In the wake of the death of The Pogues’ great singer and poet Shane MacGowan on Nov. 30 in Dublin, Ireland, there has been a renewed worldwide passion for the band’s “Fairytale of New York,” the classic down-on-their-luck Irish émigrés duet between MacGowan and the late, great Kirsty MacColl.
Bouyed by the crescendo of “And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day,” the song has become a staple around the holidays, but at Kieran’s Irish Pub in downtown Minneapolis, it has always been thus.
Since its in opening on the corner of W. 6th Street and N. 1st Avenue in 2010, pub patrons have been greeted by the song’s lyrics upon entry, with “Got on a lucky one/Came in 18 to one/I’ve got a feeling,” and “I love you baby/And the bells were ringing out/They howled out for more” painted on glass above the front bar, and “We kissed on a corner then danced through the night“ behind the stage. Amidst all the Irish décor — the “Titanic room,” portraits of W.B. Yeats, Van Morrison, John F. Kennedy, James Joyce and others — MacGowan’s lilting words leap from the walls and into the imagination.
“People always comment on them, but in the last week it’s been every day, multiple times,” said Kieran’s bartender John Fitzgerald, nodding up at the words looming over him. “With Shane’s passing and all, people have definitely been more curious about, you know, ‘Is that from…?’ Because as they are, the lyrics, they’re a little disjointed.”
Pub owner Kieran Folliard, a longtime MacGowan and Pogues fan, had the lyrics painted over the bar and stage upon moving operations from the original Kieran’s location at S. 4th Street and 2nd Avenue. As the Kieran’s sign outside the door has it, “Cead Mile Failte (‘a hundred thousand welcomes’), Born 03-16-1994, Emigrated 03-16-2010.”
“The lyrics have been here ever since we opened — March 16, 2010, which was the 16th anniversary of the original pub opening in 1994,” said Folliard last week, sitting at the bar and nursing a pint of Guinness and a shot of the Irish whiskey that bears his name, Kieran’s Red Locks. “So 16 years later, we moved it over here. We had a pipe band, and we had about 300 people march down with pints — completely illegal, but whatever.
“I always thought of MacGowan as the quintessential icon for a public house. Because clearly, he was the poet, and Ireland and poets and pubs seems to have a connection that goes back a long way, whether it’s Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, all of the great Irish writers, they all seem to have pubs running through their writing. And MacGowan, I remember I went to the Mean Fiddler in London a million years ago, because it was reported that he used to spend time there. I never got to meet him, unfortunately, but I did get to see him on stage here at First Avenue. I don’t know how he stood on stage that night, but whatever.”
(MacGowan and his band the Popes played First Avenue in 1995 and 2001.)
In Ireland last week, “Fairytale of New York” (from The Pogues’ 1988 album “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”) hit No. 1 on the Irish charts, 36 years after it first hit the top of the charts there.
In America, the football-playing Kelce brothers’ version (“Fairytale of Philadelphia”) just hit the top of the Billboard charts, and when Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill performed “Fairytale of New York” with the surviving members of the Pogues at MacGowan’s funeral in Tipperary Friday, the video of church-goers dancing in the aisles went viral.
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To be sure, more live versions are sure to abound this month (including Dec. 19 at the Driftwood Char Bar in Minneapolis, where Minnesota rock legends Robert Wilkinson and Gini Dodds will join St. Dominic’s Trio for what is sure to be a one-for-the-ages version), culminating in a global singalong on Dec. 25, the “Christmas Day” so heart-rippingly celebrated in “Fairytale of New York,” and MacGowan’s 66th heavenly birthday.
“For me, ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ itself is such an everyperson story, how you can have relationships, you fall on hard times, you can come back up, the dreamers, the romantic side of it,” said Folliard. “And I think that it was just calling out for it to be up there: You know, ‘Bells are ringing out,’ ‘Howling out for more…’ You know, we have live music, maybe poetry night, or I was down here for the Ireland-South Africa rugby game of the World Cup, and there was a lot of howling out for more that day, as well. Everything about it just speaks to humanity, the public house, the egalitarian gathering spot. You know, you could have your Armani suit next to torn jeans, whatever, and the pub welcomes you. Here’s to Shane. Long may he live.”
At that, Folliard tipped his glass toward a framed portrait of MaGowan that has hung behind the bar since Day One.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh[/image_credit][image_caption]“Here’s to Shane. Long may he live.” Folliard lifts a toast to the framed portrait of Shane MacGowan that hangs behind the bar at Kieran’s Irish Pub. [/image_caption]
Of “Fairytale of New York,” MacGowan’s friend and fellow songwriter Nick Cave defended the songcraft behind the tune’s homosexual slur, and poetically championed the whole of the song when he wrote,
“Truly great songs that are as emotionally powerful as ‘Fairytale of New York’ are very rare indeed. ‘Fairytale’ is a lyrical high wire act of dizzying scope and potency, and it rightly takes its place as the greatest Christmas song ever written. It stands shoulder to shoulder with any great song, from any time, not just for its sheer audacity, or its deep empathy, but for its astonishing technical brilliance.
“One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalized and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever written, the lyrics and the vocal performance emanate from deep inside the lived experience itself, existing within the very bones of the song. It never looks down on its protagonists. It does not patronize, but speaks its truth, clear and unadorned. It is a magnificent gift to the outcast, the unlucky and the broken-hearted. We empathize with the plight of the two fractious characters, who live their lonely, desperate lives against all that Christmas promises — home and hearth, cheer, bounty and goodwill. It is as real a piece of lyric writing as I have ever heard.”
Does that all translate to pub-goers in Minneapolis, who happen upon the words at Kieran’s?
“If they’re from Ireland, or England possibly, and also people that are really into that scene, they recognize it,” said Folliard. “Pat Curry, who worked with me for years at the bars and whatnot — he’s with the guys at the Loon, now — somebody like Pat who is a very voracious reader and he’s into bands like The Pogues, that would be certainly something he’d sit and have a pint and look at that and think about it.
“But out of the blue, if you took a whole group of people that were in here before a Timberwolves game possibly, and we asked people whose words they were, not many would know. But I suppose to some degree, it can speak to anybody when you just read the words without knowing the source. Myself, I think I wanted [to commemorate it] just for the ups and downs of the song, the feelings of life and the twists and turns, and, of course, just the rhythm of it.”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh[/image_credit][image_caption]Patrons walking into Kieran’s Irish Pub in downtown Minneapolis are greeted by the lyrics to “Fairytale of New York.”[/image_caption]
