1989 01 07 Morrissey NME

RETURN OF THE FAMOUS INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOY

".. and if you're so very entertaining, why are you on your own tonight?.."

Is there onstage life after Marr? Still a light that'll never go out? Last week in darkest Wolverhampton, after 18 gigless post-Smiths months, MORRISSEY set about answering these questions.
On page 34 TERRY STAUNTON reports on what turned to be an astonishing hour, while here DANNY KELLY shares the big buildup with the Moz-mad masses and a post-gig sherry with the relieved solo star. All pictures: KEVIN CUMMINS.

The NME convoy is late as it drives into its first glimpse of The Second Coming. It is unreal, the Miners Strike organised by The Cartel! Ranks (ahem!) of scowling coppers confront a mass of sensitive haircuts and Smiths T-shirts; these are the unlucky ones, the ones who hadn’t camped out overnight and have been shown the No Entry sign. And heaven knows they’re miserable now...

Crash!! Around the sides of Wolverhampton’s Civic Hall the crackling chatter of police radios is being punctuated by the tinkle of glass as ever more desperate efforts to gain entry start to take on the nature of kamikaze missions.

Everywhere lies the evidence of the stir Morrissey’s return has caused - twisted metal sculptures that were recently police crush barriers, and the trampled detritus of the campers. Constabulary and security race from potential security breach to potential security breach. The Alamo comes to Wolverhampton...

We gain admission by the old journalists’ trick of waving your bus pass and shouting a lot. Inside all is calm, all is bright. What could easily have felt like a Moonie convention actually enjoys the atmosphere of a good-humoured family get-together.

Unlike a Metal crowd - bank clerks by day, Hells Angels by night - there is no self-consciousness about the necessary-for-admission uniform T-shirts; these people would’ve been wearing them anyway...

The red of the ‘Sheila Take A Bow’ cover vies for overall popularity with the green thickets of 'The Queen Is Dead’. This crowd is incredibly young, with the disarming exception of two ladies who’ve survived the rigours of getting in and taken up residence near the mixing desk.

If they’re undercover cops then they’re playing their part brilliantly: their grins would leave Cheshire Cats branded miserygobs. Theirs is just part of an air of anticipation thick enough to spread on toast...

The gig itself (check Terry Staunton’s review, page 34) is extraordinary. NMEs Features Editor cries; I dance; neither, be assured, are common occurences. At the end, the delirious crowd (too polite, naturally, to demand more than the single encore) departs on slippers of air.

For a select group of fortunates a modest buffet (nothing as crass as a ‘bash’) has been laid on upstairs. My Fear Of Twiglets is overcome by the word that Morrissey will be in attendance. What choice do I have?

Thankfully he is sat at the table furthest from the Twiglets, basking in the evident, not to say triumphal, success of the evening. Remarkably affable and relaxed, he accepts congratulations, signs autographs and fights a losing battle with a giant bottle of Evian. NME, despite a natural shyness that is criminally vulgar, decides to give him a hand...

Several times during the set I’d winced as the stream of stage-invading worshippers threatened to throw that skinny body down, son. In the past that kind of mauling, however affectionately intended (and one guy, Morrissey remarks, kissed his arse!), would’ve had him talking of retirement. But tonight, though not committing himself to more dates, it’s clear that the crowd’s unbridled and genuine adulation has had a positive effect. He is moved.

And, yes, he’d enjoyed it too. Toying with a backstage pass that bears the weasley mug of Charles Hawtrey (“I told an interviewer once that Charles was a kind of role model for me, but they made out I’d said Kenneth Williams instead, because he’s better known”), he largely shrugs off the strain his solo debut had put on him, preferring instead to outline the pressure that had been on Craig Gannon.

Beneath the imposing shadow of Johnny Marr, and on a hiding to nothing, the guitarist’s response to those pressures was, in Morrissey’s view, ‘magnificent’.

Unwilling to disturb this beaming afterglow, I nonetheless suggest to Morrissey that his imminent single The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ will again leave him dodging the flying shit. ‘Playboys’, y’see, is about the Kray twins, while the 12" track, ‘Michael’s Bones’ is a mournful lament to another of the Moors Murders’ victims.

The fact that the latter is seriously brilliant won’t save it from the wrath of the kneejerk brigade.

Morrissey reckons he’s fully aware of, and prepared for, the likely reaction to the record. The glint in his eye, indeed, suggests that he’s looking forward to it. He may well feel differently in a few weeks time but tonight’s mood will tolerate no such doubts.

For the first time since ‘The Queen Is Dead’, the world of Morrissey (who departs in response to Andy Rourke’s ‘all aboard’ nod) is a place where none of the days are just like Sunday, and all things seem possible...