Greenock has a bad reputation. It's not so much a one-horse
town, as a no-horse town. If you tether your steed to a lamp-post, you're
likely to come back and find that its shoes have been stolen, its hair has been
cut off and there's someone waiting to fight you for what's left of it.
Greenock Town Hall, a late-Victorian building famous for its 250-feet high
tower, is only a couple of miles from where some of my lot landed at the end of
the 1850s. They liked it so much that they decided to go back to a life of
poverty in Ireland for a few years, then try their luck further up the Clyde.
I'd not been in the building for about 20 years, and I'd never been in the
hall, proper. The bar had been set up in a room I recognised from a past life
and, thankfully, the noise and general confusion prevented me from seeing any
ghosts of people long dead and much missed.
I'd not seen Morrissey on a stage for a similar length of
time, back in the days when not just he, but everyone was thinner, lighter
on their feet and had fewer grey hairs. Of course, tickets cost a lot less back
then, too, and you almost always got value for money. About 10 minutes before
he and his band of merry men emerged, I heard a song I'd not heard for an
even longer time, one I used to play from my mother's collection; Max
Bygraves' version of Lionel Bart's "Fings ain't wot they used t'be".
I sang along to it, and wondered how many others in the audience not only knew
all the words, but felt that it was highly appropriate, under the
circumstances. I also wondered how many of the skinheads, fat-heads, no-necks
and general ne'er-do-wells in the crowd felt that The Smiths spoke to them back
in the day.
The lights went out, the crowd sang "Morrissey,
Morrissey, Morrissey" more passionately than Greenock Morton supporters
would shout for the team at Cappielow, and on he came, shaking hands with
people at the front and trying hard to be a jolly fellow. I'd not been
able to get "The First Of The Gang To Die" out of my head for
days, so it was great to hear that as the opener. Then came "Still
Ill". The crowd went wild, and he asked how the audience could still be
pleased to hear such songs. Don't be silly! Off came his jacket.
I've never been a fan of his solo material, so many of the
songs meant nothing, but I recognised some from the last album and the current
one. Put it this way, he didn't do "Every Day Is Like Sunday". He did
"Girlfriend in A Coma", not one of my favourites, but I sang along,
anyway. He changed his shirt from a rather tight brown one, which matched those
of his band, to a black one with a more flattering fit, to match mine, I hope.
There was an obvious lull in the set around the 40-minute mark, with a few dull
and boring slower songs, then the pace picked up, before a blistering version
of "How Soon Is Now". Off came the shirt, off went the band. A measly
one-song encore ("Irish Blood, English Heart") followed, with Moz in
a canary-yellow number, then he flew away, around an hour and 20 minutes after
he started.
Was it worth 32 quid? No, of course not, but it WAS
Morrissey, and I justified it by telling myself I'd not seen him before, and I'd
never see him again. A few drunks at the back grumbled on their way out of the
hall, deflated, perhaps, by the sudden ending but, all in all, he stole their
hearts away.
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