The pre-show is an entertainment in itself. It’s Morrissey’s best-of Youtube compilation. Tina Turner, Edith Sitwell, The New York Dolls, Anne Sexton and Ding-dong the Witch is Dead. He’s still fighting Thatcher after all these years. The old enmities never die. The experience is peculiar. The night is warm. The sky clear. The Teatro de Verano fills up gradually, full of familiar faces. But this is pure, unadulterated, multi-cultural, Morrisseyan Britishness on stage, with its nods to glam rock, black culture, eccentricity. Edith Sitwell talking about her fashion choices, as the traffic flows ever so gently along the Rambla with the River Plate in the background.
Reasonably promptly, soon after 9, the singer appears on stage with his youthful band. Dressed in a jacket with no shirt underneath. “Montevideo,” he says, “I come here,” (pause) “to spill my” (pause) “heart”. Without further ado he breaks into a spritely version of Suedehead.
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It’s a large room. As big a room as I’ll have to myself for years. In one corner is a single bed, in another a desk. There’s a bay window which looks out over the courtyard and the garden, behind which is another red brick, late Victorian building, similar to the one that contains this room, where another 50 or so boys live. This is a boarding school, a bastion of British privilege, a place as corrupt as any other school, perhaps more so. This house has been my home for nearly five years. The end is in sight. We live in the reign of Margaret Thatcher. Her spawn are hatched here, and other buildings such as this. Britain’s future (current) rulers inhabit a similar environment in another school called Eton, which we visit from time to time on sports trips. All of us, whether we like it or not, belong to the great club of the heirs apparent.
On the windowsill there’s a cassette radio. I am a senior figure within the house, ‘the head of house’, and the greatest benefit this role bestows is space and privacy. Here, in my study, I can escape. I can listen to the music I like, read the books I like, dream the life I would like to lead. At night I fall asleep with the radio on. Or else a cassette playing. Insomnia is already my friend. It’s a half-life, waiting for the day when we’re allowed to leave this closeted world and be permitted to start the process of getting to know that other world, the one that isn’t closeted, the one that isn’t mired in snobbery and elitism.
The music we listen to is the Stones, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, Burning Spear, Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, Otis Redding, Steve Hillage, the Kinks, the sixties, the seventies. Contemporary music comes via John Peel, snatches of songs which will later be hunted down. People have started to talk about The Smiths. Someone said that someone else said they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. There’s always a band that’s due to be bigger than the Beatles, but people seem to believe in this one, they seem to think the hype might be justified.
Someone gives me a tape. The tape is grey. It has ‘The Smiths’ written on it in felt-tip pen. It is their first album. It sings me to sleep. I listen to it repetitively, in the way that once upon a time people listened to music. Every song has its nuances. It’s music from another place, a Northern soul, music sung by young men who never knew the privilege of the world we inhabit. Music sung by men who have crossed the frontier of adolescence, unlike us. But already the relationships the songs depict, the cruelty of these relationships, is something understood, even though we are only on the brink of this world. ‘Reel around the fountain, slap me on the patio, I’ll take it now.’ And the line that speaks of place, the line that says it all, can be appropriated with just the slightest of twists. ‘Manchester, so much to answer for’; becomes - ‘Winchester, so much to answer for’. A sentiment that I know, as I lie in bed waiting for sleep to arrive, is true now and ever more shall be so.
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Morrissey looks fresh and seems to be enjoying himself. His band is young and some of them are Latinos. At one point, Morrissey leaves the mike to the keyboard player, who sings the lyrics of the song in Spanish. The crowd are with the old diva. He plays very few Smiths tracks. Many of the songs are from more recent albums, which I don’t know. There’s one about the cops beating people up, accompanied by footage from Ferguson and what looks the Rodney King attack. There are songs about war and democracy. But, with the exception of one moment, the gig maintains a vigorous, upbeat tone. Morrissey clearly enjoys saying the word “gracias” in response to the raucous applause. At one point he declares: “How happy I am to be in a heart-shaped country.”
I’ve never seen Morrissey live. Once I went to see Dylan in the Docklands Arena. It was one of the most depressing nights in my life. Dylan churned through the songs as though he was being paid by the hour. His lack of enthusiasm could not have been more obvious. Song after song was, effectively, butchered. To my ears at least. Of course, the other side of the coin is that this is their work: this is what they have to do in order to earn a living. No matter how much you’re getting paid, no-one likes being a servant to the man, and you’re going to have nights when you’re just not in the mood. So I steer clear of those figures who had once mattered so much, who’d been part of a time that was past. But Claudia has bought the tickets and now he’s here. And as Morrissey sings I weep like a child. For all our yesterdays, which have lit the road to here, to the dusty now, with so much left behind.
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A restaurant in York. I’m 20. Tonight. It’s my birthday. There’s four of us. Sedley, James and Nadine. Nadine used to go and watch The Smiths, with her then boyfriend, called Mike. I met Mike once. He had hair like Robert Smith. He opened the door to the party in deepest Hertfordshire with a cat on his shoulders. He had a chameleon quality. He and Nadine used to travel into London to watch bands, and one of them was The Smiths. She saw The Smiths before they were famous. Before they were going to be the next Beatles. We spent all night holed up at this party, full of people who I didn’t know. On our way there, in the car, Nadine said: ‘Keep an eye on me tonight’. I told her I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. She said: ’You know’. I was living that life now. At a certain point in the evening, Nadine was in a room upstairs with Mike, and a few others. I sat outside on the landing, overhearing their conversation. Mike said: ‘Who is he anyway?’ The nerdy public school boy. Nadine said something dismissive. I heard it all. I don’t know if this is true, but I have a memory of entering the room. Everyone leaving. Tears. Who knows. It’s probably a false memory.
On my 20th, we go to a mediocre restaurant which is near the banks of the Ouse. It’s big and almost empty. We eat burgers, probably with blue cheese dressing. We get drunk on red wine. The music is anodyne until, out of the darkness of the cavernous restaurant, come the chords of The Smiths. Their most spaced-out, almost Doorsy song. How Soon is Now. Which seems heavily Johnny Marr influenced. Less Morrissey, more Marr. Later we go and sit by the banks of the river, on the wharf, and drink whisky, from the bottle. Nadine liked drinking whisky from the bottle. In my memory, another false memory, the song is still playing as we sit outside, on a cold June night, keeping warm with whisky. ‘I am the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar…When you say it’s going to happen now, well what exactly do you mean? See I’ve already waited too long and all my hope is gone.’
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Morrissey plays How Soon is Now midway through the set. It’s unexpected. It catches me off-guard. His band rip into the song with a verve. It’s still a young person’s song, with its 10 gallon rhythm; with its relentless quest to get to the next point, to reach the future. The words sit in the air. Ubiquitous, understandable in any culture. For once Morrissey’s lyrics reduced to the most basic, plaintive. ‘I am human and I need to be loved, just like anybody else does.’ These words will never age, and neither will the song.
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A shop in Covent Garden. Full of wood and shoes. Neal Street buzz. On Saturdays or Summer afternoons the shop, which is not large, becomes a claustrophobic sauna. People fall over themselves trying on Birkenstocks or Grensons. The team of half a dozen shop assistants, of whom I am one, run around dementedly, trying to maintain order, trying to keep things in shape. The staff is an evolving snapshot of young London life. Eric, who wants to be a DJ, has lived in London all his life, has a model girlfriend, dreams of getting a flat in Pimlico. Steve, with whom I’ll take E’s, go clubbing at Ministry, share a chaotic house, man a stall in Portobello. Rebecca who’s very straight and comes from the Midlands and is a violinist, who ends up getting me a job at the Royal Albert Hall. Steve, the manager, who’s from Chicago, quietly camp, lost, with dreams, which will never be fulfilled, of becoming an opera singer. Arita, an architecture student, who I’ll live with for three years. Kathy, from Manchester, who told me she had become lesbian as an act of political militancy. The spikey-haired woman, Sam, who ended up studying shoe design at Cordwainers, because every once in a while someone really did care about shoes. Colin, who also came from Manchester, hated London, and played the Inspiral Carpets on a loop, when he could. The cheerful fellow who escaped when someone gave him a job on a boat observing whales. A hundred others, at least, and Robbie, the friendly gay man who had toured with The Smiths to Japan. Working as an assistant. Who told me that Morrissey used to check the staff’s hotel bills, to make sure no-one had been indulging in long-distance calls at the band’s expense.
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The most volatile moment of the gig comes as we are starting to head towards the end. Morrissey offers an attack on the meat industry, stating that at the Paris Climate Change Summit, nothing was said about the industry which is, he claims, the greatest contributor to global warming, because of vested interests. This is the cue for a bracing version of Meat is Murder, accompanied by images which show animals being slaughtered. The images are horrific. You wouldn’t catch them appearing in a Britney or a One Direction concert. This is full-on, confrontational proselyting. Later people would talk about it. A gleeful moment of political activism, thrown into the middle of a party.
None of it phases me. It makes me smile. Good for the Mozza. Why shouldn’t he use his stage as a platform to speak about something he feels strongly about? He’s always worn his cares on his sleeve and he carries on doing it. Conviction is something pop isn’t famous for. But the Morrissey is for real. I take my hat off to him.
Later he offers a few slightly confusing words before singing a song about bullfighting. “In a country called Peru,” he says introducing the song, “the people are great and the life is great and everyone’s really happy… unless you happen to be a bull.” No-one has much of a clue why he’s talking about Peru. Afterwards, there will be Facebook speculation that he’d forgotten where he was. The song is another of his more political tracts, and the last quarter of the gig is given over to the new songs, few of which I recognised. The intensity of the experience tails away; he isn’t singing about my youth anymore. Most of the songs I would have put on the playlist aren’t going to appear, and perhaps that’s a good thing.
The band is still having fun and Morrissey is still having fun. He gets the maracas out. He poses. He is more than a singer. He’s an icon; and he knows it.
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A bar in Montevideo, 1994. My friend Ana has brought me to a bar which runs a kind-of snakes and ladders pub game, which is conducted by her partner, Horacio. I can’t really work out how it works and at this point in time my Spanish is non-existent. If you land on the wrong number, you have to do something like recite a poem or sing a song. I tell Ana I’m happy to do anything except sing. Of course, as a result and via divine intervention, my number comes up and I am called on to the rickety stage to sing a song. Horacio, a grizzled survivor, former political agitator, theatre director, ‘personaje’, as they say here, has his two sons on stage with him with their instruments. The idea is that the singer tells them the song and they provide the backing music. I feel self-conscious, terrified. Singing, performing in public, this kind of thing is not my bag. I feel ridiculous, but there’s not much I can do about it. No-one speaks English, so Ana translates. I try to think of a song. The only one that comes to mind is Girlfriend in a Coma. I ask the band if they know it. They nod, as though to say, of course, then strike up a rangy reggae rhythm. It’s The Smiths, but not as we know them. I muddle through a verse or to, ‘I know, I know, it’s really serious’.
Twenty years later, one of Horacio’s sons who was on stage with me, Martin, will compose the music for the play I’m directing. He remembers nothing of that night. I was just some gringo passing through.
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The concert concludes and the crowd bay for an encore. Morrissey’s already thrown one shirt into the crowd and at the end he’ll throw another. There’s something disarmingly charming about a 50 year old man well past the peak of his physical prime, skipping around with his top off like he’s a 20 year old carrying a bunch of gladioli. It’s not just because the night is balmily warm. He clearly gets a kick out of it. At one point he mutters, “there’s always a barrier” and the crowd bays at him, telling him he’s wrong, there’s no barrier, they’re with him all the way. The thought doesn’t go anywhere, it just leads to another song, but the notion of the artist who wants to strip himself bare, to throw himself like Iggy Pop into the maelstrom, floats, like a bizarre, anti-English mirage. Morrissey’s inner Latino is lurking.
Morrissey’s Englishness. The title of a novel. The love and the tension are palpable. There’s Edith Sitwell, then there’s an image of William and Kate, projected over the playing of This World is Full of Crashing Bores. It’s easy to dismiss this attitude in today’s neo-conservative Britain. Easy to dismiss him as a petulant, fifty-something child. Still waging the war against Thatcher. Then again - why not? Why do I now live here, on the other side of the world? Why is Britain so trapped in it’s torpid, sub-colonial world vision? We’re a country that has spent the last twenty years bombing other countries as though we have a divine right to do so, with very little questioning of the ethical implications. We are still ruled by a monarchy which looks and talks like something that belongs to the ninetieth century, let alone the twentieth or the twenty first. And no-one questions any of this. To query the validity of the institution is to invite ridicule. No-one does it.
Except for the wonderful, perverse, narcissistic Morrissey. With his band of youthful gunslingers, hot-footing it around the world, showing all the images that the British Council would not approve of. For his encore, here in the Teatro de Verano, he chooses a stampeding version of The Queen is Dead. “So I broke into the Palace, with a sponge and a rusty spanner. She said Eh, I know you and you cannot sing, I said that’s nothing, you should hear me play piano.” Behind him is an image of Her Maj, giving the world two fingers with both hands. Thirty years on, Morrissey is still dishing it out, still out on a limb, still dreaming of an England which isn’t the one he was born into. “The Queen is dead, boys, And it’s so lonely on a limb. Life is very long, when you’re lonely.” The funny thing about Morrissey is that he’s still lonely but, here in the balmy Summer Uruguayan night, he looks like he’s thriving on it.
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One of the songs Morrissey plays is Every Day is Like Sunday. It’s one of his first solo hits, coming out in 1988. For almost anyone who grew up in a small British town in the eighties, this song puts the hammer on the nail of the petty desolation. Dull days, where Summer is full of rain, where we dream of living somewhere where the sun shines and the world feels more enticing. “Everyday is like Sunday, everyday is silent and grey.” I remember whole Summers when it felt as though it rained every day, when the architecture itself seemed to sag under the weight of water, when the yearning to flee, to obliterate this life was so strong that the song’s refrain couldn’t have felt more apposite: “In the seaside town, they forgot to bomb, come Armageddon, come”. Now, he’s singing it here, in another seaside town. With the stars and the beach a stone’s throw away. Never has the song felt less appropriate. My world has been flipped around, 180 degrees. Southern hemisphere/ northern hemisphere. Wet sand/ hot sand. Soggy days/ balmy nights. The constant is Morrissey’s yearning. I smile at the contradiction. And at the same time, I am possessed by a sharp-toothed nostalgia.
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