The drummer and founding member of The Pogues has died.

Andrew Ranken was 72 years old.

The Pogues announced his death on Feb. 10 on social media, but did not share how or where he died.

He had suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), The Times reported.

Nicknamed “The Clobberer,” The Times said he did not play a normal drum kit when the band started, instead using only a tom tom and snare drum and standing behind the instruments.

“They wanted a big, fat sound, but to achieve it with very minimal equipment and insisted that I wasn’t allowed a drum stool,” he said. He didn’t have cymbals at the beginning, and instead used a saucepan lin.

“The rhythms were quite rudimentary, but I had to develop a whole new technique to play them,” he said.

He eventually had a normal kit after getting injured on the snare during a tour in Germany.

“It got infected and I got blood poisoning so I could only play with one hand,” he said, according to The Times. “So I said to the guys, ‘I think it’ll be fine if you give me a bass drum and a hi-hat so I can sit down’.”

Rankin was born in London in 1953 and grew up in East Sussex. He went to the Priory School in Lewes when he tried to play guitar, but bleeding blisters made him rethink the instrument.

By the age of 14, he was playing drums in school bands and eventually attended London’s Central School of Art and Design.

After a year of hitchhiking around europe he went back to London and worked with the Stickers and the Operation and went to school at Goldsmiths College. he went back to London and worked with the Stickers and the Operation and went to school at Goldsmiths College.

He met Shane MacGowan in Kings Cross and would frequently hit the same bars.

“We used to moan about the New Romantics and put Irish songs on the jukebox and he tracked me down to my flat one day from the racket of me practising on the drums,” Rankin said, according to The Times.

MacGowan was forming a band and asked him to audition.

He played on every Pogues album and was part of their hits “Fairytale of New York,” “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “The Irish Rover.”

Ranken also played harmonica and sang, the BBC reported.

The band ended up breaking up in 1996, five years after ousting their lead singer due to drug and alcohol abuse, but got back together in 2001. They broke up one last time in 2014.

Ranken continued making music with Mysterious Wheels, The New York Times reported.

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