Autobiography (41 page)

By December the roll is all too much, and although I do not like arena shows I am here at Newcastle Arena – walking on as if newly hatched and freshly plucked, wondering where I will find the ‘more’ that I must give. I find it in the response.

There it is again, the following night at Nottingham Arena as 8,500 pairs of eyes burn into my greyness, the dying swan all over again – ah, this list of inner displacements. By Sunday I fall into clean sheets after an incomprehensibly insane show in Luxembourg. I shall never use the same between-song patter twice. A week later I am back in Berlin, lifted way too high to ever come back, my life spared once again by the love of an arena crowd, and further saved at the Color Line Arena in Hamburg on the following night, and
‘I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have’
(Charles Dickens).

December 22nd and 23rd are Manchester nights, here at G-Mex, where I am greeted as the foot soldier that saved the Empire. Each second is wrapped in eternity, my loud comrades happy to the last sip. I go my way yet leave something behind, for these are the good old days.

The
NME
generously issues a
CD
called
Songs to Save Your Life
, which they graciously allow me to compile with some of my favorite recordings by other artists. As the
CD
goes into production the
NME
adds four tracks by newer groups who are
NME
favorites – mainly because all of the songs I have chosen date back to the Roaring Twenties. These last four would never be my choice, but the
NME
argues (not unreasonably) that by adding the newer bands the
CD
has modern currency against my Bronze Age tastes.

A postcard arrives at Sweetzer from Ron Mael. He thanks me for being
‘such an inspiration’
, and such praise from Caesar makes me collapse in a heap. A lengthy hand-written letter arrives from Julian who sings with the band the Strokes. He is angry and apologetic at a recent
NME
interview in which he is quoted as calling me
‘a faggot’.
Julian writes that no such comment was ever made, and nor would it ever be made, and that the writer had simply faked an entire paragraph.

You cannot hope
To bribe or twist,
Thank god! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
The man will do
Unbribed, there’s
No occasion to.

Humbert Wolfe (1886–1940)

A very small, flightless bird is now living in the back yard. I feed it constantly, and at night I place it on a blanket and fence it in using large boxes so that it has freedom to move about but can’t be pounced on by predators. Whenever I handle the bird I use gardening gloves because I have noticed its parents watching from the roof and they will not accept the bird if it has had contact with human flesh. For days and days both parents call down to the bird – encouraging it to fly up and join them. But it can’t. Twice they swoop down to feed their baby, causing it to skip and flutter in drunken excitement at their contact, but as they move away they are still urging the bird to follow, and it freezes in fright. This scenario continues for two weeks, and I won’t go to bed unless I’ve made sure that the fledgling is secure. One morning it is gone, and I am distraught, pulling apart every bush and outdoor plant in search, when suddenly I look up to the roof and there is the bird
finally
positioned between both parents. Not everything ends horrifically.

Last night at the State Theater in New Brunswick I sang to save my life, and I am overfed with varnished love from an audience of all ages and shapes and colors. New Jersey throws back a desperate generosity – returned by the singer. The singer sings to the dreamer, and the dreamer confirms unfolding pleasure. The following night we are at Lowell Memorial Hall, where 2,862 tickets were grabbed with witch-trial madness. Lowell is there – somewhere, under great mounds of snow, and privileged suburbia twinkles its decorative lights and moneyed upscale tush from wooden antiquarian homes of welcoming porches alive with signs of megabuck kids and chipped pets. Surely Gordon MacRae is ready to charge out from a handsome doorway all beaver-coated and beau-hunk, part lover boy part pretty boy with a song on his manly lips – bored on the fourth of July, and nothing to do but ‘be’ in order to win it all. I spy the delights of wealthy American safety, so drummed into the popular mind since the troubled waters of the corny cornball 1940s. The lie of American film entranced the world and made everyone expect a handsome ransom from life, on which the economic arrangements of the western world seemed to settle themselves for good – which is all very well if you are William Reynolds in
All That H
eaven Allows
, but not quite so if you are carrying a large pot on your head in Somalia. Here, Lowell life imitates art. And very well! Lowell is, in fact, a
Has Anybody Seen My Gal?
university town of ballgames and sleepovers and star-spangled tripe. The old glory oozes and the downright neighborly are as righteously swell as home-cooking. I am, of course, seduced. Would they let me stay? Could I begin a life without pain? Could I cast aside this dark lantern? Would I be allowed into the buddy club? Could I become so sweet that I, too, dripped diabetes? The Memorial Hall is utterly and sensibly organized, and in my cozy dressing room I mentally race through all of tonight’s lyrics – an unexpected echo in these American legion rooms. I step onto the stage and the heave forwards from the crowd is like a mudslide as hockey tonsils roar back at me. It is an avalanche of heavy petting, and what discreet Lowellians might refer to as ‘night baseball’. Jesus, I am loved. Having never found love from one, I instead find it from thousands – at the same time, in the same room. The inquisitives want a closer look, and the well-meaning want to know what this strange man is about, whereas the outstretched front legion are flirting a face-rape pass at me. The touch of their hands to mine ignites electricity, and I wonder how on earth I had ever become anyone’s idea of a hot number. In the midst of it all I am expected to behave – usually with sympathetic understanding and moral balance – yet I can’t for the life of me think why I should.
Morrissey?
Wasn’t that the sneeringly caustic way by which those crude St Mary’s schoolteachers had called to me – each bark full of shitheel slander?

Yes, it was.

Torn down, put down and shot down, it survives the skinned-alive ethics of the working-class secondary modern and becomes a word loved instead. Oh Manchester, so much
you can’t
answer for.

Tonight at Lowell a young woman is present backstage. She is flanked by police officers, is British, and had been working locally as a Nanny when a baby in her charge had died. She is an ongoing news topic throughout the world as she awaits trial. She is nonetheless escorted here tonight to hear
November spawned a monster
on this November night as speculators assess whether or not she is, or isn’t, a monster. The world still loves a good hanging. By Monday 24th we wind over to rough Buffalo where, again, all 2,699 tickets have been snapped up. It is not a high figure for most artists, but to me it sounds extraordinary, since I am flatly denied big-league entry onto page-one America.
Never mind.
You see, I do not sing about chicks or screws or eight-track studettes, so I am left adrift, too complicated to be taken on. I walk onto the stage at Kleinhans Music Hall and I witlessly shout
‘Hello, Paris!’
(since Buffalo and Paris could not be more sharply dissimilar, you see), and the next day a review in the local newspaper says,
‘What a shame he forgot which city he was in.’
I bang my head on cold concrete with frustration. Can one attempt to be witty in Buffalo? Is it allowed?

As we leave, a girl pulls at me
. ‘I can’t believe you’re here
...
I can’t believe you came to Buffalo,’
and the ice wind blows both of our spectacles off.

In the daytime the wide city streets are north-star miserable with the homeless constantly on the march (where to? where from? what for?), and the rain falls harder on the dark-skinned folk.

December 1st steers us into Sweden, which always feels like a reward. We are finally released from the American highway with its unending stream of identikit fast-diarrhea diners with their deathly menus offering only murder or sugar – not food at all, and it isn’t half-baked to accuse such ‘fast food’ outlets as being responsible for the deaths of millions of Americans. Now, here in Sweden, food resembles food – and even looks edible, although I would never give in to herring. Fish are not food. Driving along Göteborg’s motorways we persistently see lighted signs directing traffic to
‘Morrissey concert, next left’
or
‘Morrissey concert, this way’
, as if I am finally a landmarked grave. It is chilling.

Snow-blind motorists meet traffic police who are also guiding everyone to the Morrissey concert, and now I know how the Pope must feel in his little fancy shopping-mobile. It is warming to be a part of Göteborg life, and my heart swells to think of teenagers fastidiously checking their appearance in bedroom mirrors in preparation for tonight and whatever it may bring for them. Touching, too, are the vast car parks, some full, some almost full, their owners already inside the venue waiting for me, in each car a refreshers cassette of
You Are the Quarry
or
Hatful of Hollow
lodged in the receiver. In Sweden I appear to be known everywhere, in tones of tender gestures. In Göteborg I indulge myself with the child-like pleasure of taking photographs. I quite possibly will never look at them. With each Swedish concert my love for the country deepens. The crowds are young and they shriek like airplanes streaking down. Their sensuality is strong, and there is a subtle uniqueness in our relationship, because it leans not on the gullibility of the pop audience, but on its intelligence. I am surprised that my life has turned out like this. Nothing but promise erupts from everywhere in Sweden, and the life-giving enthusiasm of the audience feeds me. From the stage I see faces I shall never forget, in a wobblyscope hand-held array of quite beautiful eyes and mouths, clicking along with camera-shutter speed. Life is only now. I begin to worry that my humility can be seen as a part of an act, but then, to edify my natural feelings is to then
become
an act. What do you do? There must be truth in all of it otherwise you are no different than a door-to-door salesman. To never feel guilt when you look into the eyes of your audience. I will border on silliness – anything at all to avoid self-indulgence replacing the old hunger, for that is the route they all go, and can’t help but go. Why is the crowd at Lisebergshallen so young? Why are they looking at me, when all I ever read about myself is one of intolerable egocentricity and dramatized depression? Each city responds with the same rhythm, and Scandinavian success seems automatic in that there is no struggle. Is this the ‘accidental’ life? Is this the first time when all I need to do is accept? Over in Helsinki the snow is so heavy that the audience is draped in overcoats and scarves and hats even whilst inside the venue (for surely no cloakroom could accept thousands and thousands of horse blankets?). Of course, this is the famous Ice Halle, where rubber sheeting covers the rink as, above, everything vibrates to the transmutation of pop nights. Three thousand five hundred heart-shaped faces beam back at me, withholding nothing in their excitement.

But my body is changing once again, and I now look avuncular, and it can’t be helped, and I can’t measure the love they transmit as being to the sexual or to the paternal. Either way, it cannot matter, but it is a point nonetheless. See the crushed rows of Helsinki yupsters and nearly-shavers; sonny boy teenies and bubble-gum girl rockers. How do they find their way to me? The young fry and the twixt-teens shout my words up to the ceiling knowing that my own time at their age was spent behind a small door kept locked. Pride and pity hit the blender at the same moment, and the band sound ruthlessly loud, kicking each second forward and faster and forward and faster.

I never wanted to kill, I am not naturally evil
Such things I do, are just to make myself more attractive to you
...
have I failed?

and this audience roar a
‘Nooooooooooooooo!’
creating their own part in a song written long ago, in silence, in tangled solitude, with two broken legs. The loving nature of Finland matches Sweden. Each move deeper into the country answers hesitant prayers for love and acceptance. Finland bore the unusual distinction of a Smiths appearance many years ago, and my mind wrestles with the memory of that festival billing and of audience disinterest and of harshly blowing rain. I recall standing at the lip of the stage as if dragged from a river, the microphone slipping out of my wet hand, and no one around to caution how rain and electricity are deadly components to the overheated flesh. We played on and on in the whirring rain as the audience disappeared, yet we clung on as if trying to prove something, yet proving only absolute stupidity and a childish inability to make sensible decisions. All those tears ago. This thought returns to me on the night of the Ice Halle. Post-show, I stand in a spirited hot barrack-style shower for all of thirty minutes, stone flags beneath my feet, snow piled up against fortress windows. Outside, the twitter-twitter of high voices leaving the venue – always in the corner of my ear, the young blood excitement of satisfaction and of things that must be said. A voice sings in the snow. Naked, I walk across the hard floor and my mind stalls and I lie down on Helsinki hardwood, and I am mine.

The following day I cross the market square with snow wrapped around my knees. The cheap lights of the market stalls contrast amusingly with the rampaging snowfall, but nobody minds, everyone is happy, and the snow hides the dirt. A cluttered record shop piles up Eastern Bloc rock – artificial pop-poop, fish music, or Death Metal. In the midst of the shuffled jumble the only name I recognize is mine – a privileged placing for a hankering catalogue.