RIP: Shane MacGowan, Catholic

From The New York Times:

Shane MacGowan, the brilliant but chaotic former songwriter and frontman for the Pogues who reinvigorated interest in Irish music in the 1980s by harnessing it to the propulsive power of punk rock, has died. He was 65.

Mr. MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, announced his death on Instagram. She did not provide additional details. A joint statement from the family that was shared on one of the band’s social media accounts said he died early Thursday. “Prayers and the last rites were read, which gave comfort to his family,” the statement said.

A profile of him from a few years ago noted his complex relationship with the Catholic Church:

No Irish artist of the twentieth century—or, to be more precise, no twentieth-century artist working in the Irish milieu—could escape the influence of the Catholic Church. MacGowan is no exception. “When the sacred blood of the Holy Ghost is boiling in my veins, I think of Jesus on the cross and I scream out for his pain,” he howls on “The Church of the Holy Spook,” the opening track of his 1994 post-Pogues solo debut, The Snake. While Irish writers from James Joyce to Seamus Heaney larded their work with criticism of the Catholic Church and celebrated the diminution of its priestly influence over everyday life in Ireland, MacGowan’s view of the Church has always been more complex. “The Roman Catholic Mass is one of the most beautiful experiences a human being can be subjected to,” he has said. “It’s not something you want to do, it’s something you’re beaten into doing. But then once you’re there, right, the whole thing takes you over, and like, you go . . . WOW! OH OH OH.”

A self-proclaimed “religious maniac,” MacGowan describes his adult faith as a “free-thinking Catholicism.” He claims special devotions to Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Martin de Porres. As an adolescent, he took his relatives’ urging to heart and considered the priesthood, even if driven more by his base human appetites than by the spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion that the Church prefers: “Like every house I went to visit they’d give me loads of booze, know what I mean? . . . And I was religious, so I mean, I wouldn’t have to fake it.” As recently as late last year, MacGowan remarked, “I’m very grateful to Christ and his Holy Mother and Joseph and all the saints, including my family, that have passed on.”

And there is this, about his legacy:

In recent years, the group’s songs have been featured in episodes of David Simon’s The Wire (about Irish-American cops in Baltimore) and, more incongruously, in a Subaru commercial. Their Christmas classic, the MacGowan-penned “Fairytale of New York,” was recently named “Britain’s favorite Christmas song” by the ITV television network. “Fairytale,” about gin-soaked, drug-addicted lovers who might just make it despite spending Christmas Eve in a Big Apple drunk tank, rose to Number Two on the British pop charts in 1987 and remains the commercial and artistic peak of the Pogues’ career.

Step into an Irish pub anywhere in December and try not to be swept away by its soaring melody and sing-along charm as the whole place raises a glass to the chorus: “The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay/And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day.” It is MacGowan’s crowning achievement and likely to be the song for which he is best remembered.