Morrissey First Direct Arena Leeds 20th March 2015
Support: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Laura is a big Mozza fan so we couldn’t pass up on an opportunity to see him playing “up North”. No Manchester date on this tour; Leeds had the honour of hosting the only northern date. Tickets were a bit pricey with best seats £75 (whats that about Morrissey?) so we plumped for a couple of cheap seats at £45 each. Shortly after buying the tickets Laura realised that she was going away that weekend with a group of friends, but not to worry, after a bit of thought we arranged to meet Dale in Leeds; he bought a ticket outside and drove Laura down to Derbyshire after the show.
Buffy Sainte-Marie was onstage playing “Love takes us up where we belong” as we entered the Arena at 7.30. We saw her play “Universal Soldier” and a couple of more songs; she was finished by 8pm. Morrissey is a fan and had invited her to join him on tour. Good taste and a great choice. Sadly I suspect most of the crowd didn’t know who she was, and that they were witnessing a performance by a legend. There was the usual video sequence during the interval which started with The Ramones and included Jefferson Airplane performing White Rabbit and Penetration playing Don’t Dictate. More good taste and more great choices.
Morrissey took the stage at 8.30 in front of an image of his heroine (not) the Queen; and went straight into “The Queen is Dead”. For this tour he is playing quite a lot of new material with few Smiths tracks so there were a lot of songs that I didn’t know. Having said that I really enjoyed the concert. The sound was loud and crisp; much better than you would normally expect in an arena. And his band were excellent. Morrissey looked quite dapper in a dark shirt with a white V neck and new looking jeans; and he seemed to be a in a good mood. He told us that he had driven through Harrogate on the afternoon and commented on seeing lots of children all dressed the same with fur (from cats he told us, but I really doubt that Morrissey) around their hoods (it was quite an odd comment) and then into “Crashing Bores”; he also had some pretty caustic comments about the coming election and how we couldn’t possible get excited about it (“It’s just Impossible!”). The audience reaction was good, with swaying crushes on the floor, although a little subdued in the seats. There were quite a few empty seats in the upper tier, but the crowd was a respectable size (the arena holds I think 13,500 or so). He finished with Meat is Murder (“Lamb, Spam, Murder”) with the usual shocking video sequence of pigs and cows being slaughtered. “First in the Gang” was the encore. He finished around 10pm. I dashed during the encore to get to the carpark and get out before the queues started (when we drove into the carpark we were told that it can take up to 1.5 hours to get out at the end). Managed to achieve a quick getaway and was back home before midnight.
Setlist: The Queen Is Dead; Suedehead; Staircase At The University; World Peace Is None Of Your Business; Kiss Me A Lot; Istanbul; Neal Cassady Drops Dead; I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris; Irish Blood, English Heart; What She Said; Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before; Scandinavia; The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores; One Of Our Own; Trouble Loves Me; Everyday Is Like Sunday; Kick The Bride Down The Aisle; The Bullfighter Dies; Meat is Murder. Encore: First Of The Gang To Die
21 Mar
Vintagerock's Weblog. 