The Pogues have spoken to NME about their 2025 tour in celebration of the 40th anniversary of 'Rum Sodomy & The Lash', playing without Shane MacGowan, and how Fontaines DC helped pave the way for the run of dates.
- READ MORE: Shane MacGowan, 1957-2023: an uncompromising, chaotic one of a kind
The Celtic icons recently announced their first headline tour in 13 years – and first since the passing of Shane MacGowan – which will feature the original members James Fearnley, Jem Finer and Spider Stacy, alongside a cast of guests standing in for the late frontman.
It will come off the back of two shows that commemorate 40 years of The Pogues' debut album 'Red Roses For Me' this year. Following a performance at the Hackney Empire back in May, an upcoming gig at Dublin's 3Arena on December 17 sees the trailblazers joined by the likes of Fontaines' Grian Chatten and Tom Coll, Nadine Shah and members of Lankum.
“The 'Rum Sodomy & The Lash' shows stemmed from the 'Red Roses For Me' anniversary shows which came from outside the band,” Stacy told NME. “Tom [Coll, drummer] from Fontaines DC was doing a weekend of Irish music in Hackney in May, and wanted to do something to mark 40 years of 'Red Roses…', and he got me involved and off we went.”
“It's grown organically from the people who want to see and hear us rather than us foisting what we think worth is celebrating on anybody else,” added Fearnley.
Asked if they feel any affinity with the new wave of Irish bands that include Fontaines DC, Lankum and Kneecap, Stacy responded: “Fontaines are a fantastic band, but they're very much carrying their own torch. And Kneecap – Irish-language rappers – are without precedent. If you're talking about bands like Lankum and The Mary Wallopers, that's a different story because it's more Pogues-like territory – to hear them doing what we do in their unique way is exciting. All of those bands are immense.”
MacGowan passed away in November 2024 following a period of ill health, but the band feel these dates honor him. “It was very much like Shane was there,” said Stacy of the 'Red Roses For Me' Hackney gig. “You could feel his presence and spirit and it was a fitting tribute.”
Produced by Elvis Costello, The Pogues' second studio album 'Rum Sodomy & The Lash' yielded the singles 'A Pair of Brown Eyes' and 'Dirty Old Town' and was hailed by NME as “probably the best LP of 1985” in its original review. Reflecting on what MacGowan would have made of the anniversary celebrations, Stacy laughed: “I think there would have been a considerable amount of mockery [from him]!”
Finer agreed: “I don't think he would have ever entertained a conversation about the legacy of The Pogues or his music. He wasn't like that. I had numerous conversations with him over the last few years and that was a subject area you just wouldn't go to.”
Check out our full chat with the band below, where the band also share their memories of MacGowan and remember once colorfully branding Laurence Fox a “herrenvolk shite”.
NME: Hello The Pogues! Are there any 'Rum Sodomy & The Lash' album tracks or deep cuts you're particularly looking forward to digging into live?
Fearnley: “For me, it's 'London Girl', because it's going to be a massive challenge and I'm going to have to go into seclusion to figure out what I did and how to play it!”
Finer: “One of the great things about doing these songs with new people is you get new twists to them. There are songs I can imagine coming to life that might have been thrown away before. I'm interested in what will happen with 'The Gentleman Soldier' because that's a mad song.”
Stacy: “We can tell you one special guests. [London folk outfit] Stick In The Wheel are guesting on the 'The Genteman Soldier'. I was turned on to them by Lankum, and they have a great, unique sound. I love their London take on folk, and they have such a wide sonic palette.”
Presumably when you started out, you couldn't have imagined that one day he and The Pogues would become so beloved that his funeral procession would attract crowds and mass sing-a-longs?
Finer: “You'd be a nutter if you thought that.”
Stacy: “We were aware of the quality of what we were doing, but the way Shane came to be regarded and the nature of the funeral was something else entirely. It had the trappings of a state funeral. It was extraordinary. Walking to the abbey, every shop and pub was playing Pogues songs.
“Outside a hardware store, they were playing 'Hell's Ditch' on a speaker mounted on a telegraph pole at full volume. You heard the lyrics blaring: 'GENET'S FEELING RAMON'S DICK/THE GUY IN THE BUNK ABOVE GETS SICK…' as I thought: 'This is perfect!'. Shane would have probably shouted: 'TURN IT DOWN!'.”
You performed 'The Parting Glass' at the star-studded funeral that was attended by the Irish president, and also included readings from Bono, and Nick Cave singing a moving 'Rainy Night in Soho'. How did it feel?
Finer: “We went through all emotions. It was extreme sadness, but then elation that you can only feel when you're in that state of extreme grief. The spirit of Shane was very much present – even in the fact he arrived late! He was definitely there. It was unlike any service I'd ever been to.”
When did you last speak to Shane?
Stacy: “I saw him two days before he died. My wife and I were in Dublin. We were going to see him the night before he died, but his doctors had advised that he shouldn't have visitors. I'd been to see him a couple of times in the run up to him passing and he wasn't communicating and clearly on his last legs. It was a very sad thing to see. There was a part of me that thought it was merciful that it didn't drag out too long, because Shane wouldn't have wanted to be like that.”
Would he have enjoyed these 40th anniversary celebrations?
Stacy: “As to what we're doing now, I think there would be a considerable amount of mockery!”
Finer: “I don't think he would ever have entertained a conversation about the legacy of The Pogues or his music. He wasn't like that. I had numerous conversations with him over the last few years, and that was a subject area you wouldn't go to. Not of interest.”
In the wake of his death, there was a passionate campaign to get Fairytale Of New York'to Number One for the first time ever, as it's held every position in the Top 20 bar one. Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' topped the charts that year, but would the accolade of Number One mean anything to you?
Finer: “No, we weren't bothered. That was more of a record company thing. It doesn't mean anything.”
Stacy: “It doesn't need it. 'Fairytale of New York' not being Number One is a bit like how neither [acclaimed footballers] Johan Cruyff nor George Best won a World Cup!”
It's also the fourth anniversary of The Pogues' official Twitter account slapping down Laurence Fox with a memorable insult…
Stacy: “It was the last good thing on Twitter probably! When the BBC announced they weren't going to play 'Fairytale…' pre-watershed on Radio 1 without censoring the lyric 'f****t', Laurence Fox jumped on it and said that he wanted to get The Pogues to Number One, but the proper version, none of this woke nonsense! And on The Pogues' Twitter, I responded with: 'Fuck off you little herrenvolk shite'”.
For those unaware, Herrenvolk was a concept in Nazi ideology which referred to the German people as the 'master race'…
Stacy: “When Brendan Behan gets arrested in his [1958] autobiography Borstal Boyhe describes one of the special branch guys as a blond herrenvolk. As soon as I saw Laurence Fox, I thought he had a SS recruitment poster vibe.”
Finer: “Did he respond?!”
Spiders: “Eventually, he responded that he had to look up what it meant. It got over 10k likes and swatted him out of the water, which was very gratifying. The perfect end!”
Does it bore you when people try to drag that song into a culture war?
Stacy: “We don't want to be dragged into anything on behalf of people like Laurence Fox. When the BBC announced they were censoring that lyric, I was looking at Twitter where a guy said that he loved The Pogues but every Christmas when he hears drunk blokes shouting that word in the street – when they're singing along to 'Fairytale of New York' – he's reminded of the number of times he heard it when having the shit kicked out of him at school for being gay.
“My personal point of view is that people shouldn't have to put up with that, so I took it upon myself to say we were in agreement with the BBC's decision. Times change and you to be more mindful of what you're saying and when you're saying it.”
It's about context, right?
Finer: “If those lines were delivered in a play, it would be different, but a song puts words into people's mouths to drunkenly sing and they might not even realize what they're singing, but suddenly it's in the tube station. So although Shane wasn't writing a homophobic ditty and he wasn't homophobic in any way – he was writing a character who would have spoken like that – if it's being played in a setting where it might be taken out of context and harm people in any way, then it's fair enough that the word's substituted or bleeped. We don't have a problem with that.”
The difference would be that on a radio station, it's a general audience whereas – like a play – people will come to The Pogues' gigs with knowledge of the song and fully understand its lyrical intention. Will you be singing the original lyrics live?
Stacy: “We're going to be doing it in Dublin and I'm going to leave it up to the singer to make their own choice. Because there's been a substitute available and I don't know why Shane didn't do it in the first place – which is blaggard. If he'd done that originally, we would have had a hit in America.”
As Ridley Scott's Gladiator 2 has just been released. We wanted to ask about the unusual idea that Shane once had of having his band dressed up as gladiators to sing 'cretin music'…
Fearnley: “He wanted me to dress as a gladiator with a leather loin cloth. That was in [his first punk band] The Nips…”
Stacy: “Wasn't that the band he wanted to start with you post-Nips which was going to be like Soft Cell with you doing the synths?”
Fearnley: “To him, it made complete sense. Thankfully, it never happened! He was absolutely serious. He was going to wear a toga. His imagination was prodigious!”
Check out the full list of The Pogues' 2025 UK tour dates below and visit here for tickets and more information.
MAY 2025
1 – Leeds, O2 Academy
2 – Birmingham, O2 Academy
3 – London, O2 Academy Brixton
6 – Glasgow, Barrowland
7 – Manchester, O2 Apollo
8 – Newcastle, O2 City Hall
