Amanda Petrusich at The New Yorker:
The Irish singer and songwriter Shane MacGowan, a founding member of the punk-rock band the Pogues, died on Thursday, of pneumonia, at age sixty-five. It might sound as though he went young—and, by ordinary rubrics, he did—but MacGowan was a famously voracious consumer of drugs and prone to physical trauma. For decades, he flung himself around as though he were made of rubber. (“He was repeatedly injured in falls and struck by moving vehicles,” is how the Times put it in his obituary this week.) By all accounts, MacGowan was a man of irrepressible appetites, hungry and ungovernable. He was beloved for his songwriting (Dylan, Springsteen, and Bono were ardent fans), and also for his rotten teeth (when he finally had them fixed, in 2015, his dental surgeon described the experience as “the Everest of dentistry”). That he made it this far feels like a miracle, both for him and for us. Because if MacGowan was seemingly unconcerned with the preservation of his corporeal self, he was positively obsessed with elevating the soul.
more here.