Shane MacGowan, the lead singer and songwriter of trailblazing Celtic punk band the Pogues and one of the all-time great bandleaders, has died aged 65 following a long period of ill health.
The Irish singer was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, a life-threatening condition that leads to brain swelling, and had been in and out of hospital for months. Shane MacGowan, the lead singer and songwriter of trailblazing Celtic punk band the Pogues and one of the all-time great bandleaders, has died aged 65 following a long period of ill health.
A family statement said he died at 3.30am on 30 November, and was described as “our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved”.
His wife Victoria Mary Clarke wrote in a statement on social media: “Shane will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life … I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him.”
The sad news comes days after MacGowan returned home after being released from the hospital amid a battle with a brain condition, with his wife Victoria sharing a photo of him in his hospital bed.
Hellraiser Shane, whose 1987 Fairytale of New York became a Christmas anthem and sold millions of copies worldwide, became as famous for his hard-partying lifestyle during his 1980s heyday.
In recent years, the Irish icon was confined to a wheelchair and was aided by his wife and carer at home, having been plagued by by ill-health linked to his years of alcohol and substance abuse.
Shane had been receiving care in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin for an infection but was discharged last week ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day.
Tributes have started to pour in following MacGowan’s death, with Irish President Michael D Higgins hailing him as one of ‘music’s greatest lyricists’.
Mr Higgins said: ‘Like so many across the world, it was with the greatest sadness that I learned this morning of the death of Shane MacGowan.
‘Shane will be remembered as one of music’s greatest lyricists.
‘So many of his songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them.
‘The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.
‘His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways.’
MacGowan became involved with the burgeoning punk movement in 1970s England. He formed his own punk band before a revival in ethnic musical influences led him to form The Pogues in 1982.
The band played traditional Irish and rebel songs given new life by an injection of the energy, anger and anarchy of punk.
The band reached their critical peak with the 1985 album Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, and their commercial peak with 1988’s If I Should Fall from Grace with God.
The latter provided the band with their biggest hit, MacGowan duetting with Kirsty MacColl on Fairytale of New York. Although it was kept off the coveted festive number one spot by The Pet Shop Boys, Fairytale regularly tops polls for the best Christmas song.
However, MacGowan’s erratic lifestyle and drinking habit got him sacked from The Pogues in 1991 for his increasingly unreliable behaviour.
