Shane MacGowan: The lyrics that defined a great songwriter

“You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy f****t.”

It’s Shane MacGowan’s best-known line, the subject of much debate and discussion, but the head Pogue wrote so many great lines that it seems unfair his lyrical legacy should be boiled down to a redundant epithet.

Here are 10 of the best from the boozy bard.

1. Dark Streets of London

Now the winter comes down, I can’t stand the chill

Shane MacGowan obituary: Outsider who became one of Ireland’s most feted sons

---

Shane MacGowan bows out as thousands line streets on a rainy day in Nenagh

---

Larry Masterson obituary: RTÉ producer and social justice campaigner

---

That comes to the streets around Christmas time

And I’m buggered to damnation and I haven’t got a penny

To wander the dark streets of London

Fairytale wasn’t MacGowan’s only song about being down and out at Christmas time. Before he wrote that seasonal classic, set in New York, he wrote many an ode to the dissolute life in London, and this song captures the bleakness of a winter in that cold, unforgiving city.

2. Transmetropolitan

In the rosy parks of England, we’ll sit and have a drink

Of VP wine and cider ‘til we can hardly think

And we’ll go where the spirits take us, to heaven or to hell

And kick up bloody murder in the town we love so well

The opening track of the Pogues’ debut album was a raucous ode to going on the lash in London, and as a statement of intent, this first line was unequivocal. The “rosy parks of England” conjures up Pimm’s on the croquet lawn, but it’s clear that these bowsies are out to stomp all over the picnic basket.

3. Streams of Whiskey

I have cursed, bled and sworn, jumped bail and landed up in jail

Life has often tried to stretch me, but the rope always went slack

And now that I’ve a pile, I’ll go down to the Chelsea

I’ll walk in on my feet, but I’ll leave there on my back

In the narrator’s fevered dream, he is visited by a vision of Brendan Behan, who shares his philosophy of life – basically, when the going gets tough, the tough go to the pub, knock back 15 pints and have to be carried out.

4. A Rainy Night in Soho

Now this song is nearly over

We may never find out what it means

Still there’s a light I hold before me

And you’re the measure of my dreams, the measure of my dreams

With many of MacGowan’s songs – Sally MacLennane for instance – it’s hard to tell whether he’s singing about a beguiling woman or a favourite drinking haunt. Rainy Night in Soho is equally ambiguous, and the “measure” reference is open to interpretation, but the killer closing lines of the song are no less poignant for it.

5. A Pair of Brown Eyes

Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed, then cursed

Then prayed, then bled some more

And the only thing that I could see

Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me

Many of MacGowan’s songs feature a loquacious character in the next barstool/cell/sickbed whose got a story to tell, and this one features a soldier who endured the horrors of war by focusing on the brown eyes of his loved one, and has been searching vainly for the elusive ochre peepers ever since.

6. If I Should Fall from Grace with God

Bury me at sea

Where no murdered ghost can haunt me

If I rock upon the waves

No corpse shall lie upon me

The title track from The Pogues’ third album is a deathbed entreaty by a man who has accepted he’s probably not going to float through the pearly gates while a host of angels sing. So he needs to go where the ghosts of those he has killed can’t catch up with him, and the high seas might just provide cover.

7. Lullaby of London

May the ghosts that howled ‘round the house at night

Never keep you from your sleep

May they all sleep tight down in hell tonight

Or wherever they may be

When MacGowan sings you a lullaby, chances are it’ll keep you awake at night with the horrors, and Lullaby of London is filled with visions of ghost, graves and all sorts of howling winds. Still, at least there’s no danger of the cradle plunging to the ground from the treetop.

8. The Broad Majestic Shannon

I sat for a while at the cross at Finnoe

Where young lovers would meet when the flowers were in bloom

Heard the men coming from the fair at Shinrone

Their hearts in Tipperary wherever they roam

A homecoming song of sorts, as MacGowan revisits the places near the shores of Lough Derg where he spent his early childhood. The song conveys that huge sense of longing for home, and also the equally huge sense that no matter how much you wish for it, you can never go back to the past.

9. The Body of an American

Fare the well, gone away, there’s nothing left to say

With a sláinte Joe and Erin go my love’s in Amerikay

The calling of the rosary, Spanish wine from far away

I’m a free born man of the USA

The curse of the emigrant looms large over the lyrics of this song, in which the body of boxer Big Jim Dwyer is returned home to the ould sod to be buried. Needless to say, the wake for this expat descends into drinking, reminiscing and, ultimately, regret.

10. White City

Oh, the torn-up ticket stubs from a hundred thousand mugs

Now washed away like dead dreams in the rain

In this lament for how his beloved London has gone to the dogs, MacGowan recalls the old greyhound track at White City, where “the paddies and the frogs came to gamble on the dogs” and invariably lost their shirts.