1986 02 08 From Manchester With Love review Melody Maker

MANCHESTER UNITED

Manchester goes to Liverpool! Penny Kiley reports on the Manchester bands' benefit gig for the Liverpool councillors. Photography: Gary Lornie

"FROM Manchester with love"? It seemed an unlikely idea: there's never been much love lost in the past between Manchester and Liverpool. But suddenly there were three of Manchester's most desirable acts - The Smiths, The Fall, and New Order - all agreeing to devote their names and their talents for the benefit of Liverpool City Council in a unique gig at Liverpool's Royal Court Theatre.

Specifically, the cause was to raise funds for the legal costs of the Council's current High Court appeal against surcharge and disqualification, on which rests the political and financial futures of 48 councillors. Whether the gesture was particularly pro-Liverpool or just anti-Government was never quite clear.

It was Morrissey who'd put this impressive line-up together, after offering support to Derek Hatton and being enthusiastically taken at his word. Derek Hatton, from the stage, gives the official version: "I got home from work one day and there was this bundle of records in the post and with them was a letter from Morrissey offering support... And it took my kids to tell me who Morrissey was!"

The official version from The Smiths was: "The Smiths aren't talking to anyone. They've said their statement is that they're doing the concert." The official version from New Order is their advert in the programme: "Q. Why are we doing this? A. Because we're rebels."

Over to Ronnie Flood in Liverpool, the man behind the legendary "Hatton Rap" single, who's masterminding the event. "They're only 30 miles away and they've seen the problems here. With Liverpool playing Manchester United the next day it's like a double billing."

From 30 miles away it's easy to see what's happening in Liverpool as a good old romantic class struggle. Living with the tensions of perpetual crisis it's not so easy.

Yet the facts directly behind this concert remain. In September 1985 the District Auditor issued surcharge certificates against Liverpool City Council for failing to set a "legal" rate until June, 10 weeks into the financial year. The penalty is £106,000 and disqualification from office for five years and affects each councillor individually. An appeal against the charge is currently being heard in the High Court in London and a "fighting fund" has been set up to cover the legal costs, expected to reach at least £200,000. Hence tonight's concert (the £6 tickets sold out fast) and other spin-offs like a benefit by The Redskins on March 10, a single "Maggies's Farm" (does Bob Dylan know?) by local nonentities the Lloyd Collection, and tonight's merchandising.

"It’s better than Red Wedge," Ronnie Flood had enthused about the line-up, but Red Wedge it wasn't, as The Redskins were only too pleased to point out at the end of the show. Red Wedge, apart from running a lot more smoothly, communicated the harmony and honesty of a common purpose. This event communicated nothing, offstage or on.

Communication of any kind has never been New Order's strong point. Their only spoken words tonight are to the hecklers and do nothing to suggest a drop in hostilities between the two cities. Yet their music speaks for itself, and makes specifics rrelevant for 45 minutes. From a cold start on a cold evening, they warm up from being just another (good) group, building into brutal beauty and then crashing into a cascade of casual splendour that climaxes with "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

Next is John Cooper Clarke, actually eferring to the event in question. 'Something to do with not paying the rates?" he quips before providing the most pertinent cliche of the night: "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and be proved one." We then get an entertaining encapsulation of his act: prose, poems, jokes, impersonation, speculation on the Lone Ranger, Tonto and AIDS, and 'from my town to your town", something that says more about the condition of Liverpool than any amount of statistics, 'Evidently Chickentown".

Then it's The Fall (as usual, no words), the most inexplicable band in the universe. Like New Order, theirs is not the usual type of pop communication, rising relentlessly above the literal. Listening to The Fall's seductive torture after most modern pop music is like being taken out of cotton wool, placed in a large dark box and shaken very hard - to the rhythm of your mother's heartbeat.

It's almost a relief to get back to real life, even if that means Liverpool's Margi Clarke doing two songs from her current show and then introducing "the biggest scally in Liverpool - Derek Hatton". Remarkably brief, Hatton contents himself with leading a Pavlovian chorus of "Maggie Maggie Maggie ..." and thanking Morrissey for making the concert possible.

And, not before time, to the man himself. The Smiths (first word: "Hello", second word: "This is from our new album") get the big build-up, the big response, and turn the evening into what most of the punters had paid their money for - a Smiths concert, no more, no less. It’s worth it.

The pace is for the most part fast and almost frivolous, with new songs like "Frankly Mr Shankley" bringing Morrissey's dry humour to the fore. No-one who, having written "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", and who can also come up with a line like "I didn't realise you wrote such awful poetry", can be accused of taking themselves too seriously.

The Smiths encore and leave, and the ritual applause starts, in anticipation of a promised grand finale. When the house lights go up, half the audience leaves, and then the house lights go down again. Someones announces the impending arrival of 'The Smiths, The Fall, New Order, The Redskins, and the Lloyd Collection doing the Lloyd Collection's new single 'Maggie's Farm' out now on Rough Trade". (It isn't: it's distributed by Rough Trade). Three men calling themselves "the flying picket faction of The Redskins" (they can't seem to stay away from Liverpool) arrive and tell us why they don't support Red Wedge - because Neil Kinnock doesn't support Liverpool City Council.

Someone comes back and promises "all our guest stars and the Lloyd Collection ... in two minutes". The only star to materialise is Bernard from New Order.

Eventually the Lloyd Collection arrive and begin some very ugly early Seventies guitar noises. They haven’t even arrived at anything resembling a Bob Dylan song when the expletives and the beer cans start to fly. They return them with equal venom and increasing frequency until someone has the sense to put the house lights back on and the audience retreats to the strains of "You'll Never Walk Alone".

Your photographer goes home with a black eye. Your writer goes home wondering if something else Bob Dylan wrote would have made a better conclusion to the evening. Something that said "Don't follow leaders" ...