In the words of the artist’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, “The Pogues began to tour America in the late 80’s, and Shane spent a lot of time in New York, hanging out at the Chelsea Hotel, and meeting many of the writers, artists, actors and filmmakers who had influenced his own work, including Lou Reed, The Ramones, Tom Waits, Jim Jarmusch and Robert De Niro.
Shane and The Pogues often stayed at the Gramercy Park hotel, where Shane met William Burroughs, and became fascinated by the idea that the ‘Naked Lunch’ writer who lived at The Gramercy was able to function and create while simultaneously devouring heroin.

New York had a romantic appeal for Shane as a place where people came to try their luck on Broadway like the couple in ‘Fairytale’, and where people fell from grace and lived desolate, broken lives on the streets. It also had appeal as a place to score drugs. The Lower East Side and Irish Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhoods were places that Shane liked to wander the streets late at night, looking for Crack and heroin, and drinking in the late night Irish bars and clubs. New York City Sky was drawn very early one morning during a Pogues tour. The Pogues tours of America started out with a great deal of anticipation and excitement, Shane and Spider had memorised the entire script of ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ before they set foot in the USA. Shane was entranced by The Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, all of Clint Eastwood’s films, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Taxi Driver etc. He was also heavily influenced by American musicians like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Laura Nyro, The Band, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Elvis, Creedence, The Beach Boys and Tom Waits and had romantic and sometimes horrific visions of America, concocted from a mish mash of their music. He was also horrified by the dark side of The States, having watched the Vietnam War on TV as a child, and having read about the torture and racism. His fervent imagination devoured cartoon violence, Mafia stories and gritty detective shows and cop shows.

He had been brought up on stories about Irish people emigrating the the USA and sometimes making it big like the Kennedy family ‘JFK was one of the portraits on the wall in the cottage in Tipperary where he formed his view of the world) and sometimes about people who fell on hard times and ended up on the streets. By the time The Pogues got to Vegas, Shane was hooked on smack and having to drink several bottles of gin every day just to get through the gruelling tours, so ‘Greeting From Vegas’ features a syringe in an eyeball in a cocktail glass, and a lot of lipstick. This was actually drawn on the morning of Pogues tin whistle player Spider Stacy’s wedding in Vegas, where Shane acted as Best Man and also wedding singer.”