Johnny Depp’s chaotic first meeting with Shane MacGowan: “I’m still in love with him”
If you were to create a league table of showbiz’s biggest ever boozers, then somewhere toward the top, nestling next to Oliver Reed, would undoubtedly be the late Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, a man who was never seen without a drink in hand, as his long-standing friend Johnny Depp will attest to.
Of course, alcoholism is nothing to celebrate, but it is hard to imagine the success that MacGowan and his band had without the intertwining of whiskey or a pint of Guinness, and the same can be said of Depp, who features in many an alcoholically apocryphal story both in the US and the UK, courtesy of his drinking supergroup The Hollywood Vampires.
Depp and MacGowan were fast friends for more than 30 years before the Irishman eventually succumbed to a life of hedonism (and pneumonia) at the tail end of 2023, and Depp was one of the pallbearers to carry the musician’s coffin at the funeral. MacGowan described Depp as the brother he never had, and Depp was similarly effusive in his description of the bond the pair shared after their meeting back in a pub in the early 1990s.
Depp recalls the initial coming together, saying: “When I met Shane he was negotiating a pool table. There was a drink in this hand, a pint, and in this hand there was a guitar. And he was teetering, balancing back and forth trying to negotiate which way to fall. I watched him do that for about 15 minutes”.
He added, “Then I was introduced to him, before he fell, and from that moment on you just knew… there are moments in life when you know this will happen one time and one time only, when you get the opportunity to spend time with greatness… I’m still in love with him to this day.”
It sparked three decades of creativity, but mostly drinking, with Depp joining the Pogues during a performance of ‘That Woman’s got me Drinking’ on Top of the Pops back in 1994, in addition to directing the music video for the song starring MacGowan’s future wife, the Irish journalist Victoria Mary Clarke.
In 2020, three years before his death, Depp produced a documentary about MacGowan’s life called A Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan. Written and directed by Julian Temple, the film was highly acclaimed and tracked the songwriter’s path from a childhood in Kent to psychiatric care for substance abuse at just 17 to international fame as the Pogues lead singer in the mid-1980s, with a string of huge hits including the perennial Christmas classic ‘Fairytale of New York’.
Temple underlined the reasoning of the fellowship between Depp and MacGowan, noting: “They are both very interested in reading, they share an incredible love of music, and they like a drink, obviously. They’ve got a good piss-taking sense of humour about each other that is engaging to watch.”
Depp was the best man at MacGowan’s wedding to Clarke in 2018, playing the guitar at the end of the ceremony, and the Irishman was vocal in his support of Depp during his very public and very messy divorce proceedings from actress Amber Heard in 2022.
He’s now on something of a comeback trail and will be appearing in Terry Gilliam’s The Carnival at the end of Days alongside Jeff Bridges and Jason Momoa, and a film with Penelope Cruz called Day Drinker, reuniting the pair some 25 years after they starred in drug-dealing biopic Blow.
