The Pogues' Jem Finer: ‘Shane MacGowan could be maddening but inspiring'

Telegraph

24-03-2025

When are The Pogues not The Pogues? That's the question plaguing Jem Finer, one of the Irish folk-punk band's founding members, as he strides around Hampstead Heath, his little dog Bonzo trotting on ahead. He has lived nearby for 'almost 31 years, exactly,' he tells me.
It matters because this May, the band will embark on its first headline tour in 10 years with the glaring absence of Shane MacGowan, the group's riotous frontman, who died in November 2023 and with whom he co-wrote Fairytale of New York. 'I wouldn't call it The Pogues,' says Finer, who these days is more paterfamilias than punk in his navy cords and peacoat. 'But I still haven't figured out what I would call it'.
With MacGowan gone, the amiable 69-year-old will take the stage with Spider Stacy, and James Fearnley. 'I don't feel comfortable, the three of us, [all] original members, calling ourselves [The Pogues].'
A US tour in September will follow the UK dates, which are being billed as a celebration to mark 40 years since Rum Sodomy & the Lash, the band's breakthrough second album, which was hailed for reviving Irish music.
MacGowan 's absence makes this tour 'more poignant' – and also possible. 'This probably wouldn't be happening in this way if Shane was here, so it's what it is,' he adds, referring to MacGowan's poor physical health.
Finer appreciates the irony in The Pogues' enduring Irish image (their look was equal parts 'Brendan Behan and typical Irish granddad', to quote MacGowan). 'Most of us weren't actually Irish,' says Finer, who plays various instruments including the banjo, mandolin, and the hurdy-gurdy – a medieval mechanical violin, and his latest passion. Of the original line-up, only Chevron was Irish by birth, although MacGowan, who was born in Pembury, Kent, had Irish parents.
That said, it would be 'very negative' to stay within one's own experiences, adds Finer. 'Especially now when there is so much xenophobia. That would be caving into those who say the only good thing is our thing'.
'From the Irish point of view, the band had a big effect on the young Irish community in London. They went from being slagged off for being Irish to being something cool,' he adds.
The odd thing was being a group of 'young, predominantly middle-class people', and singing sea shanties or songs about people working on the railway. 'Sometimes people would say, why are you doing that? But I think it's perfectly fine to do that. You're not saying, I am a sailor, or, I'm working on a railway. They're valid stories about people who are being subjugated to quite sh-t conditions and the songs keep something alive.'
There was also an irony in Finer making it as a musician at all. Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1955, he graduated with a degree in computer science from Keele University and no clue what to do. His father, Samuel, was a giant of post-war British political science, winding up as a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. 'I was always told I was tone deaf. I'd tried to play guitar, but couldn't,' says Finer.
That changed after moving to London in 1977, where he squatted with friends in Burton Street, just south of Euston, and met MacGowan. Everyone played music. 'One friend thought it was funny when I said I couldn't play. They gave me a guitar. Someone wrote out some chords and one thing led to another,' he adds, notably a West End New Romantic club called Cabaret Futura, when the band that would become The Pogues played their first gig in early 1981.
Life with The Pogues was 'by turns wonderful, ecstatic, thrilling, boring, horrible, oppressive, heartbreaking. It was a whole life in itself. It was like a family of weird brothers and occasional sisters.' While MacGowan was self-destructing via drink and drugs, Finer was struggling to balance rock star life with being a young, married father of two.
'For a long time, it was very difficult. Marcia, my wife, and I, we'd always had this idea that we'd both be doing our own thing, but supporting each other and being around.' The couple met in early 1981: they had both enrolled on a course to learn to teach English as a foreign language back when Finer was juggling odd jobs. Their daughters, Ella and Kitty, were born in 1983 and 1985. Marcia went on to become a visual artist.
I wonder if having a young family kept his own rock star antics in check. 'I'm not a saint. I've always enjoyed having a few drinks and I particularly enjoyed smoking dope in vast quantities and spent decades quite stoned, but I wouldn't say I had any antics. My family was the most important thing, and I would have stopped being in the band if that had been necessary. And there were times when I offered to stop. Somehow we got through it. I wouldn't say without…,' he pauses. 'There are probably scars.'
By 1991, MacGowan had become so unreliable that the band sacked him, but Finer's close friendship with the singer would last for the rest of his life. 'Shane could be maddening. He could take a few weeks to finally get around to doing something but once we got down to working he was always funny and inspiring and a generous collaborator,' he says.
Breathing space from The Pogues' eventual breakup, in 1994, sent Finer in other directions, not least on a quest to compose a piece of music that will last for 1000 years. Longplayer began playing 25 years ago, at the dawn of the millennium, and Finer hopes it will continue until the end of the year 2999 with one proviso: 'I'm not taking any steps to ensure it carries on after I'm dead – I only want it to carry on for as long as the people want it to.' This stops the project from sliding into the realms of vanity, he believes.
He traces the impetus back to being unnerved aged five, on learning that his grandfather had written an autobiography. 'All I could imagine was that if you were writing a book about your life, you'd have to be sitting constantly writing, and all you could be writing [about] was that you were writing about the act of sitting writing. It was this horrible nightmarish loop. Longplayer is maybe some way of making sense of that weird conception: an autobiography. I've made something that marks every instant.'
Longplayer works by applying precise rules to six short pieces of music. Six sections from these pieces – one from each – are playing simultaneously from a computer. It can be heard via a live web stream, or at its London base, in a lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where Finer has a studio.
To mark the project's 25th anniversary, the music will be played at the Roundhouse, in Camden, next month for 1000 minutes. People can watch shifts of six to 12 people, reading from a graphic score, playing the music from 7.20am until midnight. 'In terms of mortality, Longplayer gives me optimism,' he says, by way of justifying the project. 'The idea of something that has this longevity built into it.'
He is writing a song that encapsulates the rules you need to know to play Longplayer 'because songs are their own time capsules that can go on for hundreds of years' – regardless of what the band that is playing them is called.