The Pogues' Spider Stacy: "We just want to go out there do the songs proud, do Shane proud – and give everybody a good night and a great start to Christmas"

In the March issue of Hot Press, I wrote a feature piece about The Pogues’ first single ‘Dark Streets Of London’, in which I spoke to, amongst others, one of its founding members, Jem Finer. It’s a privilege now to take up the history of the band with Finer’s fellow Pogue, Spider Stacy – especially since the next step in the band’s chronology is their incendiary debut album, Red Roses For Me.

To mark the 40th anniversary of that landmark record, Spider will be overseeing a special concert at Dublin’s 3Arena this December, for which a Galacticos-like array of musical talent will be present. As well as members of The Pogues, also on-hand will be members of Fontaines D.C. and Lankum, The Bad Seeds’ Jim Sclavunos, Junior Brother, Nadine Shah, Kojaque and many more.

Chatting to Spider, I start by offering my condolences on the loss of his old friend and band leader, Shane MacGowan. Indeed, the last time I was in the same room as Spider was at Shane’s wake in the Thatch Cottage in Ballycommon, when Spider joined Shane’s last band, Cronin, onstage to perform ‘The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn’, ‘Poor Paddy’ and ‘Boys From The County Hell’.

But let’s go back to happier times, to the foundation of The Pogues and indeed beyond – way back to before Spider met Shane. Back, indeed, to schooldays in North London and Spider’s first band The New Bastards, who in true punk style performed just one gig.

“We were terrible,” he laughs. “I was playing drums and I’ve never been able to play the drums. There was this guy, Nashy, an early punk, saying, ‘That was fucking great! When are you playing again?’ We really didn’t play any songs that you would know as such, but that kind of led to The Millwall Chainsaws. We were a bit more serious than The New Bastards, in that we wrote six or seven songs, and we did half-a-dozen shows, albeit over a period of about two years.”

Spider Stacy. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Spider first met Shane MacGowan at a Ramones gig at the Roundhouse in 1977.

“I went outside for a bit of fresh air,” he recalls. “Shane was out there as well. I knew who he was, because he was a face. He said, ‘You’re enjoying yourself?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am! Well, it is The Ramones!’ He said, ‘That’s what it’s all about, innit?’ We met again a couple of years later, in ’79, when we were both living on Burton Street.

“The Chainsaws never had a guitarist of our own, so we used to borrow other people’s guitarists. And Shane was kind of a de facto guitarist, right? He kind of loved us. I mean, we were shit, but he sort of saw through the shit, and saw there was a spirit. If you like, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak!”

Spider fondly recalls those early London days, with Shane working at Stan Brennan’s Rocks Off record store on Hanway Street, and Spider working labouring jobs. Both whittled away nights at the Norfolk Arms on Leigh Street, The Boot on Cromer Street and The Lord John Russell on Marchmont Street.

In the spring of 1981, The Millwall Chainsaws renamed themselves The New Republicans and included MacGowan in their line-up. They only ever played one gig – a five-song set of Irish ballads and rebel songs at Richard Strange’s Cabaret Futura.

“We did ‘The Foggy Dew’, ‘The Patriot Game’ and ‘The Rising Of The Moon’,” Spider recalls. “There were these squaddies who started pelting us with chips, which I suppose is a lot better than what they may have chosen. There were plenty of glass bottles, so we possibly got off lightly there!”

If that sounds agit 101, it wasn’t. Playing rebel songs in the London of the time was an insurrectionist act. But MacGowan possessed a further idea that would prove to be even more revolutionary.

“I think Shane was already writing songs,” Spider explains. “There was a hiatus of maybe a year, during which Shane started showing Jem songs. Jem didn’t pick up a banjo until The Pogues started, nor had James Fearnley picked up an accordion. I got a phone call three days before our first show at the Pindar of Wakefield. We did ‘Streams Of Whiskey’ and ‘Dark Streets Of London’ at that gig. I knew that Shane could write songs because of The Nips, but this was really something else.”

After that, things moved swiftly. Gigs started happening, and the band recorded their first single and got signed to Stiff Records by Dave Robinson. They then recorded Red Roses For Me at Elephant Studios in Wapping. Spider recalls being rather naïve regarding the recording process, spending a lot of time sitting around waiting to record his parts. He only really grasped what they had achieved when he got his hands on a copy of the album in a record shop in Oxford, while touring with Elvis Costello.

“I was really proud of it,” Spider recalls. “But I had this weird thing – will people actually like this? All the press we were getting seemed to be universally positive. Crowds were going bananas. There was a point on the Costello tour when I said to Jem, ‘I think we might be the best band in the world’.

“Just the sheer quality of Shane’s writing, but also the way we played – I loved the way we sounded. And I loved being on stage with The Pogues. The 40th anniversary Red Roses For Me show that we did in Hackney was quite uncanny, because the vibe was very similar to the early days. But, of course, without Shane.”

I wonder about the genesis of the show.

“It was initially Tom Coll from Fontaines,” Spider outlines. “And Campbell Baum, a young guy who runs a folk collective called Broadside Hacks. They were promoting a weekend of Irish music at the Moth Club and Tom suggested they do something for the 40th anniversary of Red Roses For Me. Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis was involved and he suggested to them that I curate it.

“They already had a couple of people on the bill, and I thought I can invite a couple of other people along. It was only 350 capacity, so we announced it with no guests or anything, and it sold out. Then The Mary Wallopers’ manager, Cian Lawless, and Lankum’s Daragh Lynch got in touch and suggested moving it to Hackney Empire. It’s five times the size and luckily they had a spare night on that date. Now we’re at the 3Arena.”

It’ll be one hell of an evening, with that brilliant line-up ready to celebrate one of the great Irish records.

“It’s the album’s 40th birthday,” Spider concludes. “But you can’t separate the album from Shane, and the date is close to his birthday, and not long after the anniversary of his death. We just want to go out there do the songs proud, do Shane proud – and give everybody a good night and a great start to Christmas.”

The 40th anniversary concert for Red Roses For Me takes place at 3Arena, Dublin on December 17. Tickets are available here.