Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Year: 1988
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The story goes that Phillip Chevron was a bit apprehensive to bring “Thousands Are Sailing” to the Pogues. In retrospect, that seems a bit strange since, unless you were paying attention, it was virtually indistinguishable from a Shane MacGowan lyric, both in overall subject matter (Irish emigration) and telling details (Manhattan, Brendan Behan).
And of course one of the things about the Pogues was — in the grand folk tradition — they didn’t really seem to care where a song came from: a great song was a great song. So “Thousands Are Sailing” became the first great Pogues song written by someone else in the band other than MacGowan.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1596: The Pogues – “Thousands Are Sailing”