Morrissey at the Budweiser Stage in Toronto on Saturday. The Toronto date was the third of three Canadian stops on the current North American tour.Tom Pandi/Live Nation/Supplied
It was news that Morrissey even showed up at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Saturday. The complicated Britpop crooner is infamous for his concert cancellations.
He arrived to big applause, appearing with a mittful of drooping tiger lilies likely given to him by a fan. “Take me out tonight,” he sang on There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, a song by his former band the Smiths, “where there’s music and there’s people.”
We were good to go on both counts.
Over the course of 90 minutes, the middle-aged melodramatist born Steven Patrick Morrissey yapped amiably and sang broodingly. At one point, he ripped off his top, as is his wont, tossing it to the crowd. Giving them the shirt off his back is symbolism smack dab on the nose. But, then, the man who once declared “Life is never kind” has never minced about.
A male fan evaded a security guard to achieve an awkward embrace with the main attraction. He was gently guided back to his front row seat.
Tom Pandi/Live Nation/Supplied
Six of the 17 setlist selections came from the Smiths catalogue. Under the circumstances, those songs could be seen as advertising. Earlier this month, Morrissey announced he was selling his business interests related to the band that made him the (diminished, controversial, occasionally boorish) star he is today.
“I am burnt out by any and all connections to Marr, Rourke, Joyce,” the man known as Moz said in a statement, referring to his 1980s bandmates. “I have had enough of malicious associations.”
If that makes it sound like he seeks psychological closure, The Guardian’s Eamonn Forde wasn’t buying it, saying the business proposition had the “musty whiff of a yard sale.” Perhaps Morrissey just needs the money. Keeping up with the Joneses, he’s selling off his share of the Smiths.
Watching him Saturday, one could not help but notice that it might be time to tighten his belt. All night the 66-year-old Lancashire native tugged at it, hiking his trousers. He was in good spirits, though. His big mouth may get him in trouble offstage, but onstage he’s rather charismatic.
“You had a choice tonight,” he announced early on. “You could have seen Texas Chainsaw 6 or you could have come here. I can tell you there’s not much difference.”
Self-deprecation has always been his bag.
Morrissey recently announced he was selling his business interests in the Smiths, the band that made him a star. Still, he performed six Smiths songs on Saturday.Tom Pandi/Live Nation/Supplied
Performing with a five-piece band, Morrissey was on his game. The morose 1997 anthem Alma Matters − “It’s my life to ruin my own way” − was posh jangle-rock of the best kind. His sturdy baritone has held up well, and Morrissey is a better tambourinist than Liam Gallagher.
Before Jack the Ripper, the singer moped about his two unreleased albums, saying record labels have told him they want no part of him because he is a “free thinker.”
The crowd booed in support of their Moz. Then he explained why he doesn’t simply release the albums on his own: “You have no idea how lazy I really am.”
Morrissey’s “free thinking” comes in the form of anti-immigration opinions and other conservative views. This summer, Australian rocker Nick Cave said he declined Morrissey’s offer to collaborate on an unreleased song that contained what he called an “anti-woke screed.”
Morrissey is also a self-described “animal protectionist” who in 2014 condemned Canada’s seal-hunting practices. On the Budweiser Stage X account, it was announced that only vegan food options would be available. (There appeared to be cheese on the vegetarian pizza slices, however.)
The Toronto date was the third of three Canadian concerts on the current North American tour, preceded by shows in Ottawa and Laval, Que. It was a convincing soft-rock evening of songs that expressed the pains and passions of the romantic and the disillusioned.
During Life is a Pigsty, Morrissey stretched out an arm, seemingly apologetically. The stylish ballad Let Me Kiss You auditioned for placement in a James Bond film. The Smiths’s Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me captured Morrissey’s fleeting joy and consistent disappointment:
“No hope, no harm, just another false alarm.”