Observations after a Morrissey concert

It’s clear even before the show begins that there’s something a little odd about this event. Tonight is August 20 and we're at Atlanta's Chastain Park Amphitheater waiting for the headlining act, Morrissey, to come on stage and show why we've been fans of his music for so long. But still, things are off. While the tour is nominally for Morrissey, you can see a 50 ft. tall, black and white picture of James Dean behind the curtains where the stage crew makes their preparations. Old movies are projected onto a sheet, and while maybe this is just a venue thing and has nothing to do with the actual event going on it’s a good sign to the fans. Hell, even the management forbidding meat for the evening seems like a reference to The Smiths, and, let’s be honest here, that’s who most of the crowd here is wishing to see perform.

As the curtain goes down and the odd litany of words Morrissey puts on before his show ends (an almost indescribable list of nominally negative things, though half of it is utterly baffling in that context), the band comes running onstage and “Panic” begins. The crowd roars with approval.

Two minutes later though and there’s a sense of confusion. While it’s obviously the song everyone loves, and half audience sung along to the chorus about hanging the DJ, it’s not really the song. Where are the jangling guitars? Where is the clever interplay between the bass and the drums? Most importantly, why the hell is everything so loud?

The obvious reason for this is that this was a Morrissey concert. Since the group broke up in 1987, Morrissey made a very definitive break from their old sound. Gone were the jangly guitars and the light sing-songy feel—all of this was gradually replaced with the biting, jagged sounds of his solo works. This can be heard easily by grabbing a copy of his newest release and letting the first track, “I Will See You in Far off Places.” The dynamics are more pronounced, the lyrics are angrier. While in The Smiths’ works the guitar was always there in the background, weaving in and out to create a level world of sound with the singing really one more instrument band, Morrissey’s solo work features none of this layered sound and instead there each of the instruments lays down its own sound, distantly working with the same riffs.

All of this translates extremely well to an amphitheater like the one Morrissey performed at on July 20. Places like this are notoriously bad at subtlety, and thus even more so than on recordings the music was played without any. There’s nothing wrong with this and in fact it’s what stadium music is all about.

However, as indicated by the opening track and the stage’s background, even Morrissey seemed confused about what this concert really was and solo work wasn’t the only thing played. Big-riffs solo Morrissey came on with his taste for rough playing to a huge audience. It’s not so much that the music was played louder than it should have been for a concert by The Smiths, though it was, it’s that it was played by a band that works on Morrissey’s solo music. To say they messed things up is not so much an understatement as it is to miss the point. This is how Morrissey sounds now, and so by those standards the music was played well, just by the standards of anyone expecting things to sound like The Smiths things were more than a slight disappointment—they were disastrous.

Perhaps most emblematic of this was the gong. Played as part of “At Last I Was Born,” it’s an instrument that cannot intermix with others, cannot be played around and more than anything else is just really, really loud. By the standards of Morrissey’s music, the song went well and the gong emphasized the huge emotions of the track, hitting an undeniable note at the end of the epic song. Considering all of this, though, and how many thousands of people were in attendance, things should have been far more exciting. People should have screamed others should have clapped; it should have given the audience the emotional high that only a communal experience of music can. Morrissey is nothing if not an idol so there was still some of this, but not how it should have been for the set’s centerpiece. Instead the audience gave a strange medium level of applause that expressed, ‘Yes, very nice, but why is there a gong in the first place?”

Morrissey could have gotten around this problem of pleasing no one in a number of ways. One is to have become a one-man tribute band to his own group and playing a series of faithful The Smiths covers. He certainly has the right, and few living could sing their tracks as well as he did. On the other hand this is a pretty soul-crushing route and, as much as those attending his concert wish he’d done so, ultimately it’s a good thing that Moz never considered this.

The other way to get around this problem is for him to do onstage what he’s done so well musically, which is to say distance himself as a solo incarnation from The Smiths. It’s time for Morrissey to drop the film star pictures and, while maybe it’d be fun to drop in a Smiths track come encore time, play a set of only his solo tracks in his own style. Despite what his naysayers may have said, Morrissey’s post-Smiths work isn’t bad, though it’s not as consistent as the band’s output, with many works just as great as The Smiths at the height of their musical prowess. While Morrissey’s music and playing has moved on, likely due to fans’ desires his concerts are still haunted by The Smiths’ specter.

In terms of sheer performance, Friday was one of the worst, least enthusiastic musical experiences I’ve ever had. The crowd really wanted to be into it but couldn’t mesh with what was being played. Unable to build off of this, Morrissey, one of the most charismatic men to ever walk the earth, was lackluster and dull. By playing songs by The Smiths and putting on the trappings of one of their concerts, he set everyone, including himself, up for disappointment. My hope is that next time I see Morrissey play it’ll only be the people wishing for concert by The Smiths who walk out wondering why they came.

-Sean Gandert
Photography by David Marek