by Jamie Jones
Frustratingly, as Doody was at work, I had to wait until that evening to give him this life-changing news. I was only allowed to ring him at work in an emergency. Although I knew he was going to be excited about this gig, I didn’t think even I could justify classifying it as an emergency.
I was still only 16, unlike Doody who was now 18, so had to convince my mum to let me go to the gig. Fortunately, as I hadn’t returned from Reading Festival with a mohican, a tattoo or a drug habit, she felt I could be trusted and agreed that I could go and thankfully didn’t insist that I took the coach to Brighton. She even agreed to buy the gig and train tickets on her credit card and for us to pay her back in instalments.
None of the rest of our little gang had fallen under The Charlatans spell, so the path to Brighton Centre was one that Doody and I travelled alone. The day of the gig was the first bright and breezy spring day of the year, with thousands of indie-kids descending onto the seafront, all able to ditch their long-sleeved band t-shirts for the short sleeved versions (often of the same design). We couldn’t afford to drink in the local pubs as our spare cash needed to be saved for the prized commemorative “Daytripper” t-shirt. Instead we bought a case of beer, a bottle opener and retired to our seafront B&B to prepare for the biggest gig of our young lives.
We bounded up to the Brighton Centre later that evening, high on life and Becks. Even before either band took to the stage, the DJ hyped up the indie disco atmosphere with some of the best tunes of the time (including Belly – “Feed The Tree” and Radiohead – “Anyone Can Play Guitar”). Ride were first up with a shimmering hour of indie rock and fringe shaking. The Charlatans followed and were in imperious form, with a bouncing Tim milking every drop of adulation from the crowd. As “Sproston Green” rattled the windows of the venue with its “Apocalypse Now” helicopter outtake, Doody and I stood there ruddy faced, knackered, beaming and had our now traditional hug. It had been another magical Charlatans performance, one that we would both treasure.
We went back to our B&B and sat drinking, recalling the gig in intricate detail before falling asleep, still fully clothed, on the double bed that we had been assigned.
On the train home the next morning we bumped into a clearly still twisted Bobby Gillespie. Being perky young lads still high from nothing more than the gig, we ignored his obvious “Pish off and leave me alone” stare and asked him to sign our commemorative Brighton postcard. He scribbled his name then politely asked us to sod off.
The weekend had been as close to perfect as it was possible to imagine and I was thirsty for more. I was like a sponge, desperately sucking up any new elements of culture that I could find. I was reading 3 books a week; from Irvine Welsh to Oscar Wilde and watching films like 1984 and The Ipcress File, but my real passion remained indie music.
At the Daytripper gig, when the DJ was whipping up the crowd, he played a song that I hadn’t heard before, that got my hips wriggling in a way that I’d never felt the urge to do previously. As the opening guitar riff kicked in, a voice from a planet somewhere outside the known universe began to question me about what turned me on and something called animal nitrate. I had absolutely no idea what he was blathering on about but I had received the telltale shot of adrenaline that forced me to dance and I knew instinctively that I’d found another band.
I knew about Suede before that night in Brighton, and had even caught a bit of their set in the Melody Maker Tent at Reading the previous summer. I had dismissed them as the new darlings of the music press who were taking valuable column inches from the likes of The Charlatans and Ride. They were acolytes of The Smiths and Morrissey, and that was not a compliment. But after hearing “Animal Nitrate” at the Brighton Centre, I hoovered up every radio session, single and live recording I could get my hands on and eagerly awaited the release of their debut album on 29th March 1993. That album was the signal for the start of a movement that the music press christened “Britpop”.
The country as I saw it, was ruled by the 3-headed monster that was grunge, manufactured chart pop and the crusty scene. Britpop was a wake up call, which served to show that outstanding guitar music was being made in the UK. This was my time and in Suede we finally had an indie band that could take “Oveeeeeeer” the UK. Their eponymous album went to the top of the album charts on its week of release.
“Suede” was packed full of passion, urban drama and twisted spirit. It concentrated on the unglamorous side of sex, the coldness, the regret, revenge and anger. I adored every track but the singles (So Young, Animal Nitrate, The Drowners, Metal Mickey) were the highlights and provided a vivid soundtrack to the springtime.
Suede were a band that dragged you into their world. The music, the look, the androgyny, the whole package. They were definitely the band that annoyed my dad most, with me upstairs squealing along to ‘Metal Mickey’, while he was downstairs trying to watch the 6 O’clock News. He would come running up the stairs to complain only to find me, shirt undone to the navel, gently whipping myself with a microphone lead, singing along. At least once he just turned around and shouted “I give up on you Jay, I really do.”
Despite my Brett Andersonesque dancing, my real hero in the band was Bernard Butler. Up to that point I had only really cared about lead singers. In my eyes, guitarists were the same as drummers and bass players, important but never worthy of adulation. However, when it came to Suede, you would have to have been a cloth eared halfwit to not realise that the real talent within their ranks belonged to the guitar wielding Butler.
I wanted to be Bernard Butler. Obviously, I didn’t do anything as crazy as learn to play the guitar. As I had been growing my hair, I had it cut in his long bob style, bought some charity shop shirts and worked on the look. I didn’t get close to it really but it was enough for me to become a bedroom impersonator.
It was Suede’s obvious obsession with The Smiths that persuaded me to put my music press inflamed prejudices aside and give Morrissey another chance. For two years, Mark and I had sat in his bedroom listening to music, routinely ridiculing his younger brother Anthony who was in the next room listening to Morrissey. I had fallen for the myth that Morrissey was just a miserable git who was obsessed with songs about being run over by buses and girlfriends in comas. The combination of Suede and finally listening to the tunes Anthony was playing saved me from a life of happiness and introduced me to the world of Morrissey.
On a warm June day, I decided to take the plunge and finally determine whether or not I liked this indie icons songs. I trundled into town on the bus and back to House On The Borderland. After a couple of minutes of scrambling around in the piles, I found a CD for £2.50 which, on the front, had a slightly blurred photo of Morrissey and the title “Beethoven Was Deaf”. I turned it over to look at the track listing and immediately my eyes were drawn to “You’re The One For Me Fatty”. Seriously, was this bloke a genuine indie messiah or a very bad 1970’s comedian? I carried on reading and found that this was a live album, which put me off buying it even more. I decided there and then that I definitely didn’t like Morrissey and went to walk out of the shop. I stood in the doorway and remembered that the hippy who owned the shop would give customers £1.50 for any decent CD album, so if I returned this one after listening to it, and undoubtedly dismissing it as rubbish, it would in effect only cost me £1. For the sake of a quid, I thought I should buy it to confirm my apathy to the bequiffed one. Little did I know that buying that CD would cost me a lot more.
I paid for the CD, got the bus home and settled down in my room to listen with an air of apathy and a can of Tizer.
I had read in The Guardian that researchers had found that heroin was the most addictive drug for the first time user. Those researchers had obviously never heard “Beethoven Was Deaf”.
Within 10 minutes of putting the CD into the stereo I was entranced. Within an hour of constant listening I’d learnt enough of the lyrics to be able to croon along to the choruses, whilst throwing myself around my room with gay abandon. Son
gs like “Jack The Ripper” and “Glamorous Glue” sounded like they came from a different era to the indie-pop that I was used to listening to. His words were full of desire, wit and intrigue and I ate them all up.
As the afternoon became evening, I politely refused all offers of tea from Mum as I simply had to keep listening to the album. After 6 hours of playing the CD over and over and looking through the inlay booklet, I was in love with everything about him. The voice, the attitude, the look, the lyrics and the songs had tapped into a space in my brain that was previously listed as vacant. I was desperately in need of more songs but as the shops all shut at 5.30pm, I forlornly accepted that I would have to wait until the next morning to go and buy my next fix.
As I waited for morning to come, I decided to immerse myself further into the world of Morrissey by re-styling my hair. It quickly became obvious that my long Bernard Butleresque locks weren’t going to be easily teased into a Morrissey style quiff. My sideburns, however, were almost in the Moz style anyway. I had been cultivating them since I was 13, first as hair slicked down in front of my ears and now, thanks to my weekly shave, closely resembling the stubbly real thing. I ended up having a shave at about 11pm, by torchlight so as not to wake anyone, just to try and make my sideburns look exactly like Morrissey’s. I was already totally addicted.
I woke the next morning and made plans to skive off school in order to feed my new habit. The problem was that I had only £6.50 in my wallet. What I did have though, was my Building Society Savings Account passbook. Mum had made it clear to me on numerous occasions that this book was strictly only to be used to deposit money. That account hadn’t seen a withdrawal since the day it was opened shortly after my birth. I’d had it drummed into me that my savings account would one day be used for something important. Well it seemed to me that day had arrived. I needed those albums.
Idly daydreaming on the bus journey into town, it dawned on me that not only did I need to buy all the Morrissey albums that I could find, but all The Smiths ones as well. This was all set to be a thrilling, if expensive, morning. I walked into the Building Society, handed over my passbook and quietly whispered “£100 withdrawal please”. I’m not sure why I was whispering. Maybe I was concerned that they had my mum on speed-dial and would be secretly calling her with the news that I was daring to withdraw money from my own account.
I stashed the illicit bundle of £10 notes in the pocket of my Pepe jeans and ran to HMV. It’s one of the best feelings imaginable when you are stood in a record shop with cash in your pocket and you know that you can spend it all on music that you are desperate to own. I was like Augustus Gloop let loose in Mr Wonkas factory. I couldn’t have stopped myself from grabbing the Morrissey and Smiths CD’s from the shelves if my life had depended on it. It was a compulsion. I had given control of my functions to the music of Morrissey and would have to live with whatever decisions it made on my behalf. I didn’t buy all the albums I needed from HMV of course, not with their £12.99 for a non-chart CD policy. I shopped around in Andy’s, Our Price and House on the Borderland and got the bus home with 3 Morrissey CD’s (Viva Hate, Kill Uncle, Your Arsenal) and 5 Smiths CD’s (The Smiths, Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead, Strangeways Here We Come and Hatful of Hollow) tucked safely inside my rucksack. All for the princely sum of £91.50, which seemed like an outstanding deal to me. As the bus rumbled along, the adrenaline began to subside and it dawned on me that Mum probably wasn’t going to see it the same way.
I got home and furtively opened the front door. After quickly scanning the kitchen for Mum’s presence, I ran for my life up the stairs and hid the CD’s under my bed. A doped up to the eyeballs Ben Johnson couldn’t have beaten me in that 20 yard sprint. Mum didn’t actually find out about the missing money until 6 months later when she went to pay some of my birthday money into the account and asked for a statement. She was not amused, and I was grounded for a week with the promise that I would pay back the money that I had “stolen” from myself. The albums were well worth it.
Of the 8 albums that I’d bought, “The Queen Is Dead” was the instant hit. How had I not heard this album before? I was the miserable juvenile with the dark sense of humour that needed these songs, and it was a need. Hearing songs like ‘I Know It’s Over’ and ‘There Is A Light…’ for the first time was a call to arms to all of my repressed teenage emotions and they came tearing to the surface for a view of the brave new world. I knew that he had an army of fans, were they all like me? Knowing that we were all joined by this supernatural force that was Morrissey was a real comfort to my adolescent brain.
I wanted it all; CD’s, live shows, t-shirts, videos; whatever I could get my hands on to quench my thirst. Within a matter of days of buying those albums, I had placed a trust in this man that I had never even met in the same way you would trust your dad or your best friend. In songs such as ‘Cemetery Gates’ and ‘Suedehead’ he lit up my life and was talking directly to me in the space under my desk in suburban Peterborough. The swelteringly hot spring and summer of 1993 were spent under that desk, feverishly gulping down every Morrissey song I could find. I took every word that he sang as gospel. Those lyrics instantly became the user-manual to my youth. For better or worse, this was it for me.
Within 3 weeks of welcoming Morrissey into my life, I had decided to become a vegetarian. I felt the need to show my total and utter commitment to him, and the best way to do that seemed to be to give up eating meat. His arguments in favour of embracing vegetarianism were compelling but, to be honest, if he had told me to give up all of my worldly possessions and go and live in a skip in Newport Pagnell, I would have been on the first train there. I was now a fully paid up member of the cult of Morrissey.
Even with Mum’s backing, it wasn’t easy being a vegetarian in 1993. I was, quite understandably, seen as a freak by my mates, but I did manage to convert my immediate family so that, within a few months, we were a meat free household. I knew, because he kept telling me, that my dad wasn’t keen on “going veggie” but as Mum was the only one who cooked in our house, he didn’t really have much choice. Then, like with most things that you do for a period of time it became a habit, something that Dad got used to.
My only concern in relation to Morrissey was the music press ascertion that his best days were behind him. Would I never get to hear a better album than “The Queen is Dead” or “Your Arsenal”?
Then, in 1994, he released ‘Vauxhall & I’ and upon hearing the opening line of ‘Now My Heart Is Full’, I moved from addiction to obsession. Everything about it was sublime, from the cover with Morrissey looking resplendent, to the passion filled tales packed within. It’s an album that has all elements of life wrapped up within its immaculate tunes. The single that preceded the album, “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” set the charts alight (well it got to number 8 in the UK), and the dark wit and genius of that anthem was there for all to hear.
That album was released in March with my A-Level exams looming but, being the rebel that I was, I still spent far too much time listening to “Vauxhall & I”. At least once a week, I would leave the house on the pretence of going to school, and then wait behind a huge bush at the end of our road for my parents to go to work, before sneaking back home and spending the day listening to those life affirming songs. I needed to know exactly what Moz was thinking on the key life subjects, from emotional rollercoasters (Now My Heart Is Full) to the need for your best mates (“Hold Onto Your Friends”). “Vauxhall & I” also helped cement my theory that the final track of any album should be it’s best. This theory had worked with all my favourite albums, from The Stone Roses debut (I Am The Resurrection), The Charlatans “Some Friendly” (Sproston Green) through to Billy Braggs “Workers Playtime” (Waiting For the Great Leap Forwards). ‘Vauxhall’ had the gigantic epitaph that was “Speedway”. From the sound of chainsaws at its opening to lyrics that felt as if Moz was singing whilst looking through the window into my soul. I would sit under my desk, idly pressing repeat on
the remote control as the song glided to its conclusion, desperate to hear something new in the next listen, to feel even closer to the words and the melody.
Morrissey had also provoked the type of fluttering in my stomach that neither Tim Burgess or Belinda Carlisle had managed previously. I would sit for hours gazing at photos of him, wanting to reach out and hug him. I knew that I wasn’t alone in feeling such emotions. I had seen video footage of grown men, many of whom no doubt had wives and girlfriends, hurl themselves onto the stage where Moz was singing, desperate to hug, kiss or caress the messiah. I spent a lot of the summer of 1993 exploring my sexuality in the confines of my bedroom. I would ponder why I found both Morrissey and Tim Burgess so physically attractive whereas, since Jo, I’d shown very little interest in the opposite sex.
I had vague thoughts about being gay without every really believing that I was. In the pages of the NME, I was reading about ambiguous or bisexual indie popsters like Brett Anderson, without having a clue what either phrase meant in reality. That July, something happened which showed me with definitive certainty that I was not gay. It occurred during a raucous and particularly sweaty set by The Wedding Present at the Phoenix Festival. The crowd was tightly packed together as the band blasted through their set and I was throwing myself around with the best of them.
About halfway through “Blue Eyes”, I noticed a hand pressed against the front of my jeans, on my crotch. At first I thought it was just an accident, someone inadvertently trying to find somewhere to put their hand in the packed crowd. I did my best to ignore it and jumped around as Gedge and co. banged out another tune. I started to change my opinion as, during the intro to “Silver Shorts”, this errant hand began to force its way inside the front of my jeans. I froze, not so much out of terror, more out of a sense of “what the hell is happening here?” After a few seconds of this unwelcome foreplay, I turned my head to see who had their hand perilously close to my 2 day old festival pants.