Shane MacGowan’s photographer says people only wanted to see snaps of the singer with rotten teeth.
Shane MacGowan’s photographer says people only wanted to see snaps of the singer with rotten teeth
Andrew Catlin spoke out about how he got sick of the public wanting pictures of the late Pogues wildman looking “grotesque” after one of his most famous shots of Shane was displayed on the singer’s coffin during his funeral procession and during his farewell service at St Mary of the Rosary Church in Ireland.
He told The Independent about how most of the public remembered Shane: “(People) wanted a picture of his mouth open, his teeth all showing looking as grotesque as possible.
“That’s all everyone ever wanted for a long-time and it seemed to me that it was really irrelevant.”
The image seen at Shane’s funeral showed the ‘Fairytale of New York; singer sitting serenely holding a glass of wine.
Andrew admitted the hard-living rocker – who died aged 65 on 30 November at his home in Dublin after a series of illnesses including pneumonia – could be a “very difficult” subject to photograph.
But he stressed despite Shane’s wild reputation he was “never nasty”.
Andrew added about Shane’s behaviour during photoshoots: “He was either bored or he didn’t want to engage with you.
“And then he would just switch off and ignore everything. He could be in a room full of people and not be there at all – people thought he was always completely out of it, but he just wasn’t interested in whatever was going on.”
He added if someone said something that caught Shane’s interest he would “snap out of it” and come out with “an incredible, intelligent, well-informed opinion”.
Andrew said: “He was so sharp. And he was incredibly interested in people – if they weren’t interesting, that’s when he’d switch off. And he didn’t like people who were full of (rubbish.)”
The photographer added about Shane’s funeral on 8 December: “It lasted for more than three hours, and it was absolutely electric for every second of it.
“It was emotional, beautiful, funny and extraordinary.”
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