I didn’t want it to be in any way maudlin, because, well, Shane would have hated that for a start,” says Stacy. “That’s not what it was meant to be about.”
Indeed, the show was in fact anything but sad. Rather than billing it as an explicit tribute to MacGowan himself, directing the focus towards Red Roses For Me was a deft way to evade the emotional heft. “If you’re celebrating any Pogues record, you’re implicitly celebrating Shane, because how can you not be,” Stacy points out. There were no long speeches necessary – the feral energy with which they played, returned in kind by their crowd – made for far finer tribute. The guest vocalists were given the room necessary to make the songs their own, rather than attempt any imitation. Stick In The Wheel, for instance, brought a cutting experimental edge to ‘Dark Streets Of London’; Nadine Shah – in a performance that remains one of the most spellbinding this writer’s ever seen – unleashed an avalanche of emotion with ‘The Auld Triangle’ that felt like hers alone.
It was telling that one of the few times Stacy mentioned MacGowan specifically onstage was after the youngest of their guests that night – rising Brighton group The New Eves – performed an utterly manic version of ‘Waxie’s Dargle’ – caterwauling the words, hurtling around the stage in the spaces between them. “That one’s for Shane…” Stacy said then. “He would have fucking loved them,” he adds today. “Nadine was definitely just fucking fantastic, but then The New Eves had that psychotic hooligan energy.”
Overall, he says, the night felt “more like an early Pogues gig, rather than a reunion show.” When the band had reunited with MacGowan in the 2000s, he admits, “there was a certain darkness. A lot of those shows were great, but some of them were not so great. Shane wasn’t necessarily always in the best of shape.” At Hackney, however, they pulled off something almost impossible, acknowledging the band’s – and MacGowan’s – legacy without getting bogged down by it, striking a fine balance between looking backwards and giving room for those pushing folk music forwards, all the while playing out of their skins. Despite reservations, it wasn’t just a success but a triumph, so much so that it’s to be repeated in Dublin at the 3Arena this month (17 December), before they take their second album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash on tour in 2025.
“It’s got a much longer run up, so I’ve had much longer to in which to be nervous,” says Stacy. Mixed in with his complicated feelings around the anniversary of MacGowan’s death, he’s also busier than he’s been in some time. “Life’s more full on than I would have expected to be this time a year ago.” He’s still, however, found time to pick out 13 of the records that have soundtracked his life, past and present.
The Pogues and special guests will perform Red Roses For Me on 17 December at 3Arena in Dublin, and tour Rum, Sodomy & The Lash through the UK in May 2025.
To begin reading Spider Stacy’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Record’ below
