[continued from the previous post.]
Some/many/most of you will have guessed that the band I passed up on seeing that night was The Smiths, but if you are like the thirtysomething I spoke to recently who had not even heard of The Smiths – The Smiths were an indie pop band who were around for about five years in the 1980s but split up because of differences between the two founding members: Johnny Marr, the guitarist, and Morrisssey, the vocalist. They recorded what is a contender for the greatest-ever pop song, but also they sang about loneliness, isolation, a shyness that is criminally vulgar, repressed emotion, and longing, often in an arch and ironic manner which was quintessentially British but seemed to resonate with listeners all around the world in a way that resulted in the band having arguably the most devoted of fanbases. It is pointless to speculate about how things might have turned out if someone had taken a different turning at a fork in the road but I truly believe that if I had attended that gig all those years ago my whole life would have been altered as The Smiths normalised being candid about expressing your feelings at what would have been a hinge moment for me – first time living away from home – when my default response to any new opportunity or invitation was generally “no, thanks”. They do say that when you get old your regrets will be predominately those of omission rather than commission. I am finding that to be the case.
What really cemented The Smiths into my consciousness was when they were profiled on one of the UK’s premier arts and culture programmes – The South Bank Show – but that was broadcast about a month after they split up.
I thought I had a chance to right that wrong a decade and a half later when Morrissey returned to the city to play a concert at a venue with a relatively modest capacity – just over a thousand – but he was at the time, I think, between record labels, and he also might have been attracted by the history of legendary music acts that had previously played there such as Sabbath, The Police, Slade, Queen, the Manics. This venue was The Brangwyn Hall, so named because it houses 16 large wall panels painted by Frank Brangwyn which were rejected by the original commissioner because they were so out of character with those surroundings. The gig I attended then was okay, but it just wasn’t like the old days anymore, it wasn’t like those days. The most memorable thing about it was something I learned afterwards which was when the person I went with told me that as we were in the crush just in front of stage the person directly behind them had used the pounding beat of, appropriately enough, Boy Racer to rhythmically grind against them which if I had known about at the time would have resulted in a usually even-tempered person such as myself having to intervene.
I have seen Morrissey a couple more times since then, the last was just after his friend Steve Strange, Visage frontman, had died because there were pictures of him projected onto the backdrop prior to Morrissey coming on stage. I mention this because that means it would have been 2015 and therefore three or four years before Morrissey got a lot of media coverage for discussing matters that were not related to his music. I am glad I went to those concerts because I would never again go to see him perform in spite of him being on tour in the UK later this year – he will not miss me. It is ironic that after 42 years I once again would not attend a gig of his and it is not because he has reverted back to wearing his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly button – in my old age I have grown much more tolerant of how people express themselves sartorially. No, the reason I won’t go to see him, not even if he was only a minute’s walk from where I live and that is obviously not going to happen again, is the same reason, or at least one of the reasons, that Johnny Marr will not re-convene what is left of the band. There must be something about having the surname Ma[her][rr] that makes you pigheadedly obstinate. I wonder if Morrissey’s prejudice will keep him warm tonight.
