Kathy Burke's recent views on Morrissey

[Originally posted in the Strange/unexpected Moz references? thread.]

---

From Kathy Burke’s Wikipedia:

 

[Thewlis]

Many thousands of people have moved on, massively reducing Morrissey's commercial clout and his ability to secure a record deal and release new songs. If you're happy for him to be a nostalgia act whose recorded output is behind him, then that is indeed all fine.

Nah, do cheer up

 

[Crisstti]

I'd disagree with that. I'm not saying I agree with the accusation (he's clearly anti-immigration and has some politically incorrect views on the spread of Islam etc, but I wouldn't go quite as far as to call him 'racist'). However - even on somewhere as obsessed by the minutiae of everything he ever said as Morrissey-Solo, there are those who think he is. And I would expect Kathy Burke, like most casual fans, probably gets her view from more mainsteam sources - when even something like The Simpsons calls you a 'massive racist' then it's not surprising that your name has been tarnished forever.

Is he? It's an over-simplified way of putting it imo.

It's not about saying sorry. It's about a retraction of support for a political group.
And those songs you posted were from many years before the biggest f*** up of his entire career, one that has all but destroyed his image, removed tens of thousands of people from the fanbase, and perhaps most gallingly of all, meant that Johnny Marr has now become the face of the Smiths.

He should retract for popularity's sake?

It's his life to ruin his own way...

 

[JJKelsall]

Ironically enough it didn't kill off the casual fans.
The ones who were most obsessed with Morrissey were the ones who were most affected. Those who (however foolishly) had constructed their own image around him such as Martin Rossiter, Stewart Lee and Uncle Skinny were the ones who were most aghast/sickened, and have felt obliged to distance themselves from (or publicly criticise) him the most.
Why? Because all their friends/family associate them with Morrissey, so when Morrissey supports the far right, it is assumed that his dedicated disciples do, too, hence their extreme reactions.
I'm a casual fan of groups like The Cure, New Order and Depeche Mode. Couldn't care less what the singer's politics are, never visit their websites, no friends or family associate me with them - if they say vote for some bigoted berk, I may not even hear about it (as just a casual fan).
So, it's some of his biggest fans that have decided to move on, not the casual ones.

You're spot on. This is the problem with "identifying" with things. I'd say it's not even just that their friends/family associate them, but that because they identify so strongly with him, I imagine they feel "tainted" themselves.

I am pretty attached to Morrissey's music but I don't really care about the man himself, not in a mean way but in a "that's his private life and it's none of my business" way. I don't judge him either way, because ultimately I don't know him.

 

[TheSmiths_1985]

these people have no shame,as long as they think they are on the right side.

Or, to be more precise, the left.

 

[TheSmiths_1985]

I am pretty attached to Morrissey's music but I don't really care about the man himself, not in a mean way but in a "that's his private life and it's none of my business" way. I don't judge him either way, because ultimately I don't know him.

Ah, so you’re one of those ‘sneaky fascists’*…

[* Nerak™]

 

[Anonymous]

How do you 'look like' a racist? I am laughing out loud here. Do you skulk about in a cape and top hat, in blackface, twirling a villainous handlebar tash, making loud anti-black or Asian-disparaging comments outside corner shops?

What shoes or trousers or teeshirts or blazers or dresses do racists wear to 'look racist'? Is there an official racist uniform you have to belong to a racist club to wear with absolute 100% skin-colour-intolerant pride? The world wants to know! Neo-Nazi numpties need fasc...eh...fashion tips too!

Still laughing.

True that. On the other hand, you can look like, for example, a charmless fat slag. Not that I'm saying Kathy Burke looks like a charmless fat slag.

 

[BurgerButt]

Quite possibly one of the most ugly women ever..... seems inside as well as out. Thick as pigshit as well.

 

[Ryan]

Quite possibly one of the most ugly women ever..... seems inside as well as out. Thick as pigshit as well.

Nothing to convey.

If you hate someone that much, stop repeatedly saying you were in one of his music videos. You can’t, in fact, have both.

 

[gashonthenail]

I do love Kathy Burke. But she is obviously, well, a bit of a berk. And she has always looked like one.

 

[Morrissey-so-old.com]

Well you know what they say if the shoe fits.

 

[goinghome]

I do love Kathy Burke. But she is obviously, well, a bit of a berk. And she has always looked like one.

Seeing as Kathy Burke was also a skinhead, according to a comment above, I'm going to scratch the sore of Madstock again, with the help of John H. Baker, still a pop culture and Biblical scholar in Westminster, who in 2011 for the same tome, wrote, 'In the Spirit of ’69? Morrissey and the Skinhead Cult'.

(and just to say, real racism is playing out elsewhere, as this description of current full-throttle anti-Chinese prejudice shows.)

First, John H. Baker sketches a concise history of the different waves of skinheads, group names, features , social contexts and influences, emphasising the original generative energy from Jamaican immigrants and musicians, gradually mimicked and expanded by disenfranchised working class British youth.

Next, he probes Morrissey's engagement with skinheads, referring in particular to the video for Our Frank.



Then he looks at what exactly happened at Madstock.

Signs of the trouble to come were noticeable during Gallon Drunk’s set earlier in the afternoon: several objects had been thrown at the band, and they had been the target of some abuse. Morrissey’s slot was awkwardly timed: the huge crowd had just enjoyed Ian Dury’s set and were growing impatient for the arrival of Madness. Morrissey had chosen an extremely striking image of two skinhead girls – a cropped version of a picture taken by Derek Ridgers in Brighton in 1980 – to be used as the backdrop for his performance, and had decided that it would be appropriate to face thousands of drunken Madness fans wearing a gold lamé shirt – that Liberace would probably have rejected as excessively camp – open to the waist to reveal a lean bare torso.

Contemporary footage shows him walking onstage to the esoterically dramatic sound of Klaus Nomi’s ‘Wayward Sisters’ and receiving a generally positive reception. Crucially, he holds a Union flag, which he drops onto the stage before heading over to the microphone and greeting the crowd with a shriek. What transpired over the next 40 minutes or so – or, at least, subsequent accounts of it – has haunted Morrissey ever since, and has been repeatedly used to link him to the skinhead cult in the most negative of ways.

Fortunately, Morrissey’s set was videoed by someone in the crowd and can be viewed online. There is also at least one bootleg audio recording extant. The footage shows that the area closest to the stage was occupied, unsurprisingly, by Morrissey fans, who supported their hero throughout his set by clapping and cheering. Nevertheless, Morrissey fans were a tiny minority at this gig. Morrissey was in the unusual position (for him) of performing to an audience who were largely indifferent to him. This explains why his set was not received with undiluted adulation, and also explains the irritation the footage clearly shows him feeling as the set goes on. Three years later he would, for the only time in his career as a solo artist, agree to tour as a support act – to David Bowie – and the tour ended in disaster when Morrissey abruptly quit, apparently angry at having to perform to largely indifferent crowds of Bowie fans.

The set begins well. Morrissey is cheered on his entrance and upon the conclusion of his first song. However, the mood begins to sour during the second song, ‘Glamorous Glue’, during which the singer, notoriously, picks up the Union flag he had carried on earlier and proceeds to wave it about. He at no point “wraps himself ” in it, as was later alleged – indeed, in my opinion he treats it with scant respect, whipping the stage with it, flailing about with it, and finally tossing it into the crowd before the end of the song.

To see this performance as some sort of racist display seems perverse. The National Front had, since the late 1970s, attempted to appropriate the flag as a racist symbol, but Morrissey does not treat the flag with reverence. If there is a nationalist agenda here, it is anti-American rather than racist – the song itself laments the bland effects of globalization on British culture, and Morrissey’s declaration that “London is dead” does not seem to go down well with many of the crowd; Madness are a London band. If anything, it is this statement that seems to have particularly riled some Madness fans. It should also be emphasized that the “skinhead backdrop” depicts two skinhead girls – unusual figures, in that they have close-cropped hair unlike the longer style usually worn by female skinheads. The girls in the picture are somewhat androgynous, and Morrissey’s choice of this image profoundly undermines the intensely masculine skinhead stereotype and reflects the blurring of gender stereotypes Morrissey has undertaken throughout his career. Morrissey had similarly “queered” skinhead imagery through his choice of T-shirt and make-up when meeting Stuart Maconie the previous year. Had Morrissey chosen a more conventional image of male skinheads, the “message” of the backdrop would be rather different.

From this moment on, Morrissey becomes the target of abuse from some of the crowd, which grows steadily throughout his set. The footage shows various missiles (usually plastic water bottles, it would seem) being thrown at the stage, though most of them fall short – they are not, after all, being thrown by Morrissey’s fans, but by people further back. It is not a “hail” of missiles, and Morrissey is not “bottled off ”, as would later be reported. Most of the people in shot seem to be on Morrissey’s side. Interestingly, the footage does not clearly show a single “skinhead” in front of the stage – pretty much everyone has fairly long hair. Morrissey is also the target of verbal abuse – “wanker” is a popular insult, and a small number of people can be seen making the “wanker” gesture or giving him two fingers as the set goes on.

John H. Baker then mentions a 2009 online article by fan Johnnie Craig which exaggerated the event to comply with NME's report but the supposedly terrifying “bald giants” and "hate-filled missiles" are conspicuous only by their absence from the contemporary footage.

Craig’s depiction of events seems, to say the least, “coloured” by subsequent accounts and the “folk devil” stereotype of skinheads as racist imbeciles. Chris, a skinhead since 1979 and a big Madness fan, provides another perspective. He describes a very different atmosphere, with Finsbury Park full of a largely good-natured crowd of Madness fans, including many families as well as quite a few skinheads. It was a very hot day and many of the crowd had been drinking heavily by the time Morrissey was preparing for his entrance. Chris was quite close to the front and found himself next to some working-class men in their forties singing football chants. These men were, according to Chris, not skinheads but “your average guy you see down the pub”. Chris says he rather liked The Smiths himself and was looking forward to seeing Morrissey perform, but he was surprised at his presence on the bill since many skinheads viewed Morrissey and his fans as “weirdoes and poofters” – which makes one think that some of the crowd may have objected to Morrissey’s performance on the grounds of his perceived sexuality as much as anything else. Chris says that the crowd became quite rowdy during Morrissey’s set and that keeping his footing was difficult at times (a not uncommon experience at big gigs). He did not notice the backdrop until after the gig, when he viewed some photographs taken by a friend, and says that as far as he could tell Morrissey’s antics with the flag did not bother the crowd.

The main problem, he claims, was caused by the “blokes” mentioned earlier, whose booze-fuelled impatience for the arrival of Madness led them to shout abuse at Morrissey throughout his set, including charming remarks like “I’d rather be a Paki than a Smiths fan.” Despite this, Chris maintains that “there were no Nazi skinheads sieg-heiling at that gig”, which conflicts with much of the subsequent media reportage. His account of the affair is of considerable interest because, as far as I know, no one has ever bothered to ask a real, living skinhead what he made of Morrissey’s performance.

The footage shows Morrissey consulting with his band about half way through the set and gesturing at the set-list: he is evidently deciding to cut the set short. After nine songs Morrissey abruptly walks off stage, swiftly followed by his band. His performance was followed by Madness’s live return, which was ecstatically received by the crowd. Morrissey proceeded to disappoint his fans by cancelling his appearance at the second date, blaming his early exit on “the abysmal behaviour of a small group of loathsome yobbos” [Bret 2004]– perhaps the drunken racists mentioned by Chris.

So people like Kathy Burke shouldn't always believe what they hear. It was an accident that Morrissey ever ended up playing that festival at Finsbury Park, North London on 8th August 1992, at all. It was organised to celebrate headliners Madness, inactive since 1986, re-forming for a one-off concert. Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Flowered Up and The Farm were listed on the first bill. When tickets were snapped up, a second date on Sunday, 9th August was added. It wasn't until shortly before the event, that an opening for Morrissey to play came up, which he agreed to fill:

The Farm were removed from the bill for both dates, despite the fact that many of their fans had already bought tickets to the gig. They were replaced by Gallon Drunk, a London band whose work had been critically acclaimed but never popular, and, by contrast, one of the best-known British performers of recent musical history: Morrissey.

Morrissey’s brief performance at Madstock – he was on stage for little more than half an hour – has come to assume an importance in relation to his career that no one could have imagined at the time. Despite the fact that his set was videoed and recorded, as well as witnessed by thousands of people, it has come to assume a grotesquely distorted character as a major piece of evidence in the case against Morrissey, for those who wish to depict him as a flag-waving British nationalist with a nasty racist streak. A great deal of the subsequent discussion of Finsbury Park simply replicates the entirely hostile account of the event given, notoriously, in the edition of the NME dated 22nd August, 1992 (Fadele et al. 1992).

At least poor cruelly-ejected Malarkey would agree. Misinformation and cemented minds keep errors in circulation, ensuring harms last.

 

[j*e*t]

In this video Kathy talks about growimg up in poverty and visits a new writer in a smilar situation. It looks to me like the new writer has the Vauxhall and I LP on her shelf (2:57)!

 

[DagenhamDan]

Seeing as Kathy Burke was also a skinhead, according to a comment above, I'm going to scratch the sore of Madstock again, with the help of John H. Baker, still a pop culture and Biblical scholar in Westminster, who in 2011 for the same tome, wrote, 'In the Spirit of ’69? Morrissey and the Skinhead Cult'.

(and just to say, real racism is playing out elsewhere, as this description of current full-throttle anti-Chinese prejudice shows.)

First, John H. Baker sketches a concise history of the different waves of skinheads, group names, features , social contexts and influences, emphasising the original generative energy from Jamaican immigrants and musicians, gradually mimicked and expanded by disenfranchised working class British youth.

Next, he probes Morrissey's engagement with skinheads, referring in particular to the video for Our Frank.



Then he looks at what exactly happened at Madstock.

Signs of the trouble to come were noticeable during Gallon Drunk’s set earlier in the afternoon: several objects had been thrown at the band, and they had been the target of some abuse. Morrissey’s slot was awkwardly timed: the huge crowd had just enjoyed Ian Dury’s set and were growing impatient for the arrival of Madness. Morrissey had chosen an extremely striking image of two skinhead girls – a cropped version of a picture taken by Derek Ridgers in Brighton in 1980 – to be used as the backdrop for his performance, and had decided that it would be appropriate to face thousands of drunken Madness fans wearing a gold lamé shirt – that Liberace would probably have rejected as excessively camp – open to the waist to reveal a lean bare torso.

Contemporary footage shows him walking onstage to the esoterically dramatic sound of Klaus Nomi’s ‘Wayward Sisters’ and receiving a generally positive reception. Crucially, he holds a Union flag, which he drops onto the stage before heading over to the microphone and greeting the crowd with a shriek. What transpired over the next 40 minutes or so – or, at least, subsequent accounts of it – has haunted Morrissey ever since, and has been repeatedly used to link him to the skinhead cult in the most negative of ways.

Fortunately, Morrissey’s set was videoed by someone in the crowd and can be viewed online. There is also at least one bootleg audio recording extant. The footage shows that the area closest to the stage was occupied, unsurprisingly, by Morrissey fans, who supported their hero throughout his set by clapping and cheering. Nevertheless, Morrissey fans were a tiny minority at this gig. Morrissey was in the unusual position (for him) of performing to an audience who were largely indifferent to him. This explains why his set was not received with undiluted adulation, and also explains the irritation the footage clearly shows him feeling as the set goes on. Three years later he would, for the only time in his career as a solo artist, agree to tour as a support act – to David Bowie – and the tour ended in disaster when Morrissey abruptly quit, apparently angry at having to perform to largely indifferent crowds of Bowie fans.

The set begins well. Morrissey is cheered on his entrance and upon the conclusion of his first song. However, the mood begins to sour during the second song, ‘Glamorous Glue’, during which the singer, notoriously, picks up the Union flag he had carried on earlier and proceeds to wave it about. He at no point “wraps himself ” in it, as was later alleged – indeed, in my opinion he treats it with scant respect, whipping the stage with it, flailing about with it, and finally tossing it into the crowd before the end of the song.

To see this performance as some sort of racist display seems perverse. The National Front had, since the late 1970s, attempted to appropriate the flag as a racist symbol, but Morrissey does not treat the flag with reverence. If there is a nationalist agenda here, it is anti-American rather than racist – the song itself laments the bland effects of globalization on British culture, and Morrissey’s declaration that “London is dead” does not seem to go down well with many of the crowd; Madness are a London band. If anything, it is this statement that seems to have particularly riled some Madness fans. It should also be emphasized that the “skinhead backdrop” depicts two skinhead girls – unusual figures, in that they have close-cropped hair unlike the longer style usually worn by female skinheads. The girls in the picture are somewhat androgynous, and Morrissey’s choice of this image profoundly undermines the intensely masculine skinhead stereotype and reflects the blurring of gender stereotypes Morrissey has undertaken throughout his career. Morrissey had similarly “queered” skinhead imagery through his choice of T-shirt and make-up when meeting Stuart Maconie the previous year. Had Morrissey chosen a more conventional image of male skinheads, the “message” of the backdrop would be rather different.

From this moment on, Morrissey becomes the target of abuse from some of the crowd, which grows steadily throughout his set. The footage shows various missiles (usually plastic water bottles, it would seem) being thrown at the stage, though most of them fall short – they are not, after all, being thrown by Morrissey’s fans, but by people further back. It is not a “hail” of missiles, and Morrissey is not “bottled off ”, as would later be reported. Most of the people in shot seem to be on Morrissey’s side. Interestingly, the footage does not clearly show a single “skinhead” in front of the stage – pretty much everyone has fairly long hair. Morrissey is also the target of verbal abuse – “wanker” is a popular insult, and a small number of people can be seen making the “wanker” gesture or giving him two fingers as the set goes on.

John H. Baker then mentions a 2009 online article by fan Johnnie Craig which exaggerated the event to comply with NME's report but the supposedly terrifying “bald giants” and "hate-filled missiles" are conspicuous only by their absence from the contemporary footage.

Craig’s depiction of events seems, to say the least, “coloured” by subsequent accounts and the “folk devil” stereotype of skinheads as racist imbeciles. Chris, a skinhead since 1979 and a big Madness fan, provides another perspective. He describes a very different atmosphere, with Finsbury Park full of a largely good-natured crowd of Madness fans, including many families as well as quite a few skinheads. It was a very hot day and many of the crowd had been drinking heavily by the time Morrissey was preparing for his entrance. Chris was quite close to the front and found himself next to some working-class men in their forties singing football chants. These men were, according to Chris, not skinheads but “your average guy you see down the pub”. Chris says he rather liked The Smiths himself and was looking forward to seeing Morrissey perform, but he was surprised at his presence on the bill since many skinheads viewed Morrissey and his fans as “weirdoes and poofters” – which makes one think that some of the crowd may have objected to Morrissey’s performance on the grounds of his perceived sexuality as much as anything else. Chris says that the crowd became quite rowdy during Morrissey’s set and that keeping his footing was difficult at times (a not uncommon experience at big gigs). He did not notice the backdrop until after the gig, when he viewed some photographs taken by a friend, and says that as far as he could tell Morrissey’s antics with the flag did not bother the crowd.

The main problem, he claims, was caused by the “blokes” mentioned earlier, whose booze-fuelled impatience for the arrival of Madness led them to shout abuse at Morrissey throughout his set, including charming remarks like “I’d rather be a Paki than a Smiths fan.” Despite this, Chris maintains that “there were no Nazi skinheads sieg-heiling at that gig”, which conflicts with much of the subsequent media reportage. His account of the affair is of considerable interest because, as far as I know, no one has ever bothered to ask a real, living skinhead what he made of Morrissey’s performance.

The footage shows Morrissey consulting with his band about half way through the set and gesturing at the set-list: he is evidently deciding to cut the set short. After nine songs Morrissey abruptly walks off stage, swiftly followed by his band. His performance was followed by Madness’s live return, which was ecstatically received by the crowd. Morrissey proceeded to disappoint his fans by cancelling his appearance at the second date, blaming his early exit on “the abysmal behaviour of a small group of loathsome yobbos” [Bret 2004]– perhaps the drunken racists mentioned by Chris.

So people like Kathy Burke shouldn't always believe what they hear. It was an accident that Morrissey ever ended up playing that festival at Finsbury Park, North London on 8th August 1992, at all. It was organised to celebrate headliners Madness, inactive since 1986, re-forming for a one-off concert. Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Flowered Up and The Farm were listed on the first bill. When tickets were snapped up, a second date on Sunday, 9th August was added. It wasn't until shortly before the event, that an opening for Morrissey to play came up, which he agreed to fill:

The Farm were removed from the bill for both dates, despite the fact that many of their fans had already bought tickets to the gig. They were replaced by Gallon Drunk, a London band whose work had been critically acclaimed but never popular, and, by contrast, one of the best-known British performers of recent musical history: Morrissey.

Morrissey’s brief performance at Madstock – he was on stage for little more than half an hour – has come to assume an importance in relation to his career that no one could have imagined at the time. Despite the fact that his set was videoed and recorded, as well as witnessed by thousands of people, it has come to assume a grotesquely distorted character as a major piece of evidence in the case against Morrissey, for those who wish to depict him as a flag-waving British nationalist with a nasty racist streak. A great deal of the subsequent discussion of Finsbury Park simply replicates the entirely hostile account of the event given, notoriously, in the edition of the NME dated 22nd August, 1992 (Fadele et al. 1992).

At least poor cruelly-ejected Malarkey would agree. Misinformation and cemented minds keep errors in circulation, ensuring harms last.

Was there that day in '92, was a great day out but I thought before the gig that Moz wouldn't go down to well with the Madness crowd. Had a few skinhead mates back then and apart from liking a few Smiths tracks, he wasn't really on their radar. (and he played no Smiths songs), I think he was far more interested in skinhead culture than they were in him. But got to meet Janice Long, 'Hi Janice, do you know what time Moz is coming on?', 'Dunno' was her reply and off she trotted.
But yes, the furore the NME created the next week was completely over the top because what they reported bore no relation to what actually happened that day, they were simply just looking to smear him. Again.
As much as I love him, and due to the fact he never plays greatest hits sets, I think he is much better when playing to just his own crowd rather than festivals.

 

[nicky wire's legs]

yesterday i watched an hour long video on youtube with james dreyfuss her co-star on gimme gimme gimme in the 90s,she has has done the same with him,totally disowned anything they did in the past.great video about how he was cancelled because graham linehan asked him to sign a petition,james thought there would be loads of celebrities signing but alas there were very few so he was cancelled.
on a sidenote he did an audio thing for dr who and everything went fine and when the product came out they erased a picture from him on the cover,very similar to how M feels with being erased from all things the smiths.
great video if you have an hour,andrew gold/heretics on youtube.

Saw that one! Andrew gold's one of my fave youtube hosts.

 

[gordyboy9]

Saw that one! Andrew gold's one of my fave youtube hosts.

yeah nick hes very balanced with his interviews.
he worked for the bbc and wrote stuff for a programme but when it came to presenting they said we dont need you and brought in someone from a diverse background to present the stuff he had wrote,its a box ticking exercise.

 

[j*e*t]

Saw that one! Andrew gold's one of my fave youtube hosts.

Did you notice that in the interview with James Dreyfus Andrew Gold identified himself as Jewish? Just wondering how this fits in with your love of Hitler (as stated by you on page 701 in the It's not about politics thread, November 3rd 2023).

 

[Les Tameside]

Seeing as Kathy Burke was also a skinhead, according to a comment above, I'm going to scratch the sore of Madstock again, with the help of John H. Baker, still a pop culture and Biblical scholar in Westminster, who in 2011 for the same tome, wrote, 'In the Spirit of ’69? Morrissey and the Skinhead Cult'.

(and just to say, real racism is playing out elsewhere, as this description of current full-throttle anti-Chinese prejudice shows.)

First, John H. Baker sketches a concise history of the different waves of skinheads, group names, features , social contexts and influences, emphasising the original generative energy from Jamaican immigrants and musicians, gradually mimicked and expanded by disenfranchised working class British youth.

Next, he probes Morrissey's engagement with skinheads, referring in particular to the video for Our Frank.



Then he looks at what exactly happened at Madstock.

Signs of the trouble to come were noticeable during Gallon Drunk’s set earlier in the afternoon: several objects had been thrown at the band, and they had been the target of some abuse. Morrissey’s slot was awkwardly timed: the huge crowd had just enjoyed Ian Dury’s set and were growing impatient for the arrival of Madness. Morrissey had chosen an extremely striking image of two skinhead girls – a cropped version of a picture taken by Derek Ridgers in Brighton in 1980 – to be used as the backdrop for his performance, and had decided that it would be appropriate to face thousands of drunken Madness fans wearing a gold lamé shirt – that Liberace would probably have rejected as excessively camp – open to the waist to reveal a lean bare torso.

Contemporary footage shows him walking onstage to the esoterically dramatic sound of Klaus Nomi’s ‘Wayward Sisters’ and receiving a generally positive reception. Crucially, he holds a Union flag, which he drops onto the stage before heading over to the microphone and greeting the crowd with a shriek. What transpired over the next 40 minutes or so – or, at least, subsequent accounts of it – has haunted Morrissey ever since, and has been repeatedly used to link him to the skinhead cult in the most negative of ways.

Fortunately, Morrissey’s set was videoed by someone in the crowd and can be viewed online. There is also at least one bootleg audio recording extant. The footage shows that the area closest to the stage was occupied, unsurprisingly, by Morrissey fans, who supported their hero throughout his set by clapping and cheering. Nevertheless, Morrissey fans were a tiny minority at this gig. Morrissey was in the unusual position (for him) of performing to an audience who were largely indifferent to him. This explains why his set was not received with undiluted adulation, and also explains the irritation the footage clearly shows him feeling as the set goes on. Three years later he would, for the only time in his career as a solo artist, agree to tour as a support act – to David Bowie – and the tour ended in disaster when Morrissey abruptly quit, apparently angry at having to perform to largely indifferent crowds of Bowie fans.

The set begins well. Morrissey is cheered on his entrance and upon the conclusion of his first song. However, the mood begins to sour during the second song, ‘Glamorous Glue’, during which the singer, notoriously, picks up the Union flag he had carried on earlier and proceeds to wave it about. He at no point “wraps himself ” in it, as was later alleged – indeed, in my opinion he treats it with scant respect, whipping the stage with it, flailing about with it, and finally tossing it into the crowd before the end of the song.

To see this performance as some sort of racist display seems perverse. The National Front had, since the late 1970s, attempted to appropriate the flag as a racist symbol, but Morrissey does not treat the flag with reverence. If there is a nationalist agenda here, it is anti-American rather than racist – the song itself laments the bland effects of globalization on British culture, and Morrissey’s declaration that “London is dead” does not seem to go down well with many of the crowd; Madness are a London band. If anything, it is this statement that seems to have particularly riled some Madness fans. It should also be emphasized that the “skinhead backdrop” depicts two skinhead girls – unusual figures, in that they have close-cropped hair unlike the longer style usually worn by female skinheads. The girls in the picture are somewhat androgynous, and Morrissey’s choice of this image profoundly undermines the intensely masculine skinhead stereotype and reflects the blurring of gender stereotypes Morrissey has undertaken throughout his career. Morrissey had similarly “queered” skinhead imagery through his choice of T-shirt and make-up when meeting Stuart Maconie the previous year. Had Morrissey chosen a more conventional image of male skinheads, the “message” of the backdrop would be rather different.

From this moment on, Morrissey becomes the target of abuse from some of the crowd, which grows steadily throughout his set. The footage shows various missiles (usually plastic water bottles, it would seem) being thrown at the stage, though most of them fall short – they are not, after all, being thrown by Morrissey’s fans, but by people further back. It is not a “hail” of missiles, and Morrissey is not “bottled off ”, as would later be reported. Most of the people in shot seem to be on Morrissey’s side. Interestingly, the footage does not clearly show a single “skinhead” in front of the stage – pretty much everyone has fairly long hair. Morrissey is also the target of verbal abuse – “wanker” is a popular insult, and a small number of people can be seen making the “wanker” gesture or giving him two fingers as the set goes on.

John H. Baker then mentions a 2009 online article by fan Johnnie Craig which exaggerated the event to comply with NME's report but the supposedly terrifying “bald giants” and "hate-filled missiles" are conspicuous only by their absence from the contemporary footage.

Craig’s depiction of events seems, to say the least, “coloured” by subsequent accounts and the “folk devil” stereotype of skinheads as racist imbeciles. Chris, a skinhead since 1979 and a big Madness fan, provides another perspective. He describes a very different atmosphere, with Finsbury Park full of a largely good-natured crowd of Madness fans, including many families as well as quite a few skinheads. It was a very hot day and many of the crowd had been drinking heavily by the time Morrissey was preparing for his entrance. Chris was quite close to the front and found himself next to some working-class men in their forties singing football chants. These men were, according to Chris, not skinheads but “your average guy you see down the pub”. Chris says he rather liked The Smiths himself and was looking forward to seeing Morrissey perform, but he was surprised at his presence on the bill since many skinheads viewed Morrissey and his fans as “weirdoes and poofters” – which makes one think that some of the crowd may have objected to Morrissey’s performance on the grounds of his perceived sexuality as much as anything else. Chris says that the crowd became quite rowdy during Morrissey’s set and that keeping his footing was difficult at times (a not uncommon experience at big gigs). He did not notice the backdrop until after the gig, when he viewed some photographs taken by a friend, and says that as far as he could tell Morrissey’s antics with the flag did not bother the crowd.

The main problem, he claims, was caused by the “blokes” mentioned earlier, whose booze-fuelled impatience for the arrival of Madness led them to shout abuse at Morrissey throughout his set, including charming remarks like “I’d rather be a Paki than a Smiths fan.” Despite this, Chris maintains that “there were no Nazi skinheads sieg-heiling at that gig”, which conflicts with much of the subsequent media reportage. His account of the affair is of considerable interest because, as far as I know, no one has ever bothered to ask a real, living skinhead what he made of Morrissey’s performance.

The footage shows Morrissey consulting with his band about half way through the set and gesturing at the set-list: he is evidently deciding to cut the set short. After nine songs Morrissey abruptly walks off stage, swiftly followed by his band. His performance was followed by Madness’s live return, which was ecstatically received by the crowd. Morrissey proceeded to disappoint his fans by cancelling his appearance at the second date, blaming his early exit on “the abysmal behaviour of a small group of loathsome yobbos” [Bret 2004]– perhaps the drunken racists mentioned by Chris.

So people like Kathy Burke shouldn't always believe what they hear. It was an accident that Morrissey ever ended up playing that festival at Finsbury Park, North London on 8th August 1992, at all. It was organised to celebrate headliners Madness, inactive since 1986, re-forming for a one-off concert. Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Flowered Up and The Farm were listed on the first bill. When tickets were snapped up, a second date on Sunday, 9th August was added. It wasn't until shortly before the event, that an opening for Morrissey to play came up, which he agreed to fill:

The Farm were removed from the bill for both dates, despite the fact that many of their fans had already bought tickets to the gig. They were replaced by Gallon Drunk, a London band whose work had been critically acclaimed but never popular, and, by contrast, one of the best-known British performers of recent musical history: Morrissey.

Morrissey’s brief performance at Madstock – he was on stage for little more than half an hour – has come to assume an importance in relation to his career that no one could have imagined at the time. Despite the fact that his set was videoed and recorded, as well as witnessed by thousands of people, it has come to assume a grotesquely distorted character as a major piece of evidence in the case against Morrissey, for those who wish to depict him as a flag-waving British nationalist with a nasty racist streak. A great deal of the subsequent discussion of Finsbury Park simply replicates the entirely hostile account of the event given, notoriously, in the edition of the NME dated 22nd August, 1992 (Fadele et al. 1992).

At least poor cruelly-ejected Malarkey would agree. Misinformation and cemented minds keep errors in circulation, ensuring harms last.

‘Cruelly ejected’? She was here just a few weeks ago?

 

[Juan Dulces]

The difference between Morrissey and many others...regarding politics...is that he actively talks about his. He's going to put himself out there each time, and he 100% knew from the beginning what being outspoken about that kind of thing can do to another's viewpoint of you, in general.

As many here have stated...more specifically, of course it seems like 'the cool thing' today is to demonize Morrissey by publicly 'not agreeing' with his politics. Growing up in Pennsylvania US, nobody really knew who Morrissey even was in the 80s or 90s. Sounds dumb, because that was an appropriate time period to know his name at least, but most people around me (thousands) listened to American artists - punk/rap/rock/metal/r&b/country. If someone when I was 16 asked me who my favorite musical artist was, I would say Morrissey, and they would always be like "Who?". But today, many people globally know who Morrissey is. So, nowadays when somebody mentions Morrissey's politics, it's usually in the vein of 'I used to really love and respect him and his music, until...' --- making them (at the very least) seem interesting, intelligent, cool and sophisticated for even liking Morrissey to begin with. That is I think the point of them even mentioning him at all.

Flipping Bozos.

 

[Crisstti]

The difference between Morrissey and many others...regarding politics...is that he actively talks about his. He's going to put himself out there each time, and he 100% knew from the beginning what being outspoken about that kind of thing can do to another's viewpoint of you, in general.

As many here have stated...more specifically, of course it seems like 'the cool thing' today is to demonize Morrissey by publicly 'not agreeing' with his politics. Growing up in Pennsylvania US, nobody really knew who Morrissey even was in the 80s or 90s. Sounds dumb, because that was an appropriate time period to know his name at least, but most people around me (thousands) listened to American artists - punk/rap/rock/metal/r&b/country. If someone when I was 16 asked me who my favorite musical artist was, I would say Morrissey, and they would always be like "Who?". But today, many people globally know who Morrissey is. So, nowadays when somebody mentions Morrissey's politics, it's usually in the vein of 'I used to really love and respect him and his music, until...' --- making them (at the very least) seem interesting, intelligent, cool and sophisticated for even liking Morrissey to begin with. That is I think the point of them even mentioning him at all.

Flipping Bozos.

I think that's sport on, my friend.

 

[BrokenFrame]

Other artists get away with being controversial. Look at rap music. People are so boring.