Brief 57: MacGowan - a generation of men

That generation of men ... it was the first I was into, properly into, that were young punks when I was born. New wave, post-punk - to start with, when I first discovered The Jam, and wanted music a bit like that, I was indiscriminate, it was The Jam but also The Police, Dire Straits and Boomtown Rats.

I love this photo of Weller and Cave, two men of the same age, now at roughly the same level of fame, by very different journeys, bumping into each other at a service station, Cave the one more out of stage character, Weller an endless mod. Of all that generation, those are the two I'd put furthest apart, two completely different sides of my taste, but really, they're not that far apart.

And so many of these men are linked - Cave was in the MacGowan film, duetting with Shane at his 60th birthday on 'Summer in Siam'. So was Bobby Gillespie. So was Bono. Bob Geldof got a bit of a slagging from McGowan, as did Costello.

McGowan was a young punk all the way, front of the crowd at Pistols, Jam and Clash gigs - he once sold Weller a union jack t-shirt he'd got off a tramp, for a ridiculous sum. For MacGowan, an IRA supporter, it was a bitterly ironic item of clothing, for Weller, it was part of the mod look. That union jack element bedevils people's idea of Weller's fanbase. That Fred Perry for cool kids but also, horribly, for Proud Boys ...

Who was doing what MacGowan was doing? Kevin Rowland - original, joyful, angry rebel music for the diaspora. Who else was doing what Kevin Rowland was doing? Adam Ant - distinct, stylish dance music for the masses.

They were not the last, but almost the last, generation in Britain who didn't have to choose between being pop stars and rock stars, they could be, and were, both.

So many Number 1s ... Geldof was the first of all of them to have a Number 1 - The Boomtown Rats were really pretty decent. He tries to get people to remember, but no one remembers now.

The Irish and the Irish diaspora in it all - Lydon, Costello, Rowland, MacGowan, Geldof, Hewson ... and Morrissey, of course. There's that scene too. And O'Dowd, an unlikely friend of Weller, And McCulloch. There's that scene too. 

Collins and Frame, that scene too. Dammers, Hall, McPherson, that scene too.

There was a great generation of women too, of course:

... and so much else going on, but I think, right now, of that generation of men who came out of punk, and who made brilliant, angry, popular music...

There was punk and rock against racism and red wedge and there was live aid - less than a decade between punk and live aid. They seem a million years apart. Some of them were never so great again - some just kept going, some had barely got started by that point.

And Joe Strummer, of course, I almost forgot Joe - pretty much my favourite of all of them - pretty much the oldest of them, 18 years gone now.

Aah, those men ...