Nick Cave pays tribute to “chaotic, poetic soul” Shane MacGowan
Nick Cave has written an obituary for the late Shane MacGowan, urging people, “It is his genius we should remember, rather than all the other stuff.”
Cave, who first met the Pogues frontman in 1989 and performed at his funeral, wrote a touching tribute to his late friend, who passed away in November. “I was excited because I was a fan, completely in awe of Shane’s songwriting,” wrote Cave, recalling the years they spent “going out, fucking around, getting wasted.”
On his effortless poetic songwriting, Cave said: “To me, his songs were such precious things, deep works of art, really, but he didn’t treat them like that. While I laboured away at my desk, day after day, to produce what I could, Shane’s words were delivered to him on a beer tray with a whiskey chaser.”
“I loved his voice, too,” Cave added. “It was the perfect vehicle for his chaotic, poetic soul. And I loved the way he comported himself when he was singing live. There was a nonchalance about it.”
Mentioning a Pogues soundcheck he’d seen in France, he said: “He just walked up to the mic and sang ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ with his hands shoved in his pockets, this gorgeous, racked voice coming out of him like he was a cypher for the angels. It was a rare privilege to witness something like that.”
Cave nodded to MacGoawn’s substance use, saying he saw it as a “solemn duty to be permanently fucked up” but urged fans to remember “his genius” first and foremost.
“He wrote a bunch of songs that are truly great,” wrote Cave in the Guardian obituary. “That’s a hell of a lot more than most songwriters manage. His best lyrics have a truly lived-in nature to them. His beautiful soul is baked into every word, every phrase of ‘A Rainy Night in Soho’ or ‘The Old Main Drag’. They are rooted in earned experience. Those profoundly beautiful words coming out of such a broken soul. He had something that we lesser writers have to work hard to even get close to. An effortless, God-given talent.”
Cave nodded to the outpouring of grief from the music world, writing: “There was a truth to him, a clarity of soul that was of the purest kind. You can’t hide something like that. The whole world could see it, which is why so many deeply loved him.”
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