Like his idol, Brendan Behan, Shane MacGowan lives life in a slurry of whiskey and words. He's just finished another round of Christmastime gigs in Britain and Ireland with his bandmates, the Pogues, and he's left critics with no shortage of words to describe his self-destructive auto-auto de fe. MacGowan has created some beautiful songs, which he now tramples like lilies fallen beneath the wheels of commercialism.
MacGowan turned 51 this Christmas Day, and we all wonder how. How has he escaped the damage he's swallowed. How has he not fallen victim to one of the many accidents he's been a party to. How has his body not refused, even once, to mount the stage and bellow those songs that his audience now knows better than he does.
MacGowan and the Pogues return to America in 2009 for a St. Patricks season set of gigs on the East Coast.
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