Shane MacGowan was 65.
Shane MacGowan, principal songwriter with The Pogues, one of the greatest lyricists of his generation, has died.
The news was announced on social media by his wife Victoria Mary Clarke, who had been documenting his recent stay in hospital.
“I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it,” she wrote. “Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.”
I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures. There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world.
“Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music. You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much You meant the world to me.”
MacGowan was one of the faces of the London punk scene and emerged from there and his spell in The Nips with The Pogues’ debut album Red Roses For Me in 1984.
An immediate hit of the Irish folk, punk and sharp tongue which would underpin the band, it led into Rum Sodomy & The Lash a year later and his career peak during the late eighties propelled by the inimitable festive hit Fairytale Of New York and its classic parent album If I Should Fall From Grace With God.