| Shane MacGowan says Carney is home The Guardian 30 Jun 2001 By Cian McCormack Hell raiser and folk legend, Shane MacGowan, will spend the rest of his life living in his home near Nenagh. The renowned musician and songwriter moved back to Tipperary almost a year ago and is living at his family’s traditional 350-year-old home at Carney Commons near Ardcroney. MacGowan told The Guardian that the move home would ensure he is away from London and closer to his family and parents who live outside Silvermines village. “My parents were living here and I wanted to come back full time. I was sick of living in London and travelling around. I still travel around the world a fair bit, but I was basically sick of London. I never really liked the place,” MacGowan said. Speaking at his home in Carney the singer added: “This is the only fixed address that I have ever had - you know what I mean?” “I will stay here for the rest of my life. This has always been my home. However far I wander this is where I belong. This is my home this is the only place where I ever lived in and it is where I am living now and it is the last place that I will ever live,” he added. The Carney home, which is the ancestral dwelling of the Lynch family – Shane’s mother’s relations - is a remote old cottage equipped with an open-hearth fire and ancient family parlour. Despite the remoteness of this dwelling Shane does not get lonely there. “I go out a lot, I get visitors, I often go up to Dublin. I am very rarely here on my own for more than a day or two because I have got relatives and friends living around the area that I have known all my life,” Shane said. MacGowan is continuing his artistic endeavours at his home near Nenagh. “I am trying to write a novel, a historical novel based on the Blue Shirts and O’Duffy. I was thinking automatically of making it into a film like Michael Collins – except the real story”. “It will be more a play than a book or maybe one of a collection of short stories. You never know there could be someone with the guts to make a film about O’Duffy. I am not expecting Hollywood to go for it.” MacGowan has written new songs and ballads on his Spanish guitar and piano at his Carney home. "The last song that I wrote is a sad little ballad called 'Little Irish Blue Shirt Boy". It is a haunting ballad. It is about a broken hearted mother worrying as she sows the patch onto the Blue Shirt of her little Irish Blue Shirt Boy as he is going out to defend what he believes in," says MacGowan. |