Morrissey on my mind

Morrissey in Manila, this May: my mind still spins at the thought. Barring last-minute Chitauri invasions and/or the end of the world arriving slightly ahead of schedule, though, it is definitely happening: the announcements have been made, the tickets have been sold, Ricky Lo has done the interview.

It’s still strange to me to read articles about the upcoming event that start off by explaining who Morrissey is, and who The Smiths were; to my mind, they need as little explanation as The Beatles. Of course, that’s because I discovered them when I was in high school, and when you’re that age, bands can be worlds unto themselves, seemingly all-encompassing, the planet-sized existence of them hanging in the sky, matter-of-factly.

 By the time my first high school best friend Allan introduced me to the music of The Smiths—by lending me his copy of “Hatful of Hollow” followed by “Meat is Murder,” a one-two punch that I’ve never fully recovered from—the band had already disbanded, over the usual stew of creative differences, fame-related pressures, and record label dickery. This did not prevent me from immersing myself in their music, though the limited accessibility we had at the time meant that we could not absorb their catalog in its entirety. Nevertheless, what we could listen to, we listened to obsessively; in fact, there may have been instances of lying on one’s bedroom floor in the dark, crooning along to Asleep, while one’s housemates wondered if one was committing ritual suicide. I’m not saying there were. Not denying it either.

The point is, the music of The Smiths got under my skin, and by the time their singer Morrissey came out with his debut album “Viva Hate,” I was ready: I snapped it up as soon as it came out here, in cassette format, unembarrassed by the shirtless male torso on the cover (oddly enough, the releases in other countries just feature a close-up of Morrissey’s head; someday, I will find out why we got the ‘sexy’ version).

I had my doubts, of course: all indications were that The Smiths had run mainly on two engines: singer Steven Patrick Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr. (Not to belittle the contributions of what’s-his-face and the other guy.) What would the music be like, minus one genius?

I was answered by Suedehead: ringing guitars, snappy drumbeat, Morrissey’s voice plaintive as ever, asking Why do you come here? Why do you hang around? And as always, lyrics that evoked scenes that were not from my life but felt like it anyway: “You had to sneak into my room, just to read my diary/ It was just to see, just to see/ All the things you knew I’d written about you.”

I lived in the world of that album for a while: wrote a short story entitled “Late Night, ______ Street” inspired by one of the songs; blasted I Don’t Mind if You Forget Me in the school’s front lobby once when I wrested control of the sound system during a Valentine’s Day event; wandered around a nearby mall listening to Everyday is Like Sunday on repeat, savoring the unearned bittersweetness.

It’s easy to see—or at least hypothesize—how the music of Morrissey and The Smiths can mean so much to a certain adolescent mindset: the alienated, lonely, bookish, yearning boy or girl, “writing frightening verse” and prone to poring over the lyrics on inlay cards. Slightly harder to account for is how the music changes and grows with you, and continues to evoke scenes from your life, just as vividly, just as meaningfully.

I read a first-person, true-life account online recently, by a young woman barely out of her teens, who, stuck in London and desperate to make money, ended up offering herself for paid sex. Her first customer was a bald, middle-aged man, a kindly banker with whom she had basically nothing in common—nothing, that is, except a shared love of The Smiths. It is an anecdote that seems appropriate.

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Morrissey performs at the World Trade Center in Pasay City this May 13. Contact Charlemagne (0917 833 4223) for tickets. Thanks to Little Asia.