Celtic folk-punk singer-songwriter Shane MacGowan, the beloved chain-smoking, hard drinking longtime front-man of The Pogues, has passed away at the age of 65, according to an announcement made by his wife Victoria Mary Clarke on Instagram on Thursday.
"I am at a loss for words, but I feel compelled to share this heartbreaking news. Shane, who will forever be the guiding light in my life and the embodiment of my dreams, has left us to be with Jesus, Mary, and his dear mother Therese," Clarke expressed. "I am eternally grateful to have crossed paths with him, to have loved him unconditionally, and to have been so deeply loved by him. We shared countless years of life, love, joy, and laughter, and embarked on countless adventures together."
"It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved Shane Macgowan," Clarke said in a separate statement issued jointly with the singer's sister Siobhan and father Maurice. They said he died peacefully with his family by his side.
MacGowan was discharged from a Dublin hospital on Nov. 22 after several months of treatment to return home to spend time with his friends and family, according to Irish state broadcaster RTE.
He struggled with health problems but returned to play with The Pogues in 2001 after a decade-long split due to his struggles with alcohol. About a decade after that his health deteriorated to the point that he could no longer perform, and his last gig with the band was in 2014.
The singer was born in southern England but spent much of his childhood with his mother's family in the county of Tipperary in Ireland, where RTE said he was "surrounded by folk and traditional music" that would go on to form the basis of his band's trademark sound.
MacGowan was ensconced in London's 1970s counterculture punk rock scene as a young man and first joined a band called The Nipple Erectors, or just the Nips, before later forming what would become The Pogues with a couple friends.
Remembering Shane MacGowan
Shane MacGowan, the legendary Irish musician and songwriter, passed away recently, leaving behind a lasting legacy in the music industry. His death so close to Christmas will be particularly poignant for many in Britain and Ireland as The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" — an irreverent and tortured ode to love between Irish immigrants struggling to survive in the new world — has for years been a perennial favorite and chart-topper of the season. The song was the result of a 1987 bet that MacGowan, who was born on Christmas day, couldn't write a Christmas song, according to RTE.
RTE quoted Irish President Michael Higgins as describing MacGowan as "one of music's greatest lyricists" in a tribute.
Many of MacGowan's "songs would be perfectly crafted poems, if that would not have deprived us of the opportunity to hear him sing them," Higgins said. "His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways."
In her tribute to her late husband, Clarke gave a nod to MacGowan's song-writing genius with her comment about him being the "measure of my dreams," which comes from the final lyric in his "A Rainy Night in Soho":
"Now the song is nearly over, we may never find out what it means. Still there's a light I hold before me. You're the measure of my dreams. The measure of my dreams."
