Excess all areas

When I meet James Fearnley in the resident’s lounge of a midrange Dublin hotel, my first thought is that the bald-headed 58-year-old doesn’t look much like a veteran member of The Pogues. His eyes are bright and clear. There’s not the slightest trace of dried vomit, blood or any other bodily fluids on his neatly-pressed suit jacket. And is that a cappuccino I spy on the table before him?

Okay, I’m being facetious. The Pogues might have a long-held international reputation as a wayward bunch of hard-drinking, rock ‘n’ roll desperados, but for the most part that’s down to their infamously badly behaved frontman. While Fearnley and the rest of the band were no strangers to excess, it was Shane MacGowan who set the, erm, bar for Bacchanalian behaviour.
Frustratingly for his bandmates and audiences alike, MacGowan’s inebriation reduced many Pogues gigs to embarrassingly shambolic farces, especially in the latter stages of their first incarnation. “The worst thing was watching Shane hanging off a microphone, incapable of doing any singing at all,” the accordionist recalls, speaking in a strong north of England accent. “He can’t leave so he’s just in the middle of the stage screaming his head off. That’s hard. And it’s always hard to talk about.”
Presumably slightly easier to write about though. After a string of successful albums and seven riotous years on the road, MacGowan’s drinking and drugging eventually got so out of hand that his fellow Pogues were left with little choice but to reluctantly sack their singer and founding member. Fearnley’s recently published memoir, Here Comes Everybody, opens at this painful juncture, which occurred on the eve of a festival gig in Yokohama in 1991, before rewinding 11 years to the moment where the solidly middle-class, Worsley-born musician first met the decadent singer – then trading under the moniker ‘Shane O’Hooligan’ – in a dingy London rehearsal room.
That audition led to a brief period playing guitar for Shane’s budding punk band The Nips (shortened from Nipple Erectors). Following their implosion, it was a couple of years before the pair hooked up again to form The Pogues, playing their first gigs in 1984 with a line-up that included Jem Finer, Spider Stacey and the fiery Cait O’Riordan.
With their pioneering blend of punk spunk, traditional melodies and the powerfully poetic song-writing of MacGowan, which occasionally bordered on genius, The Pogues effectively reinvented Irish music in the ‘80s. Despised by purists, the motley band of boozers rose from the sweaty chaos of backroom gigs in Camden pubs to world tours with the likes of U2, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan (MacGowan went AWOL for the Dylan shows).
Although Fearnley had originally aspired to be a writer, the novel he was working on was abandoned when The Pogues took off. He now admits it was no great loss. “It was actually a load of shit,” he laughs. “Far too verbose. A lot of it was based on what I thought Flann O’Brien’s style was. Arched and clever and that sort of stuff. Looking back, I was writing my way up my own arse.”
Although still quite verbose, his memoir tells the band’s story with wit, lyricism, compassion and great candour. Fearnley brings to life the youthful friendships, the arguments, the decadence, the amazing gigs, the disastrous ones, and the fantastic highs and lows of life in The Pogues.
“One reviewer complained that there wasn’t a lot of drugs in the book,” he says. “But my whole thing wasn’t to talk about that kind of stuff. I think that would veer towards exposé. This is a rock ‘n’ roll memoir. I wanted it to read like a novel.”
MacGowan supplied a typically smartarsed cover blurb (“It’s just how I imagine I’d remember it”), but has he actually read the book?
“Shane can’t keep hold of a pair of glasses so I think it was read to him by Victoria [Clarke]. There was a little bit of consternation about the way that I described Victoria. I didn’t freight it with any particular attitude. When you describe somebody’s incisors... let’s just say she wasn’t very happy.”
Although most of the band weren’t offended by his warts-and-all portrayal of them, one member is apparently less than impressed. “I sent them all typescripts beforehand. Shane’s reaction was lovely and funny. Philip [Chevron] found an inaccuracy in it, and said, ‘you need to take that out because it’s wrong’, so I did. I had feedback from a couple of them in the form of proofreading on my behalf, which was really very helpful. And without mentioning names, there’s one member of the band who’s not happy at all. Which is a drag. I meant no harm. Because I love these people. They might have been strangers once, but they’ve kind of turned into family.”
What was Cait O’Riordan’s reaction?
“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I sent her a copy and I haven’t heard from her – which doesn’t mean anything because she moves around a lot. The thing is I take pokes at everybody – myself included. I didn’t want to write a book that said I’m the greatest accordion-player ever and all these people should be privileged to know me. I’m just as much of a shit as anybody else is.”
Fearnley currently resides in LA with his actress wife Diane von Zerneck and their two daughters. As confessed in his memoir, he basically seduced her away from the late Joe Strummer (who deputised for a while after MacGowan was sacked).
“I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Joe,” he shrugs. “After all, I met my wife through him.”
Did he get pissed off with you over that?
“Well, Jim Jarmusch would say of his performance in Mystery Train that nothing better could have happened to put him into the frame of mind that Jarmusch wanted of him in the film. Because that’s when it came down for Joe, when he went off to New Orleans to work on the film. So I think it was difficult for him. At the same time, the relationship that he had with my wife... It sounds so personal and soap-opera-ish, but it was one that his own wife didn’t know about. So I daresay he was sort of conflicted about the thing.”
Following a lengthy hiatus, The Pogues eventually reunited with MacGowan in 2001, and have been touring irregularly ever since. Needless to say, with everyone now older and wiser, things aren’t quite as decadent. In fact, most of them have quit the bottle.
“Well, when we got back together in 2001 it was strange to find ourselves doing the same thing again,” he muses. “I was looking at all my guys. Spider Stacey could be dead from alcohol, but he’s been sober for 12 years. Philip’s the same. Terry [Woods] wouldn’t have done himself quite such a mischief, but he’s been sober for as long as that.
“I still drink. I don’t have to drink, but I do enjoy drinking. We all drank a lot back then, but I wasn’t the worst. I became a bit of a scallywag at times. But there’s not much I regret.”
While inevitable health problems have forced Shane MacGowan to seriously slow down, he hasn’t stopped boozing either. How are relations at the moment?
“I’ve run the gamut with Shane from the pits to the summit, basically,” Fearnley laughs. “Right now, it’s probably on some bridle path on the fellside. So things are okay.”

Here Comes Everybody: The Story of The Pogues is published by Faber & Faber.