Morrissey lovers hit Limerick last weekend for an academic conference on the mopey Mancunian’s lyrics, politics and celebrity.
'IT'S LIKE a cross between going back to university and joining a religious cult," reckons Steve Berry from Hertfordshire, as he surveys the scene. I'd have said a "rockabilly Star Trekconvention" myself, but we won't split hairs. We're in the atrium of the Foundation Building at the University of Limerick, where "The Songs That Saved Your Life – A Two Day Symposium on Morrissey" is about to get under way. Steve got up at 6am to fly in from Stansted. Others have travelled from the US, continental Europe and even Australia.
Steve is researching a book about his own Morrissey fandom. “I suppose I’m as bemused as anyone,” he says. “Firstly, that he should be taken so seriously in an academic context, but also, that the symposium would be held in Limerick of all places.” As it happens, there’s a straightforward explanation on both counts. And he’s standing right beside us.
Dr Eoin Devereux is head of sociology at UL and the organiser of this event. A Morrissey devotee since his first Smiths concert in 1984, he cuts a distinctive figure in jeans and cherry-red Doc Martins. Heck, his quiff is symposium-worthy in its own right. “This is the second year we’ve been doing this,” he says. “Last year we ran a half-day seminar with two papers and a brief discussion. This year we decided to something on a much more ambitious scale. It has really taken off.” He isn’t lying.
1.42pm
In the queue for registration, I get chatting to Erik Askeroi from Norway, a PhD student in popular musicology. He tells me he finds an “intense ideological struggle” between the vocals and guitar on Morrissey’s latest album. I can’t say that I had noticed myself. Registration complete, I’m handed a laminated MOZ POSSE pass, which I’m told I’ll have to wear all day. We’ll see about that ...
2.03pm
Approximately 120 people are in attendance – mostly male, aged between about 30 and 45. There is a smattering of quiffs, but not too many gold lamé shirts. The PA is playing Will Never Marry, the B-side from Morrissey's 1988 Everyday is Like Sundaysingle. The track segues smoothly into Let Me Kiss You, from his 2004 comeback album You Are the Quarry. Yip, when it comes to being a Morrissey geek, I've still got it.
2.20pm
"My name is Eoin Devereux and I'm a Morrissey fan." Our host's opening remarks set the tone for the day. It may be an academic setting, but there will be no pretence of objectivity. This is a gathering of fans. Devereux refers to the subject of the symposium, as he will throughout the day, simply as "Moz". After a short speech, Devereux introduces Kerri Koch, the American film-maker behind Passions Just Like Mine.
2.26pm
Koch's film documents the fervent following Morrissey enjoys among Hispanics in California. It opens with a five-year-old Mexican boy singing and preening along to Morrissey's The First of the Gang to Die, and gets progressively weirder. A barrel-chested teenager talks of how, upon hearing his first Morrissey album, he immediately went out and bought every album, read every interview and took up every cause the singer has ever espoused – including passivism and vegetarianism. (That gets a big laugh – the kid is about 17 stone.)
It seems incredible that songs inspired by the red-bricked streets of Manchester should resonate so strongly in the dusty barrios of Los Angeles. But they do. This really is a fascinating story and a wonderful film.
3.27pm
Make that a fascinating story ... but an incredibly overlong film. Having established in the opening minutes that Morrissey enjoys a fervent following among Hispanics in California, the film essentially treads water. Most of the interviewees adore the singer with an intensity that seems to say more about the deficiencies in their own lives than it does about his work. No one mentions the singer’s outspoken anti-immigration stance in the UK.
3.31pm
In photographs with ecstatic Latino fans, who religiously copy his hairstyle, dress and mannerisms, Morrissey appears utterly bemused. The whole experience must be pretty weird for him, I suppose ...
3.38pm
Dream sequence: I’m at Benito Juárez International Airport, being greeted by the ecstatic screams of 500 unshaven Mexicans. “Eoin, Eoin ... we love you”, they cry. They quote lines from my weekly Shuffle column and brandish breakfast rolls ...
3.53pm
At the reception, beverages are served in cups emblazoned with the legend "Share some grease tea with me". I try to chat up an American girl, but she prefers to make eyes at a nerdy looking guy in a Meat is MurderT-shirt. Great, I'm the outcast at a Morrissey convention. Truly, a new low.
4.21pm
On my way back into the lecture hall, I’m asked to display my pass. It’s in my pocket. “Just the place for it,” the lady replies, sarcastically. In the next lecture, Erin Hazard of the University of Chicago recounts a “pilgrimage” she undertook to Fairmount, Indiana, the setting for Morrissey’s Suedehead video. It’s riveting stuff.
4.46pm
Martin Power of UL talks about “Representations of the Working/Underclass in the Works of Morrissey”. Mr Power does not formally indicate where his own allegiances lie in the class struggle. But his bright red T-shirt, with the letters CCCP spelled out in yellow, does offer a tantalising hint. The global hegemony of neo-liberalism is his great bugbear, with references to Morrissey’s lyrics seeming somewhat tacked-on in places.
4.51pm
Someone really should point out that Morrissey’s fascination with working class “hard men” is not necessarily, ahem, politically motivated. Still no mention is made of his anti-immigration stance.
4.59pm
Mr Power cites Morrissey's anti-Thatcherite Margaret on the Guillotineas evidence of the singer's solidarity with the working classes. This really is too much. The song is not one of Morrissey's better efforts. A far more interesting discussion might centre on why unpopular female politicians, such as Thatcher or Hillary Clinton, are so often characterised as demons to be slain; whereas unpopular male leaders, like John Major or George W Bush, are written off as mere idiots or buffoons.
5.05pm
I’m bored. After a little creative biro-work, my laminate pass now reads, MOZ POSSE: DO NOT RESUSCITATE.
5.07pm
In the Q A, an audience member suggests that Morrissey's is an outdated vision of working-class culture, repackaged for middle-class consumption. The speaker does not contest the charge. "After all," he says, "Morrissey's most powerful statement against neo-liberal hegemony, The Slum Mums, was only made a B-Side. What does that tell you?" Erm, that he chooses his singles based on other criteria?
5.31pm
As a teenager, Peter Finan of the Morrissey-Solo.com website found that the Smiths song Back to the Old Houseperfectly captured the unrequited love he felt for the girl who worked in his local snooker hall. It's a delightfully pathetic tale – something all Morrissey fans can relate to.
5.45pm
Meetings With Morrissey author Len Brown has known the singer for 25 years. He provides some valuable insights into his personality, but at times I suspect he’s just taunting the assembled hardcore devotees with casual references to their friendship. (“So Morrissey rang me up the other day ...”)
6.30pm
Someone finally brings up Morrissey’s controversial views on immigration. The panel squirm. Most express discomfort about his views, but admire his willingness to take unpopular stances. Kerri Koch admits she’s just too adoring a fan to offer a critical view.
7.11pm
The Moz Bus leaves for Dolan’s Warehouse, where Smiths/Morrissey tribute act These Charming Men will be performing. Since I have no idea of the way, I follow in my car. At the very first set of traffic lights, I lose the bus and have to weave in and out of traffic at speed to catch up. This is by far the most exciting part of my symposium experience.
8.35pm
In Dolans, I get chatting to a cute lesbian couple in matching pompadours and NHS specs.
8.36pm
On closer inspection, they are a heterosexual couple. Oh dear Lord ...
10.31pm
It’s getting late, so I decide to make tracks. Before I do, I must relate how things ended up between Peter Finan and the snooker hall girl he had a crush on. As it turns out, he eventually did work up the courage to ask the girl out. He took her Sylvia Plath’s grave and they got drunk on cider. One of his friends – “a complete bastard”, he recalls – insisted upon tagging along. On the train home, the friend ended up getting off with the girl. As anecdotes told at a Morrissey symposium go, it’s almost too perfect.
** Morrissey plays Omagh Leisure Centre tonight and Waterfront Hall, Belfast tomorrow
