August 29, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Takin’ a Walk with your host Buzz Knight, we’re joined by Spider Stacy—tin whistle player, singer, and co-founder of the legendary band The Pogues. Known for their groundbreaking blend of punk attitude and traditional Irish folk, The Pogues created a sound that rewrote the rules of modern music. Spider takes us on a journey through the band’s raw beginnings, their wild ride across world stages, and his own path as a musician, storyteller, and wanderer. From the spark of inspiration found on city streets to the life lessons learned on the road, this conversation is a mix of reflection, humor, and the spirit of a true musical pioneer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
A lot of people can sing, but most people don't
realize they can sing. They don't know they can sing.
And if the idea of kind of doing it in
anything like a you know, doing it in front of
an audience is something that just phrases a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
What happens when punk rock energy meets the haunting melodies
of traditional Irish music, you get the pogues. One of
the most colorful voices Spider Stacy, I'm buzz night and
today I'm taking a walk. We step into the winding
streets of Spider's musical journey, where every stroll.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Sparks the story.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Every melody tells a tale, whether it's the call of
the tin whistle or the roar of the crowd. Spider
reveals how walking through life's highs and lows fuels the
magic behind the music.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Lace up those shoes. This is one walk you won't
want to miss. Taking a walk. So great to have
you on. Take it a walk, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, it's really good to be here. Thanks for having it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
So we're virtual, but I do have to ask you
our opening question. Use your imagination however you like, Spider,
I know your imagination runs wild, Who could you envision
that you'd want to take a walk with living or dead?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
And where do you think you would like to take
that walk?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well, actually, I know the answer to this one. When
we first moved to New Orleans, we moved to the
part of the Tremee that's between North Claybourne Avenue and
North Broad Avenue, which is the part of the Tremee
that is was kind of really I guess well, some
people didn't even sort of accept that it really was
(01:50):
in the Tremee at all. The part of the tree
between Rampart and Clayborne, the sort of lower part is
definitely the pretty sort of creole cottage kind of thing.
This other part above Playborne and above where they decided
to put the I ten during the sixties, which was
an act of urban vandalism, shall we say we that's
(02:13):
a kind of more but a bit more sort of
hard scrubble, I guess, certainly less green. And when we
moved there, we'd kind of we kind of like got
the impression that we were pretty much like really the
only white people living for you know, a good few
blocks around, but we had no truck or or bikes.
Even at that stage when we first got there, so
(02:34):
we were just we'd just walk around, you know, we
didn't mind the heat, it was, it was all everything
was new to us. But then we noticed that very
swiftly there was this old white guy living two blocks
below us on the two thousand block of Saint Philip Street.
And we got talking to him and it turned out
he was actually we were walking past it one day
and he went and out like that and we were like, oh,
(02:55):
you're English. And his name was Tom Staggan. He was
from He was from South London and he had come
over to New Orleans in about nineteen sixty eight. He
had been he had had an interesting life. He had
been like an all a pro wrestler and all in
wrestler in England, which is a very different thing to
your wrestling. It's totally totally staged. And he was one
(03:20):
of the sort of ring villains, you know. He was
the baddie, the one that the old the old, the
old ladies would all boo out and sort of throw
stuff at It's only this kind of like little skinny guy.
But anyway, there you go. Well, also he there was
a big New Orleans jazz scene, the trad jazz scene,
in England in the late fifthies, sort of studed in
the early fifties in fact, and he was one of
(03:41):
those guys. He was he was really really he just
loved old, old style, old school New Orleans jazz. And
he actually was booking a few New Orleans artists who
were coming over to the UK in the sixties. And
one of these guys, I believe it might have been
Walter Penny, said to him, you should come to New Orleans,
and he did in about sixty eight and he just
(04:02):
stayed there and he never left. And we'd actually go
driving around with Tom because when we first met him,
you know, he was like getting on a bit. He
was in his late seventies and New Orleans, say, in
the summer is not really kind of place to be
walking around if you're a New late seventies because it
gets cruelly hot. But we're drive around with him and
(04:24):
he would just like he was just a mine of information.
He'd be like, you know, you'd see some sort of
like kind of like abandoned sort of looked like it
might have been a cinema or something. At one time
he goes, oh, that that was rips. That was rips,
and rip was that's Domino's bodyguard, and he bought and
this was his club, and he'd have all these stories
(04:46):
about you know, about Rips Club and and you know,
he lived in a house that was that was owned
by Dave Bartholomew, who's as a legitimate claim to be
definitely one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.
Of what the actual draft of the constitution if you like,
and people to continue them out for and uh, and
(05:06):
he just would just go around. He knew, you know,
because obviously by this point the New Orleans there were
a lot of the places they'd be pointing out what
places that were in fact no longer there because time
and people dying and Katrina and everything so on and
so forth. But he knew like everything about the place.
And what I'd really like to do is actually I
need I need. I needed the use of a time
(05:28):
machine is go back and wander around New or New
Orleans with him, maybe say in the early seventies, and
uh and and and see and see what that was like,
because that's when a lot of these people, the guys
that he sort of like had been booking and everything
were still alive and everything. So I'd say that would
be that would be quite something to do. He us
is one of the one of the things he told us,
(05:49):
just like, you know, Bourbon Street now nowadays is I mean,
you know, people go to Bourbon Street to kind of
have fun and everything, but it's a bit of a
it's a bit of a terrorist trap.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Really.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It's a bit like like I say, Temple Bar in Dublin.
You know, like you go to go to Dublin and
you know a lot of people go to Temple Bar
and they don't think to sort of go outside that.
But actually, you know, real Dublin is more outside of
Temple Bar than it is inside of it. Save as
with New Orleans and Bourbon Street. But I mean, I
remember when we first went to Bourbon Street. The band
(06:20):
back in the late eighties went to New Orleans, I
should say, Bourbon Street in those days just wild, you know,
not like it is now. It's really really wild. But
I mean, I can only imagine what it would have
been like twenty years prior to that. He said that
you would walk down if you walk down the street,
the middle of Bourbon Street, so you were equidistance between
the bars on each side, said the noise would just
(06:42):
be deafening because there'd be just bands everywhere just playing
really really hard, really loud. There's a great because Jelly
Roll Morton's autobiography when he talks about you know, if
you wanted to play with with with the black musicians,
you had to play really really hard because otherwise they
(07:04):
weren't you know. They was like, nah, no, you're not
used to us.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, you'd be left in the dust. You'd be left
in the dust. Yeah. Yeah, those those guys play their instruments.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
And we got the time machine all cranked up for
you for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh beautiful.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, get strap in as they say, right yeh.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
But so we're going to talk about the tour, which
I know you're super excited about, but I do want
to ask you, do you recall the.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
First moment in your existence that you knew you had
this deep connection to music that would manifest itself to
this day.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's a funny thing, actually, because it's always something that
I thought I would do, even though there was no
kind of real reason for thinking that I might do it.
I didn't. I didn't play any musical instrument until I
joined the Pokes. You know, I was in a punk
band prior to the Pokes, but I was the singer,
for want of a better word, yeah, the singer. But
(08:16):
it was always there, and it was always just it
was always something I sort of like i'd kind of
I kind of thought about, but more in the sort
of abstract, if that makes sense. And I think really
the crucial thing for me, and I think for a
lot of other people as well, was where punk Happened
is seventy six seventy seven, and a lot of us
(08:38):
really just got the idea. You know that, you know,
it doesn't actually matter if you like, if you've got
no prior experience, that doesn't mean anything. You can just
start now and just and see where the journey takes you.
You know, because you don't possess a particular skill set
right at the moment, it doesn't mean that you can.
You can't acquire it, as you you know, and there's
nothing not being able to say, play the guitar or
(09:01):
whatever is no barter actually starting a band. You know,
if you're going to be the guitar as well, start
in the band. Then learn to play the guitar and
hopefully you'll be good at it. I think that's what,
you know, one of the brilliant things about it, one
of the really beautiful things about that was just like
people did discover this means of expressing themselves, which maybe
they'd felt there was something that they couldn't do, and
(09:22):
it was it. Suddenly everything became very egalitarian, democratic, which
I think was always is always very important.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I had Danny Field on the podcast, and.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
There's another guy I'd like to take a walk with.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Oh, well he would. I'm pretty sure we have a
shot at that.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
If you want to follow we could follow up, because
he's a man who loves the stories, loves talking obviously
about the days with everybody lou Reed the Ramones.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Walk around New York with Daddy Fields.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, yeah, Well he looks at the way the villagers
now now and is you would expect. He kind of
looks around and goes, this is really not how I
remember it, and I don't I really like it the
way it is right now, you know, because I hear
one too many of fill in the blank, you know,
franchises that are in the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
But so, what did the Ramones mean to you?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh? The Ramones were really really important. The Ramones really
kind of they kind of switched me on it. I
was at a at a summer dance and kind of
end of term dance at a at a local girls
high school to where I grew up in Golders Green
in northwest London, and and yeah, some I was aware
(10:45):
of the Ramones. I'd heard the remones. This is I
wasn't actually end of termined. I suppose it was. I
suppose it would have been in like towards the end
of term. So I say, June seventy six something like that,
and I'd heard the Ramones. I'd kind of given up.
I'd rather given up and reading the music papers in
those first crucial kind of first six months of seventy
(11:06):
six because it was just kind of stuff had just
got boring and I wasn't really really interested in reading
about the people who was reading there. Just as actually
they I decided to stop reading them just as they
started to get more interesting. But I was kind of
like occasionally obviously, like you know, I hadn't decided to
cast them out of my life or anything, but I
just stopped buying them. But I did pick up one,
(11:29):
you know, an M or a sounds every now and again,
and so I was aware that there was something going on.
I was aware that there was this band, the sex Pistols,
who i've for a while. I picked up the idea
that they were French. I don't know where I got
that from. And I was aware of the Ramones and
I heard I heard I Want to Be Your Boyfriend
(11:51):
on the job on the John Peel Show on the
radio one on the BBC. He did, yeah, the late
night show. He was a very important guy, and that
sort of it was a really kind of like cheap
shitty transistor and it was it sounded good, but I
couldn't really sort of get it. It was too crappy
a reproduction to really sort of like leaning, you know,
(12:13):
just actually sort of get what was going on. But sorry,
back to the dance. Somebody put on the singular blitz
creed Bop and I knew immediately what it was and
who it was, and it was just like, you know,
one of those things when you just kind of like
you just set bolt up right and you're like, what
is this? What is I mean, knowing what it is,
(12:34):
but it's like, you know, it was just kind of
like felt with this filled with this real sense of
urgency and excitement and that kind of just it just
kept going from there.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Really the beauty of a signature sound, right.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are moments for me really were
a very they they were the band that really did
it for me, that kind of like moved me off
the out of the starting blocks.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
We'll be back and more the Taking a Walk Podcast
in a bit. Now.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
We love recommending podcasts from time to time, and we
have one for you if you're into music. It's called
gig Gab. Labeled as the show for working musicians. It's
a fascinating and entertaining look behind the scenes as to
what it takes to put a live band on stage.
It's hosted by Dave Hamilton. If you're a fan of
live music, playing it or watching it be played, be
(13:24):
sure to check out gig Gab at gig gab podcast
dot com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
But now, so we talk about a signature sound.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The sound of the Pogues, I mean it fuses you know,
punk energy, traditional Irish music. Can you share how that
blend sort of came about and sort of the background
on the experimentation with different genres.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's kind of pretty simple really. There was a time
were Shane and I were round in a friend's house
and she had an acoustic guitar and he just picked
it up and he started bashing out on poor Paddy
works on the railway but doing it, which is a
song that I knew because we both had the same
(14:20):
Dubliners album that it was on. It was a kind
of one of these cheap o label compilations, but you know,
it was actually quite a seven Drunken Nights it was called,
and it was a very good sort of like selection
of Dublin Has songs in it. So I knew this song.
Shane obviously knew that we'd listen to it together, and
he just started doing it the way that we would
do it a couple of years further down the line,
(14:42):
and I just kind of like looked at him and
this just sounds absolutely brilliant. This is a really, really
a great idea, you know. And then we it was
Shane and this guy Ollie Watts, who was the drummer
in my band, The Millwall Shane source Uh, He and
Shame were in a club called Cabaret Futura, which is
(15:05):
not exactly a new romantic club, but it was this
kind of like sort of more sort of outrey, kind
of like, you know, kids dressing in really sort of
like weird sort of imaginative clothes, kind of like kind
of yeah, sort of post punk sort of thing. But
I know how you describe it, I just did and
(15:26):
uh and they sort of but they colored Richard Strange,
the guy that run it, and said, yeah, we've got
this band. We play Irish rebel songs and we're going
to be playing here next week. And he said, well,
actually I can't fit you in next week, but that
sounds kind of cool. Why don't you let's let's say,
why don't you come along a month from now and
(15:46):
you can play then, so it never you know. So
we did this this set of Irish rebel songs, which
I was singing, except I kind of lost my voice,
probably through nerves on the day of the show, but
I kind of did it anyway. But there was never
any sort of the only way that we've ever thought
of doing those songs was to play them, you know,
(16:08):
really sort of fast and hard, kind of as though
you mean them. And that just really sort of continued
into the Pogues. The idea was always to kind of
do irish stuff, but play it really fast, play it
with that sort of punk energy and everything. And of
course at the same time Shane was I mean, Shane
(16:29):
had already been writing songs in his band, The Nips,
and so he was a kind of tried and tested
songwriter in that regard. But then he just started coming
out on this whole track, of this whole different track,
of something of a different order entirely. And we were
just lucky enough that the especially when we acquired Andrew
Rank and you know, it took us about four or
(16:51):
five goals to actually get a settled drummer, but then
when we did that, we had this line up and
it just it was the alchemy in bands where you
might think that certain parts, if you examine them in isolation,
might seem to be somewhat extraneous, but in fact you
(17:12):
can't take anything out of it. You've got to have
everybody in there because that's how it works. That's how
it works, or at least there's a crux of a
core of people who need to be there for it
to sort of really properly operate. And we were very
lucky that we kind of stumbled on that, or those
are the people that joined the band.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
So I love it. Your tin whistle playing is.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Iconic And how did you first learn the instrument and
had your approach evolved?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
No, I the original idea was that myself and Shame
were going to share singing duties, and in those days
I kind of just wasn't up to it. I didn't
have the confidence to try and sing properly. A lot
of people can sing, but most people don't realize they
can sing. They don't know they can sing. And if
(18:04):
the idea of kind of doing it in anything like
a you know, doing it in front of an audience
is something that just freezes a lot of people. And
in fact, the way to get over that is just
to open up and let and let fly. One of
the things I really like about Ireland is that is
the notion is that notion that you know when you
(18:25):
have a session in a pub and it's like, basically
the idea is that everyone's going to get up and
sing a song. And it doesn't actually matter whether or
not you're technically you know, a great singer or you're
just not you know, it doesn't matter. The important thing
is that you get up and you and you do
your song, and you will hear people singing and it's like,
(18:47):
you know that guy there, old lady that the picture's
got a really incredible voice, you know. You just like
they're just put themselves into it. And I think I
think a lot of people are actually capable of that and
just simply don't it, which is a shame. But in
those days, I was definitely one of those. I just
kind of froze up the time. There was a time
(19:08):
later on in the band's story when we were asking
me about the tin whistle. Sorry, so Shane said, why
len't you learn the whistle? It's easy? He said, it's not.
It's easy to sort of pick it up and maybe
sort of play a simple tune on it. I mean,
I think the first thing I learned was Silent Night
from the play in a day book. They had all
(19:29):
the relevant holes marked out, so learn Oh yeah. But
the thing with that is that you know, if you
can actually achieve an instant result, which I could do,
then it really does encourage you to go and sort
of like try something a little bit more complicated. One
of the problems with the guitar was like I wanted
(19:50):
to be able to play it now, not like have
to sort of sit through all this business of like
you know, cutting your fingers to shreds and sort of
like forming them into our natural patterns that you know. Yeah,
I just didn't have the patience or the application much
of I regret that.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
There you go, the band's storytelling style. It draws on
you real world experiences but also Irish folklore. How does
one balance personal stories with sort of mythology and songwriting
for applying a.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Bit of genius, I guess it's it's it's something that
I think it lends itself readily to the imagination. The
blending of the of the every day with the not
so every day. It's like a natural state of the form.
Does that make sense to you? The stories and the
way that the stories are told, obviously they vary from
(20:47):
some to son, but I think the in terms of
like if you're writing, if you look at the work
of a lot of the great Irish writers, particularly sort
of like the poets and the play rights, there's a
lot of the kind of magical stuff in there interwoven
with the every day that the everyday objects can actually
(21:10):
can also have a sort of some kind of extra
significance attached to them, some kind of extra power attached
to them. I think Ireland is a place that's very
full of this kind of law, this kind of this
kind of I hesitate to use the word supernatural because
it creates the wrong impression. I'm thinking more of the
sort of smaller, quieter forces of nature, but that at
(21:34):
the same time it's best not to sort of disturb them.
So maybe under sets I'm talking about the supernatural. But
I think it's it's something that has been that has
been held on to, and I think it's probably something
you find in a lot of particularly like rural communities
all over the world. In Ireland in contrast to maybe
(21:55):
other European countries, certainly, it seems to be sort of
closer to the surface. So it's something that is a
it's something that comes naturally. I think it's a tricky
one as well. It's a tricky you know, I feel
a certain you know, I'm not Irish, I don't have
that upbringing. So I'm here A lot of it is
(22:16):
I'm just going by sort of stuff I've picked up
and stuff i've sort of and there's a certain amount
of conjecture, but there's also a certain amount of just
like you observe and you listen and watch and yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know, so tell me how excited you are to
be hitting the road coming up here in the fall.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
These these shows that we've been doing since I was
first approached by to do the what turned into the
Red Roses for Me show at Hackney Empire, which is
originally just going to be in a little folk club
over the road, and it just blew up into something
entirely different. Everything is kind of you know. The first
show was great, and we did Dublin which was fantastic.
(22:58):
The tour we've just done the UK for the Rummy
in the Lash I think was one of the most
in many ways, one of the most enjoyable I've ever
been on, just simply because we've got all these all
these fantastic artists, both musicians and singers. I think we're
really really doing justice to the songs. I think they're
(23:18):
being played in a way that really brings sort of
brings back the sort of the fire and the fire
and the fury that they kind of need being done
by people who, you know, in many cases, people who
actually sort of grown up with the band. I mean,
like Darren Lynch from lancam who's going to be one
of our guitarists on this tour, was saying, you know
(23:39):
when he was like getting who was learning the when
we were rehearsing sorry, when we were rehearsing for Rumsordomy
in the Lash, and he was saying, you know, like,
I've known your band since I was seven years old.
I've been playing these songs since I was about seven
years old, and I never really actually realized just how complex,
how complicated they are, because we've got all these weird arrangements,
(24:00):
weird sort of little chords that just pop up here
and there were people don't necessarily expect them to be,
but they are there. But the point was that he'd been,
he'd been he'd been the fan of the band since
he was seven. And that's kind of true about particularly
with regard to the Irish musicians that we've got along
with us. They've been fans of the band since they
were kids. I think that's sort of like you see
(24:23):
that in the in just the sheer enthusiasm that they
bring to it. I mean, the playing is stupendous, the
way that I mean, we're really lucky that we're really lucky.
One thing that Island's just had this extraordinary outpouring of
really superlative talent talent over the last sort of studying
(24:43):
about maybe ten years ago or whatever. And they're all
people who really love the pokes. So that's that's really
sort of like work to our advantage. But you know,
when you get somebody like like Lisa O'Neill saying A
Rainy Night in Soho is just you know, there's a
there's a part in that where the song there's a breakdown,
(25:07):
and we have another one of the artists we've got
with us as a her name is Iona Zadjak. She's Scottish.
She's a beautiful singer, but she also plays the Celtic heart.
Ah My shame would have just exploded if he had
If if he had seen this, he would have you know,
he wouldn't have been able to contain himself because he
(25:27):
would have loved it. But there's a bit in in
a Rainy Night where it all drops down and it's
just Lisa's voice and Iona's played the harp. She's you know,
And this first of all happened at rehearsals, and then
it was happening actually at the shows as well, where
other people play, would be kind of like we'll be
looking at each other sort of going, I'm not crying,
you're crying because it just it's it's so sort of like, oh,
(25:51):
you know, it's very very powerful. I'm really excited to
be bringing it. I could talk about it all day long.
I think people are really in for a true.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Oh I love it. That's so great. So I want
to close.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
So how do you see your own musical identity evolving
now compared to the early days of the Pogues.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, I mean, I think as far as I'm concerned,
but keep on, keep on doing this kind of for
a few more years, and and then I guess in time,
time will take its toll, and then it will be
time to say, all right, enough is enough. But you know,
but for the moment, this is this is so good,
This is so much fun that I really don't want
(26:33):
to stop doing doing it just yet. We've still got
to do Foo from Grace as well, you know, and
A's the others, So please don't stop. I do my best,
not too.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, Spider, thank you so much, it's so great to
give you. I'm taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It's an utter and I've really enjoyed myself. Thank you
very much.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts.
Taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
A lot of people can sing, but most people don't
realize they can sing. They don't know they can sing.
And if the idea of kind of doing it in
anything like a you know, doing it in front of
an audience is something that just phrases a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
What happens when punk rock energy meets the haunting melodies
of traditional Irish music, you get the pogues. One of
the most colorful voices Spider Stacy, I'm buzz night and
today I'm taking a walk. We step into the winding
streets of Spider's musical journey, where every stroll.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Sparks the story.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Every melody tells a tale, whether it's the call of
the tin whistle or the roar of the crowd. Spider
reveals how walking through life's highs and lows fuels the
magic behind the music.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Lace up those shoes. This is one walk you won't
want to miss. Taking a walk. So great to have
you on. Take it a walk, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, it's really good to be here. Thanks for having it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
So we're virtual, but I do have to ask you
our opening question. Use your imagination however you like, Spider,
I know your imagination runs wild, Who could you envision
that you'd want to take a walk with living or dead?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
And where do you think you would like to take
that walk?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well, actually, I know the answer to this one. When
we first moved to New Orleans, we moved to the
part of the Tremee that's between North Claybourne Avenue and
North Broad Avenue, which is the part of the Tremee
that is was kind of really I guess well, some
people didn't even sort of accept that it really was
(01:50):
in the Tremee at all. The part of the tree
between Rampart and Clayborne, the sort of lower part is
definitely the pretty sort of creole cottage kind of thing.
This other part above Playborne and above where they decided
to put the I ten during the sixties, which was
an act of urban vandalism, shall we say we that's
(02:13):
a kind of more but a bit more sort of
hard scrubble, I guess, certainly less green. And when we
moved there, we'd kind of we kind of like got
the impression that we were pretty much like really the
only white people living for you know, a good few
blocks around, but we had no truck or or bikes.
Even at that stage when we first got there, so
(02:34):
we were just we'd just walk around, you know, we
didn't mind the heat, it was, it was all everything
was new to us. But then we noticed that very
swiftly there was this old white guy living two blocks
below us on the two thousand block of Saint Philip Street.
And we got talking to him and it turned out
he was actually we were walking past it one day
and he went and out like that and we were like, oh,
(02:55):
you're English. And his name was Tom Staggan. He was
from He was from South London and he had come
over to New Orleans in about nineteen sixty eight. He
had been he had had an interesting life. He had
been like an all a pro wrestler and all in
wrestler in England, which is a very different thing to
your wrestling. It's totally totally staged. And he was one
(03:20):
of the sort of ring villains, you know. He was
the baddie, the one that the old the old, the
old ladies would all boo out and sort of throw
stuff at It's only this kind of like little skinny guy.
But anyway, there you go. Well, also he there was
a big New Orleans jazz scene, the trad jazz scene,
in England in the late fifthies, sort of studed in
the early fifties in fact, and he was one of
(03:41):
those guys. He was he was really really he just
loved old, old style, old school New Orleans jazz. And
he actually was booking a few New Orleans artists who
were coming over to the UK in the sixties. And
one of these guys, I believe it might have been
Walter Penny, said to him, you should come to New Orleans,
and he did in about sixty eight and he just
(04:02):
stayed there and he never left. And we'd actually go
driving around with Tom because when we first met him,
you know, he was like getting on a bit. He
was in his late seventies and New Orleans, say, in
the summer is not really kind of place to be
walking around if you're a New late seventies because it
gets cruelly hot. But we're drive around with him and
(04:24):
he would just like he was just a mine of information.
He'd be like, you know, you'd see some sort of
like kind of like abandoned sort of looked like it
might have been a cinema or something. At one time
he goes, oh, that that was rips. That was rips,
and rip was that's Domino's bodyguard, and he bought and
this was his club, and he'd have all these stories
(04:46):
about you know, about Rips Club and and you know,
he lived in a house that was that was owned
by Dave Bartholomew, who's as a legitimate claim to be
definitely one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.
Of what the actual draft of the constitution if you like,
and people to continue them out for and uh, and
(05:06):
he just would just go around. He knew, you know,
because obviously by this point the New Orleans there were
a lot of the places they'd be pointing out what
places that were in fact no longer there because time
and people dying and Katrina and everything so on and
so forth. But he knew like everything about the place.
And what I'd really like to do is actually I
need I need. I needed the use of a time
(05:28):
machine is go back and wander around New or New
Orleans with him, maybe say in the early seventies, and
uh and and and see and see what that was like,
because that's when a lot of these people, the guys
that he sort of like had been booking and everything
were still alive and everything. So I'd say that would
be that would be quite something to do. He us
is one of the one of the things he told us,
(05:49):
just like, you know, Bourbon Street now nowadays is I mean,
you know, people go to Bourbon Street to kind of
have fun and everything, but it's a bit of a
it's a bit of a terrorist trap.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Really.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It's a bit like like I say, Temple Bar in Dublin.
You know, like you go to go to Dublin and
you know a lot of people go to Temple Bar
and they don't think to sort of go outside that.
But actually, you know, real Dublin is more outside of
Temple Bar than it is inside of it. Save as
with New Orleans and Bourbon Street. But I mean, I
remember when we first went to Bourbon Street. The band
(06:20):
back in the late eighties went to New Orleans, I
should say, Bourbon Street in those days just wild, you know,
not like it is now. It's really really wild. But
I mean, I can only imagine what it would have
been like twenty years prior to that. He said that
you would walk down if you walk down the street,
the middle of Bourbon Street, so you were equidistance between
the bars on each side, said the noise would just
(06:42):
be deafening because there'd be just bands everywhere just playing
really really hard, really loud. There's a great because Jelly
Roll Morton's autobiography when he talks about you know, if
you wanted to play with with with the black musicians,
you had to play really really hard because otherwise they
(07:04):
weren't you know. They was like, nah, no, you're not
used to us.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, you'd be left in the dust. You'd be left
in the dust. Yeah. Yeah, those those guys play their instruments.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
And we got the time machine all cranked up for
you for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh beautiful.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, get strap in as they say, right yeh.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
But so we're going to talk about the tour, which
I know you're super excited about, but I do want
to ask you, do you recall the.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
First moment in your existence that you knew you had
this deep connection to music that would manifest itself to
this day.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's a funny thing, actually, because it's always something that
I thought I would do, even though there was no
kind of real reason for thinking that I might do it.
I didn't. I didn't play any musical instrument until I
joined the Pokes. You know, I was in a punk
band prior to the Pokes, but I was the singer,
for want of a better word, yeah, the singer. But
(08:16):
it was always there, and it was always just it
was always something I sort of like i'd kind of
I kind of thought about, but more in the sort
of abstract, if that makes sense. And I think really
the crucial thing for me, and I think for a
lot of other people as well, was where punk Happened
is seventy six seventy seven, and a lot of us
(08:38):
really just got the idea. You know that, you know,
it doesn't actually matter if you like, if you've got
no prior experience, that doesn't mean anything. You can just
start now and just and see where the journey takes you.
You know, because you don't possess a particular skill set
right at the moment, it doesn't mean that you can.
You can't acquire it, as you you know, and there's
nothing not being able to say, play the guitar or
(09:01):
whatever is no barter actually starting a band. You know,
if you're going to be the guitar as well, start
in the band. Then learn to play the guitar and
hopefully you'll be good at it. I think that's what,
you know, one of the brilliant things about it, one
of the really beautiful things about that was just like
people did discover this means of expressing themselves, which maybe
they'd felt there was something that they couldn't do, and
(09:22):
it was it. Suddenly everything became very egalitarian, democratic, which
I think was always is always very important.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I had Danny Field on the podcast, and.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
There's another guy I'd like to take a walk with.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Oh, well he would. I'm pretty sure we have a
shot at that.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
If you want to follow we could follow up, because
he's a man who loves the stories, loves talking obviously
about the days with everybody lou Reed the Ramones.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Walk around New York with Daddy Fields.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, yeah, Well he looks at the way the villagers
now now and is you would expect. He kind of
looks around and goes, this is really not how I
remember it, and I don't I really like it the
way it is right now, you know, because I hear
one too many of fill in the blank, you know,
franchises that are in the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
But so, what did the Ramones mean to you?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Oh? The Ramones were really really important. The Ramones really
kind of they kind of switched me on it. I
was at a at a summer dance and kind of
end of term dance at a at a local girls
high school to where I grew up in Golders Green
in northwest London, and and yeah, some I was aware
(10:45):
of the Ramones. I'd heard the remones. This is I
wasn't actually end of termined. I suppose it was. I
suppose it would have been in like towards the end
of term. So I say, June seventy six something like that,
and I'd heard the Ramones. I'd kind of given up.
I'd rather given up and reading the music papers in
those first crucial kind of first six months of seventy
(11:06):
six because it was just kind of stuff had just
got boring and I wasn't really really interested in reading
about the people who was reading there. Just as actually
they I decided to stop reading them just as they
started to get more interesting. But I was kind of
like occasionally obviously, like you know, I hadn't decided to
cast them out of my life or anything, but I
just stopped buying them. But I did pick up one,
(11:29):
you know, an M or a sounds every now and again,
and so I was aware that there was something going on.
I was aware that there was this band, the sex Pistols,
who i've for a while. I picked up the idea
that they were French. I don't know where I got
that from. And I was aware of the Ramones and
I heard I heard I Want to Be Your Boyfriend
(11:51):
on the job on the John Peel Show on the
radio one on the BBC. He did, yeah, the late
night show. He was a very important guy, and that
sort of it was a really kind of like cheap
shitty transistor and it was it sounded good, but I
couldn't really sort of get it. It was too crappy
a reproduction to really sort of like leaning, you know,
(12:13):
just actually sort of get what was going on. But sorry,
back to the dance. Somebody put on the singular blitz
creed Bop and I knew immediately what it was and
who it was, and it was just like, you know,
one of those things when you just kind of like
you just set bolt up right and you're like, what
is this? What is I mean, knowing what it is,
(12:34):
but it's like, you know, it was just kind of
like felt with this filled with this real sense of
urgency and excitement and that kind of just it just
kept going from there.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Really the beauty of a signature sound, right.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are moments for me really were
a very they they were the band that really did
it for me, that kind of like moved me off
the out of the starting blocks.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
We'll be back and more the Taking a Walk Podcast
in a bit. Now.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
We love recommending podcasts from time to time, and we
have one for you if you're into music. It's called
gig Gab. Labeled as the show for working musicians. It's
a fascinating and entertaining look behind the scenes as to
what it takes to put a live band on stage.
It's hosted by Dave Hamilton. If you're a fan of
live music, playing it or watching it be played, be
(13:24):
sure to check out gig Gab at gig gab podcast
dot com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
But now, so we talk about a signature sound.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
The sound of the Pogues, I mean it fuses you know,
punk energy, traditional Irish music. Can you share how that
blend sort of came about and sort of the background
on the experimentation with different genres.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's kind of pretty simple really. There was a time
were Shane and I were round in a friend's house
and she had an acoustic guitar and he just picked
it up and he started bashing out on poor Paddy
works on the railway but doing it, which is a
song that I knew because we both had the same
(14:20):
Dubliners album that it was on. It was a kind
of one of these cheap o label compilations, but you know,
it was actually quite a seven Drunken Nights it was called,
and it was a very good sort of like selection
of Dublin Has songs in it. So I knew this song.
Shane obviously knew that we'd listen to it together, and
he just started doing it the way that we would
do it a couple of years further down the line,
(14:42):
and I just kind of like looked at him and
this just sounds absolutely brilliant. This is a really, really
a great idea, you know. And then we it was
Shane and this guy Ollie Watts, who was the drummer
in my band, The Millwall Shane source Uh, He and
Shame were in a club called Cabaret Futura, which is
(15:05):
not exactly a new romantic club, but it was this
kind of like sort of more sort of outrey, kind
of like, you know, kids dressing in really sort of
like weird sort of imaginative clothes, kind of like kind
of yeah, sort of post punk sort of thing. But
I know how you describe it, I just did and
(15:26):
uh and they sort of but they colored Richard Strange,
the guy that run it, and said, yeah, we've got
this band. We play Irish rebel songs and we're going
to be playing here next week. And he said, well,
actually I can't fit you in next week, but that
sounds kind of cool. Why don't you let's let's say,
why don't you come along a month from now and
(15:46):
you can play then, so it never you know. So
we did this this set of Irish rebel songs, which
I was singing, except I kind of lost my voice,
probably through nerves on the day of the show, but
I kind of did it anyway. But there was never
any sort of the only way that we've ever thought
of doing those songs was to play them, you know,
(16:08):
really sort of fast and hard, kind of as though
you mean them. And that just really sort of continued
into the Pogues. The idea was always to kind of
do irish stuff, but play it really fast, play it
with that sort of punk energy and everything. And of
course at the same time Shane was I mean, Shane
(16:29):
had already been writing songs in his band, The Nips,
and so he was a kind of tried and tested
songwriter in that regard. But then he just started coming
out on this whole track, of this whole different track,
of something of a different order entirely. And we were
just lucky enough that the especially when we acquired Andrew
Rank and you know, it took us about four or
(16:51):
five goals to actually get a settled drummer, but then
when we did that, we had this line up and
it just it was the alchemy in bands where you
might think that certain parts, if you examine them in isolation,
might seem to be somewhat extraneous, but in fact you
(17:12):
can't take anything out of it. You've got to have
everybody in there because that's how it works. That's how
it works, or at least there's a crux of a
core of people who need to be there for it
to sort of really properly operate. And we were very
lucky that we kind of stumbled on that, or those
are the people that joined the band.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
So I love it. Your tin whistle playing is.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Iconic And how did you first learn the instrument and
had your approach evolved?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
No, I the original idea was that myself and Shame
were going to share singing duties, and in those days
I kind of just wasn't up to it. I didn't
have the confidence to try and sing properly. A lot
of people can sing, but most people don't realize they
can sing. They don't know they can sing. And if
(18:04):
the idea of kind of doing it in anything like
a you know, doing it in front of an audience
is something that just freezes a lot of people. And
in fact, the way to get over that is just
to open up and let and let fly. One of
the things I really like about Ireland is that is
the notion is that notion that you know when you
(18:25):
have a session in a pub and it's like, basically
the idea is that everyone's going to get up and
sing a song. And it doesn't actually matter whether or
not you're technically you know, a great singer or you're
just not you know, it doesn't matter. The important thing
is that you get up and you and you do
your song, and you will hear people singing and it's like,
(18:47):
you know that guy there, old lady that the picture's
got a really incredible voice, you know. You just like
they're just put themselves into it. And I think I
think a lot of people are actually capable of that and
just simply don't it, which is a shame. But in
those days, I was definitely one of those. I just
kind of froze up the time. There was a time
(19:08):
later on in the band's story when we were asking
me about the tin whistle. Sorry, so Shane said, why
len't you learn the whistle? It's easy? He said, it's not.
It's easy to sort of pick it up and maybe
sort of play a simple tune on it. I mean,
I think the first thing I learned was Silent Night
from the play in a day book. They had all
(19:29):
the relevant holes marked out, so learn Oh yeah. But
the thing with that is that you know, if you
can actually achieve an instant result, which I could do,
then it really does encourage you to go and sort
of like try something a little bit more complicated. One
of the problems with the guitar was like I wanted
(19:50):
to be able to play it now, not like have
to sort of sit through all this business of like
you know, cutting your fingers to shreds and sort of
like forming them into our natural patterns that you know. Yeah,
I just didn't have the patience or the application much
of I regret that.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
There you go, the band's storytelling style. It draws on
you real world experiences but also Irish folklore. How does
one balance personal stories with sort of mythology and songwriting
for applying a.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Bit of genius, I guess it's it's it's something that
I think it lends itself readily to the imagination. The
blending of the of the every day with the not
so every day. It's like a natural state of the form.
Does that make sense to you? The stories and the
way that the stories are told, obviously they vary from
(20:47):
some to son, but I think the in terms of
like if you're writing, if you look at the work
of a lot of the great Irish writers, particularly sort
of like the poets and the play rights, there's a
lot of the kind of magical stuff in there interwoven
with the every day that the everyday objects can actually
(21:10):
can also have a sort of some kind of extra
significance attached to them, some kind of extra power attached
to them. I think Ireland is a place that's very
full of this kind of law, this kind of this
kind of I hesitate to use the word supernatural because
it creates the wrong impression. I'm thinking more of the
sort of smaller, quieter forces of nature, but that at
(21:34):
the same time it's best not to sort of disturb them.
So maybe under sets I'm talking about the supernatural. But
I think it's it's something that has been that has
been held on to, and I think it's probably something
you find in a lot of particularly like rural communities
all over the world. In Ireland in contrast to maybe
(21:55):
other European countries, certainly, it seems to be sort of
closer to the surface. So it's something that is a
it's something that comes naturally. I think it's a tricky
one as well. It's a tricky you know, I feel
a certain you know, I'm not Irish, I don't have
that upbringing. So I'm here A lot of it is
(22:16):
I'm just going by sort of stuff I've picked up
and stuff i've sort of and there's a certain amount
of conjecture, but there's also a certain amount of just
like you observe and you listen and watch and yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know, so tell me how excited you are to
be hitting the road coming up here in the fall.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
These these shows that we've been doing since I was
first approached by to do the what turned into the
Red Roses for Me show at Hackney Empire, which is
originally just going to be in a little folk club
over the road, and it just blew up into something
entirely different. Everything is kind of you know. The first
show was great, and we did Dublin which was fantastic.
(22:58):
The tour we've just done the UK for the Rummy
in the Lash I think was one of the most
in many ways, one of the most enjoyable I've ever
been on, just simply because we've got all these all
these fantastic artists, both musicians and singers. I think we're
really really doing justice to the songs. I think they're
(23:18):
being played in a way that really brings sort of
brings back the sort of the fire and the fire
and the fury that they kind of need being done
by people who, you know, in many cases, people who
actually sort of grown up with the band. I mean,
like Darren Lynch from lancam who's going to be one
of our guitarists on this tour, was saying, you know
(23:39):
when he was like getting who was learning the when
we were rehearsing sorry, when we were rehearsing for Rumsordomy
in the Lash, and he was saying, you know, like,
I've known your band since I was seven years old.
I've been playing these songs since I was about seven
years old, and I never really actually realized just how complex,
how complicated they are, because we've got all these weird arrangements,
(24:00):
weird sort of little chords that just pop up here
and there were people don't necessarily expect them to be,
but they are there. But the point was that he'd been,
he'd been he'd been the fan of the band since
he was seven. And that's kind of true about particularly
with regard to the Irish musicians that we've got along
with us. They've been fans of the band since they
were kids. I think that's sort of like you see
(24:23):
that in the in just the sheer enthusiasm that they
bring to it. I mean, the playing is stupendous, the
way that I mean, we're really lucky that we're really lucky.
One thing that Island's just had this extraordinary outpouring of
really superlative talent talent over the last sort of studying
(24:43):
about maybe ten years ago or whatever. And they're all
people who really love the pokes. So that's that's really
sort of like work to our advantage. But you know,
when you get somebody like like Lisa O'Neill saying A
Rainy Night in Soho is just you know, there's a
there's a part in that where the song there's a breakdown,
(25:07):
and we have another one of the artists we've got
with us as a her name is Iona Zadjak. She's Scottish.
She's a beautiful singer, but she also plays the Celtic heart.
Ah My shame would have just exploded if he had
If if he had seen this, he would have you know,
he wouldn't have been able to contain himself because he
(25:27):
would have loved it. But there's a bit in in
a Rainy Night where it all drops down and it's
just Lisa's voice and Iona's played the harp. She's you know,
And this first of all happened at rehearsals, and then
it was happening actually at the shows as well, where
other people play, would be kind of like we'll be
looking at each other sort of going, I'm not crying,
you're crying because it just it's it's so sort of like, oh,
(25:51):
you know, it's very very powerful. I'm really excited to
be bringing it. I could talk about it all day long.
I think people are really in for a true.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Oh I love it. That's so great. So I want
to close.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
So how do you see your own musical identity evolving
now compared to the early days of the Pogues.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, I mean, I think as far as I'm concerned,
but keep on, keep on doing this kind of for
a few more years, and and then I guess in time,
time will take its toll, and then it will be
time to say, all right, enough is enough. But you know,
but for the moment, this is this is so good,
This is so much fun that I really don't want
(26:33):
to stop doing doing it just yet. We've still got
to do Foo from Grace as well, you know, and
A's the others, So please don't stop. I do my best,
not too.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, Spider, thank you so much, it's so great to
give you. I'm taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It's an utter and I've really enjoyed myself. Thank you
very much.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a
Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your friends
and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking
a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts.
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