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Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues

James Fearnley

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5 stars

233 (29%)

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews

Michael Burke

347 reviews289 followers

May 31, 2026

I love the Pogues. Led by the erratic, alcoholic brilliance of Shane MacGowan, the Pogues were a force of nature—a unique blend of the Chieftains, the Clash, and whatever else they felt like being. Years after their split, I attended a performance by the then-obscure Low and Sweet Orchestra; my jaw dropped open as I thought I recognized the accordion player, James Fearnley from the Pogues.

In 2012 Fearnley penned “Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues”. It begins with the day the group was forced to fire Shane and backtracks from there. Fearnley shows how the band developed their voice and gives a full accounting of each of the band members and what they had to contribute. While Shane was the primary songwriter, Philip Chevron wrote my favorite one, “Thousands Are Sailing.” I always wondered about Elvis Costello’s producing the band and his subsequent whisking away and marrying their bass player, Cait O’Riordan. Later, the one and only Joe Strummer joined up– but the book basically wraps up with Shane’s dismissal.

The book provides a candid look into the volatile history of a band living on the brink. While Shane could be a difficult and unruly presence, every member of the group was fully aware of the path they had chosen. Sadly, we lost Shane MacGowan in 2023. It is a shame the Pogue experience could not have lasted longer– we treasure what we have.

Not covered are Shane’s limited solo career with the Popes or Fearnley’s work with Low and Sweet or his later involvement with The Walker Roaders and I would love to read up on these.

Long live Shane MacGowan… in our hearts, at least.

Sláinte

“And in Brendan Behan's footsteps
I danced up and down the street” – Thousands Are Sailing / Philip Chevron / Pogues

éirinn-go-brách libraried rockers

Peter Boyle

595 reviews762 followers

January 10, 2022

I wouldn't say I'm a massive fan of The Pogues, but here in Ireland, they are impossible to ignore. Fairytale of New York is a Christmas radio staple by now, ensuring their legacy for years to come. And every Irishman and woman knows of Shane McGowan, the hard-drinking hellraiser who composed their most memorable songs.

Here Comes Everybody is written by James Fearnley, the band's Manchester-born accordion player. Fearnley almost joined Culture Club before he auditioned for McGowan's first band The Nips, and from that moment their alliance was sealed. His story charts the heady rise of the Pogues in the 80s, from appearing on Top of the Pops, to touring with U2 and working with the likes of Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer. It ends with the band having to kick McGowan out, no longer willing to tolerate his wild behaviour.

Fearnley is a wonderful writer, and he provides a fascinating insight into life in a chart-topping rock group. He does a terrific job of capturing the personalities of his band members, from the generous banjo-player Jem Finer to the sullen bassist Cait O'Riordan. And of course, there is McGowan himself. It's tragic to witness his decline as the Pogues grew in popularity. He was always a heavy drinker but the more successful the band became, the more his alcoholism took hold. Maybe it was his way of coping. Fearnley found it difficult to fathom: "I couldn’t understand how anyone could let himself become so bereft of responsibility for anything and yet write songs of such incisive beauty, full of chastening pity for the human condition."

I loved Fearnley's recollections of life on the road. In the 80s, the band toured for the majority of the year and got to travel the world. He speaks with awe about arriving in Manhattan, the magic of shooting the Fairytale of New York video with a young Matt Dillon. He reminisces about filming a movie in Almeria, soaking up the Spanish sun for a month while trying his best to woo Joe Strummer's mistress. But it wasn't all glamour. The band spent long hours on a cramped tour bus, often bickering with each other as any family would. I laughed at a heated exchange between McGowan and Spider Stacy:
"By the time we were approaching Oslo, Shane and Spider were at the roaring stage of an argument. It had started on the subject of whether or not a tomato was a vegetable. It had gone on to the matter of whether dogs could think.
'You fucking stupid fucking ignoramus!'
'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!'
'Fuck you!'
'No! Fuck you!'"

It all makes for a compelling inside account of a legendary band, rich in witty anecdotes and memorable detail. Shane McGowan is the enigma at the heart of it all. I wouldn't say it goes all the way to unravelling his psyche, but it offers a first-hand view of his sad journey to self-destruction. His coarse, boorish ways will never be to everybody's tastes, but any man who can write a song as beautiful as A Rainy Night in Soho is all right with me.

music non-fiction

Yalla Balagan

773 reviews44 followers

June 24, 2026

James Fearnley played bass and accordion in this legendary band, and his memoir handles every instrument at once. He writes the way a good rhythm section plays, steady underneath while everything else solos on top.

London in the early eighties appears as a city of bedsits, building sites, and bands forming in stairwells, and Fearnley catches that energy with a memoirist's timing tuned like a fiddle before a session.

The musicians crowding these pages performed at a pitch rare for any decade, rarer still for a single postcode. Pub bands, punks, and folkies collided in squats and rehearsal rooms, and somewhere inside that collision the Pogues found their tuning.

Elvis Costello drifts through several chapters as a kind of patron gremlin, part champion, part complication. He produced "A Pair of Brown Eyes" with the ease of someone comfortable around a mixing desk, adding mandolin harmony and a tambourine roll, clearly enjoying a turn inside another band's clothes. His involvement gave the group a louder amplifier and a more crowded green room. Fearnley credits the boost honestly, alongside its costs, several of them carried by his own bandmate.

That bandmate carries the book on his own broad, unsteady shoulders, even on pages where he can barely stand upright in a hotel lobby. Shane MacGowan wrote songs of startling tenderness and sudden carnage inside the same verse, lyrics drawn from pub jukeboxes, dismembered soldiers, and an old man muttering alone at dawn.

Fearnley records this gift with a friend's patience, watching a house come down brick by brick, drink by drink, ruined by the very builder who raised it. The chronicle of decline plays out as a wake held early, performed live, mourners included.

Fearnley spares little of his own conduct in these pages either. He lays his own ambitions and irritations beside everyone else's, and that honesty buys a memoir its trust. The prose stays plain, content to let detail carry the weight, a Telecaster bought with building-site wages, a kitchen window pried loose and tossed onto a roof, a singer biting through a stranger's earlobe before anyone learns his actual name. These read as facts a novelist might dream up and a memoirist gets to keep, living memory turned a touch keener for being true.

Cait O'Riordan strode into the band the same way she strode into the record shop where Shane worked, bass in hand and confidence already tuned to gig volume, and the room's wary hush around her dissolved fast once she opened her mouth and revealed a soft Irish lilt riding shotgun with a tongue sharp as broken glass.

Debsey Wykes, of Dolly Mixture, moves through these pages as Fearnley's own steady chord, helping him paint a flat pink and stamp demo sleeves while her own band's friendships frayed under romantic strain elsewhere.

Spider Stacy supplied half the band's stage chaos and most of its literary ammunition, trading insults and quotations with Shane until both men collapsed laughing, then learning tin whistle out of pure embarrassment after one ragged early show.

Early gigs at the Pindar of Wakefield and the 100 Club ran on improvisation and nerve in equal measure, raw enough that a fan mistook the wrong woman near the stage for the new bass player and got a quick, gentle correction.

The band's sound, traditional instruments wired into punk's current, finds an echo in Fearnley's own method, musical training plugged straight into literary craft.

Among the songs threading through these chapters, "Streams of Whiskey" and "Poor Paddy on the Railway" mark the earliest recording sessions, cut on a cassette that lost half its stereo before anybody noticed. "A Pair of Brown Eyes" gets a full chapter of its own, its waltz-time chords and battlefield imagery drawing Elvis Costello into the producer's chair. Traditional numbers such as "Connemara Rose" and Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" sit comfortably beside originals like "Turkish Song of the Damned," "Boys from the County Hell," "A Rainy Night in Soho," "Fairytale," "Siam," and "Sailing," proof that the band borrowed from the folk songbook and wrote straight back into it with equal nerve.

Reading this book feels something like standing offstage, near enough to catch the count-in, far enough back to watch the whole shambling outfit teeter and somehow keep playing through to the last chord.

Readers will hear banjos, accordions, and a singer's ruined, beautiful voice. Anyone curious about a band turning drinking songs into something close to scripture should begin here. These musicians proved players in every sense the word allows, and Fearnley's account of their bruises, their banjos, and their broken hearts plays like a céilí thrown for ghosts still turning up to dance.

❤️ 🇮🇱

Nigeyb

1,573 reviews440 followers

December 16, 2023

And he wrote us a book of times long gone...

Well written, astute, honest, and full of great anecdotes and insightful day-to-day details. For a book that is essentially a chronological document of the history of The Pogues, the book was engrossing and always interesting.

As with most memoirs, an interest in the subject matter is pretty much essential, however, if you’re reading this, then chances are you feel some affinity to The Pogues. If that's the case then I confidently assert you should love this book. My only pause for thought is the range of ratings this book has inspired.

I loved it. To give you an idea of the quality of the writing and the type of insights on offer, here is a description of Shane MacGowan nodding off on the tour bus...

"Sleep came upon him this way. He never planned it. He was heedless of the fact that the passage of time was divided into dark or light. Whatever sleep-cycle he might once have had, he had bent into more or less a straight line, punctuated with random periods of unconsciousness. These periods didn't synchronise at all with the diurnal round, no match with the routine of being on the road. I pitied him for it and for what seemed not so much his fear of unconsciousness but the transition into it. The workings of his intellect were tireless and gave him no release. A malevolent energy possessed him. It goaded him to talk, draw cartoons, scrawl lyrics across crumpled pieces of paper, clink the rings on his fingers incessantly against the side of his bottle of wine or on a tabletop, tap his foot on the floor."

Although Shane MacGowan is probably the person who looms largest over the history of The Pogues it is to James Fearnley’s credit that his presence does not dominate the book. Indeed it is The Pogues as both a collective and, as the various disparate individual members, who get equal billing, and this adds to the book's richness.

From the tale end of pre-Pogues band The Nips, via the world of King's Cross squats and Camden housing association flats and small gigs in nearby pubs, and onward eventually to mainstream acceptance, this is a great read that evokes the doomed, mythological, fiercely romantic world of the band and their rise and fall. The slow, inexorable decline of the inscrutable Shane MacGowan is very painful to read, as is the helpless response of his band as they watch him become ever less reliable and functional, until finally, and in the opening chapter, they finally agree to fire him.

It's a hell of a read, always interesting and frequently fascinating, even Shane MacGowan agrees…"It’s just how I imagine I'd remember it"

5/5

John

951 reviews39 followers

February 26, 2024

In his afterward, James explains that he conceived this chronicle of non-fictional events as if writing fiction. And about 3/4 of the way through, how he diligently kept journals of his dozen years as accordionist, a guitarist, and an impressively multi-instrumentalist for the Pogues. He begins if not 'in medias res,' than at least near the end, as the band convenes to save Shane MacGowan from his dissolution by firing its frontman. I add how the subtitle, the story of the group, nevertheless shows as its primary image the backs of the men, as they troop into the background while Shane stands crookedly soused, gaping at the camera, dwarfing his companions at the right margin of the cover photo.

Only after closing this account did I realize the significance of this scene. I'd opened the book wondering why if James was the author, that he didn't feature as the main subject of the photograph. Now I understand it. James and his comrades as the lineup stayed solid as such. They had to abandon their increasingly demented, drunk, and disorderly singer-songwriter, lest he succumb to his rages and do in himself and/or them.

While the narrative is very well detailed, the pace, perhaps unintended, staggers. It's as if James took his many years of recollections, gathered them into roughly the order needed for the tales to unfold, and let their internal organization organically march out of the diaries. There's often jump cuts. Many paragraphs don't include transitions. Events of many months compress into a few sentences, while particular conversations, dramatic clashes, intimate moments, and a few concerts or recording sessions expand and deepen the reader's appreciation of how pressure builds, ebbs a bit, only to reconfigure into growing damages inflicted on the mental sanity, physical health, musical talent, and necessary integration of the ensemble's sustainability. They grow into accomplished players, and some as singers. You witness their craft as they mature.

But I wanted first to perceive how the author's compositional acumen began. His background isn't depicted in any depth, but only as scattered sketches here and there. What was he doing with his smarts before the Pogues, and the freelancing gigs common to most creative types trying to enter the spotlight? Why does he tend towards reticence? We're ranted glimpses of his formative stage, but it's vague. His evident knowledge of the humanities, of a wide range of techniques drawn from a truly diverse range of lyrical and instrumental global heritages, and his honed creation of his verbal voice on paper attest to the worth of Here Comes Everybody. But, tellingly, he never reveals this particular allusion.

Like a lot of such contents, if you're not well-versed in Irish culture, history, and literature along with its sonic lore, you're missing the full impact. As a fan since their very first LP that I heard in the early Eighties when I bought it on pricey import, I could follow the plot and catch the context. However, if one lacks these sometimes subtle background details, the going will be more uneven. As common with this literary genre, there's passages blurring tour venues, album releases, supporting players, managers, roadies, and the hangers-on who come and go along the roads.

This recital likely challenges the best of authors from a performing arts career. James does his best to offer a thoughtful examination of forces which loosed by drink, lust, anger, and other deadly sins wreak havoc in friendships, on lovers, with rivals. I recommend this in tandem with Richard Balls' bio of Shane, A Furious Devotion, recently reviewed by me. Together they dispel 'Oirish plastic Daddy' stereotypes, to seek honesty. It may sound entertaining to follow the doings of a talented bard who follows this well-worn mythologized life, but the costs incurred by those who accompany the star outside his spotlight dim the glamour. By the by, we never learn how Shane picked up his own immersion into the tradition of the island's tunes, or except in one short vignette, how he found the space to pursue his muse, given his constantly altered state.

Andrewhouston

84 reviews5 followers

June 12, 2015

A great read if you are a Pogues fan like me. Great inside stories about the dynamics and friendship between the band members, how it all started, some stories and opinions about other musicians and bands in their orbit. Although I was disappointed there were no stories about meeting Bob Dylan and what he was like even though Dylan asked them to be his opening band on several tour dates. And I must say that even though Fearnley apparently had ambitions to be a great writer before the Pogues got big and he even got great praise for his writing from the likes of John Jeremiah Sullivan and others, I didn't particularly care for the writing itself. It was as if he thought being a writer meant you have to use a lot of big words that no one has ever heard when other words might do.
Here is a list of just some of those words that I had never read before and had no idea as to their meaning - and bare in mind that I only started marking them 3/4ths of the way through the book, so there are way more!:
PRETERITE
DULCITUDE
PYKNIC (not just a European spelling of picnic) "They were immense men, pyknic and broad-chested"
BARM
PLOSIVE (like related to ex-plosive?)
MUNIFICENT
APOTHEGMS (!!)
PELLUCID
INELUCTABILITY
STRABISMUS
CATALYSIS (having to do with catalyst?)
MARDINESS (hedonistic? As in Mardi Gras? about Shane: "Since turning up from England there was a mardiness about him which brooked no contradiction")
SPLEENFUL (okay, I guess I know what the spleen is... but 'spleenful'? "Jem brought in a couple of songs, both of them spleenful")
CLEMENT (as in clemency? "The weather was unremittingly clement" Did he really have to use the word clement or is he just showing off?)
SENESCENTLY
RATAPLANNED (I actually kind of like this word)
SOLEMNISING (obviously having to do with making something a solemn occasion, but it's a weird word
INAPPOSITE
SCUTIFORM (!!) ("His scutiform face was handsome, his lashes lush." what?)

Simon Bendle

92 reviews6 followers

September 27, 2013

An entertaining book about an entertaining band. James Fearnley, it turns out, is as good a writer as he is accordionist. He’s got plenty of mad anecdotes, as you’d expect. And plenty to say about his talented but troubled frontman, Shane MacGowan (not all of it complimentary, which was appreciated). Just one quibble: as well as downing gallons of booze during his time with the Pogues, Fearnley also appears to have swallowed a dictionary. Words like etiolate, contumely and crepitation pepper his prose. Personally, I found it distracting. But otherwise Fearnley has done a decent job. If, like the Pogues, you knelt and said a prayer at the sickbed of Cuchulainn back in the day, and Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid, you should give this a go. A good pop memoir. Slainte!

Scott Rowley

21 reviews1 follower

August 29, 2012

I love the Pogues and this is a real insight into life in that band and bands in general. Written by accordion player Fearnley, it makes you realise how little of most band's stories you get to hear. THe Pogues were 6-8 different people battling with addictions and illness and fidelity and creativity and Feanley captures the feeling of being one of the cogs in the wheel - not necessarily the most important or glamorous, but a vital cog nonetheless.

He's frank and not afraid to reveal his own weaknesses - often he is weak, confused, eventually unfaithful and not as creative as he'd like to be. Shane MacGowan's drinking, meanwhile, is stripped of all the Brendan Behan/Dylan Thomas myth-making bullshit. He acted like an arse and you can see why the band had to end.

Lizva

215 reviews2 followers

December 9, 2023

Since Shane MacGowan passed away last week, I have been listening to the Pogues and introducing my kids to their music. For me, Shane was a true poet. His interpretations of traditional songs and his own compositions are meaningful to me and touch me in a way few others do. This is the story of the Pogues, told by James Fearnley, their accordionist as well as player of many other instruments. He chronicles beautifully how they came together and made music for about ten years, until they fired Shane. I like his narration, he is honest about the envy he feels at times and the negativity he feels as well as some bad behavior on his part (infidelity). The portrait of MacGowan is beautifully done. They all recognize his genius but even beyond his substance abuse his behavior is erratic and he is difficult to be with. His self-destructive tendencies as well as those of others are described obliquely. They are really shown not told. This author is very good at showing not telling and it makes this a very enjoyable read. It’s also fascinating to get this ride along view. I appreciate that it in no way glorifies substance abuse unlike some of the other material describing Shane and the band.

Mark Peacock

179 reviews6 followers

December 8, 2023

I've had this in my Want to Read list for ~18 months. Shane MacGowan's death last week bumped it over to my Currently Reading list.

It's one of the better written musician autobiographies I've read. Fearnley tells an honest story about how the Pogues came together; the choices and the work required to become even moderately successful. He's very clear-eyed about his talent as a musician and his activities while on tour. Though it's nominally Fearnley's story, MacGowan drives the plot -- at first, a shambolic but talented ne'er-do-well who turns darker, more malignant as the band becomes more successful. And as much as MacGowan's actions frustrate and anger Fearnley, it's MacGowan's unique talent as a songwriter that keeps Fearnley coming back to MacGowan until the end.

My only criticism is that Fearnley's desire to be a serious writer sometimes gets in the way of Fearnley's telling of the story. He'll drop in overly ornate descriptions of a scene that distract rather than support his story. It's not too surprising. He says early on that he was working on a novel before he joins MacGowan in the Nips and then the Pogues, and he talks about attending writer's workshops during tour breaks. But it's a minor quibble that a bit of skimming easily solved.

FittenTrim

431 reviews7 followers

January 23, 2026

Audiobook review: Fearnley's memoir covers his life from joining an early band with Shane MacGowan through their founding of the Pogues to the fateful decision to kick Shane out. Wonderful, honest writing with the extra spice of Fearnley brilliantly 'doing the voices' of his bandmates. Must read/listen for any fan of The Pogues

Tricia Lowther

16 reviews

February 17, 2021

An interesting, entertaining, but ultimately depressing story.

I loved the Pogues, still do, especially those first three albums, which will always be amazing. But it wasn't just the music I loved, it was the energy, the spirit they radiated, and the infamous frontman who apparently never really wanted to be the frontman.

James Fearnley's memoir covers the period from 1980 when he first met Shane O'Hooligan as Shane MacGowan was then known, and continues through until 1991 when the Pogues decided to get rid of Shane. Fearnley's not a bad writer, there are some beautiful passages in there, but he can also be unnecessarily wordy, and his over-use of unusual words had me rolling my eyes. I was bored too, by the technical stuff about how some of the tunes were played, although there wasn’t too much of that. I guess musicians might appreciate it.

Shane is the main star of the story, but we never really get to understand him. It seems like that may be the case in general - he’s not easy to get to know, or it could be more of a reflection of James' relationship with him. At times it seemed that Fearnley lacked insight into what was happening with the people around around him.

I enjoyed getting to know the other band members. There are several funny anecdotes and I found myself looking up certain videos and performances to get a better picture of some of the things James refers to (The video for Streams of Whiskey is even more hilarious when you realise the reference to Wham’s ‘Club Tropicana’). Detail isn’t spared on some of the nastier aspects of touring. I did wonder whether there was really a need to go into so much detail on watching Shane pee, and I was shocked and disappointed by the way the guys treated Cait O’Riordan. The only woman in the Pogues was treated to some disgustingly misogynistic invective when she decided to leave.

Here Comes Everybody is a good read but it left me sad and wondering why people are often revered as alcoholics. MacGowan sounds like he needed help, needed care he didn’t get. I wonder if fans share some collective responsibility for the state he and some of the others got into - he wasn’t the only band member with an addiction problem. The early days sounded like a lot of fun and I felt some nostalgia for the eighties even though my own life at the time wasn’t anywhere near as exciting. But in the end it’s little surprise that what looked like one big party from the outside was filled with the same sorts of problems, disagreements and insecurities shared by everyone.

Rebecca Dobrinski

75 reviews8 followers

October 7, 2013

It’s the end of August 1991, The Pogues are on tour and have checked into the Pan Pacific Hotel in Yokohama. Shane has gone to his room, everyone is jet lagged. A meeting is called, and it will be about Shane. A long discussion ensues and a decision is reached. Darryl starts by saying, “We’ve been having a talk.” Shane replies, “You’ve all been very patient with me. What took you so long?”

In Here Comes Everybody, James Fearnley starts at the end. The rest of The Pogues have decided to kick Shane MacGowan out of the band. MacGowan has always been inextricably associated with The Pogues, but his ousting seemed to be no surprise to him. His bandmates had finally had enough of his behavior and excesses.

This is Fearnley’s version of events from the time he showed up at the studio at Halligan’s rehearsal rooms after answering an ad in the Melody Maker for a spot in The Nips all the way to the show immediately following Shane’s firing. He considers this story a work of creative non-fiction: “I have tried to revivify the events and characters in it using the tools and the sensibilities of a fiction writer.”

He handles the story in a compelling way, keeping the reader close as though an insider privy to the inner workings of The Pogues. There are plenty of stories you would expect – excess, drama, various characters both famous and not interspersed throughout the journey. Life with The Pogues does not seem to have been terribly boring.

Throughout the text are pictures from throughout the band’s career. The first image is an early snapshot of Shane singing with Shanne behind him playing bass. Further into the book you’ll find a young Shane sitting amongst his belongings in a one-room apartment. There’s live shots, candid shots, and promotional shots enhancing the story as Fearnley narrates.

Pogues fans will enjoy the ride through the life of the band. From rehearsals and tours to the dynamic personalities involved, Fearnley does not spare much in the way of details (although admitting in the author’s note that sometimes, the stories are amalgams of multiple similar events).

Put on “The Fairytale of New York” then shuffle the rest of your Pogues library while you dive in to Here Comes Everybody. You won’t be disappointed.

This review originally appeared at Zen Dixie, http://www.zendixie.com/read.html

Readersaurus

1,715 reviews47 followers

August 27, 2014

If you are a fan, you will hear every song as Fearnley chronicles the writing, performing, and recording of each. Oh, lamentations -- all my Pogues albums are on cassette. Thank goodness for you tube, but it's not the same as listening to a whole album all the way through.

I love that they were from England and not Ireland (though some had Irish roots) and they were, at first, rejected by traditional Irish singers, and later embraced. Their punkish edge made all those songs more enjoyable for me.

I remember seeing the Pogues in NY some time in the late 1980s -- the whole crowd swayed together and belted out "Dirty Old Town," and the dancing was wild -- I lost a lens from my eyeglasses. It shot across the club floor, never to be found, even though we waited for the lights to come up and the clean-up crew to sweep. I was grateful for the color-coded subway lines. Just get me to the big purple orb that means the 7 line and I'll find a way to explain the missing glasses to Mom later.

The only part that stuck in my craw was Fearnley's scathing words for Cait. They were all drunkards, all badly behaved, most learned their instruments as they went along. Several of the bandmates missed gigs, were jerks, etc. But only Cait gets such ugly words, as if he's still mad at her after all these years. His treatment of her felt beneath the rest of the story.

After reading this, I wanted to re-live a little more -- Tried to buy the movie they made with Joe Strummer, "Straight to Hell." $65! I saw it in the theater and, though it was fun, there's no way to justify that expense. Sigh. I did order the Shane Macgowan documentary (If I Should Fall From Grace) for my library. What will it be like to look at those teeth for two hours?

It's great to read these rock & roll memoirs. If you're ever sorry you didn't choose the glamourous life, it's good to be reminded of the cramped tour buses, motel rooms shared with bandmates with odd and grotesque habits, and the near-constant drunkenness, filth, and sorrow of being on tour. Hi diddly dee, it's a nice clean librarian's life for me.

biography-memoir music pop-culture

Hundeschlitten

213 reviews11 followers

January 14, 2013

Fearnley was the accordionist for the Pogues. Twenty some years later, he has written a book about their heyday. He has done an excellent job, coveying the urgent and the ridiculous and the sublime. I love the Pogues. They are a touchstone for me. And perhaps that makes me a bit biased, as I was eager to embrace the story of their rise and to cringe at some of the awful moments on their way down. Shane MacGowan is one of the true characters of my generation, and Fearnley has the perfect vantage point, close but not too close, to tell Shane's tale. Intuitive genius or self-destructive drunk, he can make you feel both about the man. There are moments in this book when Fearnley focuses a little too much on the fate of the rest of the band, as if the audience really cares about whether Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. But that is a quibble. Fearnley pretty much understands who the star of his story is, and he tells his story well.

Sally

1,403 reviews

June 21, 2014

Interesting read about the history of the Pogues, written by the accordion player. He veers between a nice use of words and overly-ornate prose. He did a good job of telling his story without trashing anyone in a vicious manner, always a plus. Reading this made me determined to avoid live concerts: while the fans are out there having a good time, who knows what is going on within the band and in each member's life? The misery of life on the road and interpersonal struggles was quite depressing.

memoir non-fiction

188 reviews

April 27, 2020

This is the best rock’n’roll memoir I’ve ever read. Early in the piece, James states he writes with typewriter and a thesaurus - I have never read anything where I needed to check words so much, at least not since I was 16 and tried to read Joyce.

I’ll come back to this review later. I just wanted to say the above before I got right into it or out of it

rock-n-roll-memoirs

Dennis

3 reviews

May 4, 2013

Well written story of the Pogues by a man who was there from the beginning!

Seamus Coye Drums

1 review

September 27, 2020

Fantastic..awesome journey of a great band written with charm and candour with anecdotes aplenty. Couldn’t put it down until the very end.

Lee Robertson

71 reviews

August 18, 2022

2nd time through and enjoyed the novelistic approach a lot more on this read. Obviously the downfall of Shane McGowan is heartbreaking no matter how it is told.

jorjee

43 reviews1 follower

December 27, 2025

did not know who james fearnley was before this, actually knew very little about the pogues
what i knew: they drank a lot, especially shane mcgowan
the drinking and general destructive tendencies of the latter led to his exile from the band

Review is very disorganised, thoughts wrapped around themselves.

the memoir starts on this very pivotal moment then sweeps back in time for the formation of the nips, of which james fearnley and macgowan were founding members before they joined jem finer and spider stacey (& a rolling cast of various bass players, drummers, masters of miscellaneous folk instruments).
it is a personal memoir as well as the story of the band, filled with fearnley’s less than stellar behaviour and his own drinking, his contributions to the music, the band and his personal and tumultuous relationship with shane. He is aware of his own shortcomings - desire for attention, jealousy, adultery - as well as full of candor, often to the point of brutality, and sometimes wit. This makes him a compelling narrator for a fascinating band, seeing them through their formation to the renouncing of shane (actually was with the band until 1994, but the memoir ends there - maybe out of literary satisfaction maybe tacit acknowledgement that the band was not the same, and not as interesting). He paints excellent portraits of the main characters that are compassionate, bitter and facainting, from the energetic Spider, his boyish and often immature humour, his brotherhood - and it’s painful demise - with Shane; the sullen and volatile Cait; Jem, the voice of reason and monogamy. Shane Macgowan. Fearnley is unrelenting in his attacks and brutal descriptions of his drunkenness, disorderliness, violent and unpredictable outbursts and how he “betrayed” the band. But it is also impossible not to see their connection - he is mentioned on nearly every page, this memoir of James’ life, of the Pogues’ life is littered with him. His talent and lyrical genius (Naked, Howling Freedom), but also almost tender descriptions (bashful, boyish) and an account of his demise in the excruciating detail of someone who cannot look away.

What I learnt: They drank a lot, much more than you can imagine. It’s a vivid picture of years of touring, boozing, music-writing - something really special and amazing fun but dangerous and destructive and looming for disaster.
In the same way that the story begins and ends with Shane, his deterioration and influence on the band provides structure for the narrative, which at many times is a first-hand account of his descent into depravity and oblivion, ruining himself and the band. It’s a fascinating character portrait and I guess a real life example of a character I’m always drawn to, that seems doomed from the very start.

Ben

242 reviews2 followers

July 2, 2026

Coincidentally, I finished this one on Bloomsday. Fearnley, as you can tell from the title, is clearly inspired by Joyce and doesn't attempt to hide it whatsoever. He uses archaic vocabulary, like "omophorion" or "pellucid", which come off as unnatural. Nothing is "colorful" it's "kaleidoscopic."

The book is interesting, despite this, but what the book fails to convey is that being in the Pogues was probably fun. He seems bitter, at times egotistical and at other times resentful.

Also, if you're looking to read this to gain insight into what Shane MacGowan is like, it doesn't seem like James understood him (or liked him) very well.

If you're a diehard fan, you'll probably find it interesting. If not, it's probably not the book for you.

Paul Evans

6 reviews1 follower

December 27, 2021

I followed The Pogues from their very early days onward with the kind of devotion that you can only save for one band. I saw them countless times, including at one venue where the audience almost outnumbered the band. I had every record in every format and I still play in a Pogues tribute band today.

For us band Kremlinologists, a lot of this rings true. They didn't start out with an unswerving dedication to Irish music that they became known for, they DID have an ear for it though, but also an ability to adapt and encompass so much else.

If Fearnley's book has one, obvious ulterior motive, it is to restore the credit that the rest of the Pogues have lost for a lot of the music. Jem Finer and Fearnley in particular (and, later, Terry Woods) were obviously huge contributors to the overall sound as well as the band's voice. Spider Stacy seems to have supplied the band's Freudian Id - something that was evident from the early performances. Stacey's raspy democratic personality, not MacGowan's may even be the one that defines the band in many ways.

The book also casts Shane MacGowan as someone who has been unreliably narrated (at least in part, by himself as well as his coterie) and - to some extent - there's nothing wrong with a bit of romantic re-invention. Shane doesn't come out of this book well though. At times, he's just painted as a moron though Fearnley constantly offers glimpses of something much richer and he gives every credit to MacGowan's chrysalis-like ability to transform himself into a stunningly empathetic songwriter.

My own sources and occasional personal brushes with MacGowan showed me someone with a degree of charity that Fearnley either misses or ignores. But the book largely rings true and it's a cracker to read. Fearnley himself is a fascinating character, and I'd love to read the more objective account of the contribution that he and Jem Finer made to the band.

But, in the meantime, do read this if you can - it's as good as any rock-band history that I've read - it's fascinating to read Fearnley's grapple with the English language, and that alone is worth the cover price. I would desperately like to have a drink with James, which is more than I can say for Shane, I'm afraid.

Gary Baysinger

Author 3 books25 followers

November 6, 2023

I'm a musical nut and so I've read a lot of biographies about musicians or bands. A lot of the biographies I've read aren't that good. This one is. The author captures a band walking a tightrope between disaster and stardom. Mixing punk and traditional music, the Pogues blazed a trail across the music scene, all the while being led by an unstable genius. Fearnley's honest insight and effective writing make for a fascinating read.

Sam

387 reviews5 followers

December 2, 2023

When James Fearnley was invited to play accordion in the band that became the Pogues he said he'd do it as long as it didn't interrupt his attempt to write a novel (he had also briefly played guitar in Shane MacGowan's pre-Pogues punk band). 'Here Comes Everybody' is a story of the Pogues with novelistic touches, 'creative non-fiction' Fearnley calls it: events are combined, long-ago conversations are dialogued. Hopefully there were diary entries or something to refer to.

I raced through the first half of this book, couldn't put it down. It seemed like I was able to feel the excitement of a band hitting on the right formula, & also felt somewhat transported back to the 1980s. I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment came from the writing & how much came from the fact that I was a big fan of the band in those years.

The band's recipe was a fusion of Irish folk music and punk rock but apparently only Shane and Cait O'Riordan self-identified as Irish. Per Fearnley, Cait was a 17-year-old girlfriend of Shane's when she joined the band on bass, which she could hardly play. There's a question of the mysterious alchemy of music groups here, a story behind the story. After playing in the band a couple of years, Cait quit so she could spend more time with her new (common law) husband Elvis Costello. This marked the end of the Pogues' most inspired period & also of Elvis Costello's.

good-books-read-2021

Daniel

51 reviews7 followers

March 27, 2019

This is an autobiography pitched to the reader as a biography of the Pogues. There is no doubt that the Pogues had a lively and interesting story to tell but this book feels like it is always inches away from it. It spares no barbs for many of the members of the band and collaborators but is largely tied up in the over written anecdotes of James life in the band. What was really maddening about the writing is the many many many self indulgent pages wasted talking about the authors minor personal details while Joe Strummer is paired down to a few off hand anecdotes. The biggest of which is about how he married Strummers ex. Elvis Costello gets similar short shrift and Shane is only ever shown to be a mad drunk who the author repeatedly has to tell us is a brilliant song writer. For someone who was in two separate bands with Shane they seem more like ships passing in the night and there is no real insight about the man and his work, just his outbursts.

Fearnley makes much of how he was a frustrated writer in his early days and the book itself shows it. The prose are overly flowery and his memory is too precious and prosaic to come off as honest. There is a truly interesting story to be told about the Pogues, sadly this isn't it

Nc Hegarty

15 reviews1 follower

December 7, 2023

So seemingly the least interesting member of The Pogues writes a book. McGowan, the driving force, is reduced to grunts and swear words while the author waffles on repeatedly about the engineering behind stage set ups and the colour of hotel rooms.

There are some insight into the dynamics of the band which are interesting but before long we are back to the author fawning over romantic interests or complaining about the weather, using ridiculously wordy language straight out of a bad creative writing course.

As McGowan finally descends into complete mental breakdown and life destroying substance abuse disasters, not helped by the bands relentless schedule and pressures, there seems to be no insight into the fact that maybe they should have stopped and taken a break to get him help? It seems they needed the money.

In fact a crew member dies not long after collapsing backstage while most of the band seem close to death on multiple occasions.

This is really lacking charm and self awareness of the bigger picture. Not the book I wanted after learning of Shane’s death.

Fearnley should be thankful he was there at all, at one point, McGowan remarks to him, “Will you shut up you whining cunt”. I couldn’t agree more. RIP Shane and The Pogues!

Carolyn Drake

970 reviews13 followers

December 11, 2023

Accordionist James Fearnley documents the ugliness and beauty of The Pogues in this story of the band's rise to fame and the long-spiralling descent of their mythical and monstrous singer Shane MacGowan. And what a story it is: the minor sub-plots alone could each carry a half season narrative arc in the box set version of this disparate bunch of musicians.
Fearnley is a skilful observer, conjuring up the filth and fury of a set of musicians battling with drink, demons and eachother. He drags you right in to the squalid flats, pubs, stages, backstage dressing rooms, and gives you a seat at the back of the tour bus. There's love here, but also its flip side of hatred, as MacGowan's alcoholism and addictions begin to take all the joy out of stage shows. The book has no real theories or answers to explain MacGowan's obviously tormented soul, with its contradictory capacity for writing tender poetry but also spitting out hateful invective. Fearnley writes well, let down only by a slight Will Self tendency to be...well, I can't resist this now...'sesquipidalian'. But this is an engrossing tale, made to be read as you listen along to Pogues tracks.

Derek Bridge

1,071 reviews21 followers

August 1, 2013

In general, I'm not fond of celeb or band or sports biogs. "We did this; then we went there where that happened; and then he said something; and we went to somewhere else." - for 300 pages, spiced only by the odd caustic remark or tale of illicit sex or drugs. And to some extent, this story of The Pogues, inevitably, has the same flavour.

But...

But Fearnley can really write. Sitting a little uncomfortably alongside the narrative are some lyrical descriptive passages, especially when describing aspects of the music. These lift this biog above the ordinary.

And...

And somehow never quite centre stage, never quite in focus, there is the ever-present, looming, lurking, haunting figure of Shane MacGowen. He lifts this biog into the realms of great tragi-comedy.

And...

And the other good thing about reading this biog is it reminds you to listen to the albums all over again.

Andrew Byrne

Author 2 books3 followers

May 8, 2012

A masterful account of life in one of the more colourful bands of the last 30 years, Here Comes Everbody is an insight into how a band comes together and then dissolves through the self-destructive personnel involved.
James Fearnley, accordion player with The Pogues, describes the ramshackle origins of the band and captures their taciturn defiance at attempts by their manager to introduce a degree of professionalism. Fearnley's droll prose depicts a vivid portrait of each of his colleagues and is particularly effective in capturing Shane MacGowan's descent into drunken waywardness.
This book should become the yardstick for music memoirs - honest, wry, lyrical and capable of transferring those of us fortunate enough to have been part of The Pogues entourage back to those heady days.

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