“I will not be reconstructed!” growls Shane MacGowan somewheres in the final verse of Sunnyside Of The Street, the opening track on Hell’s Ditch by The Pogues. “I will not be reconstructed!” says he, and the melodies round about wither for a moment ‘neath the intensity of the heat rising off of this most loaded of lines from this most legendarily loaded of songwriters.
“I will not be reconstructed!”
First I ever heard that line I was sat facing the stereo speakers in my bedroom, seventeen years of young and with the jaws hangin’ to the knees and the tongue lashed black with the grog. A dizzying collage of Arcadian revelry and damnable debaucheries all flickering and fizzling on the crest of the brains, aye, there surely were, and straining for to hear the record o’er the screeching of those scenes hung back my eyes like phantoms hung front a furnace.
“I will not be reconstructed!”
I dare say I raised a fist upon hearing those words, those words like swords of sulphur thrust through the sheets of delirium draped across the teenaged skull.
“You’re damn right!” I’d wager I hollered, “I will not, sure as God I won’t!”
Scarcely a year later and I was lain on the floor begging for reconstruction, but Shane, he still gnashed what teeth he had left and refused any such notion of the sort with all the vehemence at his command.
He’s still refusing.
Here and now, however many years after I first heard that most astounding record, Hell’s Ditch, the fifth Pogues album and the last to feature Sir MacGowan, here and now listening to the remastered, expanded edition all lavished with the beautiful booklet there and the seven bonus numbers, here and now I’m still startled something fierce by that line, and still find myself thinking of an evening;
“Pray tell, Lord MacGowan, to whom at all was that line directed?”
Chances are it was directed at his band-mates stood round about in the Rockfield studio, fellas who by the time of the record’s release (1990) had grown all sortsa tired of Shane’s antics and affronts;
Missing tours with Bob Dylan, playing shows with his trousers at his ankles for the duration, becoming immersed in Acid House and presenting his sore beleaguered work-chums with a half-hour epic of blissed-out techno abandon intended for the next album (this mythical number has yet to see the tartan light of day) and generally ploughing ever further into the darkest depths of insanity with nary a thought for the consequences.
Perhaps it was directed at the critics who’d been wringing their hands raw over the state of your man’s mentals for much of the five years hitherto? Critics who had initially fallen over their quills in a bid for to note every drunken escapade with near-fetishistic glee, but who all a sudden stood aghast at those self same antics?
Maybe it was a reminder to himself that even whilst the band he fronted were outgrowing his initial blueprint with alarming alacrity, still he remained true to the ideals and notions had led him, way back when, to reclaim Irish folk music from the insufferably inoffensive cardigan cognoscenti and bring it back to the raucous, revelling masses where it belonged. The Pogues were no longer playing Irish folk music, at least not on record, but Shane, he was still the phantom of old literary Ireland come raging red- eyed and snaggle-yapped from midst the stomp of Finnegan’s Wake.
“I will not be reconstructed!”
Then again, maybe he didn’t even write that line. Sunnyside Of The Street is one of three tracks on Hell’s Ditch credited to Shane MacGowan / Jem Finer, the credit one also finds under Fairytale Of New York from If I Should Fall From Grace With God, being the only Christmas Song that makes sense at any time of the year and very possibly the best song of the 1980’s.
(Jem Finer, incidentally, is now spending his days as artist in residence at the Oxford University Astrophysics Department and generally causing no end of mischief with the “proper” artists roundabout, folks who take none too kindly to a man being awarded left and right and having no end of funding tossed his direction for to hover about in zero-gravity [whilst wearing a turban and sat atop a Magic Carpet, no less] or, indeed, placing upside-down woodsheds on the banks of Lough Neagh, with the assistance of one Paul Moore, whilst the sounds of eels and of various heavenly bodies flitter about from the speakers inside. He’s also responsible for Longplayer, a piece of music that is set to play continuously, without repeating, for 1’000 years, having begun to play on January 1st 2000, and set to begin anew on New Year’s Eve 2999.)
But regardless, whether the lyric fell from the fingers of MacGowan or Finer, that fact remains that a fella can rightly taste the venom in the delivery.
There are many tastes to be tasted, as a matter of fact, throughout Hell’s Ditch. The taste of impending doom in both the title track and the stunning Lorca’s Novena. The taste of Mekong Whiskey- drenched kisses in Sayonara. The taste of great regret in 5 Green Queens And Green. The taste of twilight reflection in Summer In Siam.
A plethora of tingles top the taste-holes, and all afire with gorgeousity.
Hell’s Ditch, see, it’s nothing if not a gorgeous bastard of a record, even if Shane himself shrugs it off as a “real dog’s dinner of an album” as he did in A Drink With Shane MacGowan, the autobiography-cum-series of interview transcriptions put together by his then-girlfriend Victoria Clarke a couple years back.
A beautiful album, it truly is.
Mind you, now, it’s a record that sounds none much at all like any of the four Pogues albums that preceded it, a record that all but abandons Irish folk for to wade in waters of a more multicultural colouring. Each note hangs heavy with the sun-kissed coo of the Mediterranean, all flamenco flourishes and Mariachi strum. It’s a record high on Lorca and Genet and the mythology of the Popular Front as opposed to Behan and McAlpine’s Fusiliers.
(In light of this, it makes perfect sense that Joe Strummer, no stranger to a Spanish revolutionary poem or two himself, should have been brought in as producer on the album.)
Aye, Shane has surely raged at the “World Music” tinge of the album, but then again, Gavin Martin, in his fantastic liner notes to this new edition, quotes the man himself as saying that the reason there are no Irish songs on the album is because he “wasn’t in the mood” to write them. In addition, the two Shane-less Pogues albums that followed Hell’s Ditch (the underrated Waiting For Herb and Pogue Mahone) are both stood knee-high in traditional Irish melodies, although, granted, that may have been some attempt to regain ground after the disappointing sales of the previous two records.
But whoever’s responsible, Hell’s Ditch, with its orange, dust- kissed palette and its Spanish flies all a-buzz round the verses, it sounds incredible.
One of the many casualties of The Pogues’ reputation as drink- lashed madmen barely fit to raise a yellowed paw let alone tune a mandolin, is that the amazing musicianship oft-times gets overlooked. On Hell’s Ditch they sound tight as a Mormon’s arse in a field fulla gay. The Pogues were never ramshackle on record, and certainly nowhere on Hell’s Ditch is there a note out of place nor a beat fluffed nor a string plucked in error. It’s a record that lulls and grinds with dizzying aplomb, that snarls and whispers, that throbs and sighs.
Lorca’s Novena, with its military shuffles and choruses of the damned wailing in and around the narcotic swirl of the strings, Summer In Siam with the piano like the waters trickle-tringing ‘pon sun-scourged shoulders and the sax dancing in smoke-ring circles overhead. Hell’s Ditch with its taunting, maniacal, increasingly frenzied accordion intro and its deranged eruptions of whirling opium orchestras thereafter. Ghost Of A Smile with its dreaming basslines and it’s giddy whistle.
Holy lord Jesus and the sand-raw heels o’ Mary, says I, it’s enough to have a fella bent double o’er the speakers weeping and wailing in awe of every verse.
And those verses, those words…
Even when peering through the fog of a thousand and one hangovers and with the heroin mists all wreathing round the eyes, even then Shane emerges with a fistful of the most divine language a man could e’er hope to lay a lobe ‘longside.
In Hell’s Ditch, inspired by Jean Genet, he watches the goings on in some terrible prison ward a million and nineteen miles removed from sanity or salvation;
“The killer’s hands are bound with chains, At six o’clock it starts to rain, He’ll never see the dawn again, Our Lady of the Flowers”
And;
“Genet’s feeling Ramon’s dick, The guy in the bunk above gets sick, In the cell next door a lunatic, Starts screaming for his mother…”
In Lorca’s Novena he muses upon the life and death of Federica Garcia Lorca, from the bullfight that killed his best friend and lover (“Ignacio lay dying in the sand / A single red rose clutched in a dying hand”) to the bullet that ended him;
“And Lorca the faggot poet They left till last, Blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse
Mother of all our joys, mother of all our sorrows, Intercede with him tonight, For all of our tomorrows”
Summer In Siam, which he intended as no more than a “musical hai-ku”, but which the band stretched out to four and a bit minutes, with its half-asleep vision of a “moon full of rainbows”.
Rain Street, with its series of characters and episodes slathered in the blackest of humour and the most gorgeous vulgarity;
“The church bell rings, an old drunk sings, A young girl hocks her wedding ring, Down on Rain Street”
“Bless me father I have sinned, I got pissed and I got pinned, And God can’t help the shape I’m in, Down on Rain Street”
“There’s a Tesco on the sacred ground, Where I pulled her knickers down, Where Judas took his measly price, And St Anthony gazed in awe at Christ Down on Rain Street”
In addition to Shane’s offerings, staggering one and all, are a couple of Terry Woods numbers (The ragged, angry Rainbow Man and the closing Six To Go, a beautiful chant-a-long sounds like it arose fully formed from ‘tween the cracks of the Sahara) and Jem Finer’s The Wake Of The Medusa which, as Gavin Martin notes, “linked the tale behind the famous cover artwork used on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash” – a reworking of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft Of The Medusa with the band-members seamlessly added to the horrific tableaux amongst those scurvy- and insanity-ravaged sailors – “with a bitter commentary on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.”
Hell’s Ditch. Aye.
I walked about with an erection for a fortnight after the first listening, and whilst it pained me some, knowing that this was all there was to be had, the fifth and final Pogues record with Shane’s words being wrung screaming out Shane’s own yap, still the ecstasies conjured in the head-bumps and the blood-pump and the loin-stump had me wandering the estates like a man possessed with the gargle o’ Lucifer’s bollocks for those fourteen holy days and nights.
Had it been this new fangled remastered edition I’d heard back then, chances are that delirium would’ve lasted a solid month, seeing as how it now runs for 20 tracks as opposed to 13.
Now, pray tell, son, what at all are these new additions?
I’ll tell you, surely I will, for they’re a joy to have coil around the ossicles a time.
Jack’s Heroes, being the world-cup single recorded with The Dubliners, and its far-superior B-Side, a glorious, galloping take on Whiskey In The Jar, are all the fun in the world, particularly the latter there, with Ronnie Drew and Shane trippin’ o’er one another’s beards in majestic, frenzied fashion throughout. They fairly singe the fugg from off the mentals, aye.
Many’s a night way back when I roared with all the purple in my liver ‘longside those manic verses.
The duo of Jem Finer compositions, both featuring intense, if occasionally garbled, vocals from Lord MacGowan, are better again, particularly the bitter, snarling Bastard Landlord.
First time I heard Bastard Landlord it was by way of a thirty second sound clip offered on Paddy Rolling Stone, the official Shane MacGowan website. God alone knows how often I replayed those thirty seconds, and should He ever feel like revealing the number He’ll probably also offer a thought with regards the immense shame and sorrow I brought upon my family and upon the head of Lars Ulrich when, one winters night, I heard tell of an entity by the name of Napster which would, so the crack-raw fiends stood round the bus-shelter assured me, guide me towards a complete version of this most incredible recording.
It did, and I played it on repeat for eleven hours one evening whilst sobbing and screaming o’er sundry cans of vile supermarket lager.
Now I can be rid of those MP3’s and what have you, thanks to these new editions, but by Jesus oh the blight on my soul will surely never be fully healed.
I’m sorry Lars Ulrich.
Bastard Landlord is astounding. What it tells of, is an Irish family who move to London and find themselves at the mercy of both a vast anti-Irish sentiment stewing in the alleys of the capital and also the whims of the Landlord of the title, a fella initially all the welcoming in the world, but who soon parts those yap-flaps of his for to reveal the unconscionable gluttonous lust for the green hidden ‘hind that smile. “The landlord’s conditions” sneers Shane, “Yearly they grew / with the size of his gut and his housing values”.
It’s an angry record, with echoes of Masters Of War here and there midst its chimes and its rolls and its aching harmonica. “I’m damned if I’ll die for a property deal” rages the narrator as his fellow tenants fall to the kerbsides left and right, and that defiant chorus;
“Bricks and mortar, a kingdom of stone, When you die you’re on your own, They’ll carve your name where you lie, And I for one, No tears will cry”
Finer’s other offering, Curse Of Love, is less aggressive, but not much less impressive. A glistening pop-folk lament that masks the terrors and torments of the lyrics, all direst prophecy and lovelorn abandon, with the lilting instrumentation wrapped ‘round every red-raw line.
Three Shane MacGowan penned offerings are present also, two of which - the instrumental Squid Out Of Water with its jittering banjo and bar-room rattle, and Infinity, a delightful romp somewheres between White City from Peace And Love, London Girl from Poguetry In Motion and the stomping, merseybeat-influenced single Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, – I’d never heard before. The joy of having those fantastic bastards finally unfold o’er the ear-wounds, well, it’d take more than my vocabulary for to do that feeling justice.
The very best additional track herein, though, and very possibly the very best additional track added to any album ever, and maybe even the second best song Shane MacGowan ever put his name to after Fairytale Of New York, is the heart-breaking, nigh-on-unbearably- beautiful Rainy Night In Soho.
Originally recorded and released as part of the Poguetry In Motion EP (that earlier version is available as a bonus track on the remastered Rum, Sodomy And The Lash), the version included here is the definitive, re-recorded “single” version, all love-lorn sax and tear-stung strings and swelling orchestra. Jesus aye, it is truly an astounding record.
It’s a shame these editions don’t come with the videos included, as seems to be all the rage these days. For Rainy Night In Soho, a spellbindingly evocative promo was devised featuring Shane and his missus slow dancing through the whiskey-scarred streets of the title. It’s available on the Poguevision video collection, mind, and there’s no reason at all why anyone should be without that article.
Hell’s Ditch was released to fairly unanimous critical delight. In a review for Q Magazine, Barry McIlheney praised the bugger to high heaven whilst also noting that “Hell’s Ditch perhaps makes most sense if viewed as that inevitable switch from too many nights on the ale to a less crazed, more sober state of grace.”
Whilst the record may right enough possess a certain tranquillity, a certain restraint even, there’s no doubting that it was recorded throughout the most tumultuous period of the band’s history, with Shane MacGowan at his lowest ebb and with the majority of the other members set for this or that rehab clinic or therapist or what have you.
Matters got worse following its release, and a Melody Maker live review concerning a French festival appearance less than a year thereafter shakes it head to the tune of the following;
“The Pogues bring the first day of the festival to a close and are utter shite. Shane MacGowan has put on a pound or 20 of late, and with a pair of sunglasses nailed in place and his beard merging with his navel fluff, he looks like a cross between Roy Orbison and Dave Lee Travis. Unbelievably, his voice is even more dreadful than on the group’s last album.”
The band were falling apart, y’unnerstann, and for the good of his own health and of everyone else’s, Shane MacGowan, the best songwriter of his or any other generation, was helped along the road marked To Blazes Wi’ You, Sire.
The Pogues carried on with Joe Strummer fronting for a time, and recorded a couple more albums with Spider Stacy mostly on lead vocals. Shane formed The Popes and made two astounding records, the polished, rock / folk (but not folk-rock) epic The Snake and the incredibly dark, doom-soused Crock Of Gold. These days he seems to spend much of his time hanging with Pete Doherty, recently taking to joining Babyshambles onstage for to run through Dirty Old Town.
It makes sense, the two o’ them crossing paths. There’s a definite bind twixt MacGowan and Doherty, as men fond of the waft o’ the intoxicating fugg and as men blessed with an almighty way with a pen. Both have gone out of their way to add to the romantic mythology of their homesteads; Pete’s unerring search for the Arcadian soul of yonder English spread, Shane’s continuous feeding off of and revitalising of a pre-Celtic Tiger Irish folk tradition.
And, of course, neither are on particularly good terms with sobriety.
Who at all knows, maybe Pete’s fairly prolific way with a song or two will inspire Shane in some way to get back to the studio. He hasn’t released an album since 1997.
(Interestingly, Pete’s girlfriend, Kate Moss, was romantically entangled with Johnny Depp when he was hanging with Shane way back in the early nineties. Depp can be heard slapping power-chords round about throughout That Woman’s Got Me Drinking from The Snake, and he also directed and starred in the promo for that raucous hell- hounded classic.)
Just shy of the millennium, The Pogues, having realised that a couple nonsensical grudges are no reason at all for to deny the world a chance to hear Turkish Song Of The Damned being played by the fellas done etched it in vinyl way back when, reformed for what was supposed to be a one-off tour. They’re still on the road, and now even bassist Cait O’Riordan’s rejoined, having ran off with Elvis Costello once the latter was done producing Rum, Sodomy And The Lash in 1985..
No new recordings have emerged, although last Christmas The Pogues appeared on various TV Shows for to perform Fairytale Of New York with Katie Melua. Still, there are whispers, oh aye, and if a fella could bear to allow himself to think it for a moment, he might find himself with the modest hope that maybe a new Pogues record with Shane MacGowan songs sung by Shane MacGowan might surface sometimes afore the end of the decade.
Dear God, what a man would give to hear such a thing.
“So tell me” says the gypsy with the half-moon eyes, having listened to this evangelical hyperbole for much of the past four hours. “Is the bastard thing better than Red Roses For Me or not?”
I take a sip o’ my Red Bull and light another cigarette. “No”, says I, “But what is? The next two Pogues albums, but what else? Scarcely a bastard thing. But it’s better than you’ve been led to believe, and it’s better than Peace And Love, although that record is still glorious.”
“So out of a possible ten stars” says he, “What?”
I shrug. “9 and a half.”
The barman yells about “Wicklow hoors!” to some lad stood dancing by the jukebox and I say to my friend there, “So” says I, “Did I ever tell you of the time I fell in love with a lass and also discovered for the very first time Berlin by Lou Reed?”
“You did not”
“Well the night is young and I’ve a headfull of caffeine and nicotine and mooder-upper, so what say I tell you that tale here and now. And also, eight stars, afore you ask.”
