“Fairy Tale of New York” Still Rocks as We Say Goodbye to Shane MacGowan

Okay, it’s nice—and, let’s face it, kind of weird—that Brenda Lee’s “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” has topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the past two weeks, 65 years after its release. The former teeny bopper, who celebrated her 79th birthday on December 11, is now the oldest artist to score a No. 1 hit. Even better: she has temporarily dethroned Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the 1994 ditty that keeps steamrolling holiday playlists like a runaway fruitcake.

But this year I’m in no mood to bop around a Christmas tree or pine incessantly for true love in lieu of presents. Ever since the death of the Pogues’ frontman Shane MacGowan last month, all I want for Christmas is to be regaled with his “Fairytale of New York,” a ramshackle ode that somehow makes holiday magic out of Christmas Eve in a drunk tank and the rants of a bickering Irish couple.

Written with Pogues’ co-founder Jem Finer, MacGowan’s 1987 duet with Kirsty MacColl is a perennial Top 20 hit in the United Kingdom, where it now ranks as the most-played non-carol Christmas song of the 21st century.

“It’s our ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” said MacGowan, who was born on Christmas Day 1957 and died of pneumonia November 30 in Dublin. He was 65.

Unlike Queen’s tour de force, no one dies in “Fairytale of New York.” But that doesn’t mean MacGowan and MacColl’s characters don’t eventually want to kill each other. Their relationship didn’t start out that way, of course. “You were handsome,” she tells him. “You,” he responds, “were pretty, the Queen of New York City.” And in duet they sing: “We kissed on a corner and danced through the night.”

But everything changed after his Christmas Eve stint in the drunk tank. “You’re a bum, you’re a punk,” MacColl snarls. His retort: “You’re an old slut on junk.”

That’s when the spirit of the season goes off the rails. “You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot,” she hisses before extending icy Christmas greetings. “I pray God it’s our last.”

And yet, the chorus tells us, “the boys in the NYPD Choir” are singing “Galway Bay” and “the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day.” In real life there is no such thing as an NYPD choir, so it was the boys in the NYPD Pipes & Drums who were featured in the cinematic black-and-white video shot on NYC streets that accompanied the release of the 1987 hit that would propel the floundering Pogues to stardom worldwide.

The boys in the NYPD did actually sing “Galway Bay” under the arches in Washington Square Park. And it was actor Matt Dillon who played the NYPD officer hauling MacGowan’s character into the “drunk tank,” which was actually the lockup in the old 23rd Pct at 134-138 W. 30th St. Other scenes showed MacColl walking forlornly in Greeley Square and the couple arguing outside the Times Square Hotel, along with shots of that New York City holiday staple, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

At the end of the song, the name-calling suddenly gives way to a bittersweet reckoning. “You took my dreams from me,” MacColl sings, a lament of resignation, not anger. That’s when MacGowan digs deep into his soul to surprise her with the ultimate gift: boundless love. Her dreams, he says, are safe within his heart.

“When I first found you, I kept them with me, babe,” he tells her. “I put them with my own. Can’t make it all alone. I’ve built my dreams around you.”

The bells are once again ringing out for Christmas Day, the first without MacGowan. Pogues fans and true believers might take solace in the prospect of his eternal reunion with MacColl, who was just 41 when she was hit and killed by a speeding powerboat while diving in Mexico in 2000.

The tragic fate of both singers adds a poignant coda to “Fairytale of New York.” MacGowan, like so many carousing celebrities, lived a life that was often more of a cautionary tale than a rock ’n’ roll fantasy. His chronic drug and alcohol problems got so bad that he was kicked out of his own band in 1991. He eventually made his way back to the Pogues a decade later after starting a new band, Shane MacGowan and the Popes, and working the New York pub scene with Irish brother-in-arms Joe Hurley and Rogue’s March.

Despite his demons, there was never any doubt about MacGowan’s talent and charisma. U2’s Bono, gave a reading, Johnny Depp was a pall bearer and Nick Cave, Bob Geldof and Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, were among the mourners who attended his funeral on Dec. 8 at the historic St. Mary of the Rosary Church in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland.

“Shane, you did what you dreamed,” Siobahn MacGowan, Shane’s sister, said in her eulogy. “You did what you said you were going to do in those long ago days in Tipperary, and you did it with such heart and fire–a fire that is not dimmed by death.”

In his homily, Fr. Pat Gilbert said he grew up listening to the Pogues in the 1980s. “As teenagers, the music and lyrics alerted us to what was happening around us,” he noted, wryly adding, “Shane and the Pogues made it cool to play the tin whistle, banjo or accordion.”

Fittingly, MacGowan’s Irish goodbye had a fairytale ending. Irish singer-songwriters Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill and a bevy of musicians honored him after Communion with a rousing rendition of “Fairytale of New York.”

The congregation literally whooped, whistled and danced in the aisles.

Sláinte. Merry Christmas. Pray God, it won’t be our last.