I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little worried. As I step into the foyer of Edinburgh’s playhouse, used to more austere proceedings as the Nutcracker banner outside testifies, I’m ill at ease. Which Stephen Patrick Morrissey is performing tonight?
The one who spoke so profoundly to me, and countless others, through The Smiths and beyond, in bedrooms and towns he would never visit. One who you felt was fighting your corner at all, one whom you suspected had been living on your shoulder, such was the accuracy of the description of your life.
Or the curmudgeonly old man of late? Pilloried by a once respected weekly music magazine, a music magazine now existing as Heat edited by a school newspaper, Press Gang staffed by the Big Brother house if you will. But vilified all the same for a world-view, if accurately reported, that feels like a relic of a depressing past. Where is the inclusion now, whose corner is he fighting save his own?
It is with these dizzying thoughts I find my seat. In between the support band, Girl in a Coma, and the arrival of Morrissey himself, we get films played on white backdrop the size of the playhouse stage. It’s a mix of French chanteurs and chanteuses, an episode of Dragnet (yes, Dragnet – albeit mentioning a character called Morrissey) and what looks like Anthony Newley doing some bizarre tumbling, dancing and singing routine. It’s an odd mix that leaves you feeling a bit discombobulated and amused, although when the crime boss mentions Morrissey’s name we get a cheer. I don’t feel any anticipation, so when the film eventually stops I feel a bit cheated. I wanted the aching long five minutes of nothing happening to ramp up the tension before he arrives.
When he does arrive though, it is to ‘Last of the Famous’ which neatly segues, amongst rapturous applause into ‘Stop Me…’ The audience sing the entirety of both songs, Morrissey pausing to point the microphone at the enraptured front row. ‘ I can still sing you know’, he says after the breathtaking opening. Those cancelled London roundhouse shows a distant memory.
Have I fallen in love again? I’m still not sure, I get an itching feeling he wants to say more than he does. As close as I am I can see he looks a shade tired, not that this stops him. It is a whirlwind hour and a half – there is a shirt change, an attempt to stop the terrace chanting of Morrissey and an aside of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. That apart, he offers himself no breathers.
The energy is contagious, well, as contagious as it can be trapped behind worn theatre seats with no space to move around the 6ft 6 guy that gravitates in front of me. The songs wield a punishing edge to proceedings, again I find myself surprised. The drums are relentless, the bass squalls and the guitar lines serrate like broken stars. It is most noticeable on The Smiths songs, ‘ Please Please Please Let Me ‘ and ‘ The Death of a Disco Dancer’ turn to euphorically spiteful ditties, bombastic and nimble – they sound at once as contemporary and better than the current crop of MTV2 favoured fare.
Where does Morrissey now reside I ask myself, would any of the present day indie scene do a gig in a theatre? What scene is left now, are there any with his lyrical dexterity, his self-effacing wit? And the voice, lest we forget. On record it is a louche un-threatening call, a croon to arms, but live he handles it differently, from soft shimmer to delicate roar in the same phrase. It is as exquisitely drilled as his band. A band that must be said, exude musicality from every pore. Morrissey has found a perfect combination of heart and darkness in the musicians that surround him.
The last few songs are over-taken by stage invaders, encouraged by Morrissey, and then actively, violently, discouraged by several burly bouncers. I am told they used to show wrestling in here, I can only assume there is a very, very late try out. Shy fey types are thrown around and shown the lifecycle of the headlock by exasperated black t-shirted sweating men. In one instance a hapless disciple find his way onto stage impeded by a fist. He lies on the speaker stand, bowed but not broken.
It is this final image that keeps me thinking. Is it all an act – the way Morrissey playfully taunts them into certain grapple? The debacle with the NME? Is he Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, does the mask need re-adjusting? Those first Songs ‘ International Playboy’, ‘Stop Me If You ThinkYou’ve Heard This One Before’ was there another meaning hinted at? I’m more confused than when I started.
“Don’t get me wrong, he was good” I hear someone say on the way out ” I just think he wasn’t in the mood for playing the game tonight.”