Shane McGowan

A transcendent singer/songwriter and two-fisted gutter poet whose notorious drunken behavior, rotten teeth, and drug-fueled excesses often threatened to eclipse his reputation as a performer, Shane MacGowan was born on Christmas Day, 1957, in Kent, England. Within months, his family returned to their native Ireland, where he spent the first several years of his life immersed in the traditional music of the Irish culture. When MacGowan was six, the family moved to London; there his talents as a writer gradually blossomed, and he won a number of poetry contests prior to his expu...