Ode to Kirsty MacColl
Top of the Pops and Fairytales
“When I’m in a fix I pray like fuck.”
– Shane MacGowan
When I was young I fell in love with music.
And right after that I learned that the world was full of fucking shit. But I still loved music. So I turned to punk rock and that helped. And once you get into punk music you learn about the weirdos who peppered the 1970s London subculture.
And then you had that guy on the floor of the Roxy at a Damned show in 1977, one Shane O’Hooligan of The Nipple Erectors. They have a great Yardbirds-esque song called, ‘All the Time in the World’ and if you’re a punk enthusiast it’s a must-listen.
Little did the world know that this raucous Irish punker would later team up with Mandy Doubt (Kirsty MacColl’s punk name while working with the Drug Addix), the daughter of a communist folk singer, to create one of the most famous Christmas songs ever. Reality is some weird ass shit.
When the Nips disbanded, Shane O’Hooligan reunited with his surname, MacGowan, and formed The Pogues.
And this is where I first discovered Kirsty MacColl. I didn’t know it until later, but I’d heard her sing a wee bit as an even wee-er lad in the early 1980s, only she was doing backup vocals for a woman who'd be instrumental in the success of The Simpsons. Said song also featured a video with one of the Fab 4. This’ll all make sense a few paragraphs from now.
First we have to get to the Top of the Pops in December of 1987.
The scene starts off innocent enough. Twinkle and dash from a sad yuletide piano with a pretty redheaded lass leaning against it. She’s attired in a way that screams 1980s sophistication. Just a lovely lady admiring the pianist. But upon closer inspection, the guy at the piano seems weird as fuck. For one thing, he’s wearing sunglasses indoors. And he’s chewing gum. And has a large earring dangling from his ear. And has on a black leather jacket. And he sounds fucking drunk. And his teeth look like he’s been digging with his mouth from an Appalachian meth quarry. In fact he doesn’t appear to be enthused about being on the Top of the Pops at all, despite it being one of the most famous BBC (that abbreviation means British Broadcasting Corporation, you debauched scoundrel) shows of all time. And while this regal lady listens longingly to him you can’t help but wonder if the dude is just gonna go on the fucking nod and faceplant into the ivory.
Yet the way he sings the lyrics, “Happy Christmas, I love you, baby,” you feel that he sincerely means this, and that all the other bizarre things about him do not take away from his performance or the sentiment therein, but emphasize it like shadow on a painting.
Then the track kicks in and suddenly you have this Irish dirge that makes you want to hop up like Charlie Bucket’s grandpa and rip open the curtains to a gorgeous snowy Christmas morn. Shane’s shades come off and he looks to Kirsty MacColl while singing. His crucifix earring flashes in the lights and suddenly you see yourself in him. You’re that guy, all shitty and bedraggled, hungover in the holy light and perfume of your girl. And you look at Kirsty and see your girl in her, a British redhead of Scottish lineage, all sweet-smelling and glammed up and you just feel lucky to be alive.
The Pogues had covered Kirsty’s father’s song, ‘Dirty Old Town’ on their second album Rum Sodomy & the Lash.
And their third album found them teaming up with Ewan’s daughter to sing, of all things, a holiday song.
To watch any of MacColl’s appearances on Top of the Pops, it’s hard to believe that this is the same woman whose career stagnated due to her depression and stage fright.
Her self-assuredness and stage presence glow like a dreamy hearth. Even harder to imagine is that, initially, Shane MacGowan was to sing ‘Fairytale’ with The Pogues bass player, Cait O’Riordan. However, by the time the song got up and going she’d left the band and become Elvis Costello’s main squeeze.
Kirsty’s showbiz life started off portentously when her popular debut single ‘They Don’t Know’ was released around the time of a distributors’ strike.
Back in 1979, when you had to go to the record store to actually purchase a physical album in order to listen to it, not having the latest vinyl in the shop meant customers leaving with no newly released 7 inch 45 RPM singles in tow. This killed Kirsty’s chances of getting the song on the UK Singles Chart.
However, in 1983 Tracey Ullman released her album You Broke My Heart in 17 Places and she hit #2 on the UK Singles Chart with the same song. Because Ullman couldn’t reach the note, she used MacColl’s vocals on the high-pitched ‘Baby!’ in the song, in a way redeeming Miss MacColl of her stolen opportunity. I remember shopping with my parents as a kid and hearing this song in the grocery store and in the car on the radio. This song was huge and the only thing that stopped it from going number one was Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’, which dominated the charts that year. I remember seeing the ‘They Don’t Know’ video on MTV constantly and in it Ullman daydreams about Paul McCartney who makes an appearance.
This was such a big a hit back then that it left me feeling Tracey Ullman was one of those people who kids born around the start of the 80s can’t imagine life without, like Madonna and Michael Jackson.
That is how many British people view MacColl too.
And I, nostalgia lover that I am, view 80s pop culture in any country as a very beautiful time.
Kirsty had other hits like ‘A New England’, ‘There’s a Guy Who Works Down the Chip Shop, Swears He’s Elvis’ (she appeared on Top of the Pops for this and looks just as cute as you remember your first serious girlfriend looking) and did backing vocals for everyone from The Smiths to Simple Minds, but ‘Fairytale’ remains her most known work. The song can’t help but shake and shock you. Shake because it’s so beatifically magical in the old time way. Shock because Miss MacColl lands the only, as far as I know, F-bomb ever sung in a Christmas song. And I’m not talking about the word Fuck here. F-bomb as in the pejorative that the jocks, whom most of you pedestalized in high school, called guys like me - you know, the bookish and sheepish guys who tried their goddamnedest to avoid bullies’ crosshairs and failed miserably - day in and day out. I’m sure I’ve been called the word more times than most actual gay people. The lyric, though jarring and and a fucking mindbender by today’s standards, contributes to the track’s strange intrigue. Shane MacGowan claims to “hate the fuckin song” but he’s glad he wrote it because now it’s his tribute to Kirsty, who was killed in 2000.
In Cozumel, Mexico, a millionaire’s powerboat went into waters not permitted to watercraft.
MacColl, who was diving with her sons, saw the powerboat just in time to save her 15 year-old, pushing him away from its direct impact. Tragically, Kirsty was run over and killed instantly. One moment she and her children were deep sea diving. The next moment her children were awash in their mother’s blood, her body surfacing next to them in the water. In the 2004 documentary Who Killed Kirsty MacColl? there is a scene that will wrench the heart of even the coldest bastard. Kirsty’s mother, Jean, travels to Cozumel to learn details about how her daughter died and the cover up surrounding the powerboat’s owner, Mexican supermarket magnate Guillermo González Nova. She asks a witness if Kirsty was mutilated by the boat. The witness tells her yes and Jean breaks down. It’s horrifying and heartbreaking to watch an elderly mother imagining her daughter dying in such an appalling and bloody way. Kirsty had just turned 41 less than two months before her death.
So it goes that on December 18, just 7 days before Christmas, the woman who sang my and several million others’ favorite Christmas song died while saving her son. Beautiful person, amazing singer and brave mother.
To listen to ‘Fairytale of New York’ is not enough.
I have to pair it with that Top of the Pops footage, magically preserved from December 1987 for us now courtesy of YouTube. I watch it and I think of myself as a young drunk stumbling through life and love during the holidays. And I look at Kirsty and all that she encompasses in that span of 3 and a half minutes. Someone’s child. A talented artist. A lover. A mother. A very courageous person.
It’s a sledgehammer reminder: life goes by real fucking quick.
And goes on without you even quicker. We’re all forgotten eventually. But it’s art that keeps the faint hope alive that maybe it doesn’t have to end just yet. Maybe we can keep some things going just a little bit longer, even if it's only celluloid and pixels propping up the drowsy chin of memory. Re-watching a performance, lip synched and applause-tracked, can make you feel what is no more. Can bring back a time or someone that is gone. Many of us don’t have the people we want here with us this holiday. They’re in a grave or an urn. Or missing. Or just gone.
I watch Kirsty through the eyes of MacGowan and I celebrate my holidays like it’s that TV performance. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I’ve got this year. Bedraggled and out of it, I hold hands with memories and lip-synch along to the beauty of previously recorded Christmases.
As the reductionist said:
Nothing lasts forever.
Nothing lasts.
Nothing.
.
Merry Christmas, Mom.
