The Pogues
The Pogues are an English Celtic punk band founded in King's Cross, London, in 1982, by Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacy and Jem Finer. Originally named Pogue Mahone—an anglicisation of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse"—the band fused Irish traditional music with punk rock influences. After adding more members, including James Fearnley and Cait O'Riordan, the Pogues built a reputation with their live shows in London pubs and clubs.
In 1984, the Pogues released their debut studio album, Red Roses for Me, featuring a mix of traditional Irish songs and original compositions by MacGowan. It was followed by Rum Sodomy & the Lash, the four-track EP Poguetry in Motion, and the critically acclaimed If I Should Fall from Grace with God. "Fairytale of New York", recorded as a duet by MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, reached number two in the UK charts at Christmas 1987 and remains a perennial seasonal favourite in Ireland and the UK. The Pogues recorded two more albums with MacGowan, Peace and Love and Hell's Ditch, before sacking him during a 1991 tour as his drug and alcohol dependency increasingly affected their live performances.
The Pogues continued with Joe Strummer and then Stacy as frontmen, releasing new material on Waiting for Herb, but broke up following the critical and commercial failure of their seventh and last studio album, Pogue Mahone. The band re-formed in late 2001, again featuring MacGowan as frontman, and toured regularly in the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe, and the USA for over a decade. Following the death of longtime guitarist Philip Chevron, the Pogues dissolved again in 2014. Longtime bassist Darryl Hunt died in August 2022 and MacGowan died in November 2023. Stacy, Finer and Fearnley re-formed the Pogues in 2024 and toured the UK, Ireland, and North America in 2025.
Band history
Pre-Pogues years: 1977–1982
The future members of the Pogues first met when MacGowan, Peter "Spider" Stacy, and Jem Finer were together in an occasional band called the Millwall Chainsaws in the late 1970s after MacGowan and Stacy met in the toilets at a Ramones gig at The Roundhouse in London in 1977. MacGowan was already with the Nips, though when they broke up in 1980 he concentrated more on Stacy's Millwall Chainsaws, who changed their name to The New Republicans. Shane and Stacy performed their first gig as The New Republicans at Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura in London's Rupert Street Soho in the early months of 1981. Also on the bill that night were Soft Cell.Early years: 1982–1986
In 1982, MacGowan, Stacy and Finer formed the band, then known as Pogue Mahone. James Fearnley, who had been a guitarist with the Nips, joined shortly afterward. Fearnley has noted that Stacy suggested the band's original name, taken from a sentence in James Joyce's Ulysses, where the character Buck Mulligan exclaims: "Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day! It’s destroyed we are surely!" "Pogue mahone" is an anglicisation of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse". The new group played their first gig at The Pindar of Wakefield on 4 October 1982.By their show on Friday 29 October 1982 at 100 Club in London, Cait O'Riordan and John Hasler had joined the band, with Andrew Ranken replacing Hasler on drums in March 1983. Pogue Mahone appeared on Thursday 3 November 1983 at Gossips in Dean Street Soho with Trash Trash Trash and The Stingrays.
The band played London pubs and clubs, and released a single, "Dark Streets of London", on their own, self-named label, gaining a small reputation – especially for their live performances, and national airplay on BBC Radio 1, primarily on David Jensen's evening show. They came to the attention of the media and Stiff Records when they opened for the Clash on their 1984 tour. Following
complaints from a producer at BBC Radio Scotland about the band's name, Jensen began referring to the band on air as "the Pogues", which the band subsequently adopted as their name. They released their first album, Red Roses for Me, on Stiff Records that October.
The band gained more attention when the UK Channel 4's music show The Tube made a video of their version of "Waxie's Dargle" for the show. The performance, featuring Spider Stacy repeatedly smashing himself over the head with a beer tray, became a favourite with the viewers, but Stiff Records refused to release it as a single, feeling it was too late for it to help Red Roses for Me. Nevertheless, it remained a favourite request for the show for many years.
With the aid of producer Elvis Costello, they recorded the follow-up, Rum Sodomy & the Lash, in 1985 during which time guitarist Philip Chevron joined. The album title is a famous comment falsely attributed to Winston Churchill who was supposedly describing the "true" traditions of the British Royal Navy. The album cover featured The Raft of the Medusa, with the faces of the characters in Théodore Géricault's painting replaced with those of the band members. The album shows the band moving away from covers to original material. Shane MacGowan came into his own as a songwriter with this disc, offering up poetic storytelling, such as "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn" and "The Old Main Drag", as well as definitive interpretations of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" and Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda".
The band failed to take advantage of the momentum created by the strong artistic and commercial success of their second album. They first refused to record another album ; O'Riordan married Costello and left the band, to be replaced by bassist Darryl Hunt, formerly of Plummet Airlines and Pride of the Cross; and they added a multi-instrumentalist in Terry Woods, formerly of Steeleye Span. Looming over the band at this period was the increasingly erratic behaviour of their vocalist and principal songwriter, Shane MacGowan. Their record label, Stiff Records, went bankrupt soon after the 1987 release of the single "The Irish Rover". Members of the band, including O'Riordan, acted in Alex Cox's Straight to Hell, and five songs by the band were included on the film's soundtrack album.
Mainstream success and break-up: 1987–1996
The band remained stable enough to record If I Should Fall from Grace with God with its Christmas hit duet with Kirsty MacColl "Fairytale of New York". "Fairytale of New York" was released as a single in 1987 and reached 1 in the Irish charts and in the British charts over Christmas. The song has become a festive classic in the UK and Ireland over the years, and was voted the best Christmas song of all time three years running in 2004, 2005, and 2006 in polls by music channel VH1 UK, despite not achieving Christmas Number One when it was released. It was also voted as the 27th greatest song never to reach in the UK in another VH1 poll, and also voted as the 84th greatest song of all time by BBC Radio 2 listeners in the "Sold on Song" top 100 poll. In 2007 the record was briefly censored by the BBC because of the word "faggot" being deemed potentially offensive to homosexual people. Following protests from listeners, including the mother of Kirsty MacColl, the censorship was lifted.In 1989, the band released Peace and Love, a jazzier record featuring six tracks written by MacGowan, as well as eight tracks written by band members Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Andrew Ranken, and Philip Chevron. As Mark Deming wrote in AllMusic, "It does make clear that MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band – though the fact that the set's most memorable songs were written by others did not bode well for the group's future."
The band was at the peak of its commercial success, with both albums making the top 5 in the UK, but MacGowan was increasingly unreliable. He failed to turn up for the opening dates of their 1988 tour of America, and prevented the band from promoting their 1990 album Hell's Ditch, so in 1991 the band sacked him following a chaotic live performance at the WOMAD Festival held in Japan. Vocal duties were for a time handled by Joe Strummer. Spider Stacy took over permanently after Strummer left in the winter of 1991. After Strummer's departure, the remaining seven Pogues recorded in 1993 Waiting for Herb, which contained the band's third and final top twenty single, "Tuesday Morning" which was written and sung by Spider Stacy.
Terry Woods and James Fearnley subsequently left the band and were replaced by David Coulter and James McNally respectively. Within months of their departures, ill health forced Phil Chevron to leave the band; he was replaced by his former guitar technician, Jamie Clarke. This line-up recorded the band's seventh and final studio album, Pogue Mahone. The album was a commercial failure, and, following Jem Finer's decision to leave the band in 1996, the remaining members decided it was time to quit. According to Shane MacGowan, among the reasons of the break-up was disagreement concerning the political orientation of his songs, the band not wanting to sing too obvious pro-Republican songs – though some of their previous songs were already politically engaged: for instance, Streams of Whiskey is about the poet and IRA member Brendan Behan. Soon after the break-up Shane MacGowan recorded a song titled Paddy Public Enemy Number One as a tribute to the Republican leader Dominic McGlinchey, a former leader of the INLA killed a few years before.
Post-breakup
After the Pogues's break-up, the three remaining long-term members played together briefly as The Vendettas. They played mainly new Stacy-penned tracks, though Darryl Hunt also contributed songs, and the band's live set included a few Pogues songs. First Ranken then Hunt left the band, the latter going on to become singer/songwriter in an indie band called Bish, whose self-titled debut album was released in 2001. Ranken later performed with a number of other bands, including Kippers, The Municipal Waterboard and, most recently, The Mysterious Wheels. In addition to The Vendettas, who Stacy freely admits lost all attraction when the Pogues reformed, Spider continued to write and record music with various bands, including the James Walbourne, Filthy Thieving Bastards, Dropkick Murphys and Astral Social Club.Shane MacGowan founded Shane MacGowan and The Popes in 1992. They released two studio albums and broke up in 2006 once the Pogues' reunion had become official. His autobiography A Drink With Shane MacGowan, co-written with his journalist girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, was released in 2001. Jem Finer went into experimental music, playing a big part in a project known as "Longplayer", a piece of music designed to play continuously for 1,000 years without repeating itself. In 2005, Finer released the album Bum Steer with DB Bob.
James Fearnley moved to the United States shortly before leaving the Pogues. He was a member of The Low And Sweet Orchestra and later the Cranky George Trio. Philip Chevron reformed his former band The Radiators, which briefly included former Pogue Cait O'Riordan. Terry Woods formed The Bucks with Ron Kavana, releasing the album Dancin' To The Ceili Band in 1994. Later, he formed The Woods Band, releasing the album Music From The Four Corners of Hell in 2002.