John McLaughlin talks about his relationship with Shane MacGowan ahead of the first anniversary of his death

National World - LocalTV

We speak to long time friend of Shane MacGowan, Pogues frontman, John McLaughlin on their relationship.

Transcript

00:00John, you put together a show for the love of Shane McGowan

00:03and that was a kind of rendition of songs

00:08but also it was a telling of tales

00:11from your time spent with Shane.

00:15Tell me a bit about how you met him

00:16and yeah, how that kind of inspired the show.

00:21Well, it was back in the day, so it was 2001

00:24when I first met him,

00:25that I was a Shane and Pogues fan from Dot.

00:29I think that we moved on from punk rock

00:31because I was a big punk rock fan,

00:33The Clash, The Pistols and all that

00:34and when that was all going,

00:37it was like Shane was the saviour of that,

00:39the Pogues were, and they kind of,

00:41I think they kind of embodied both things

00:43that I grew up with,

00:44Irish traditional music and kind of punk rock.

00:47So he just seemed to merge both those things.

00:49So we found a new hero in Shane McGowan.

00:52So I always loved Shane

00:53and then of course I'm a big Celtic fan

00:55so we were making a record

00:57to celebrate the Lisbon Lions

00:59and I managed to get a whole bunch of famous people

01:01on the record, Rod Stewart, Billy Connolly,

01:04Noel Gallagher, the fun-loving criminals

01:07echoing the band.

01:07So I had all these people but I wanted Shane

01:09so I was reaching out, reaching out

01:10and eventually he got back and said,

01:12yeah, I'll do it.

01:14He's a Celtic fan as well.

01:15So at last I get to meet him,

01:17so he comes up in 2001

01:20and I have to go,

01:22well first of all, he doesn't turn up for two days

01:24which I was told by his publicist

01:26would be a thing.

01:27Say, well, tell him it's Monday

01:28and you might get him on Saturday.

01:30I was like, okay, good, right?

01:32So that's exactly what happened.

01:34I go to meet him at the airport

01:35and bless him, he comes out

01:37and he's got a lit fag

01:38and he's swaying about like an MFI wardrobe

01:40and I thought, there's Shane McGowan, my man.

01:43And yeah, so off we go,

01:45we go to Celtic Park

01:47and we're at the middle of the park

01:48and he's singing his band.

01:51I was like, it was amazing.

01:52It was incredible, 62,000 people there.

01:54And we just became great friends since then.

01:57He stayed the rest of that week.

01:59You recorded a bit as well, didn't you?

02:01Because he did a track,

02:02As Long As I Belong to Glasgow.

02:03As Long As I Belong to Glasgow, yeah.

02:05So we'd done that together.

02:06That was the night we lost,

02:08I was going to say lost weekend,

02:09it was a lost week.

02:11I sang that song with him a couple of times

02:14in the taxi

02:15and we both didn't really know the words

02:18but it's a good tune, you know?

02:20Great tune.

02:21He didn't know the words when he wrote it,

02:23I don't think.

02:24Of course he worked with Shane as well,

02:25so you get where I'm coming from with that.

02:28But that relationship he had with Glasgow

02:31is fascinating

02:32and he did spend a lot of time here.

02:34Some of the most important gigs they did as a band

02:37were at the Barrowlands.

02:39I did feel that sense of connection

02:41to the music scene here overall, right?

02:44100%, huge, huge love for Glasgow

02:47and it's in his books,

02:49it's well documented

02:50that Glasgow is probably his other place

02:53that he loved to be, you know?

02:54I think he also got that

02:57he was appreciated here

02:58maybe more than other places

03:01and not in a kind of pop star kind of way

03:03because you knew him and I knew him,

03:04that was not his thing.

03:05You know, he didn't care about money,

03:07he had no concept of time

03:08and he certainly had no ego for all the other stuff

03:11but I think there was a general,

03:13just something special about the Glasgow people

03:15and their relationship with him and vice versa.

03:19So he totally loved it.

03:20So when we were starting to write these songs,

03:22we'd write a song about Glasgow

03:24and also as well as like,

03:25Kaiser Sozak or something,

03:26I was telling him about,

03:28he wanted to know all about where I grew up

03:29and all that, it was Milton

03:31and he wanted to know the name of the gangs,

03:33it was the Tongs and the Apostle Fleto and all this

03:35and then when we're battering away this,

03:37he just, boom, all these words go into the,

03:40the Times and the Tongs,

03:41the lassies that are gone still live on

03:42in my fond memory and all this.

03:44It was almost like all the information was going in

03:47and it just comes out in one chunk

03:50and thankfully, the time I got into a studio,

03:53we'd still got it, you know, in some form to record it.

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