Andrew Ranken, Whose Drumming Powered the Pogues, Dies at 72

Known as “The Clobberer,” he pounded out driving rhythms that fueled the band’s boisterous blend of traditional Irish music, rock and punk.

Andrew Ranken, the longtime drummer for the Pogues, whose pounding rhythms fueled the band’s rebellious blend of traditional Irish music, rock and punk, died on Tuesday. He was 72.

The Pogues announced his death in a statement on social media. It did not cite a cause or say where he died.

Mr. Ranken was studying for a degree in media and sociology at Goldsmiths College at the University of London when he joined the Pogues in 1983, when they were still known as Pogue Mahone and just beginning their rise out of the rowdy, beer-soaked North London pub scene. Nicknamed “The Clobberer,” he played with the Pogues until they broke up in 1996 and then joined them again from 2001 to 2014, when the band dissolved again.

He is featured on some of the band’s best-known albums, including “Red Roses for Me” (1984), “Rum Sodomy and the Lash” (1985) and “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” (1988).

“The music had that totally infectious thing of great hooks, great melodies and a really driving beat,” he told Aldora Britain Records, an independent music zine, in 2022. “Plus, of course, the wonderful lyrics and the impossibly handsome musicians.”

Among other contributions, the Pogues credited him with coming up with the title “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash,” based on a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.”

“It seemed to sum up life in our band,” Mr. Ranken once said.

Andrew Ranken was born on Nov. 13, 1953, in the Ladbroke Grove section of London. He grew up listening to his parents’ jazz records before the Beatles and the Rolling Stones exploded onto the scene and “a volcano erupted,” he said in the 2022 interview with Aldora Britain Records. “Nothing had ever been so exciting.”

He took up the bongos before moving on to a full drum kit in the attic of his family’s house, which spared his parents some exposure to the racket, he recounted in a 2006 book about the band by Carol Clerk. At 14, he joined the school band and started listening to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson, the start of a lifelong love of the blues.

Mr. Ranken was in his third year at Goldsmiths College and playing in a blues band called the Operation when the singer and songwriter Shane MacGowan and the banjoist Jem Finer heard him practicing in his apartment one day and asked him to join an Irish band they were putting together.

He auditioned twice, he said, and the second time Mr. MacGowan and Mr. Finer said that he would be allowed only two drums, a snare and a floor tom, and that he would have to stand when playing them. “No cymbals,” he recalled them telling him, “but you can have a saucepan lid.”

“It was a challenge,” Mr. Ranken told Aldora Britain Records. “The rhythms were quite rudimentary, but I had to develop a whole new technique to play them. Anyway, it worked, and I got the job, and things took off very quickly.”

Adding Mr. Ranken to the Pogues was “the final thing we needed to turn us from a great idea and a bit of a laugh into a serious proposition,” the band’s tin whistle player, Spider Stacy, was quoted as saying in Ms. Clerk’s book.

“With the quality of Shane’s songwriting and the originality of what we were doing, we were always going to be a serious proposition,” Mr. Stacy added. “But we needed to find a drummer who could do the job. With Andrew, we got the perfect guy.”

Mr. MacGowan died in 2023 at 65, after years of drug and alcohol problems.

After the Pogues broke up, Mr. Ranken returned to the blues, singing in a band called the Mysterious Wheels that included some of the original members of the Operation.

“I spent 35 years playing drums for the Pogues,” Mr. Ranken told Aldora Britain Records, “a slight interruption to singing the blues.”

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