See Nick Cave Sing Soulful Shane MacGowan Tribute, ‘A Rainy Night in Soho,’ in Ireland

Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan were close friends — close enough, at least, to try to cheer each other once with a duet of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” On Wednesday, Cave paid tribute to his late friend by performing “A Rainy Night in Soho,” a song by MacGowan’s band the Pogues, during a concert on MacGowan’s favorite island, Ireland. The concert took place at Malahide Castle & Gardens.

Cave, who is on tour with the Bad Seeds, played piano, singing MacGowan’s maudlin lyrics about taking stock of one’s life (“I’ve cried for all your troubles/Smiled at your funny little ways”) with a quiver in his voice. Violinist Warren Ellis played an equally soulful solo during a break from the lyrics. “Wow, all right,” Cave commented with a chuckle when he was done. It made for a loving elegy to MacGowan, who died in 2023.
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“A Rainy Night in Soho” has become a favorite Pogues song for artists to perform since MacGowan’s death, thanks to the lyrics’ inherent nostalgia. In December 2023, U2 performed the song during their residency at the Sphere. And Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band recently recorded a version of it for an upcoming MacGowan tribute album. “Shane was one of my all-time favorite writers,” Springsteen commented after MacGowan’s death. “The passion and deep intensity of his music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock & roll canon.”

Cave’s set list on Wednesday included some other notable performances, including the first time the Bad Seeds have performed The Firstborn Is Dead’s “Train Long-Suffering” since 1989 and a rendition of Your Funeral … My Trial’s “Stranger Than Kindness,” which former Bad Seeds members Blixa Bargeld and Anita Lane wrote. It was the first time the band performed that song since 2015. Lane died in 2021, and Cave paid tribute to her subsequently with the song “O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is),” on the Bad Seeds’ most recent album, Wild God.