Pogues had bust-up with cops filming video

on 15/12/2012 00:00:00

Whistle-player Spider recalled: "There was a bit of trouble while we were doing the video. We ended up getting thrown out of the precinct house we were shooting in.



"We were just being too loud and too drunk and apparently not taking our presence behind the New York Police Department's hallowed walls seriously enough for their liking."

The song has charted in the UK every year since 2005 and the band are hoping it will finally reach number one this year - its 25th anniversary.

Spider also revealed how Shane MacGowan started working on the song two years before it was released.

"It had its roots in The Pogues's first trip to New York in the mid-1980s. The city is exactly as you imagine it to be from all the movies you've seen, but it's also much more than that. It was probably all rattling around in Shane's head since the first time we went over there."

And Spider said he is still sore the song was kept off the top slot in 1987 by The Pet Shop Boys with a cover of the Willie Nelson-penned Elvis Presley hit 'Always On My Mind'.

"None of us believed it would get to number one, but we were all gutted when it didn't. I remember us watching its progress up the charts. I bumped into Neil Tennant [of the Pet Shop Boys] recently and I mentioned the song to him and he went: 'God, you're not still banging on about that?' But we were very disappointed at the time."