An off-colour prophet

Mozza at the London Palladium, 14th May 2006.

So this is where I have to come clean and confess to being a Mozza fan, for oh, say the last twenty years. It began when I first started working full-time and met up with someone who knew SO much more about the music scene than I had ever imagined- well, they had worked in HMV as a Saturday girl for a couple of years. I know that lots of people don’t get it and will ‘never be convinced he’s any cop’ (yes that’s you vodkaslut), and I totally understand their point of view, but to me he was a hero and always will be. He/They offered complex lyrical and narrative structures, and a poetic anti-establishment sensibility at a time of my life when all around me was nothing but frilly shirted dullards and popinjays. Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were SO not my thing.

So after all that build up, it comes as a bit of a shock to find myself (even thinking of) using words like lacklustre, disappointing, and sluggish, to describe Mozza’s performance at the London Palladium on Sunday night. But sluggish he was.

It all started fairly well with the thunderous vibrating chords of How soon is now? shaking the rafters, and continued with the last single You have Killed me and I Will See You In Far Off Places (love that Turkish bazaar vibe), both from the latest album Ringleader of the Tormentors, plus a couple more newies. By the time we got to the classic Smiths song Girlfriend in a Coma I was getting rather excited, despite being about half a mile from the stage and having to peer through old fashioned theatre goggles like a street urchin who’s crept in from the cold to see some shady musical hall shindig. But then it all seemed to fall apart.

To be honest, I don’t think it was all his fault, I probably would have been a bit disappointed whatever, as I had worked it up in my mind to be more than it was- I spent the afternoon before looking at my old records and reminded myself of the lyrics of favourite Smiths songs (Shyness is nice, and/ shyness can stop you/ from doing all the things in life/ that you want to Were ever truer words spoken?). The main problem is I think that I really wanted to see The Smiths in their heyday and not an aged, slightly potbellied Morrissey.

I WAS greatly entertained when the great man started moaning about Radio 1 not playing his new single The Youngest Was The Most Loved and spent quite a bit of time complaining about it in the vein of "what do you f***ing have to do to get a single played on the radio in this country" and "you really shouldn't applaud that kind of song- it's too depressing, APPARENTLY". He later apologised for swearing, if I remember rightly, because he didn’t’ want to offend the ghost of Danny La Rue and other ‘Saturday night at the London Palladium’ luminaries. Ah bless.

The man really is a mess of contradictions and I think that’s what makes him so intriguing too so many people. In him they see someone who even more confused and mixed up than they are, and that makes them feel better, or marginally less alone, in a gauche naïve kind of way (I hold my hands up to having felt this way myself). I do still love him I have to say, once a hero always a hero, but maybe I have outgrown the worst of my own melancholic excesses, and therefore can’t quite identify with him the way I used to.

Taking everything into consideration, I’m glad I shelled out to see the man of misery, would have been down the front trying to touch the hem of the prophet if I could, and Morrissey’s voice I can report is just as poignant as ever, but £35 to perch like a limpet on a mountain rock is no joke, and I really think he could have made a bit more attentive to the troops. Despite earlier football terraces chanting of Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey etc, there was actually some desperate ‘it can’t be true’ style booing when Morrissey walked off stage without so much as a goodbye and the expected encore failed to arrive. Now that just seemed rude.