I’ve been around long enough to have followed many a Morrissey tour, but for reasons that I still cannot fathom, I never have. So the UK/Ireland tour of early 2018 was my time. This is the first part of that journey.
I have been to several Morrissey shows before, so I’m not a complete novice, but I am a novice when it comes to getting near the front. I’ve been aware for some time that people typically queue for 14+ hours for such a privilege, but even with my ardent level of Moz devotion, I just can’t get my head around the practicalities of such an undertaking.
However, no longer satisfied with being 15 rows back, a recent experiment at a Morrissey concert in New York finds a rather surprised me at 3rd row centre after queuing outside for just 1 ½ hours. This placed me within arms-length of the people on the barrier (I’ve never even seen the barrier before) who had been queuing for the aforementioned 14+ hours.
A quick cost-benefit analysis in my head, coupled with a few conversations with fans, who relate stories of queuing all day only to find there’s a total fuck up at doors and people who’ve just arrived get in at the same time as them anyway, and I decide to employ this strategy for the time being.
Accordingly I arrive for the first gig of the tour in Aberdeen at around 3.30pm, although, granted, this is not so much due to design as to the fact that Aberdeen is so ridiculously far north it takes me many hours to get there, even from my northern England base in Leeds, and travel on the previous day would have meant another day off work and another night’s accommodation to pay for in what is already going to be a very expensive fortnight.
I alight from a bus with my little suitcase and rucksack, outside what I think must be the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. A middle-aged man also alighting from the bus behind me confirms this with the driver. I glance at him as we wait to cross the road. For some reason I decide he doesn’t look like a Morrissey fan (although I’m not sure what I expect a Morrissey fan to look like) and ignore him. However, after we have both attempted to check into the wrong hotel, and have both stumbled about uncertainly through car parks and up ramps before finding ourselves in a lift together, I decide to be friendly and acknowledge his existence, and our shared plight. It immediately transpires that he is indeed a Morrissey fan, from Manchester, no less.
After check in we exchange a few more pleasantries in the lift again, and traverse the long corridor to discover that our rooms are opposite each other. As soon as I enter mine I go to the window in the hope of getting my first sighting of the arena, and am rewarded not just with a birds eye view, but with the throbs of what is clearly the soundcheck! In my surge of excitement I seriously contemplate rushing across the corridor to invite my new friend to come and listen with me, but I decide I need to get a grip, and just take a photo for Facebook instead. Shyness is nice….
By the time I get myself down to the arena it is getting on for 4.30pm, two hours before doors. There is no visible queue, just people hanging and drifting around. I recognise one of them from the barrier in New York in December, but I don’t actually know anyone. However, what I do know is that I can now hear Morrissey’s voice singing I Wish You Lonely with the full backing of the band, drifting as clear as day through the apparently paper thin walls of the arena. I am in heaven, and nothing can possibly go wrong now.
“Nice to know he’s really here”, I chime up to a young couple who are leaning on a barrier, clearly enjoying the same audio treat. They are friendly; a young English couple travelled all the way from the south of England and queuing since the early hours of this morning. I take the opportunity to glean some information; Is there a List? Do they know which doors we’ll be entering through?
‘The List’ has long been something of a mystery for me to unravel. I’ve previously only ever seen pictures of it, and heard mention of it, on social media. It seems Morrissey fans write their names down on a piece of paper in numbered order as they arrive at the venue. This means they don’t need to stand or sit in an actual line for the entire day, but can just hang and float around, with a certain amount of coming and going for toilet and food breaks permissible. I’ve never been sure how you get on The List, or if you even can if you don’t arrive at around 4am.
Yes, there is a List, but they can’t see the lady who has it, and we don’t know which doors will be opened first or if they’ll all be opened at once (there are doors on either side of the arena). By now a few others have come to join the conversation, and we can hear Israel and If You Don’t Like Me, Don’t Look At Me being sound checked. I can barely believe I’m here.
I manage to find the lady with The List and make my debut on it at number 31. I ask her what her name is, thinking if she’s a hard core fan I may know her from social media. She obviously finds this a strange question and a little too forward. Clearly I have a lot to learn about List and Morrissey queue etiquette.
I nip back to my hotel room to dump my coat and as I rush back down towards the arena a lady asks me, as I overtake her, if I’m Jo from ‘There is a Light..’ Facebook group. I am amazed and somewhat alarmed that she is able to recognise me from this. She is from Florence, she tells me. I ask her if she knows the lady from Florence I met at a (cancelled) Morrissey show in Philadelphia last December. She doesn’t. Stupid question, but I’m like an excited puppy right now.
Eventually names on The List are called and people start lining up in order. One of the guys I was talking to earlier comes and stands just behind me in line. “Looks like you’ll have to put up with me for at least another hour” I quip. He grins.
He is from Aberdeen, and last saw Morrissey in Chicago on the recent US tour. I ask him if he’s going to the Glasgow show tomorrow and am a little surprised that he’s not. We chat for most of the hour before doors, mostly about Morrissey, of course.
When we eventually enter the arena I make a dash for the opposite end of the stage, and my friendly queue partner slots in next to me on the barrier. I’ve never been on the barrier before and can’t really believe my luck in achieving this honour after only a couple of hours of queuing. Owing to the chronic back pain that dogs me at all Morrissey shows (and in many other parts of my life) I decide to try to make the most of this novelty, and experiment with different positions, leaning back on it (which places me nose to nose with the people behind me), hanging over it (I’m too tall for this one to work), and (my favourite) sitting down with my back against it.
When I stand up again my new friend is reading a book. “Well I knew there’d be some time to kill” he responds to my exclamation of surprise. We chat some more, I sit some more, he reads some more, and the impossibly long 2 ½ hours somehow pass in this way until Morrissey finally appears on stage and everything else is forgotten.
The highlight of the set for me is the first ever live performance of Israel, which is stunningly powerful and climatic, and mesmerising at the same time. And Morrissey dancing to my favourite song, Jack the Ripper, in the orange fog just a metre in front of me, certainly rates as a minute of my life worth living. Oh, and being on the barrier at a Morrissey show just felt so right. At last I am born.
Adventures of a middle-aged Morrissey fan 