Nick Cave has penned a tribute to his friend Shane MacGowan, who died in late November, in The Guardian. He says they first met in 1989 through a “summit meeting” between them and The Fall’s Mark E. Smith for a cover story in the NME titled “The Unholy Trinity.” “Unfortunately, it was my first day out of rehab, and it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to spend the day with two people who were not known for their moderation,” writes Nick who sang “A Rainy Night in Soho” at MacGowan’s funeral. “It was pure mayhem from the outset. Not the most auspicious start to a friendship, but Shane and I did become close friends soon afterwards.”
“What I really envied about Shane’s lyric writing was that he was doing something extraordinary with the classic songwriting form,” Cave goes on to say. “His way of writing was steeped in the tradition of Irish balladry. It was in no way modern, whereas my songs, back then, were more of their time: darker and fractured and experimental. There was little compassion in them. No true understanding of the ‘ordinary.’ I don’t think I could have written a lyric like ‘The wind goes right through you/ It’s no place for the old’ [from Fairytale of New York]. It speaks volumes. You can feel the wind and the ice in the air but also the sense of learned empathy and deep compassion Shane had for people.”
While Cave does talk about Shane’s troubles, he writes, “At the end of the day, though, it is his genius we should remember rather than all the other stuff…He had something that we lesser writers have to work hard to even get close to. An effortless, God-given talent.”
Read the whole piece at The Guardian.
Cave also recently shared memories of performing at Shane’s 60th birthday concert, which also featured the late Sinead O’Connor via his Red Hand Files site: “Sinéad once said of Shane, ‘He is an angel. An actual angel’. Whether or not this is the case, who’s to say? But Shane was blessed with an uncommon spirit of goodness and a deep sense of what is true, which was strangely amplified in his brokenness, his humanness. We can say of him most certainly, ‘he was beloved on the earth,’ and Sinéad too — truly beloved and greatly missed, both.”
Read Nick’s full Red Hand Files entry here.
