Shane MacGowan’s Madonna

So, it’s Thursday night in Dublin, I’ve found some Poitin, and am thinking of Shane MacGowan. How very sad it is that he’s gone. ‘A Rainy Night in Soho’ playing on the radio.

I had a funny connection with Shane.

His wife Victoria gave me a photo of her and Shane for an auction, to raise money for a battle against a semi-state body spraying pesticides.

I had to get it signed. ‘Come on over!’ Victoria said. Next thing I’m in their  house, Victoria has scarpered, and I’m alone with Shane.

I’ve had the photo of them blown up and printed on canvas. Shane loves it,  grabs it, asks me what it’s for, takes a green marker and scrawls, ‘Fuck Those F—  Hypocrites! Love Shaney XXX’.

Wow.

Business completed, joints are rolled. Blue gin poured.

My head is melting.

My heart is too.

Shane talks poetry. Seamus Heaney. James Clarence Mangan. The Famine. The Rising. Have I ever been ‘strung out’?. Where do I live? With whom? I explain I’m with my children and their partners. ‘A commune!’.

Would I like some music? Absolutely I would. Shane leans over the arm of the sofa where he’s sitting to rummage through a box of CD’s.

‘I used to play with this band’ he says, shyly, ‘the Pogues’.

I want to jump up and hug him. I want to say everyone in the whole world knows the Pogues and your incredible music Shane!

‘That would be lovely’ I say. ‘I’d love to hear you and the Pogues’.

Shane slides in ‘Rum, Sodomy and the Lash’.

Victoria re-appears.

Shane looks around. ‘Hey Vic, give ‘er that’, he says, pointing to a floor tile on which he’s drawn the Virgin Mary.

In brightest greens and blues, Mary is standing, holding one arm up. ‘What’s she doing?’  ‘Calming her people’ says Shane. ‘And the little guy with a Kalsnikov?’. ‘He’s minding her’.

I’m unsure if I should take it. Victoria, who’s probably seen hundreds of items given away, is graciousness itself: ‘He’s delighted to give you something’.

I finally leave, my head ringing, thinking when I’d asked Paul McCartney if he’d sign a rare Beatles EP, a frosty PR company replied: ‘Sir Paul does not sign memorabilia’

Thinking how CRAZY it is that notorious hellraiser Shane MacGowan has just given me a picture of the Virgin Mary. On a floor tile.

And also, this thought: it’s the middle of the recession. I can’t keep asking artist friends for help. I’ll collect Virgin Mary’s instead. And sell them.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art IMMA made a beautiful print of Shane’s original, ‘Gra agus Beannacht’ added in Shane’s hand.

I was on my way.

I had to visit Shane and Victoria again to get the prints signed. Exhausted after a UK trip, Shane lined up something for himself and said: ‘Okay give me those fukken things’ then, gent that he is, signed them all.

He and Victoria were guests of honour at our first exhibition of Virgins in the local Arts Centre. He the first to buy. A beautiful print of his beloved Sinead O’Connor as Mary by Aga Szot (who previously featured as an artist on Cassandra Voices). Nobody else moved. ‘Fukken tight fist fukken cunts’ Shane growled.

O Lord.

Truth be told, a Catholic boarding school girl, I’d never much liked Mary. She seemed cold. Distant. Pastel. Shane turned me on to a different one. A powerful female icon. A warrior woman, ‘Calming her people’.

With everything he cut to the chase.

‘I just wanted to shove music that had roots, and is just generally stronger and has more real anger and emotion, down the throats of a completely pap-orientated pop audience.’

He sure succeeded. He sure was loved for it.

He was beautiful. Impossible. Sensationally gifted. Honest. Punk. Sensationally sensitive. Spiritual. Political. Wild.

‘Gra agus Beannacht’ in the fullest measure.

He will be sorely missed in this ‘pap-orientated’ world.