A Quote by Shane MacGowan

My mother was a champion Irish dancer and singer and most of my family were musical, particularly in Irish dancing. Music is all about spewing out your emotions. A mixture of a good tune and a good beat and everyone playing their guts out and something that grabs people's attention.
My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.
Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it.
Throughout my childhood, I did a form of Irish dancing that was kind of the precursor to 'Riverdance.' It was a mixture of ballet and Irish dancing that my teacher, Patricia Mulholland, had invented, essentially. It was Irish ballet, and she would create performances based around the myths and legends of Ireland.
All my family look Irish. They act Irish. My sister even has red hair... it's crazy. I'm the one that doesn't seem Irish. None of the kids in my family, my siblings, speak with an Irish accent... we've never lived there full-time; we weren't born there. We just go there once or twice a year. It's weird. Our parents sound Irish, but we don't.
Irish music in the local pubs was my first exposure to musical expression, and I feel like Irish music is very close to musical theater because it is always telling a story.
Irish music is guts, balls and feet music, yeah? It's frenetic dance music, yeah? Or it's impossibly sad like slow music, yeah? Yeah? And it also handles all sorts of subjects, from rebel songs to comical songs about sex, you know what I mean, yeah? Which I don't think people realize how much innuendo there is in Irish music.
When I was growing up, for example, everybody on our street was Irish. And all the girls did Irish step dancing. It was pre-Lord of the Dance - it was before anybody knew what gillys were - but we did, and there was such pride among the members of my family and people I grew up with.
I'm not so much a rock star, d'ya know what I mean? I play Irish music. There's really no age when you stop playing Irish music. Even if I retired from playing onstage, I'd still be singing in pubs.
You can't think and play. If you think about what you're playing the playing becomes stilted. You have to just focus on the music I feel, concenctrate on the music, focus on what you're playing and let the playing come out. Once you start thinking about doing this or doing that, it's not good. What you are doing is like a language. You have a whole collection of musical ideas and thoughts that you've accumulated through your musical history plus all the musical history of the whole world and it's all in your subconscious and you draw upon it when you play
My mom was a single mother. She had six siblings in a big Irish family, all descended from shanty Irish folks who arrived after the Famine. They settled along the Cuyahoga River. It's the river that caught on fire. We're real good at picking real estate.
I don't feel bound by the ebbs and flows of musical trends, or what's happening with new music in general. I always had a fascination with that sound. It's a mixture of the idea that something could be going wrong along with the idea of bending constrained, Westernized music out of tune. But because I wasn't copying an idea, and it just came from somewhere inside me, it felt like a birth of something that most people didn't understand at the time.
My mom's family was 100 percent Irish, in the American way of being Irish, and then my dad was half Irish.
Inherently in us as Irish people, wherever you are in the world, when you hear an Irish accent, it's like a moth to a flame. There's a real personable pride and camaraderie about being Irish.
The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think.
I'm quite good on the harmonica and can get a tune out of most musical instruments, so long as the tune is 'Oh Susannah.'
The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!