They came, presumably, from all corners of the country, maybe from beyond. They had their Smiths shirts, their quiffs, the odd gladiolus, those glasses; mostly they were men, some were old, but the majority (it seemed) were young. As I got off the tube at Greenwich, a great chant filled the station, a choir of wannabe misfits and old timers singing “And if a double-decker bus crashes into us…“ and so on. In the air: a sense of remarkable jubilation, festive almost… almost, indeed, religious. So in they came, electric and chanting, flooding the O2 arena, here to gawp at and worship one Stephen Patrick Morrissey.
Witty, spikey, a man of Olympian irony and outrageous opinions; the contrarian vegetarian, homoerotic, surly and shy in equal measure, self-deprecating, cheeky and pathologically narcissistic all at once; disgusted with life and sex and yet bewitched by desire for carnal contact: Morrissey is a unique individual, the eccentric uncle of modern British music.
2014 really hasn’t been a good year for Morrissey. Firstly, although attaining pretty saleable reviews, his new album World Peace Is None Of Your Business was withdrawn from iTunes and Spotify after a bumptious spat between Morrissey and his label, Harvest (it still hasn’t been re-released). His American tour was cut short due to illness and yet more quarrels (this time with support acts). To top off the misery, Morrissey revealed in October that he had been treated for ‘cancerous tissues’. Despite this, his European tour this November has been quietly successful, and his performance at the O2 on the 29th proved to be no different.
The show began with the most Morrisseyesque collection of videos imaginable: Jimmy Clithero sketches, scenes from A Taste of Honey, clips of The Ramones and New York Dolls – and, predictably, pictures of the late Lady Thatcher set to the tune of ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’. After this, Morrissey makes his grand entrance – he’s wearing a white tracksuit – and teases the crowd with two classics: ‘The Queen is Dead’ and ‘Suedehead’. With the crowd primed, Morrissey begins what he came here to do – what he was put on earth to do: promote his latest album and make meat-eaters feel very guilty indeed. He succeeds on both accounts.
He sings almost all of his new material, some of which is very good: I’m thinking particularly of the thundering ‘I’m Not A Man’, ‘Kiss Me A Lot’ (a typical Morrissey ballad of stunted desire) and ‘Neil Cassidy Drops Dead’. Some aren’t so good. The title song ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’ is a howler of particular note, a jangly little number full of banal politics and Brandisms (‘each time you vote you support the process’).
As a performer, Morrissey is as good as he’s ever been. His voice is stronger than ever before. His movements, gestures and swoops are glorious to behold: each head-flick, each tragic turn and genuflection is choreographed to transform Morrissey into the doomed, romantic figure he has always longed to be. The crowd buys it; many swoon and weep as he twists and writhes. There is an atmosphere of exquisite fatalism, the electrifying miserablism that has been Morrissey’s stock-in-trade for over thirty years. Morrissey has always fetishized death and illness (existential and physical), but here he excels himself: he ends with an astonishing rendition of ‘Asleep’, urging the crowd: ‘Remember me, but forget my fate’, an echo of Dido from Purcell – a reference to the fatal course of his illness? Perhaps.
A woman next to me quite seriously breaks down in tears for the remainder of the show. By the end of the whole thing, I too am a little weepy, leaving all at once exhilarated and dejected, buzzing and sorrowful. Well, what else would you expect from Morrissey?
