Leeds Town Hall, Thursday April 20th 2006
The Story...Bloody hell, this is really happening! I'm going to see Morrissey! Soon I'm heading under the Dark Arches railway bridges, negotiating City Square and circling Park Square looking for parking places. I visit The Victoria behind the Town Hall for a quick toilet-stop. The pub is thronged with t-shirts, quiffs and national health spec’s. Big equipment pantechnicons and juggernauts block the rear of the Town Hall. I begin to queue on the Town Hall steps, flanking the famous stone lions, and I’m thinking about a recent TV profile of Alan Bennett, where he strode down the steps to The Headrow, gawped at by loafing students with plainly no idea who he was. Security men warn me audibly that cameras are forbidden, that body-searches are being conducted and any cameras found will be confiscated. My nerve fails me, and I jog back to Park Square to safely stash my brand new digital. Now I don’t have to stress about taking photo’s – in a way they’ve done me a favour!
As I enter through the hallowed portals my attention is inevitably drawn to the fabulous (and fairly fabulously priced) array of available merchandising artefacts, notably, Morrissey y-fronts complete with a monogrammed crest! I resist the underwear, but start forking out for souvenir t-shirts. A small bar at the rear of the main hall strikes me as fairly civilised, dispensing lager in the inevitable plastic pint glasses. Naively, I assume that people are buying the lager to drink….but I shall learn! One of the lads manning the trestle table bar noisily hurls empty bottles into a large, plastic bin – but is warned by a colleague “not to do that when Morrissey’s on!” The hall is already heavy with cigarette smoke.
The support band – Sons & Daughters from Glasgow – fronted by a girl singer possessed of the stiffest, most unnatural, forced stage movements I’ve ever seen, don’t particularly impress. They’re OK, nothing actually wrong with them – and God knows it must be a thankless task opening for Mozzer! Their girl bass-player stands statue-still, and the singer attempts to throttle the guitarist with her microphone lead on one song. Credit where it’s due, the thin guitarist, all waistcoat and quiff, is fairly cool (a la Clash). Another song is “about murdering your girlfriend” and the unkind thought occurs that, as long as the girlfriend in question is currently caterwauling with Sons & Daughters, it’d get my wholehearted support. They’re reasonably well received by the crowd – but the place is now filling up to really-quite-packed proportions, and lots of people are intent on jockeying for viewing positions and standing space. I stand at front left, maybe a dozen yards from the stage. It’s all a bit physically stressful. Some people continue to push and shove their way forwards, squeezing past me, one or two intrepid souls (or should that be twats?) attempting to ferry 3 or 4 pints of lager with them. This, remember, is Leeds – and, while the general atmosphere is excited, lively, friendly enough, there is a fairly high “knobhead quotient”. As the shows progress I’ll grow used to this, even amused by it – you don’t, let’s face it, have to travel to a Morrissey gig to find knobheads!
The intro tape plays on, testing the patience a little and including, bizarrely, “A Pub With No Beer” by The Dubliners! As an electric, rocking “You’ll Never Walk Alone” ends, the stage lights go down, and loud “Italian piano music” blasts from the speakers. The drum platform is draped in Italian flags. Desultory “Morrissey” football chants break out and the great push forward begins, and, all over, beer starts to fly. Plastic glasses arc and circle in the lights. I'm literally drenched – it’s sudden, wet, shocking – but it’s just delirium, pandemonium, no malice, nothing personal – a beer celebration as shadows start to move onstage, the lights go up and, unbelievably visible and clear, Morrissey arrives to a roar.
Here’s what I've “rescued” of the Leeds show – forgive the scrapbook nature of my jottings.
As the band check their instruments, just before hammering into “First Of The Gang To Die”, Morrissey sends the crowd into a frenzy of approval by singing a snatch of lyrics from “Panic” – “On the Leeds side streets that you slip down…”
Looking up towards the balcony – “Ladies & Gentlemen, Alan Bennett! Made You Look!”
The band are all decked out in white shirts and dark trousers – “All, by mystical coincidence, born and bred in Brighouse!” “No, really, Boz Boorer!” – “Michael Farrell…the man with the horn!”
After introducing Boz Boorer, Gary Day, Matt Walker, Jesse Tobias and Michael Farrell – “And I, I am just a mere cog in the wheel!”
Before “Song From Under The Floorboards” – “This song was written by someone who was born in Leeds!”
“Do You Love Me ? – Even Though I Come From Manchester ?”
“Billy Bremner, Alan Clarke, Tony Harrison…..Have You Heard Of Him? Liars!”
Morrissey peers into the crowd near the front right of the stage, enquires (as he will each night we see him) – “Are you all right, Julia ?”
One lad nearly breeches the security but is manhandled away – “Nice try, so near and yet so far!”
At the end of the concert, Boz Boorer makes a paper plane of his set-list, and floats it, inexpertly, into the mob.
As he leaves the stage, Boz turns back to the crowd, miming “we’re going for a drink” to the audience (but I’m prepared to bet it won’t be in Bridget’s bar in the nearby Victoria!)
On ‘Life Is a Pigsty’, Boz plays two glasses of water with xylophone sticks, eliciting the required “clink, clink” noise – remarkably, this can be heard quite distinctly above the guitars and drums and keyboards.
The backdrop projection is of a thin man in a tight-fitting suit, ‘Sacha Distel’, sitting on a bed playing an acoustic guitar.
On the large gong behind the drum kit (walloped so impressively at the end of “The Youngest Was The Most Loved”) is the word “Tormentors” spelled out in black.
Boz changes guitars between virtually every song. One is a double-necked instrument, painted with the stripes of the Italian flag.
Loads of people in the audiences sport ancient Morrissey and Smiths t-shirts, harking back to tours of yesteryear.
Morrissey looking up and waving to the balcony. A home-made banner hangs over the balcony railings.
“And If The USA Doesn’t Bomb You!” – Morrissey mimes pulling a pin out with his teeth and tossing a hand grenade.
“Over Smashed Human Bones” – accompanied by Morrissey’s high kicks.
Grabbing the maraccas from the drum platform for the climax of one track.
In “Still Ill” England is no longer “mine” but, instead, is “a swine”.
As I head for the tiny back exit of the Town Hall, I trample hundreds of plastic containers underfoot.
The Town Hall staff sneak onto the balcony for a free “peek” at Mozzer.
One girl, crushed or fainted, is hauled out over the front barriers.
“Girlfriend In A Coma” elicits rapture – “You have very strange taste in music!”
Morrissey’s dark shirt tied in a bolero-bow just above his waistband as done with the New York Dolls.
As he chucks his shirt into the crowd, he trots quickly off-stage.
Prior to the encore, all the band link arms and bow. The band laugh as Morrissey “collapses” with emotion.
Best song at Leeds ?- “How Soon Is Now”
As I exit the Town Hall to the strains of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”, it’s accompanied by hordes of bellowing knobheads – all apparently secretly convinced that nobody else knows this record, that it’s a personal secret discovery of their own – and, even more tragically, that by bellowing it they’re as cool as Frank (or Morrissey!) Oh listen to me and my hideous prejudices!
As my taxi drive back out of Leeds, down the Leeds side streets that I slip down, actually passing right by the side of the Town Hall, the streets are awash with Moz look-a-likes.
“I have a fact for you, I know you like your stats, don’t you ? No! Well…”Ringleader Of The Tormentors” is 1st in the album chart in…. ….Malta…..Incredible!”
“May I make one small request ? Would you please all sign my petition….to get the Dingles kicked out of Emmerdale!”
“Reader Meet Author” – only played at Leeds out of our 3 shows.
“Thank you! I love you! You’ve been a fat old wrestler’s idea of a perfect audience!” (Morrissey pays homage to the illustrious televised history of Leeds Town Hall).
Sorry to bore with my memories but that was my first show and it was truly incredible, a wonderful night.
