With live music concerts now on hold, we are left with only memories of happier times. And this show at Hammersmith Apollo five years ago remains one of my favorites. I wasn’t writing my blog at the time, but my head is still filled with so many memories and emotions from that night, I could never struggle to find enough to say. It was truly unforgettable.
I made a somewhat last minute decision to travel to London from Leeds, less than a week before the show. It turns out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Some train research reveals to my surprise that cheap day return fares are still available, and that I should have just enough time to make the last train home, avoiding the expense of an overnight stay.
Accordingly, I spend that Monday in the office in a state of high excitement and anticipation, and barely able to operate. I had seen Morrissey in Hull a few nights before, but rather like a drug, it’s almost as if the greater the experience, the greater is the compulsion to repeat it.
At last I am able to leave my office and make my way on foot to the train station, from where I am whisked to Kings Cross in just over two hours. After battling my way through the London rush hour I eventually emerge from Hammersmith Tube station where I am immediately greeted with a pub sign which, although misspelt, successfully entices me inside in search of food. The pub is busy and I stand awkwardly at the bar with my pint of beer and bowl of chips until two men invite me to join them at their table. They are not Morrissey fans, but locals, who I suspect are not on their first pint, but they are a comical and harmless pair, and at my age I feel no threat from their humorous advances. One of them seems to be partially deaf, but the other talks to me enthusiastically, occasionally repeating some of the conversation to his friend. “Aw, she’s travelled all the way from Leeds to see Morrissey”, he tells him. I assure him that there will be plenty of people who have travelled considerably further. Declining lively offers of more drinks and entreaties to stay longer, I make my final bathroom stop, and step outside again.
Knowing I won’t have time at the end of the show to retrieve any belongings from the venue cloakroom, I have traveled with no coat, a money belt for valuables, and a plastic bag containing various non-valuable items for the journey. Not wishing to be encumbered with this bag during the show, I look around for somewhere to hide it, and alight upon one of several large traffic cones on an island in the middle of the busy road outside the venue. Observed only by passing car drivers I place my bag underneath it and make a mental image of the spot.
The security lady at the venue doors seems impressed by how light I am travelling, and I soon find myself in the auditorium, just an hour before the show is due to start, where I sit on the floor close behind the wall of bodies that make up the front several rows, playing with my phone while the crowd builds up around me.
When Morrissey appears there is a surge forward and I find myself another few metres closer. That sense of amazement at seeing the man himself standing there once again under the same roof, in the same space, is indescribable. He opens with You’ll Be Gone for the first time, and as if it were also opening a chapter in my life, it proves to be the first of many times I was to hear him open with this song, now representing for me those intoxicating first minutes of a show when Morrissey seems to be celebrating with his beloved fans the mutual enjoyment, special connection and unique atmosphere. I will never share this feeling with another.
It is swiftly followed by the hidden gem, Let The Right One Slip In, and the joy of the crowd is palpable throughout the set that follows, which includes treats such as Boxers, Now My Heart Is Full, and My Dearest Love.
When we reach the penultimate song, Everyday is Like Sunday, it seems the passion from the crowd can no longer be contained, and dozens of people evidently feel compelled to make tangible the connection they feel with this man by shaking his hand, making physical contact, reaching the front of stage in order do this by whatever means necessary. I am one of those people.
A naturally shy and retiring person, I am in my mid-forties, I have never crowd surfed before, but I know I just have to reach Morrissey, and that my chance has come at last.
With no idea what I am doing or how to begin, I hop up and down hopelessly. A man turns and looks at me a little bemused. “I want to get up,” I tell him in urgent tones, with what must have been the desperate look of a mad person, as the music plays on and I know my chance is fast sailing by. Clearly, he understands. Without hesitation, he nudges his friend who ducks down in order to create a sort of launching ramp, and I place my foot in the cupped hands of the other man who hoists me up. No words are spoken, and it all happens so quickly, so easily, as if it’s something we do every day.
I am now atop the crowd, and without having to do anything other than make a rigid ‘plank’ reminiscent of my aerial training, I find myself advancing towards the stage at a remarkably rapid pace, reaching the front of the crowd in what must have been a matter of seconds. Here I am paused, as on the edge of a precipice, and I squeal whilst I am tossed briefly over onto my back, then again onto my front. The stage lights are brighter than ever, but I look for my target, so close now, and for one brief moment our eyes meet. He looks faintly amused, and I can only conclude that I must look like a complete idiot. The next moment I am being lifted down from my perch by a security guard, and the instant my feet touch the ground I scamper towards Morrissey who reaches out his hand to me. The stage is not very high, and I take full hold of his hand and squeeze it. And now my heart is full.
As soon as the show ends I run for the exit, knowing it is touch and go as to whether or not I will catch the last train home. However, I find I have come out through a different door than the one through which I entered, and in my excitement and confusion am very much disorientated, and I cannot identify the correct traffic cone that hides my bag. I dart about lifting one cone after another in what must have been another strange and rather comical display for any onlookers, and am just about to give up, knowing there is no time for this, when at last the bag is found and I race with it down into the Tube station.
I sit on the Tube grinning like an idiot. Nobody ever smiles on the Tube, but right now I don’t think I’ll ever stop smiling again. I did it! I actually did it! I ignored all the voices telling me I couldn’t do it, shouldn’t do it, would never do it, was too old, too crazy. I shook Morrissey’s hand. I made it happen. It is a feeling of euphoria, of freedom, of release, that I will come to experience again more than once over the course of the next five years. Such a little thing really, but right now I feel like the world is mine, and I will not be repressed, I will not be told what I can or can’t do or achieve. And I’ve never felt so alive in the whole of my life.
I reach Leeds in the early hours of the morning. The taxi driver asks where I’ve been. I tell him I have been to London where I crowd surfed to the front of a show and shook Morrissey’s hand. He is impressed. It feels like he doesn’t see a crazy woman in her mid-forties. He sees the passionate, enthusiastic, risk taking teenager in me, the one who lay on her bedroom floor listening to Morrissey’s voice, and now, at last, has the opportunity to express her deep appreciation, to make this small connection with the poet, the artist with whom she so much identifies with and admires.
Look at the blue of the sky and tell me why you held back. Did you think there would one day be a bluer sky and a better hour?
Morrissey, List of the Lost
Adventures of a middle-aged Morrissey fan 