Shane MacGowan has announced his first-ever art book, the wonderfully-named The Eternal Buzz And The Crock Of Gold.
It’s a very limited-edition creation, with only 1000 copies being made. You can pre-order it ahead of its April release on The Pogues legend’s official website.
“This may look like a book, but appearances can be deceptive,” the description of the book warns. “For once your psyche has absorbed this experience, there is no returning to innocence. You may become enlightened or you may be forever tormented.”
The book brings together a collection of never-before-seen or published illustrations, drawings, lyrics, stories, snippets and secretions from MacGowan, dating all the way back to his childhood and journeying through six decades of punk and Irish revelry.
It will also contain photographs capturing candid moments between the singer and the likes of Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Pete Doherty, and Daniel Day-Lewis.
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“I was always into drawing and painting, and I used to do all sorts of things, hurlers, IRA men, teenage punks hanging around in cafes, you name it…” MacGowan explained in a statement, as per NME. “When I was about 11 or 12 I got heavily into studying history of art and looking at old paintings and modern paintings, I knew a lot about art. It’s one of the only O Levels I got, was in art.”
He continued: “In terms of my materials, I like pastels but I don’t really think about it. I’ll paint or draw on anything, with anything. I like more or less everyone from Fra Angelico and Giotto to the latest, like Caravaggio was the last of the Renaissance, before it went into Expressionism.
I love Cezanne, Gauguin, Monet, Manet. I love the Irish impressionists, Lavery, Jack B Yeats, Brendan Fitzpatrick. The 20th century impressionists who painted the period of Ireland fighting for its freedom. I like Max Ernst, the surrealists, Dali, Chagall… God there’s millions of them.”
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Check out ‘If I Should Fall from Grace with God’ by The Pogues:
