The Real Story Behind Shane MacGowan’s ‘Boys of the NYPD Choir’

Shane MacGowan’s timeless love letter to New York announces itself from a cocky point of view – “It was Christmas Eve, baby, in the drunk tank” – before listing the city’s many riches: Frank Sinatra, Broadway, cars that big like bars and rivers of gold. ‘Fairytale of New York’ also immortalises a specific group of people doing something specific:

“The guys from the NYPD choir,” Mr. MacGowan said, “sang ‘Galway Bay.’”

Years later, the truth can be told: the guys in the NYPD choir didn’t know the words to ‘Galway Bay’.

There was also no NYPD choir.

Mr. MacGowan, the Pogues’ frontman who died Thursday at the age of 65, left behind a body of work without precedent or peer, fusing traditional Irish music and punk rock in songs that are overheated and sublime, jaded and magnanimous, earthy and wistful. But none of his works can stop every conversation in any pub like “Fairytale of New York.” The opening piano notes can have the entire house singing along with arms around a stranger’s shoulders.

Mr. MacGowan’s writing of the song partly coincided with his first visit to the city in the mid-1980s, but he had come of age reading books and watching films set there. He created a story that felt like it was based in a real place and evoked iconic street scenes, where the wind goes right through you and it’s no place for the old.

People who have never set foot in the city can imagine the drunk tank, and the man and woman kissing on the corner and dancing the night away.

But after the song was released in 1987, it needed a video for the hugely popular MTV network. So it needed scenes from the city, a working jail cell in a castle-like police building in Chelsea and, most importantly, the people Mr. MacGowan had created: the guys from the NYPD Choir.

Actual, musically inclined police officers were needed to make the video work, and in that role came the members of the Pipes & Drums of the Emerald Society of the New York Police Department.

“At least some musical influence from the NYPD,” noted Brian McCabe, a retired police officer and member of the Emerald Society. “If it’s not a choir.”

It was November 1987, honey.

“We were playing a dinner-dance show on the Upper West Side,” said Kevin McCarthy, 62, a former officer who is still in the band. includes current and retired officers. “Then we would get on a bus and go downtown to Washington Square Park where we would take part in a music video. No one on the bus had ever heard of the band The Pogues, or the song.”

There, in the bracing cold, the police band met the rock band. “They clearly started their party much earlier,” Mr McCarthy said.

The police drum major was a towering piece of granite named Finbar Devine. He stood up, carrying a hand-carved staff called a club, which he used to direct the group, and took stock of the young singer standing before him. Mr. MacGowan was known to have done exhaustive research on every drinking song he ever wrote.

“Oh,” said Mr. MacGowan, looking at the mace. “Can I take a look at the stick you’re carrying?”

And so Mr. Devine handed over the mace.

“Shane MacGowan was so prominent that he started pretending he was managing the band,” Mr. McCarthy said. “And he takes it, reaches back and fires it into the air.”

Shocked silence.

“The last thing you want to do is touch Finbar’s mace,” Mr. McCarthy said. “It looked more like a religious statue. You can only imagine Finbar’s face, and the faces of the entire band, as this thing tumbles into the air into space.

And then the mace fell back to the earth, and Mr. MacGowan caught it and gave it back. A Christmas miracle.

When it came time to roll the cameras, the 30 or so police officers were asked to mime the words to ‘Galway Bay’, but only a handful knew the song. “Danny Boy” – same thing. It was pipes and drums, not a singing act.

Someone asked, “Isn’t there one song you can sing together?” And Mr. McCarthy said, “’What about ‘Mickey Mouse’? We all know that.’ All we had to do was say the words. MICROPHONE, KEY…”

And – action!

Months later, Mr. McCarthy, fresh off a four-to-midnight shift, was at a bar in Queens at the time the video appeared on television. He shouted for everyone to shut up. “You see some guys laughing off because it’s so ridiculous,” he said.

Over time, its effect has increased. “We were basically recognized in the Irish community,” he said. “It was a big plus for the band.”

Mr McCabe said the song and the band’s punk roots resonated with young Irish police recruits. Ten years later there was a meeting place, the bar Rocky Sullivan’s in Manhattan, where agents drank with writers and other Irish New Yorkers. Sometimes Mr. McGowan would come in. Sometimes the place would start singing.

“That was, for all intents and purposes,” Mr. McCabe said, “the NYPD choir.”