Shane MacGowan
Irish punk rock legend dies aged 65
Shane MacGowan succumbed to long-term health problems at the age of 65.
© imago/WENN
Shane MacGowan is dead. The Pogues frontman and founder of Celtic Punk died at the age of 65 after a long illness.
The Irish musician Shane MacGowan, best known as the singer and songwriter of the punk band The Pogues, is dead. As British media unanimously report, MacGowan died on November 30th at the age of 65 after a long and serious illness. On the musician’s official Instagram account, MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke posted an emotional farewell in honor of the “love of her life.”
MacGowan had “the most beautiful soul” and the loss she felt could not be put into words. “I was blessed beyond words to have met and loved him, to have been loved so endlessly and unconditionally by him, to have spent so many years of life and love with him,” the post continues, accompanying a black and white photo of the star .
Long period of suffering
Shane MacGowan had been in poor health for a long time, as “The Guardian” writes, among others. Since 2015 he has been dependent on a wheelchair. At the end of last year he was also admitted to a Dublin hospital because of brain inflammation, where he had to spend several months in intensive care over the course of this year. It was only about a week ago and shortly before their fifth wedding anniversary that MacGowan’s wife still had it Happy customer communicated via Instagramthat “Shane has been released from the hospital.”
The breakthrough in the mid-80s
In the 80s, Shane MacGowan and his band The Pogues founded the so-called Celtic Punk, a mixture of folk and punk rock. The band gained regional fame through concerts in pubs and bars, and the first single “Dark Streets of London” was released in 1984. In the commercially increasingly successful period that followed, they appeared as the opening act for The Clash and U2, among others, and went on a world tour themselves.
As a result of numerous drug and alcohol excesses, the band separated from their frontman in the early 1990s. With a new singer, the band lasted until 1996 before officially breaking up. Meanwhile, MacGowan continued his career with the group “Shane MacGowan and the Popes”, founded in 1994, with which he was involved until 2002.