The Night Shane MacGowan Decided to Save Haiti
Danny Clifford was there. For almost fifty years, I’ve found myself in rooms that most people only read about. Sometimes they’re glamorous. Sometimes they’re chaotic. Occasionally they’re unforgettable. This is one of those stories.
By three o’clock in the morning, the pub had surrendered. The staff had long since gone home. The regulars had drifted off into the freezing London night, leaving just two of us behind. Somewhere during the evening we’d been handed the keys to the front door, trusted to lock up when we’d eventually decided enough was enough.
Looking back, that probably tells you everything you need to know about the sort of nights we used to have.
Across the table sat my old friend, Shane MacGowan. He casually tipped a generous handful of Valium into his mouth before washing them down with what remained of a pint glass containing little more than gin and melting ice.
Earlier that evening he’d worked his way through several impressive lines of speed. Every so often he’d slide the little wrap across the table towards me. “Danny,” he’d grin, “this speed is nearly as good as coke.” It made me laugh every single time.
Shane could afford whatever drugs he wanted. If he’d decided he fancied cocaine, he’d have had cocaine. The fact he was enthusiastically recommending speed as though he’d discovered a particularly decent bottle of wine somehow summed him up perfectly.
I always declined. My own drink of choice couldn’t have been more different. A pint of water. One slice of lemon. Two glacé cherries floating around the glass looking hopelessly out of place. It hardly screamed “rock ‘n’ roll”, but someone had to remember the evening. Besides, I still had a long drive home.
By now the Valium was beginning to soften the edges of Shane’s already wonderfully chaotic world. His words became slower, his smile somehow even broader. Outside, January had wrapped London in one of those bitter cold nights that creeps straight through your coat. As we finally stood to leave, Shane stopped halfway to the door.
“I want to do something for Haiti.”
It wasn’t the sort of sentence I’d been expecting.
Only days earlier, on 12 January 2010, Haiti had suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes in modern history. Hundreds of thousands of people had lost their lives. Entire communities had disappeared in seconds. Even Shane, who’d witnessed more than his fair share of human suffering throughout his own life, had clearly been deeply affected.
We locked the pub behind us exactly as promised, pushed the key back through the letterbox and slowly wandered the short distance towards his flat. His London flat was only a couple of minutes away. I said goodnight, climbed into my car and headed home, assuming that was the end of the conversation.
It wasn’t.
Two days later, my phone rang.
“Danny…” His unmistakable voice crackled down the line. “Fancy another drink?”
There was really only one possible answer.
Back in the same pub, over another evening that drifted happily between complete nonsense and absolute sincerity, Shane returned to the subject of Haiti.
“I’ve decided,” he announced. “We’re making a record.”
I knew exactly what he meant. A charity single. It was a wonderful idea. It was also, I suspected, terrible timing.
Simon Cowell was already putting together what would become the biggest charity record in Britain. Every newspaper, every television station and every radio programme was inevitably going to throw its weight behind that project. I gently suggested that perhaps we’d struggle to attract much attention. Shane looked at me as though I’d completely misunderstood.
No,” he said firmly. “We’re doing it.”
Once Shane had reached a decision, there was very little point arguing.
“So,” I asked, “what song?”
Without the slightest hesitation, he answered. “I Put A Spell On You.”
I paused. “Shane… are you sure?”
He looked puzzled. “Haiti has a long history of voodoo and black magic,” I said. “Maybe this isn’t quite the message we want to send.” I even suggested Fix You by Coldplay.
Nothing. Not a flicker of doubt. His mind was made up. “I Put A Spell On You” it would be.
Looking back now, perhaps I should have known better than to question him. Shane didn’t really operate by committee. He operated by instinct. And, somehow, instinct had carried him a very long way.
Once the song had been decided, the phone calls began. Shane immediately started contacting friends. He spoke to Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream. Nick Cave.
Shane MacGowan, Mick Jones, Nick Cave
Shane MacGowan
And he called Cait O’Riordan. I started making a few calls myself. Chrissie Hynde. Paloma Faith. Eliza Doolittle. Laura White.
Glen Matlock
Chrissie Hynde
Laura White
One by one, people agreed to become involved. Nobody was thinking about record sales. Nobody was talking about publicity. People simply wanted to help. The only real problem was where we were actually going to record it. Initially we’d planned to use Edwin Collins’ studio, but that arrangement unexpectedly fell through. So I picked up the phone and called someone I’d trusted for years.
Andy Wright.
Andy is one of the world’s greatest producers. He’s worked with artists at every level of the music business, from household names to emerging talent, and he possesses one rare quality that can’t be taught. Nothing rattles him.
Whether he’s recording one singer with an acoustic guitar or trying to organise a room full of rock stars, Andy has an almost supernatural calm about him. He listened to the situation for all of about thirty seconds.
“No problem,” he said. “I will produce it, come to Sphere.”
Sphere Studios in Battersea, London would become our headquarters. Looking back, I honestly don’t think the record would have happened without him.
Friday, 29 January 2010. The musicians arrived throughout the morning. Instrument cases appeared in corridors. Coffee cups balanced on amplifiers. Old friends greeted one another with hugs, laughter and stories that couldn’t possibly be printed here. There was a wonderful atmosphere. Everyone had come for exactly the right reasons. I arrived carrying my cameras, as I always did.
Photography had brought me into this extraordinary world decades earlier, and once again I found myself quietly documenting another day that would almost certainly never happen again. This time, though, I brought two very special guests with me. My sons, Jonathan and Sam.
I wanted them to experience something most people never get to witness. Not the glamour. Not the fame. But the simple joy of watching gifted musicians come together for something bigger than themselves. Neither of them realised it yet.
They were about to have a day they’d still be laughing about years later. The recording sessions at Sphere Studios settled into a wonderfully organised kind of chaos.
Musicians drifted between the control room, the live room and the corridor, cups of coffee in one hand, lyric sheets in the other. Conversations overlapped, guitars were tuned, stories were exchanged and, every now and then, another performance was captured forever.
People often imagine that sessions like this simply happen. A group of famous musicians turn up, sing into a microphone and somehow a record appears at the end of the day. The reality couldn’t be more different.
One thing has always slightly amused me over the years. I’ve occasionally seen articles claiming that Mick Jones produced the session.
He didn’t. Mick was there, of course, and I was delighted he agreed to be involved. His contribution as one of the artists was every bit as important as everyone else’s, but the producer’s chair belonged to one man, and one man alone.
Andy Wright.
Andy was the calm in the middle of the storm. When you’ve got a room full of world-class musicians, every one of them with ideas, personalities and their own way of working, somebody has to steer the ship. That’s the producer’s job. Not shouting the loudest. Not taking centre stage. Quietly making hundreds of decisions that nobody notices but everybody benefits from. Andy did exactly that.
Working alongside his trusted engineer, Gavin Goldberg, he guided the entire session from behind the glass. Every vocal, every instrument, every microphone placement, every technical decision and every performance passed through their hands. While the rest of us laughed, chatted and occasionally disappeared down the odd musical rabbit hole, Andy and Gavin never lost focus for a second. That’s what great producers do.
Most people notice the singer standing in front of the microphone. Very few notice the person sitting behind the mixing desk, shaping every performance, solving every problem and somehow making the impossible look effortless. Without Andy Wright producing that record, and Gavin Goldberg engineering it beside him, I honestly don’t believe it would ever have been completed. History should remember it that way.
As for me, I spent the day doing what I’d always done. Watching. Waiting. Looking for those little moments that nobody else noticed.
Camera in hand, I quietly wandered around the studio documenting the day as it unfolded. Nobody really paid much attention to me. After all those years photographing musicians, I’d become part of the furniture. Exactly how I liked it.
Jonathan and Sam had settled into life at Sphere remarkably quickly. Neither of them was remotely overawed by the famous faces around them. They simply enjoyed watching the musicians chatting in the corridor while they waited for their turn in the studio.
Shane knew both of the boys quite well. They’d met him on several occasions over the years, so seeing him there wasn’t particularly unusual.
At one point he disappeared off towards the toilets. A few minutes later he came back through the corridor, spotted the boys and wandered over with that familiar grin. He stretched out his hand. One of my sons shook it. Nothing remarkable. Or so I thought.
A minute or two later, one of the boys came looking for me.
“Dad…”
“Yes?”
“I think I’ve just shaken hands with Shane… and I think he’s got wee all over his hand.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “What are you talking about?”
“He was wearing those black fingerless leather gloves. He obviously couldn’t wash the gloves… but his fingers were still wet.”
I looked at him for a second before bursting into laughter. “There is a very simple solution.”
“What?”
“Go and wash your hands.” Problem solved. Or so I thought.
A little while later I found Shane. “Can I ask you something?”
“Course.”
“You’ve just been to the loo…”
“Yeah…”
“…did you really come straight out and shake my son’s hand?”
That unmistakable grin spread across his face before he exploded into one of those glorious laughs that always reminded me of Muttley from Wacky Races. Then came one of the greatest one-liners I’ve ever heard. “It wasn’t my wet hand…” He paused just long enough, “…it was the Wet Hand of God.”
Only Shane MacGowan could have delivered a line like that with a completely straight face.
Needless to say, both my boys gave their hands another extremely thorough wash. Meanwhile, another old friend of Shane’s was contributing from the other side of the Atlantic. Johnny Depp recorded his guitar parts in America before sending them across to London to become part of the finished record. Looking around the studio that day, it struck me just how extraordinary the whole thing really was. Different generations. Different musical backgrounds. Different personalities. All giving up their time because one man had sat in an empty London pub a few nights earlier and decided he wanted to help complete strangers living thousands of miles away. That’s quite a thought.
The single, if we’re being completely honest, never really stood much chance commercially. Simon Cowell’s charity record quite rightly dominated the headlines. It had enormous backing, huge publicity and became the project everyone associated with raising money for Haiti. I’d predicted exactly that in the pub. Shane had simply smiled and carried on regardless.
Looking back now, I realise he wasn’t trying to compete with anybody. He wasn’t trying to top the charts. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He simply believed that if he could do something to help, then he should. That was enough.
People often remember Shane MacGowan for the drinking. Or the cigarettes. Or the drugs. Or the wonderfully chaotic interviews. The Pogues.
I remember all of those things too. But I also remember the quieter moments. The generous moments. The moments when nobody was watching. The moment, for example, when he sat in an empty pub at three o’clock in the morning, having swallowed a handful of Valium and finished another pint of gin, and quietly said… “I want to do something for Haiti.” That’s the Shane I remember.
Completely unpredictable. Frequently outrageous. Often hilarious. Occasionally impossible. But beneath all the beautiful madness was a man with a heart far bigger than most people ever realised. And every time I hear I Put a Spell on You, I don’t think about the charts. I don’t think about the headlines. I don’t even think about the Wet Hand of God.
I think about an empty London pub. A freezing January morning. And a friend who simply wanted to help.
Gavin Goldberg (left), Andy Wright (right)
Author’s note: The Haiti charity single “I Put a Spell on You” was produced by Andy Wright and engineered by Gavin Goldberg at Sphere Studios, Battersea. Over the years, some reports have incorrectly attributed the production to Mick Jones. Mick was an important contributor to the recording as one of the participating artists, but Andy Wright was the sole producer throughout the project.
– Written by Danny Clifford
