Shane MacGowan’s sister on the struggle to avoid his music | Ents & Arts News

Siobhan MacGowan almost looks surprised as she remembers.

“It went very, very quickly. Even the first year went really quickly. Two years… you know,” she tails off.

The 24 months since her brother Shane died have flown by in one sense, but it’s clear that the family’s grief has barely subsided.

“It’s still very raw for me,” Siobhan says. “I can’t listen to Shane’s music, and I can’t watch him on video or listen to him speak.”

Legendary frontman of The Pogues, Shane MacGowan died on 30 November 2023 at the age of 65, following a long illness.

He passed away in the lead-up to Christmas, a time when his voice is heard on every radio station and in every pub – in the form of Fairytale Of New York.

For his sister, the festive anthem – which he co-penned with the band’s banjoist Jem Finer – is now a visceral torment.

“You can be a genius, the way you can avoid it [the song]”, Siobhan says. “If it’s coming on, I just turn it straight off. If I’m in a supermarket, I just block it out, or I go into the loo, or I go outside, or I do something like that, but I have to block it.”

She can’t listen to Fairytale “at all”. “It’s just pain. Pain in my heart. It’s just so painful.”

We look at a picture of Siobhan and Shane from Christmas Day 1987. Fairytale Of New York was number one in Ireland, but had been pipped by the Pet Shop Boys in the UK.

“I remember him saying he wouldn’t have minded if it had been Michael Jackson that had beaten him,” Siobhan recalls. “But he couldn’t forgive the Pet Shop Boys. And it was a terrible cover of Always On My Mind! It was dreadful like, so he couldn’t forgive that.”

But Shane got over it? “No,” she bursts out laughing.

On a fresh, clear winter’s day, we are sitting by the banks of the Shannon in Dromineer, Co Tipperary. It’s one of the locations that inspired Shane’s song The Broad Majestic Shannon. Since the death of the singer, born in the UK to Irish parents, fans have made the pilgrimage to this part of Ireland, desperate to seek out the places that shaped his music.

Siobhan, along with Shane’s widow, Victoria Mary Clarke, has launched a self-guided walking tour called Unravelling Shane, in a bid to give some structure to those journeys.

In the town of Nenagh, we visit some of the spots on the map, including Philly Ryan’s pub, Shane’s favourite watering hole. Philly is behind the bar, an ebullient force of nature, dressed like an undertaker. That’s because he is one. In time-honoured Irish fashion, he is both publican and funeral director.

In one role, he enjoyed many a raucous night with Shane MacGowan. In the other, he planned the funeral of his great friend. “Such a shock,” he says, recalling the phone call from Siobhan after her brother died.

Sitting among endless Shane and Pogues memorabilia, Philly reckons the late singer would enjoy the posthumous boost to Tipperary tourism.

“Shane loved Nenagh,” Philly says. “He’d have loved to get that attention onto Nenagh as a gift from Shane MacGowan to people of Nenagh. Nenagh was his town and he loved it dearly.”

Fans from all over the world wander into the pub now, looking for a tangible taste of Shane MacGowan’s legacy.

“We’ve had requests from places like Serbia, Italy, Germany, America, Japan,” says Carmel Ormond of the new walking tour. She’s a tourism officer with Destination Lough Derg.

“It’s a huge amount of people interested from Japan, from Australia. We’ve requests from all over the world. We constantly meet people that are rambling around trying to find an area. It has become a huge tourist attraction.”

Another stop in Nenagh is the St Mary of the Rosary church, where Shane used to attend Sunday mass with his mother. Two years ago, it was the venue for his funeral. Attended by Johnny Depp and Nick Cave, it was streamed live around the world, as family members danced in the aisle to Fairytale Of New York.

“I danced with my husband and my heart was absolutely breaking,” Siobhan remembers. “I danced through it, and I did it for him. It was a dance of defiance against death. I thought, death is not going to stop this song.”

As his family continue to grapple with their loss this festive period, Shane MacGowan’s legacy is continuing to be shaped. Siobhan says his passing made her finally appreciate the full gifts of her sibling as an artist and a person.

“It was then I realised the huge volume of work and people’s reaction to him and his work that, to me, was extraordinary. Like I thought, wow, look at what you did. That’s what I said, look at what you did, you know.

“It only seems to be getting stronger. His legacy only seems to be getting stronger.”