Waiting For Herb, the first Pogues album after the sacking of wayward frontman Shane MacGowan, was a very pleasant surprise. Shane had always seemed to define the band's personality, and liked to represent himself as its main, if not sole creative force. In fact, everyone in the band was a fine musician, and a number of them had contributed some decent songs to the earlier albums. Some of them could sing rather better than Shane, too. And I suspect that Jem Finer, rather than Shane, had been responsible for most of the music. The vital Shane MacGowan element was his distinctive drunkenly slurred vocal delivery and the mad poetry of his stream-of-consciousness lyrics. We fans had feared that these qualities would be irreplaceable, and that the band would be emasculated without him.
The wind was whipping shingles through the windows in the town,
A hail of stones across the roofs, the slates came raining down.
A blade of light upon the spit came sweeping through the roar,
With me head inside a barrel and me leg screwed in the floor.
Mother, pack me bag, because I'm off to foreign parts.
Don't ask me where I'm going, 'cause I'm sure it's off the charts.
I'll pin your likeness on the wall right by my sleeping head.
I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead.
By this time in a week I should be far away from home,
Trailing fingers through the phosphor or asleep in flowers of foam.
From Macau to Acapulco, from Havana to Seville,
We'll see monoliths and bridges and the Christ up on the hill.
An aria with the Russians at the piano in the bar;
With ice floes through the window, we raised glasses to the Czar;
We squared off on a dockside with a coupla hundred Finns;
We dallied in the 'Dilly and we soaked ourselves in gin.
Now the only deck I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
We sailed through constellations and were rutted by the storm.
I crumbled under cudgel blows, and finally came ashore.
I spent the next two years or more just staring at the wall.
We went to sea to see the world - what do you think we saw?
If we turned the table upside down and sailed around the bed,
Clamped knives between our teeth and tied bandanas round our heads,
With the wainscot our horizon and the ceiling as the sky,
You'd not expect that anyone would go and fuckin' die.
Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
At night we passed the bottle round and drank to our lost friends.
We lay alone upon our bunks, afraid that this would end.
A wall of moving shadows, with rows of swinging keys!
We dreamed that whole Leviathans lay rotting in the reefs.
There's a sound that comes from miles away, if you lean your head to hear:
A ship's bell rings on board a wreck when the air is still and clear.
And up above that means another angel's got his wings,
But all below it signifies is a ship's gone in the drink.
Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
But then, they come up with this, Drunken Boat - a very Shane-like song, in fact written by the accordionist Jimmy Fearnley. This is very nearly my favourite Pogues song ever. The Herb album happened to come out just before I went off on my backpacking year, so this song, with its dreams of world travel, acquired a special resonance for me - particularly, of course, the second verse, touching on the pain of separation from home and family: "I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead."
There are many other fantastic lines and images in this, a terrible melancholy about it. And I love the way that a life of adventure sailing the oceans becomes warped into a metaphor for alcoholism. I really think this is as good as, or maybe even a little better than anything of Shane's; it's one of those very few songs that actually stands up without the music, that can be read as poetry.
Drunken Boat
The wind was whipping shingles through the windows in the town,
A hail of stones across the roofs, the slates came raining down.
A blade of light upon the spit came sweeping through the roar,
With me head inside a barrel and me leg screwed in the floor.
Mother, pack me bag, because I'm off to foreign parts.
Don't ask me where I'm going, 'cause I'm sure it's off the charts.
I'll pin your likeness on the wall right by my sleeping head.
I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead.
By this time in a week I should be far away from home,
Trailing fingers through the phosphor or asleep in flowers of foam.
From Macau to Acapulco, from Havana to Seville,
We'll see monoliths and bridges and the Christ up on the hill.
An aria with the Russians at the piano in the bar;
With ice floes through the window, we raised glasses to the Czar;
We squared off on a dockside with a coupla hundred Finns;
We dallied in the 'Dilly and we soaked ourselves in gin.
Now the only deck I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
We sailed through constellations and were rutted by the storm.
I crumbled under cudgel blows, and finally came ashore.
I spent the next two years or more just staring at the wall.
We went to sea to see the world - what do you think we saw?
If we turned the table upside down and sailed around the bed,
Clamped knives between our teeth and tied bandanas round our heads,
With the wainscot our horizon and the ceiling as the sky,
You'd not expect that anyone would go and fuckin' die.
Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
At night we passed the bottle round and drank to our lost friends.
We lay alone upon our bunks, afraid that this would end.
A wall of moving shadows, with rows of swinging keys!
We dreamed that whole Leviathans lay rotting in the reefs.
There's a sound that comes from miles away, if you lean your head to hear:
A ship's bell rings on board a wreck when the air is still and clear.
And up above that means another angel's got his wings,
But all below it signifies is a ship's gone in the drink.
Now the only deck that I'd want to walk on
Is stalks of corn beneath my feet,
And the only sea I'd want to sail
Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk
Where a kid grows full of sadness, lets his boat go drifting off into the evening sun.
James Fearnley
I had thought that I'd have to content myself with just posting the lyrics to this. The last time I checked, it was not on YouTube. But, what do you know - someone just put it up there last month (no video as such; just a montage of sea pictures). [Although, YouTube's unbelievably crappy search engine still doesn't recognise it as a Pogues song. I mean, what is with that? No returns for "pogues"+"drunken boat", but you might be interested in this video called 'Drunken Boat' by The Pogues??!! I despair of YouTube sometimes.] Enjoy. Try not to get too depressed.
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