And then there's Shane MacGowan. If you haven't already written him off as a drunken Irish jerkoff from the 80s, then you're either a fan or you've never heard of him.
Well, quick primer: Shane MacGowan fronted one of the greatest bands to emerge from the threadbare pit of the 1980s, the Pogues. This seminal band broke from the mainstream flow of mid-eighties England to forge a strange new form of traditional Irish music with punk sensabilities, and rock'n'roll style drug and alcohol abuse.
In their lifetime, the Pogues received much love from the critics and musical dignitaries like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Elvis Costello, but the band never really broke into the mainstream. They were too unusual for an era punctuated with synthesizers, big hair, and unflinching love for MTV.
During my high school years, I was obsessed with the Pogues' literay flair, the drunken ramblings, the beautiful traditional Irish instruments, and the rawness of the production. It was beautiful-- as classy as a three piece suit, sentimental, yet drunken and freewheeling like, well, Shane MacGowan. Songs like "The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn," "If I Should Fall from Grace with God," and "Fairytale of New York" were brilliant, and I'd never heard anything as perfect before. The accordions, tin whistles, banjos, and guitars-- ah, it sounds cheesy in description, yes, but the Pogues were the kind of band that would make you rethink what you considered cool.
And while the Pogues were somewhat successful and it was well understood that MacGowan, the band's primary songwriter, had a lyrical genius that was pretty much unrivaled by anyone of his era, it was also obvious that he was a man fuelled by an undying lust for just about any substances he could get his hands on, particularly alcohol. Hundreds of bystanders watched over the years as MacGowan descended into a pit of overconsumption and excess that would make Keith Richards look like Richard Simmons. Shane always took it quite personally when he was told, on numerous occasions, that his overindulgences were seriously fucking him up. "I'm a fookin' adult," he protested.
All the while, MacGowan's songs morphed into bonafide classics in Irish pubs and various drinking scenes, where in the wee hours of the morning you can hear sloshed booze hounds wailing away at old Pogues songs.
When I heard that someone had finally produced a biopic picking apart the MacGowan myth, I was beside myself in excitement. I wanted to see the story of this fuck-up who had produced some of the greatest music I had ever heard. I ran out to San Francisco's Roxie Theatre to engage myself in the mystery and legend of Shane MacGowan.
If I Should Fall from Grace with God chronicles the life of MacGowan, and features many interviews with people close to him throughout the years, from fellow bandmate Phil Chevron, to Phil Gaston, to his girlfriend Victoria Clarke. Everyone has their favorite MacGowan story, and everyone's got their two cents about his life of excess and his contributions to music.
And while the film does demonstrate MacGowan's famed incomprehensibility, his drunken demeanor, his famed toothless mouth (pretty much all his teeth fell out after years of neglect) and his total childlike state of existence, it also fails to depict him as the articulate, well-read poet that he is as well. It is this second MacGowan that is the more interesting, though certainly the one lesser known by the public. You could, through interviews, articles, and first-hand accounts of MacGowan, piece together someone far more worthy of discussion than the guy that came through on If I Should Fall from Grace.
In the film, he seemed, if anything, a complete caricature of himself. A man consumed by excesses, brain-damaged from years of self-abuse, and remarkably incapable of stringing together a well-formulated idea. All these aspects of him are quite likely accurately presented, but yet, as a MacGowan fan, I feel like it's only one side of the coin. It's the side that you hear about because it makes for good stories and it creates the public persona that MacGowan has to now live with. Of course, the other possibility is that MacGowan's decades of debauchery have now caught up with him and have caused serious damage to his brain and his health.
There's no doubt that the film is a great addition to the MacGowan archive, and a great service to his followers, but I can't help but feel its a bit of a disservice to his legacy-- and part of that may be Shane's fault. If you didn't already know who he was, you'd probably just think he was some drunken slob (which he is, but he's a
talented drunken slob). He rambles on and on about strange subject matters, jumping schizophrenically from topic to topic without any sense of coherency or purpose: "Is Bill Gates the new Jesus Christ? The church is trafficking in light metals and orange juice!" It's funny, no doubt, especially when you hear MacGowan laughing at his own "jokes" (Rock journalist Nick Kent accurately remarked that Shane's laughter sounded like a portable toilet flushing: KSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH!), but when you hear the amazing music and juxtapose it next to a raving madman, well, it just has a certain myth-destroying element to it. And it's likely not the filmmaker's fault that MacGowan comes off as a drunken asshole-- it seems rather unlikely that in editing, director Sarah Share cut out large sections of dialogue of MacGowan delivering eloquent speech; clearly his behavior in the film is representative of his behavior in real life. For this reason, you get the distinct impression that this documentary would have worked a helluva lot better if it was made a decade or so ago, when MacGowan was probably a bit more coherent.
One of my main complaints of the film is that the pic seems to serve only the avowed Pogues/MacGowan fan. Any newbie surely would not have been impressed either by this man, the positive comments from his friends, nor the mediocre selection of songs featured. The soundtrack is nearly completely limited to nostalgic, downtempo love songs like "Lonesome Highway," and almost completely bypasses the raucous singalongs and punk attitude ("Waxie's Dargle" is one of the few exceptions) that defined the band; it ends up painting a picture of a much more traditional musician than he really was.
If I Should Fall from Grace is certainly well worth watching, but I could never consider it an enlightening vision into the mind of Shane MacGowan. At best, it seems to chronicle the tale of an influential, yet washed-up, musician with a small following of devoted fans, at worst, it could pass for one of those ironic segments on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," where they interview people with the specific intent of ridiculing them and making them look like fools. Perhaps the latter of these two assessments is a bit strong; there is clearly a love for MacGowan present, and it is certainly packaged and presented with that in mind, but you're not going to understand Shane MacGowan's importance through this film. You'll gravitate towards the unsavory elements of his persona rather than his contributions to music (which, admittedly, aren't presented to you very well). For a good understanding of MacGowan's worldview and amazing musicianship, you'll probably have to listen to his records. But that's not a bad thing to do anyway.
