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Still doing it his way
Morrissey
Leeds Town & Country/touring
Rating: *****
Dave Simpson

Thursday November 11 1999
The Guardian

These are curious times for Morrissey. He has been sued for a million quid by his former drummer and labelled "devious, truculent and unreliable" by a high court judge. But also his career has never really recovered from the accusations of racism that accompanied some ambiguous lyrics and a brief flirtation with the union flag. Accusations that the Irish Mancunian (who has performed for Artists Against Apartheid) never sought to dignify with a response.

Now the label-less singer, who crafted a persecution complex into a glorious career with the Smiths, has attempted to bar his oppressors - the press - from his gigs. Revenge indeed - for this is the man's finest show in many a moon.

Last time I saw him on a British stage, Morrissey was grim-faced and hardly spoke. Now, there's no stopping him. Whatever brought about this sudden lift in spirits (his move to Los Angeles?) is unclear, but Morrissey has rekindled the rapid-fire wit that captivated a generation. A new song is even called Why Don't Women Like Me?

Morrissey was described in last week's Guardian as "the last pop star", and while Liam or Robbie might want a word about that, a particular kind of stardom was exiled when he fell from sight. From the feverish atmosphere to his stage moves to his supernatural manipulation of the audience, we are left in no doubt that we are in the presence of a true icon.

The music isn't as great as his definitive pop performance. It's a bit Brando-in-Superman and the rockabilly band make a hopeless fist of Is it Really So Strange? - one of three Smiths classics. But when you want things to soar they do. Meat Is Murder - played for the first time since 1985 - is prescient amid the kerfuffle over beef and sewage.

He arrived on stage to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and leaves, impeccably, to My Way. Against all odds, his way suddenly sounds irresistible all over again.

• At the Forum, London from Sunday to Tuesday (box office: 0171-344 0044), then touring

I found this in Time Out magazine (10/11/99), the main "what-to-do" weekly publication in London (scan of article). Yet another example of people not having a mind of their own. Plus note the Mexican reference at the end of the article- tres racist indeed... If Mozzer was to say anything like that in one of his interviews he would be torn to pieces!

Still, as from tomorrow, London is his and it owes him a living!

Morrissey
Forum Sat to Tue

Fame, fame, fatal fame, it plays terrible tricks on the... ahem, sorry. Anyway, there we were in Atlanta, Georgia -- me, a photographer and a press officer -- when the bloke I'd come thousands of miles to interview had his photo taken, and then locked himself in his hotel room until we went away again. Admittedly, I'm not at my most gorgeous après jet lag, but then, Morrissey's reputation had fallen so far by autumn 1997 (the time of this incident) that one of my TO colleagues suggested, absurdly, that he'd clocked my off-while features, figured I was bound to ask him awkward questions about his racial attitudes, and done a runner. It's more likely he was simply playing that favored Moz role, the awkward interviewee, but still: how did the reputation of our '80s hero fall so low? And why does he behave like such a twat?

These are questions that will almost certainly remain unanswered. In rare interviews, the mardy Mancunian continues to reel out the 'I regret nothing' line, oblivious to any dismay he may have caused with lyrics such as 'England for the English' (from 'National Front Disco') or quotes like 'To get on "Top Of The Pops" these days one has, by law, to be black'. What we do know is that, despite being unsigned at present, the former Smiths leader is Big In America. Particularly among the Mexican community. That's the Mexican community. Which is about as weird as a very weird person on a weird holiday in fuckin' Weird World.

So maybe Mexicans understand a level of Moz irony that we sensitive Brits just didn't get. Whatever, with four nights fast selling out at the Forum, the times appear to be changing for Morrissey. But Moz diehards needn't worry. The music will have stayed exactly the same.

Garry Mulholland

From 2pm this Friday the 12th, Morrissey will be interviewed on BBC Radio 5 live in England. The frequency is 909 or 693 on the medium wave.

Once again, the Seattle music rag The Stranger has produced a very small and "insignificant" blurb on Morrissey... or in this case, the ongoing debate on if Smith fans really do have sex. As you may remember, the Stranger did a write-up on the "Diary of a Teenage Smiths-Worshipper" in a prior issue...

Here is the URL. It's not too long... but I'd thought you'd might like it.

"Who Says Morrissey Fans Don't Get Laid?" by Annalee Newitz

Morrissey take a bow

He was singing in The Smiths, and then he left the Smiths and heaven knows he's legendary now. As Nottingham prepares to host the first date of his British tour, we look at this charming man's career

BY MARK PATTERSON

Manchester, the Arndale Centre, 1985: Years before the IRA made a mess of this monstrous 1960s shopping centre, I'm in a cheapo record shop and handing my money over for two vinyl albums. One is Meat Is Murder, by The Smiths, which has come out on this very day. The other is a singles compilation by The Buzzcocks, another band from Manchester, where I'm going to university in a few months' time.

The Buzzcocks album is for a bit of Manchester punk heritage. The Smiths album, though, is all about today and now, 1985-style.

The Smiths were already huge by then, and while this second album lacked the starry glamour of its best-selling follow-up The Queen Is Dead, it definitively summarised The Smiths' sound and the concerns of their pale, be-quiffed and articulate singer, Morrissey vegetarianism, working class Manchester kids with names scratched on their arms in fountain pen, the barbarity of school, sexual yearning for the unreachable, all embedded in Johnny Marr's shimmering guitar and Andy Rourke's mobile, treble-high bass.

When the band inevitably split in 1987 after four albums, Morrissey dove into a solo career which has had a critical approval rating more violently volatile than a barometer in rainy Manchester. An anti-pop star hero and supreme individualist to fans, a puzzling misery to others yet a legend nonetheless, Morrissey has been absent from the UK music scene for what seems like half a lifetime but is back on Tuesday when he begins a short new British tour at Nottingham Rock City.

The show has sold out, but the tickets were not snapped up overnight as perhaps would have happened at the start of his solo career or certainly would have had The Smiths been playing.

Yet with no new album, single, video or T-shirt to promote, the new tour is all about reminding the music-buying public that this great icon of the 1980s is still breathing.

"You've also got to bear in mind that it is quite an expensive ticket price £17," says Rock City promoter Andy Copping. "And the reason for that is that Morrissey is in a position where he could play much bigger venues and he's got to reflect that in the ticket price. He also wants a lot of money to play."

So why did he choose Rock City as the first venue for the tour?

"As far as I can understand it, he wanted to do a back-to-basics tour. He's quite capable of filling much larger venues than Rock City. He had played Rock City before in his time with The Smiths and funnily enough, when the rumours started that he was going to do a tour, the only date that was being written about was Rock City. I assume the reason he chose Rock City to play on this tour is that he has good memories of shows here before."

However, you still have to wonder about Morrissey's pulling power with people on the better side of 30.

A generation weaned on dance music and its myriad mutations has grown up into a world where Steps are allowed to exist.

Since then, Morrissey and Marr have weathered an ugly legal fall-out with former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce over royalties, awarded damages of £1m in 1997, while Morrissey went through an NME- concocted controversy about alleged racism partly over his use of Union Jack flags at shows.

Today, he's adored in the USA, where he has the same fey "eccentric limey" appeal as Hugh Grant, and treated with quiet respect here.

The talk in the music press last week was that Morrissey had cancelled a gig in Germany because the venue was a former slaughterhouse.

Indeed, it was also rumoured that he had re-introduced the song Meat i s Murder into his live set. It suggested that Morrissey was happy to perform other titles from the Smiths back catalogue.

There is an unclassifiable something about Morrissey which attracts people from a strange spectrum of ages and backgrounds. Just ask Tony Shaw, a 48-year-old Morrissey and Smiths fan from Nottingham, who says: "The Smiths were definitely Morrissey. It was his erudition, his enigmatic character. And then there was the sexual ambivalence.

He was supposed to be celibate, but there was this suggestion of homosexuality. It's a shame he's been more or less expelled to the States now."

And this fan's favourite Smiths album? Without hesitation, he replies Meat Is Murder, which brings us back round to the Arndale Centre, Manchester, 1985, and all that...

Post-gig article from marktowle:

A charming man, never out of style

It was like he'd never been gone! The fervour, the adoration, the sheer worship which greeted Morrissey last night at the start of his first UK tour for donkey's years had to be seen to be believed.

If the Beatles re-formed and played The Boat Club they could expect a welcome no more enthusiastic

The man with the voice that broke a million bedsit-anchored hearts in the 80s has clearly been missed by his old disciples - but the audience was also studded with those barely born at the time of his heyday. Perhaps they had come to see what all the fuss was about in those far-off indie days.

They had their answer. Exploding into Boy Racer, November Spawned a Monster, and Tomorrow, he proved what an original figure he still is. And those lyrics! If any of today's chart contenders had his way with words, maybe pop wouldn't be dead after all.
The crowd loved all of it, throwing their clothes and even themselves at the returning hero all night long.

So perhaps it was churlish for this old fan to have longed for more of the tunes that made Morrissey great. (And ominously, not a single new song was performed among masses of solo stuff).

Although a stunning encore solved that, just three Smiths songs - Is It Really So Strange?, Meat Is Murder, and Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me - in a show lasting barely 75 minutes left me feeling a little empty, too.

By Sean Hewitt
Nottingham Evening Post - 10th November 1999

Here's a particularly trivial Moz reference - the BBC Online news site has a special article up from last week about the M1 Motorway (the UK version of Route 66, perhaps), which refers to the lyrics of "Is It Really So Strange?", amongst various pieces of trivia about the motorway. The motorway, like Morrissey, is now in its 40s.

Excerpt:

• The M1's service stations have names which have become resonant of the English countryside. Alan Partridge has paid tribute, as has Morrissey, who sang "I left the north again, I travelled south again. . . I lost my bag in Newport Pagnell".