They fired Charlie because he was living with Shane and Charlie was an asshole, no matter what anyone says. He’s dead. He wasn’t a wonderful guy. He was a sick fucker. You can say Charlie was 'rather eccentric'.
He was trying to fire me all the time. Shane said, ‘I don’t care what Joey does, but you’re not firing him.’ Charlie wouldn’t let me do any work. He wanted to take over the money. This is when I was managing. But he lived with Shane. Shane tends to get on with whoever’s around him.
Charlie. . . he was a shitty manager who hadn’t got a clue. He worked all his life with bands. Frank Murray used to say to him, ‘Stay on the stage cos anywhere else you’re just useless.’
I actually encouraged him and said, ‘Course you can be a manager.’ And Charlie became manager for a while. With Shane, nothing’s official. So I used to go to shows, do no work, get paid and go home. Whenever there was a problem, Shane would call Charlie and myself. We’d agree that in the morning we’d do this and do that and I wouldn’t see him for another week.
He [Charlie] got this money to give to the musicians [The Popes] and to do certain things and Charlie was a strange romantic. When he was away he used to buy presents for girls he wasn’t even going out with. I wouldn’t even buy a present for someone I was going out with.
Before his [last] birthday, he rang his mother up and he said, ‘Even if I was to die, Ma, I’ve done everything I wanted to do.’ He’d never in his life talked to her about dying.
On his birthday nobody turned up in the pub – I didn’t even know it was his fucking birthday. It’s a lot of shit, you know. I’ve had one birthday party in my life. Frank Murray’s wife, her 40th was the same day as my 40th birthday. They organised a birthday party and said we would all have to go. I didn’t feel any pressure about being involved. I enjoyed it. But I’ve never had a birthday party before or since. I’ve no interest in them, and I’ve frequently said, when someone would say something like, ‘Isn’t it your birthday soon?’ I’d say, ‘Actually it was last week.’ It doesn’t mean anything to me. Christmas doesn’t mean anything to me. I love other people’s weddings. I enjoy going to a party if it’s somebody else’s but I hate being the centre of attention, even though I’m loud, obnoxious, clownish at times. It’s okay for a second and then just step back, but if I thought I was the centre of attention. . . that’s why I don’t want fame.
I think Charlie committed suicide. Not suicide like jumping off a cliff, but he was really depressed. There was nobody at his birthday party. He had told an American girl he was taking her to the Seychelle Islands and he hadn't the heart to tell her he couldn't do it. It was just too much for him. When he died, he had ?50 in the bank.
Charlie got a huge amount of heroin and cocaine and he put out these massive lines and that’s what killed him. Now, if you’d gone up to him and said, ‘Charlie, that is ridiculous,’ he’d just turn round and say, ‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business? I know what I’m fucking doing and I don’t give a fuck if I die anyway.’ As opposed to walking up to a cliff and jumping off. He didn’t do it to die, but it’s a form of suicide.
It’s recklessness to the point of suicide. He’d been taking drugs all his life - he knew his limits - from the age of 17, and he was nearly 50. He’d worked with Queen, Joan Armatrading - he took Phil Lynott to hospital the day he died. He’d worked with everyone.
We used to go to the airport – ‘Hiya Charlie.’ You’d arrive at a venue anywhere in the world – ‘Oh, I’ve been here in 1967.’ He knew every venue in the world. He was a complete professional [when it came to touring].
On Pogues, work and holidays :
I mean, I’d been a potter for six years, I was in art school, I was in bands. . . I was completely new to the whole thing. I came in from nowhere. . I did start working before Charlie. I was there about a year before him. And I did his job and my job at the same time. At one time, I was stage manager, production manager, tour manager, tee shirt designer, stage designer and piss artist. I came in to change strings. . . to help Darryl, and Darryl wouldn’t let me do anything.
Philip is the person who was solely responsible for bringing me into the band. I offered to do a Christmas tour just to get a free trip to Dublin.
It came to Paddy’s Day the next year, 86 and, ‘Darryl needs a hand.' Would I do two or three shows? Then they just gave me every show that came afterwards. Then I went to America – they were trying to watch expenses, or couldn’t afford to bring me to America. I was going to stay with a friend on a yacht. I landed in New York the day they were playing there, and I went to the venue. I thought, ‘Great, they can give me a lift up to Newport. I can do a few shows just for expenses and PDs.’ I got to LA, Frank gave me all the wages for the whole tour and paid my fare back to Boston so that I could meet up with my friend.
I was really eager to work. Once I start something, I get really speedy and I want to do it. That’s why heroin’s not my drug. I want to get really in there. They had no tee shirts, so I stayed up all night long trying to design a tee shirt which turned out to be the biggest selling tee shirt they ever had. I designed some other ones which certainly didn’t turn out to be the biggest selling ones they ever had. [Stage designs] I only did about two or three.
The atmosphere in The Pogues was brilliant. It’s like what I was saying when I was sitting in the bus. I was such a smartass, making jokes about people and everyone was laughing. I also started this whole scenario of drawing everyone in the band. Not very nice. And I made each person a Viz character. Spider was Spoilt Bastard, and Shane was Brown Bottle. I was Postie, who’s a nasty bastard who used to rob children’s Christmas presents and I was also named by Spider and other people Doctor Sex, the man who knows everything about sex. Spider insisted on giving it to me.
On Terry Woods, Jem Finer and sense of humour:
Terry Woods – some of them had a great sense of humour. I made laminates and everything with the drawings inside. Jem was livid. Mr Logic. I once drew him without even realising the significance of the drawing, of the double meaning. The slang for Jew is four-be-two. I drew him as a plank of wood. So he took it both ways, a four-be-two and a plank of wood and he threw it in the bin and then he saw other people wearing them and laughing. I saw him going over to the bin and sneaking it back out.
Terry on the other hand – Terry Fuckwit, the unintelligible idiot – I did that for Terry Woods and he laughed his head off and wore it with pride. He used to wear all his laminates and it was on the front. I also drew him – he comes from Virginia, Co Cavan – he wears cowboy boots and big cowboy hats.. . He has a great sense of humour, Terry, but you wouldn’t think he would.
On Frank Murray and unexpected turns:
I like Frank. He did me phenomenal good. He also, when I became tour manager, took me to meetings with Warner Bros. Now a manager does not take his tour manager to meetings, from fear more than anything else. He taught me everything he knew. He was not mean in his attitude or sharing his knowledge. We became partners with other bands. We managed other bands as 50-50 partners.
And when they fired Frank, I was in another room and he said, ‘You won’t believe what they’ve just done.’ I’d a good idea, cos I’d fucking warned him, but they couldn’t tell me exactly cos I was his partner.
He said, ‘I think they’re going to ask you to step in. As far as I’m concerned, I think you’d be mad not to,’ which was pretty magnanimous. He didn’t come in and say, ‘Those bastards just fired me.’
On Joe Strummer and funny banners:
He [Strummer] did a tour with us to replace Philip Chevron. Joe came into a very different situation after Shane. At the Brixton show, I went out on the stage to make sure everything was okay. I looked out in the crowd and across the balcony was a banner that said, ‘Have you no Shane?’
I thought, ‘That’s smart, it’s funny, it’s very heavy for Joe.’ I went up to the guys. I said, ‘That’s a brilliant poster, but you know fine that Shane isn’t playing. You know Joe’s singing and you know you’re only going to upset him, so I’m asking you, I’m not telling you – would you mind taking it down for Joe’s sake?’ and they took it down.
On Shane, awards and lawns:
I also picked the cover for Shane’s solo album of 'The Crock Of Gold'. He did that drawing at home and it was on the floor in the bedroom. I said, 'This would make a really good cover for the album.' He gave it to me. I have it at home. One day I was talking about it. He said, ‘If you want the fucking thing you can have it.’
Every award he got, he’d hardly get home with the award. He’d usually leave it in a taxi or a bar. The Hot Press Lifetime Achievement Award – we used to use it as a doorstop at the house in London, and we left the house and left it holding the door open, which it had been doing for two years. This house was in Savernake Road, and it’s just above the Town & Country Club (The Forum).
Shane used to hate the idea of cutting the grass in the back garden. As the summer would go on, the grass would start coming up really high and eventually the council would come around to us. ‘We’ve had complaints from numerous neighbours. If you don’t cut down the bushes and the grass, we’ll have to take you to court.' He loves the idea of just letting things grow as they want. The idea of a lawn to him is sick.
The funny thing about Shane is the worse you do [to him] the less chance you have of being sacked. If you broke one of his legs, he’d just say, ‘Oh, well, anyone can do that.’ He’s very forgiving. But if you did something small, he’d probably sack you.
On future plans:
I’ve been trying to get away from Shane for years. I’ve sworn to Shane, ‘I will never leave you without a satisfactory manager. I will not leave you high and dry.’ I need my independence.
That’s one of the reasons I’m working on a script and I’ve worked on four feature films including one which got seven Oscar nominations, In The Name Of The Father. I was Gerry’s agent, and I was very involved on lots of levels.
And a bit of philosophy:
We all have everything within us. It’s the people who get into fights every night that we call aggressive people. If you get into fights once a week, you’re classed as an aggressive person. It’s a matter of how you handle your personality that makes you what you really are. All the potential is there to be everything. That means genius as well. There is a certain amount of generalisation in what I’m saying. But I truly believe that the potential to do anything is within everyone.
They’ve proved that newly born babies – you can show them a page with 96 dots on it and show them another page with 95 [they shake their head]. You lose all this stuff as you get older and also, we are not encouraged by parents to develop anything that’s slightly unusual.
Another example would be, you have this Russian guy who can remember the whole phone book, beginning to end. If one person can do it, we can all do it. The reason he does it is usually those people have something wrong with them. They have a lot of time on their hands. I believe everybody knows everything about everything all the time, but we can’t focus on it all.
Carol !
Heartfelt thanks for this script!
As well as for your patience, cooperation and understanding.
X
31.01.2007