Not woke Morrissey pulls in Gen Z
The beleaguered British pop icon summoned teenage boys bearing bouquets of roses, and young girls donning Doc Martens at his show at the Sydney State Theatre on Sunday night.
There was a wager going on between friends about what kind of crowd Morrissey would attract for his sold-out show at the State Theatre in Sydney on Sunday night.
The British pop icon and erstwhile frontman of The Smiths has, in recent years, garnered more attention for his contrarian politics — including his support for the now-defunct far right political party For Britain — than he has for his music. So much so that one article, announcing his 40 Years of Morrissey tour, went with the headline: ‘Far Right Sympathiser Morrissey Announces 2023 Australian Tour.
A few friends suspected that because of this stain, Morrissey would only attract a middle-aged mob. They thought that young people would be too wary of keeping up the appearance of being woke to indulge in a snotty sob to ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.’ They were pleasantly wrong.
While there were the expected midlife men aplenty, there were also teenage boys armed with bouquets of roses, and groups of young girls — some who couldn’t have been much older than sixteen — draped in velvet and lace, clomping around in Doc Martens, nervously chattering in the merch line about how ‘their entire lives had led up to this moment. It was pure gorgeousness.
Walking into the performance space, one couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the poor sods that thought they had lucked out in securing front-row seats. The stage, half an hour before the performance was set to start, was swarmed by Morrissey devotees, all desperate for a chance to grasp the sweaty palm of the singer.
There was no support act; rather, for pre-show entertainment, there was a Morrissey-curated video montage that flitted between footage of James Baldwin and Sylvia Plath, and music videos from Divinyls and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Total silence crept over the crowd when the opening notes of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ rang out.
When Morrissey, 64, and his much younger, dashingly cool band took the stage, the entire audience immediately launched to their feet — a rarity at seated shows. “I was happy in the hour of a drunken haze, but heaven knows its Sydney now,” he bellowed at the crowd, introducing the show, before launching into his 1992 solo track ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’ — the words, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” emblazoned on the screen behind.
As a performer, he was on fine form — one gets the sense that this is a man who feels alien to the world and at home only on the stage. His voice was rich and powerful, and didn’t falter once as he sashayed around the stage, silky shirt undone to his belly button, with a gargantuan silver cross necklace glinting on his chest. It was all disdainful finger-wagging, pained grunting, and provocative hip thrusts — moany melodrama synonymous with pop’s prince of ponce.
This career retrospective set was generously filled with a third of Smiths classics, including such hits like ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,’ ‘How Soon is Now’, ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’, ‘Half a Person,’ and the crown jewel, ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.’ But it was his rollicking solo rager ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ which beckoned the rowdiest reception.
It was the best Morrissey has sounded in years. Thanks to his iron-clad live touring band, the sound was all-enveloping: a thick carpet of sparkling guitars and earth shaking drums — occasionally smattered with a double-bass, and the bashing of a gong.
The performance culminated with ‘Jack the Ripper’ — the most violent, visceral song of the night. The theatre filled up with a dense smog, with Morrissey’s silhouette barely discernible through the blood-red haze as he laughed maniacally, spiralling into a chant of “Rats, rats, thousands of rats … with their bulging eyes … their red eyes.”
One of the divine pleasures of going to a Morrissey show is knowing that at some point during his set he will launch into a diatribe against something or someone. This time, a comparatively milder tirade was directed at the nation’s beleaguered airline.
“I must tell you that I shouldn’t really be here,” said Morrissey, hushing the crowd. “I should be dead.”
“Yesterday, we flew from Brisbane on the most frightening, horrible flight and we all thought we were finished.”
“And before you ask …” he added. “Qantas.”
He finished off the diatribe with a stab at fellow British musician/cheesemonger, Ed Sheeran. “There is one good thing about being dead, however, and that is, you never again have to listen to Ed Sheeran.”
Mercifully, Morrissey refrained from closing withe the damp squib ‘Meat is Murder’ and its accompanying graphic montage of animals being slaughtered in factories.
When he re-entered the stage for an encore — wearing a T-rex t-shirt — it was for a performance of The Smiths’s raucous cut ‘Sweet and Tender Hooligan.’
This tested his hired muscle, as crazed fans attempted to scramble onto the stage were mercilessly shoved back. One fan, veiled in a face mask, managed to breach the defences, planting a hug on Morrissey before she was booted of stage. An argy-bargy broke out between two men when Morrissey flung his shirt into the crowd.
Content with the bedlam caused — the show ended abruptly. No waves, no kisses — just the stark imagery of Jean Cocteau’s ‘Blood of a Poet’ playing on the screen, concluding an evening that was dramatic, indulgent, self-pitying, self-mocking and quintessentially … Moz.
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