Author of "The Birth And Impact Of Britpop: Mis-Shapes, Scenesters And Insatiable Ones"
It’s a wide, wild world.
Full of people like me.
Crushing bores.
Awful snores.
Stressed out poets.
Blah, blah, blah.
The crowd inside the venue for tonight’s appearance, remember Mozzer doesn’t ‘perform’, is the usual mix of the unusual; people from the olden days who haven’t yet forgotten how, and why, they fell in love with Him in the first place, hipsters, kids who don’t even meet the venues age limit, Glasgow drunks, a couple of hunks. Despite the passing of time there are even a few quiffs, some more sturdy than others.
I gathered hoping to touch the hem of His robe for the first time in 1991.
Thirty four years ago.
A teenager.
Hints of the acne that had blighted my earlier years still present for the more studious observer. My heart still full of yearning for every pretty girl I knew.
No idea of who I was, where I was going, or how I was ever going to survive…life. Tonight I am a middle-aged man.
My heart full of yearning for the boy I was then.
No idea of who I am, where I am going, or how I am going to survive…the next five minutes. Beside me in the balcony sits my daughter.
Just too young to be there.
I am not one of those parents who attempts to fashion their children into a miniature version of themselves, forcing them to listen to mouldy old copies of “Rubber Soul” or “Definitely Maybe” and decrying the things they have discovered for themselves with shouts of “That’s not real music”.
“Real music”
Hang me.
Now.
Please.
But she has discovered “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” on some playlist or television soundtrack and that has taken her to things like “Bigmouth Strikes Again” and “The Boy With a Thorn in His Side”. She knows enough about Moz to know that there are things she likes; “Rebels Without Applause”, “Everyday is Like Sunday”, “Piccadilly Palare”, “Ouija Board, Ouija Board”. When M announced he was coming to Glasgow I asked her if she wanted to come with me to see Him…and here we are.
When He arrives on stage and the crowd roar I turn to look at her, she is on her feet, a smile as wide as the Clyde spreads across her face, and when he greets us with “My pretty face has gone…TO HELL” before the band roar into “All You Need Is Me” she is screaming with delight, utterly lost in the moment, the madness, and the majesty of Morrissey.
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
People remortgaged their houses, sold their souls, and offered their only begotten child to the highest bidder in order to procure tickets to see something called Oasis this summer. I’m not even joking. I don’t know how. I’m not funny, despite being funny looking. Maybe I could qualify for funny peculiar, or just peculiar. But people really did pay stupid hundred pounds to hear someone sing songs like “Don’t Look Back in Anger” in a massive stadium surrounded by people in awful shoes.
What a world.
I blame Blair.
“Slip inside the eye of your mind, don’t you know you might find, a better place to play”. Fuck me.
Fuck you.
Fuck off.
It doesn’t even qualify for risible.
Meanwhile up the Gorbals the man who wrote I am the son and heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar”, the man who changed British popular culture simply by being himself, the man who rewrote the pop songbook, is embraced by fewer people than will form a disorderly line to hoover up some coke in the toilets of Mega Enormodome #1 while Liam screeches his way through “Live Forever”, God I hope they don’t.
Some people will try to tell you that the bloke who played guitar was the secret sauce that elevated Morrissey to his status as Godfather of indie…but while he had nice hair and played a mean guitar it was he who was elevated by his association with a bona fide original of the species. The guitarist borrowed bits of this and bits of that from other folks, magpie eyes bruv… good for him, talent borrows etc. But there was nobody like M before, and there has been nobody like him since.
Tonight’s appearance confirms it.
He sings exactly what he wants to sing, not what anybody else might want him to sing. Don’t arrive expecting him to plod his way through his greatest hits, he isn’t interested. Why should he play to the crowd, when the crowd have never really been there for him? The truly faithful, the faithfully true, are here for him…they don’t expect him to be anything other than himself. Ask anyone in the audience what they would like to hear at their dream Morrissey concert and every single one of them would give you a completely different set…and they could give you a different set if you asked them again tomorrow. Morrissey has released over 50 singles, 13 studio albums, and that is without the catalogue of The Smiths. How over the course of just under 2 hours to choose the songs that capture the magnitude of that?
Tonight he plays five or six of those solo singles, three Smiths singles, and album tracks from “Southpaw Grammar”, “Low in High School”, “Ringleader of the Tormentors”, “Years of Refusal”, “World Peace is None of Your Business”, the unreleased “Bonfire of Teenagers”, and “Low in High School”…that’s 8 of the 13 studio albums represented and unreleased tracks from the aforementioned “Teenagers” and “Without Music, The World Dies”.
Give thanks.
Surrounded by his latest gang of glamorous musical ragamuffins he sings with heart and soul, his voice stronger, purer, more powerful than ever before. He makes the audience laugh with his between song nattering, he continues to be a violently unique presence on the stage, whipping the microphone lead, playing with the lyrics, snarling and sneering certain phrases, nodding and winking to those who know. It is a masterclass in what a star looks like, and in how true art can elevate you.
You’re gonna miss him when he’s gone.
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