A friend gave me a tape of Pogues songs when I was in college, back in the mid-90s. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, but at the same time, incredibly familiar. Irish traditional music with a punk edge and a poetic lyricism that many songwriters attempt and few carry off. I was dumbfounded. I went out and bought everything they had released.

The more I learned about the Pogues, the more I hoped to see them. The problem was that they no longer existed, like so many of the bands I grew up admiring. Shane was unreliable, I read, and had split with his bandmates. This was news I was not happy to hear. But I bought Shane’s new records, recorded with a band he called ‘The Popes.’ The Snake was a great album, I loved it–it featured a hilarious track called “The Church of the Holy Spook” that I enjoyed playing at full volume. I liked some of his work with the Pogues more, but that record was important to me; I’d been waiting for a new album, rejoiced when it came, and played it for months, to the irritation of friends riding around with me in my junker of a Dodge Colt.

The other albums the Pogues recorded were a revelation to me. Impossibly good, each one better than the last. Songs like Navigator, and The Sick Bed of Cuchulain, A Pair of Brown Eyes, Dirty Old Town, The Irish Rover were the soundtrack of my twenties. I listened a lot to other music too, but the Pogues were something special. The music is wonderful but the heart of it was Shane and his poetry. He was such a writer! Singing of mythology and death and gambling and drinking with wit and charm and humor, and making this unlikely blend seem natural and easy to do. Read some of his lyrics sometime–they stand up well after all these years, even without the aid of the band. I have a feeling his songs will be sung long after all of us are gone.

And of course, there is no better drinking music. Brown Eyes begins: “One summer evening drunk to hell, I sat there nearly lifeless” and every time I heard it I burst out laughing, usually with a bottle in my hand.

I tried and failed to see them when they reformed in 2002. I got tickets the instant they went on sale and I waited for the day excitedly. My girlfriend and I would see the great songwriter in person, on St. Patrick’s Day in New York. What could be better?

We drank a lot of beers before going to the venue, but when we arrived we found a Xerox sheet on the locked doors: “THE POGUES SHOW TONIGHT IS CANCELLED.” Shane was mercurial and not so reliable with shows. He wasn’t healthy. Had it been some lesser artist, almost any other artist, I would have been angry and complained. But this was Shane MacGowan. I was crushed, but not angry with him, only sad I didn’t get to see him. We went and had some more pints of Guinness and played the Pogues on a jukebox.

Eventually, I saw him in 2008. It was worth the wait. Maybe it wasn’t the heyday of the Pogues, but I didn’t care at all. I got to see him, the peerless songwriter, the guy who in my opinion is up there with Dylan.

“Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?
And did they still make you cry?
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?”

–Thousands are Sailing

The lyric above always reminded me of my Irish grandmother, a woman I never knew, who died before I was born. An immigrant who arrived in New York when she was in her early twenties. Anytime I asked my father about her, he got very serious and spoke in reverent tones. She was very sick with Parkinson’s from the time he was a young boy. Confined to a wheelchair and ill, she was taken care of by my grandfather. My dad wasn’t big on sharing a lot of detail of his early life, but I know he grew up in borderline poverty, and her illness pained him even many decades later. It must have been hard to see the person he loved most so helpless. I could see in his eyes how much he cared for her, what an important force she was in his life. He was a kind, gentle soul, and I credit the woman she must have been for that. I’m sorry I didn’t know her.

I did know her brothers, however. I recall them coming to the house when I was a young boy. They had brogues and smoked and drank and laughed constantly and I thought they were rock stars. I’ll never forget their visits. I wish I knew them better because they seemed like an awful lot of fun.

My father also told me of going back to her hometown in rural Ireland in the early 1950s, when he was in the Air Force. He arrived in her little town, where a woman greeted him, saying, “You must be Mary’s boy.” Indeed he was. They had been told he might visit, and I guess the town was small enough that his reputation preceded him.

As an adult I gained Irish citizenship. I love Irish music and poetry, and feel proud to be Irish, but have never had the chance to go to Ireland. I’ve gained citizenship for my kids, as well. Someday we’ll all go and visit that beautiful island, and drink to my father, and my grandmother, and to Shane. May they all rest in peace. Thank you, Shane, you crazy, beautiful, poetic soul. Your exquisite songs of love and longing and hope helped many of us understand where we came from a little better.

If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried in the sod
But the angels won’t receive me

Let me go, boys, let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud, where the rivers all run dry

–If I Should Fall From Grace With God