I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  By the morning of our 4th day spent locked away from the world, I had no choice but to drag myself away from my new love and head back east to see two of my everlasting loves, namely my mates and The Stone Roses. Doody, Jacko and I had got tickets to see The ‘Roses, first in Leicester where Jacko was at university, then onto Norwich for the second night where we would stay with our old mate Mark and go to the UEA hall to see our heroes perform. It was a lads weekend that I had been looking forward to for months but leaving Amy’s bed was tough. We exchanged Portishead & Morrissey t-shirts in the same way that footballers swap shirts at the end of a momentous game, knowing that wearing the others clothes would keep a piece of them close during our enforced break. Her skinny fit t-shirt was a little snug over my lager enhanced stomach but I wore it with the pride of a 19 year old man in love. Well, I did until my mates saw it and took the piss so much that I took it off.

  None of us had seen The ‘Roses before and my adrenaline levels would have enabled me to run from South Wales to the Midlands. Here I was, off to see one of the greatest bands in the history of pop music with my best mates in the world, knowing that back in Wales, the girl I loved was waiting for me.

  Standing in the middle of the De Montfort Hall and watching this almost mythical band walk out and play “I Wanna Be Adored”, “She Bangs The Drums” and “Waterfall” as their first three songs was almost beyond my comprehension. I lost myself that night, dancing like a fool with my face fixed in a permanent Bez style grin. I know deep down that it wouldn’t have been that good, as both John Squire and Reni had been replaced by session musicians by that time, but for me to see a band called The Stone Roses play those songs was more than enough.

  They were just as sublime 3 days later at the UEA in Norwich. Unbelievably, in a venue that held maybe 1000 people, you could walk up and buy a ticket to the gig the morning before they played. We danced, we hugged and further reinforced friendships that we knew would last forever.

  The next morning, I was up and out of Mark’s flat as soon as my hangover allowed my legs to move in a vaguely straight line. With Doody and Jacko gently abusing me for, ‘Running back to your Mrs’, I gave them both a final, ‘You’re just jealous boys, enjoy the journey home’ and was out of the door. The train journey from Norwich to Cardiff was a tortuous 6 hour slog but I couldn’t wait to get back to her and found myself pacing up and down the length of the train, willing it to speed up and deliver me back to her bed. When not pacing, I spent the journey gazing out of the window. daydreaming that I was one of those men in a country song, riding the rails back to my girl. Our love affair resumed with a pint and a slobbery kiss in the Halls Bar, and we spent the weeks leading up to the Christmas break exploring each other’s bodies, minds and music collections. She even managed to persuade me to hire a tuxedo and buy tickets to the SU Christmas Ball. I lasted an hour, most of which was spent moaning about ‘looking like a div’, before we went back to hers, got changed and went to the pub. Amy was learning fast that it wasn’t going to be easy being in a relationship with me.

  Despite now being very much in love, we were also both desperately homesick. In Amy’s case, she would literally be sick thinking about how much she missed home. I would stand and hold her hair back as she dry heaved while recalling memories of her family and friends. We built up a mythology about how stupendous our home cities were and would unintentionally torture ourselves by recounting tales of home to each other. In fairness to Amy, where she lived, in a little picture postcard village just outside Cambridge was well worth being homesick for. It was a beautiful place where, that Christmas in the snow, we walked her dog through endless fields before going back to her parents’ house for hot chocolate in front of the open fire. Come the evening, her mum would present a glorious home cooked meal and her dad cracked open the Adnams ale. Despite her parents not wanting us to sleep in the same room, I would sneak in after lights out and only go back to the spare room when her dad popped downstairs in the morning to make everyone a cup of tea. It had been the perfect Christmas and she was understandably considering not leaving this idyll to go back to university.

  I would have quit Cardiff as well if she had. I had a burning desire to go home but knew that I could only do that if Amy came with me. She was more important than my education and I would have gone anywhere she wanted if it meant us being together. Many a time over that Christmas break, I asked her if we could quit university to go and get jobs and a house in Peterborough. She would give me her best sarcastic smile and simply say;

  ‘I don’t love you that much, Jay.’

  As the holiday period came to an end, despite her homesickness, Amy decided to head back to Cardiff. I went too.

  1996

  Pubs, Gigs & More Magazine

  AS it now appeared that we were both staying in South Wales for the long haul, I was determined to get on with student life. I had spent the first term lusting after Amy and missing home but this term was going to be different. I was, for the first time in years, genuinely content with my life, other than the bone-gnawing homesickness. I had a very simple test to ascertain my level of happiness. I would put “Unlovable” by The Smiths on the stereo and, If I smiled at Mozzers lyrics, then all was well in my world. Listening to the song and pulling the duvet over my head to shut out the world was a sign that I wasn’t in a good place. We would spend every possible hour together, most of them spent talking, drinking or entwined and Amy seemed as intensely happy as I was. I knew that there were things about me she wanted to change, but she’d realised that I was a stubborn, Morrissey obsessed football fan and that although they could be very boring character flaws at times, she loved me nonetheless. I did have a lot of annoying traits, not least of which was the fact that I was a terrible inverted snob. I saw myself as some kind of working class hero battling against the upper-middle class students who were everywhere I looked. The type of students whose parents gave them more a week in “spends” than I had earned working a 40 hour week back home. The angry working class boy from Peterborough was never far from the surface, ready to have an argument on any subject. I was a fully-fledged follower of the Billy Bragg political ideology and was immersed in my Social Policy degree.

  I hadn’t visited Cardiff before that first day at Talybont, I didn’t feel the need to. I read the prospectus that had details of the gig venues and a photo of Nye Bevan statue standing proudly in the city centre. I was hooked just by those two things. I had read so much before even beginning my degree about Bevan and his role in creating the NHS and was desperate to learn more and to see his statue on a regular basis.

  One Tuesday night, Amy and I were wandering through the almost deserted streets of the city centre when I spotted some rugby lads hoisting the smallest member of their group up onto Nye’s statue. When he had scrambled to his feet, he placed a traffic cone on old Nye’s head, much to the delight of his knuckle dragging mates. I wasn’t having that so, after the group of cultural vandals had moved away, I decided to climb up the statue and take down the offending item. Amy cheered her encouragement as I made my way up. I eventually reached the top and ripped off the cone, restoring Nye to his former glory. Unfortunately, the removing of the cone put me fatally off balance and I tumbled through the air with all the grace of Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards and landed, knees first, onto the pavement. As I examined my ripped jeans and shredded hands, Amy surveyed the potentially pathetic scene, selected her best weary smile and said:

  “You know what Jay, I think you care more for that bloody statue and Morrissey, than you do for any human being.”

  Amy and I spent the first few months of 1996 in a blur of pubs, gigs and running back to her flat to lock the door after buying that week’s copy of More. We had contracted that desperately in love virus where every second apart felt like a temporary break up and powered up our hormones for the next encounter. One afternoon we got onto the scales and found we had both lost over half a stone in a week. We had simply forgotten to eat. We’d had mor
e important things to do. Neither of us travelled home that term, as much as we missed it, we were so important to each other that the thought of spending a weekend apart was horrifying.

  In the Easter holidays, I took Amy back to Peterborough for the first time. She was her usual fragrant, ultra polite self when meeting my parents, who instantly fell for her. She was, though, very nervous about meeting my mates. The two of us stood outside my local pub, The Swiss Cottage, as she gripped my hand and asked; ‘What’s this pub like, Jay?’

  Me: ‘It’s my local, I’ve been drinking in here since I was 16 with Doody and Jacko. It’s tiny inside, about the size of a living room but everyone knows each other so it’s fine.’

  My description didn’t help her nerves.

  As we walked through the pub door, Doody gave his usual greeting to anyone he met for the first time; ‘Nice to meet you, what are you drinking?’ and she began to feel at ease. This particular night was Maundy Thursday which, with the lure of a bank holiday the next day, was always a big night out. After a few drinks in The Swiss we got a cab into town and I was persuaded by the boys and an intrigued Amy to join the queue to get into 5th Avenue. Once inside the neon lit nightclub, Amy turned to me and said ‘This is superb, an 80’s themed ‘club!’. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the club wasn’t trying to be kitsch or retro, this was it trying to be hip in 1996. Due to the sheer number of people out on such a night, you were always guaranteed to bump into old school mates and ex-girlfriends. Jo was first up and, having seemingly drank her own bodyweight in Hooch, she wandered over with her boyfriend to make formal and stilted introductions;

  Ignoring me and looking Amy up and down.

  ‘I’m Jo. I went out with Jay for ages. Good luck with ever getting him to smile or enjoy life. He’s a right miserable sod; I am sooooooo much better off without him.’

  Amy: ‘Didn’t you split up years ago?’

  Jo: ‘Yeah, almost exactly 4 years ago.’

  Amy: ‘Well I’m pleased you’ve moved on. Now, will you excuse us, my boyfriend is desperate to go and dance to this song, it’s his favourite.’(Gina G – ‘Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit’ was the song in question).

  With that, she linked her arm through mine and led me giggling, not to the dance floor but to the upstairs bar for a much needed drink.

  With the night drawing to a close, the DJ put on Oasis ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, which seemed a bizarre choice for the ‘Erection Section’ but it saw me drag my girlfriend onto the dance floor. As I spun her around, whilst mouthing the words to the song to each other in an exaggerated half-cut manner, we bumped into a blonde haired woman who appeared to be having her face gnawed off by her dancing partner.

  Me: ‘Oooops sorry m’duck, an accident that….. Alright Kate, how ya doin?’ (as always when drunk and back home, my Peterborian twang was back in full effect)

  Kate: ‘Errr…yeah watcha.’

  With Noel in full flow, singing about Sally’s need to wait, Kate steals a quick look at Amy and shouts into my ear.

  Kate: ‘She looks nice, too good for you! I’d heard you’d finally found your ‘true love’. Good luck with it, maybe she’ll enjoy the note filled with Morrissey lyrics when you get bored and leave her…. Right, well, good to see you but we’d better be heading off.’

  She takes the hand of the fella she was dancing with and goes to lead him off the dance floor. As she does, this lad, who I have never seen before, turns to me and snarls:

  ‘Just piss off and leave her alone mate. She’s mine now, you missed your chance.’

  Rather than get into a pointless row about him not being my mate, that Kate and I had split up in 1994, and that I was deliriously happy with my girlfriend thanks very much, I just smiled at him. He wasn’t sure what to do with that, so flicked me the middle finger as a red-faced Kate dragged him away.

  I turned to find Amy in hysterics as Noel was telling us to not look back in anger one last time. We walked back to the bar and, as I was ordering the ridiculously watered down drinks, she recovered her powers of speech and said:

  ‘I take it that was another one of your ex-girlfriends? Not exactly queuing up to form a fan club are they? This city is fully of nutters and that has made my night. Right come on I’ve had enough of this place, I want a kebab. As you’ve been abused by two of your ex-girlfriends, I’ll even treat you to a veggie burger’.

  I bloody loved that girl.

  When we returned to Cardiff it was time to plan where we were going to live during the next academic year. Over a cup of disgusting fruit tea in the kitchen of Amy and Lou’s flat, we agreed that the 3 of us and Neil would live together as a dysfunctional family. By virtue of losing a game of rock, paper, scissors, it was decreed that I would be responsible for finding our new home. I figured that I had a few weeks to get organised and find a place so continued to spend my time in Amys bed, in a lecture theatre or The Tavern. What I hadn’t realised was that the day the ‘housing list’ of approved landlords was released my fellow students were all out snapping up the best houses. By the time I ambled in to collect the list from the Accommodation Office it had barely 10 properties left on it.

  For weeks Amy had been hearing from her coursemates about the great places they had arranged to move into. She kept reiterating that she trusted me to ‘find us somewhere amazing’ and it was those words that looped round inside my head as I began to investigate the properties on the list. After looking at 3 houses where I half expected David Frost to meet me at the door to ask ‘Who would live in a rancid flea-pit like this?’ I retired to the pub. After a couple of pints I went to the next address on my list, 28 Wyverne Road. The lad who opened the door looked like every ounce of blood had been drained from his emaciated body, which is never a look that estate agents recommend when showing people around. He explained that him and his mates were final year Law students and had; ‘Gone a bit mad in this house mate I’m afraid. Once we realised it was a crap hole we abused it. We’ve ruined the sofa, the carpets and the bathroom. The boiler only works when you don’t want it to and we lock the front door by tying loads of elastic bands around where the lock used to be. The rent’s really cheap though.’ Despite his withering assessment, I didn’t want to look at any more houses, I wanted to go back to the pub. I reckoned on being able to talk the landlord into doing the place up a bit before we moved in and the downstairs room I wanted was the least disgusting in the house. Plus it was very cheap.

  I went back to the Accommodation Office and told them that we would take the house. Maybe when they asked, ‘Are you sure? You’ve been to visit the house, yeah? The house with the elastic bands on the door?’ I should have thought again but I wanted to go back to the pub to see my girlfriend and tell her that I, her hunter-gatherer, had sorted us some top quality accommodation. Amy was delighted at my description of the house, mainly because I didn’t describe 28 Wyverne Road. Lou and Neil even insisted on buying me a few drinks and taking me out for a pizza to thank me for finding such a first class house. I put their inevitable disappointment to the back of my mind and ordered a thin crust Fiorentina with no olives.

  We finished our first year at university in a blaze of sunshine and afternoons in pub beer gardens. None of us really wanted the summer to usher us back to our home cities and that alone was a huge change for Amy and I. We made plans to see each other every weekend, mainly by me travelling to Cambridge. Everything felt right with the world.

  This Gig Is Way Too Big

  THE first half of 1996 had been an indie music wasteland, still dominated by the release of Oasis’ “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory” the previous year. That was an album that had me firmly under its spell from the opening guitar strum of ‘Hello’. It wasn’t as raw as “Definitely Maybe”, but it was full of anthemic hits and as us indie kids weren’t used to such things, it felt new and exciting. ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ went on to rule the world but, for me, “Cast No Shadow” was the moment of pure genius
.

  They had also entered into the chart war with Blur the previous summer. I had no problem with two of the truly stupendous indie bands launching singles in the same week as each other but did they really have to release their worst songs as singles? “Roll With It” (Oasis) and in particular the charmless witticisms of “Country House” (Blur) were my absolute low point of Britpop. “Roll With It” was easily the most lumpen and ordinary of “Morning Glory’s” tracks and “Country House” was Albarn showing that he was fast disappearing up his own arse in a cloud of cockernee (sic) laddish banality. Or maybe he was trying to be ironic? I didn’t care, the song was crap. It was a ‘war’ that created headlines on ‘News At 10’, saw hundreds of thousands of singles sold and saw ordinary folks telling anyone willing to listen whether they were ‘Oasis’ or ‘Blur’. I bought both singles even though I didn’t like the songs, as the geek in me needed to own the B-sides.

  With no Glastonbury in 1996, all roads led to Knebworth Park in August where Oasis were due to play to over 250,000 people across 2 nights. The papers reported that 1 in 10 households in the UK applied for tickets for those gigs. That was a mind-blowing rise for a band that only, 2 years previous had been under Chumbuwamba on the Glastonbury bill. I got tickets for Amy and I, by standing outside Cardiff International Arena from 4am until the box office opened at 9am on the day tickets went on sale, and I wasn’t even the first in the queue. The gig was months away, and thousands of sad gits like me were standing outside venues (that had been designated ‘Oasis Box Offices’) up and down the country, in order to secure tickets. For the weeks leading up to the gigs, the buzz around them was inescapable. I couldn’t go to a pub, football match or gig in either Cardiff or Peterborough without someone asking; ’Are you going to Knebworth?”