In a way, it’s amazing he lived this long. It was 20 years ago when a documentary film crew captured his father saying of him, “He had a brilliant brain. Still has—a few million brain cells later.” I remembered the quote as “a few billion” and, frankly, by the end, that was probably a more accurate tally. But he also cleaned up in recent years, and it was illness that claimed his life, not any ongoing substance abuse. <br> <br>What’s funny, given the way I’m banging on about his Irishness, is that MacGowan was born in England—in Kent, on Christmas Day 1957. But his parents were Irish and he leaned into his heritage as a musician, injecting trad music with a vitalizing dose of punk energy. At his worst, he was falling-down drunk, strung out on heroin (a drug Sinéad O’Connor apparently helped him kick), so incorrigible that the Pogues, which he had founded in 1982, kicked him out a decade later. (He rejoined the band in 2001 and performed with them until 2014.)