I just saw Morrissey on Saturday in Douglass Park. Morrissey is an extremely controversial but highly respected music figure. He has always been a hugely popular figure in his native England, and he also has a very devoted if small cult in the USA.
As a member of the Smiths he was often dubbed the king of mope rock or the pope of mope and he brought us such fun and uplifting instant classics as “Heaven Knows I am Miserable Now,” “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “The Queen is Dead,” “Meat is Murder,” and of course the suicidal dance ditty, “How Soon is Now?”
I always wanted (along with ten million other people) to see a Smiths reunion but when Morrissey was asked about the possibility of one he said, “I would rather eat my own testicles than reform the Smiths, and that’s saying something for a vegetarian.”
As a solo artist he did some stuff that was nearly on par with the best Smith songs including the anti-Thatcher song, “Margaret on the Guillotine,” “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful,” “The Teachers are Afraid of the Pupils,” and the popular “Irish Blood English Heart.”
I was going to see him at the 2004 Lollapalooza show, but the show was cancelled for low attendance and Morrissey ended up doing a solo show that sold more tickets that the whole Lollapalooza show.
For my money it had one of the best concert lineups ever and it would have featured Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, The Killers, Wilco, The Flaming Lips, The Von Bondies, The String Cheese Incident, Modest Mouse, Le Tigre, Gomez, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Danger Mouse, The Polyphonic Spree, Broken Social Scene, The Datsuns, Bumblebeez 81, The Secret Machines, Brayndead Freakshow, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Elbow, Wheat, The Coup, Wolf Eyes, and The Dresden Dolls. Some of them showed up for the later, more conventional non-touring Lolla lineups.
Later on they showed a shirtless man and videos of police officers beating up unarmed civilians (during the song “Gang lord.”) In the song the narrator begs a gang leader help him deal with the out of control police.
Many critics have said that Morrissey seems to have the voice of a middle class woman in most of his songs and I tend to agree. To me the Freddie Mercury song “Killer Queen” by Queen also seems to be from a feminine perspective.
Morrissey is a big animal rights advocate so all of the vendors at this year’s Riot fest stopped selling meat (including the hamburger joints) after 6 o clock. There were signs up that said they were doing it as a courtesy to Morrissey, but I am sure they would not do that unless he put his foot down.
In 2009 he left the main stage at the Coachella Festival during his performance, which was near the food concession area. Later on he said, “The smell of burning animals is making me sick. I just couldn’t bear it.” So he’s a finicky concert performer.
Everyone was worried he would not show because he was supposed to start at 8:15 and we were shown a half hour of videos which seem to reflect his personal taste including footage of the New York Dolls (he was the head of their fan club and was responsible for their reunion), The Ramones, and Ike and Tina Turner clips, a poetry reading, footage from the great silent French film “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” as well as Andy Warhol’s “Trash. Most of the audience was confused and angry when they saw he videos and they were probably afraid he would not show.
Morrissey sang a rather shockingly explicit love song titled “You Have Killed Me” which seemed to be addressed to poet Pier Paolo Passolin (or at least the protagonist in his debut film “Accatone” in which he sang “I was nothing before you entered me.”
Before he went into the highly political attack on the monarchy in this song, “Irish Blood English Heart,” and he implied that the establishment did everything to kill off Bernie Sanders campaign because he is the only one who is antiwar.
