The wonderful wizard of Moz ***** (but completely biased)

Morrissey Brixton Academy 22 July 2009

I was almost not going to go to the Morrissey gig tonight in Brixton. The horror!

The gig had been rescheduled because he was ill and it fell right in the middle of my week’s holiday. I clearly had no motivation to haul myself off my increasingly expanding arse, as the idea of trekking down to the Brixton Academy from North London was not looking attractive. Besides… I’ve seen him several times, and god forbid I had become apathetic about the MozFather.

So I was late after dragging my heels and waiting for an unfathomably long time on both the Jubilee and Victoria Lines. As soon as I got into the Academy, with its glowing green dome and people stuffed to the rafters, I realised I had made a dreadful mistake.

He had already been playing for 15 minutes and, just as we arrived, he started to play a Smiths’ classic, Ask Me. My friend kindly put a pint into my hand but half of it came flying out as I was jumping around like a fraggle on speed. The hot sticky venue contained a hot sticky Morrissey sweating into a shirt that he changed a couple of times; it was fantastic, and I drank lager like it was water.

Moz and his band pumped out energy into an electric atmosphere. I’ve seen him over the last few years at Reading, Earl’s Court, a West End theatre and the Roundhouse, just before he cancelled the rest of his dates due to illness (presumably not the same problem that stopped him in his tracks this year). And I reckon this gig was one of his most confident and energetic.

He reeled off the rousing Irish Blood English Heart, and followed up with OH MY GOD Some Girls Are Bigger than Others and Girlfriend in a Coma. There were a couple of new songs that I haven’t heard, quite beautiful and dreamy. The only downtime was about two thirds of the way through when, for some reason, he lost some of the energy.

I chatted to a girl next to me and asked if a song I didn’t recognise was a new song, with the lyrics “I’m alright on my own”. Her comment is surely testament to Moz: “I don’t know. I’ve only liked Morrissey for about 10 years.” How many singers get “only” as a prefix for a decade of fandom? Although I was in nappies the first time round with the Smiths, I have been a militant fan since the age of 15 – for his wit, songs, pure poetry, the melancholy that never makes me sad, and for the emotional resonance that his music has with me (and indeed a lot of others). I have been a fan of Morrissey for only 15 years.

As well as being a constant presence in my adult life, Morrissey has also been a chaperone in my relationships. I first listened to The Boy with a Thorn in His Side at the age of 16 with an entirely inappropriate boyfriend. It gave me hope that despite the obvious lack of evidence, the relationship had legs: “How can they see the love in our eyes / And still they don’t believe us? / And after all this time / They don’t want to believe us”. I had images of us playing this to our grandkids, and saying, “See, they were all wrong.” (I’m not sure but I suspect he was gay; if he wasn’t, I think I did a pretty good job in turning him that way.)

It also reminds me of my last boyfriend, also a huge Moz fan, and this is the first time I’ve been to a Morrissey gig without him. At our first Morrissey gig together (and after a year together when I was still reticent to commit), Morrissey compelled me to say “I love you” for the first time. Our last gig was after we broke up and we went to the Roundhouse, and Morrissey played Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want and changed the words from “what” to “who” which resonated far too loudly. Although we were clearly never meant to be (Moz fans spot the quote), I really wanted us to be together then.

Here’s the performance in question, at the Roundhouse:

But as always, Morrissey’s lyrics had a sense of connection to my life tonight as well. As I shared my mild melancholy with my friend she pointed out that this is the first Moz gig without my ex-boyfriend but not the last. And she’s right: Morrissey was there before and he’ll be there after. And he’s right: I am more than alright on my own.

If ex-boyfriends or Morrissey’s lyrics (full of optimism and pessimism, hope and cynicism) couldn’t bring me down, one thing could. I asked a killer question to the “10 year Morrissey fan”: “We got here late – what was the first song?” She looked at me with a pained expression in her eyes. A pause followed by, “Are you sure you want to know?” Oh no! Not the answer I wanted. What gem had I unwittingly missed, stuck in a sweaty tunnel on the Victoria Line? “Yes, go on, I can take it,” I replied. She paused again and said: “This Charming Man.” I lied. I couldn’t take it. I let out a shriek drowned out by Moz and three thousand of his fans.

I would have paid the price of the ticket alone to hear this song live. The tragedy. But it was my punishment for displaying apathy towards seeing Morrissey live. And I have learned my lesson. The next time I am going to be there at 6pm, pressing my nose up against the barriers waiting for a touch from Moz, another Smiths classic and perhaps, if I’m lucky, one of his sweaty shirts. I am not a groupie, I have never been one, but I suspect I would humiliate myself and prostrate myself at the feet of the Moz (or, even harder, refrain from doing so as he would look upon it with disdain.)

Leaving the venue, covered with empty plastic pint glasses, I saw that my friend’s pint was half full still. NOT HALF EMPTY. Optimism wins through, because of Moz’s misery.