Shane MacGowan honored at funeral attended by stars including Nick Cave and Johnny Depp
By Issy Ronald and Niamh Kennedy, CNN
(CNN) — Shane MacGowan, lead singer of the Anglo-Irish band The Pogues, was honored at a funeral on Friday in County Tipperary, Ireland, attended by stars including Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, and Irish President Michael D. Higgins, after he died last week, age 65.
Depp read the first Prayer of the Faithful and paid tribute to the “maestro” MacGowan, after readings from well-known figures such as “Game of Thrones” star Aiden Gillen and former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams had been interspersed with renditions of MacGowan’s music from singers, including Cave who performed “A Rainy Night in Soho” accompanied by Irish musicians, Colm Mac Con Iomaire on the fiddle and Glen Hansard on guitar.
MacGowan’s former bandmate, Cáit O’Riordan, sang Pogues’s song ‘A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday’ alongside Irish folk musician, John Francis Flynn.
Glen Hansard, who came to fame after winning an Oscar for musical ‘Once,’ led a rousing rendition of The Pogues’s most famous hit, the Christmas song ‘Fairytale of New York,’ which culminated in a standing ovation.
Meanwhile, U2 frontman Bono was unable to attend the service but paid tribute to the singer with a recorded reading.
Earlier that day, Ireland had honored MacGowan publicly during a procession through the streets of Dublin.
A horse-drawn carriage carried his coffin, draped in the Irish flag, through the streets while mourners paid their respects quietly by the roadside.
MacGowan’s music accompanied the funeral procession in both planned and spontaneous forms.
The procession paused as the Artane Band, a marching band of young musicians, played “Fairytale of New York,” while the gathered crowd sang along.
Elsewhere in the crowd, musicians performed “Dirty Old Town,” first recorded by English folk singer Ewan MacColl and later popularized by The Pogues while others played The Pogues’ 1985 single “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”
On Thursday, MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, expressed her gratitude on Instagram that “so many beautiful people are pouring their hearts and souls into making it magnificent and magical and memorable for him and for us who are left behind.”
She added: “Shane hated funerals and he refused to go to them with a few rare exceptions. So it’s incredible to think that so many people want to come to his.”
The “Fairytale of New York” singer died on November 30 after a prolonged period of ill health, according to social media posts by Clarke.
He had been discharged from Dublin’s St. Vincent’s Hospital on November 22 after receiving treatment there for an infection, Clarke said.
Beginning at 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) on South Lotts Road, the procession for MacGowan wound along a three-kilometer (two-mile) route through central Dublin, a statement released by the Irish police said.
After the procession, MacGowan’s funeral took place at the St. Mary of the Rosary church in Nenagh, a small town about 100 miles west of Dublin, Father Pat Gilbert, the priest overseeing the service, told Ireland’s public broadcaster, RTE.
“We will have the rite of reception, we’ll have mass and we’ll have the rite of final accommodation interspersed with pieces of his music which will be performed by some of his friends,” he said.
MacGowan had grappled with multiple health issues in recent years and used a wheelchair since breaking his pelvis in 2015.
Last year, he was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, a potentially life-threatening condition that causes an inflammation of the brain.
And MacGowan received a full set of dental implants in 2015 after losing several teeth as a result of his heavy drug and alcohol use.
Clarke added on Instagram that “if you don’t want to come to the funeral Shane would definitely understand, he wouldn’t want to go either!”
“But if you want to remember him, the next time you see a homeless person stop give them your time and your compassion and your respect and treat them like a brother or a sister.”
At the service, MacGowan’s sister Siobhan thanked all those gathered for giving her brother a sendoff that she said he would have been “proud of.”
Siobhan called County Tipperary her brother’s “spiritual home,” recounting the inspiration he received from summers spent in his family’s cottage surrounded by Irish traditional music.
“Shane’s veins ran with Irish blood,” she said.
MacGowan’s wife also gave a eulogy, describing her husband as an “explorer” who pushed the “boundaries of what you can do while still in a physical body,” recounting how at one point he was taking 100 tabs of acid a day.
Clarke said that ultimately McGowan contributed “something great to our canon,” through his “radical” reinvention of Irish traditional music.
“His mind was just capable of going places the normal minds weren’t,” Clarke said.
The final performance was a rendition of traditional song, ‘The Parting Glass,’ by MacGowan’s former Pogues bandmates, Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Spider Stacey and James Fearnley.
As the service ended, MacGowan’s wicker coffin was carried out of the church by mourners, including Johnny Depp, to a thundering applause from the congregation.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
