Rakes at the Gates of Hell

Somewhere between the deaths of Henry Kissinger and Sandra Day O’Connor, the frontman and driving force of The Pogues moved beyond. He was sixty-five years old, somehow both living longer and dying younger than a more sober man could expect.

I know exactly where I was when I fell in love with the music of Shane McGowan. I was stumbling around Père Lachaise cemetery, searching for the grave of Jim Morrison.

No, that’s not true. What I was really doing was feeling sorry for myself.

The past year had been consumed by a tumultuous on-again-off-again affair with a girl who, on the occasion of our most recently inevitable break-up, dramatically ran to London to become an art dealer rather than the paramour of a middlingly successful writer. Just as dramatically, after weeks of long-distance phone calls, I followed her like a fool. In a final fit of cinematic romanticism I almost certainly stole from the denouement of Richard Linklater’s 1995 film Before Sunrise, we’d arranged to reconcile at the stroke of midday at the midpoint of Le pont Neuf, Paris’ oldest and most famous bridge.

At 12:34, my phone beeped with six terse, texted words.

“I’m sorry. I won’t be coming.”

She’d stood me up, of course. Something I’d expected given she hadn’t returned any of my messages since landing in Paris two days earlier.

Fuck it, I said, to no-one but a disinterested pigeon.

I reached into my pocket for the necklace I’d bought her. I threw it into the Seine and set out for the one place in Paris where being miserable made sense.

And miserable I certainly was as I stood before the magnificent, preposterous tomb of Oscar Wilde, though not in the way I’d planned. My miserable ankles hurt because I’d chosen Cuban heels to walk cobblestone cemetery paths. I looked up and cursed the sky. It was a perfectly sunny Autumnal Parisian day, not the cold and rainy clime I thought to which I was entitled.

Too magnificent a day to nourish my discontent, I kissed the walls of the tomb, put on my headphones to a Pogues playlist, and resolved to Oscar to find the grave of Jim Morrison. But first, one last sulking text to my now past love:

Turn your face from me

I will cover myself with sorrow

Bring Hell down upon me

I will surrender my heart to sorrow

As I walked the cobbled paths of Père Lachaise, MacGowan’s voice in my head replaced my own, became my Parisian soundtrack.

Here’s the thing about The Pogues. Every eulogy you can read about them will speak to their quintessentially Irishness (even though almost all of them, including MacGowan, were born and raised in England) or their insights into the immigrant experience. Those things are both true and bullshit at the same time. I had some minimal Irish blood courtesy of a grandmother, but it was something I had little time for or connection with, being far more concerned with my dominant, predominant Scottish ancestry. But what The Pogues spoke to was something more visceral, more universal, than all that. They provided a soundtrack for the discontented and the disconnected.

The past drifted away, replaced by the music. Turkish Song of the Damned, Thousands Are Sailing, The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn, A Pair of Brown Eyes. As I crossed paths with Marcel Proust, I shuffled to The Broad Majestic Shannon. I don’t know why.

Then, to the opening strains of Lullaby of London, moved on. The search for Jim Morrison continued, the passion for The Pogues grew, MacGowan’s lyrics ringing truer with each beat and step of the journey.

Later, back in my cosy flat in Montmarte (or was it Opéra or St Mary? I was too frequent a visitor back then, and the mind plays tricks) I kept returning to one song in particular.

I thought of her. I thought of me. And I thought of what kind of poet could write the perfect devil’s prayer.

Mother’s eyes are sparking diamonds

Still the moon, shows no light

This rose is withered, may God deliver

The rake at the gates of Hell tonight

In melancholy moments, I sometimes think of that day, that time. That song.

Goodbye, Shane MacGowan.

I’m sorry I missed you when The Pogues came to town on one of your sporadic reunions all those years ago, but I was in Paris on a fool’s errand. However, the friend I gave the ticket to said you were on time, excellent, and almost sober.

I’m sorry I never got to thank you for all you gave me and a million others in their time of needing.

That I never did find Jim Morrison’s grave. That I gave up and got drunk in the shadow of the Musée d’Orsay instead.

But the music of that moment never left me, and neither will my gratitude.

For that, Shane, thank you and fare thee well. May the devil meet his match when he greets you at the gates of hell.

And may the road rise up to meet you.