I Blame Morrissey Read online

  I

  BLAME

  MORRISSEY

  First published in 2015 by:

  Britain’s Next Bestseller

  An imprint of Live It Publishing

  27 Old Gloucester Road

  London, United Kingdom.

  WC1N 3AX

  www.britainsnextbestseller.co.uk

  Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Jones

  The moral right of Jamie Jones to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work

  may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  All enquiries should be addressed to Britain’s Next Bestseller.

  ISBN 978-1-910565-23-0 (pbk)

  For FLJ

  CHAPTERS

  1990

  Changes

  Peterborough, My Peterborough

  Becoming A Braggist

  1991

  Scratch My Name On Your Arm

  Not The Specs Again, Please

  1992

  Goodbye To Faith No More

  Reading, Writing & Tim Burgess

  1993

  Moz & Me

  Pyramid Stage at 7am

  1994

  Britpop is Mine

  Never Use Morrissey Lyrics To End A Relationship

  1995

  I Started Something

  Cardiff, Here We Come

  The More You Sleep with Him, The Closer I Get

  I’ve Tried Really Hard To Not Love You

  1996

  Pubs, Gigs & More Magazine

  This Gig Is Way Too Big

  Squashed Slugs & Smashed CD Cases

  1997

  Your Ex-Boyfriend Is At The Door

  I’ll Just Consult Moz

  1998

  The Light Is Fading

  Last Of The Gang To Leave

  One Day (But Surely Not Today)

  Come Back To What You Know

  1999

  Moving On (By Sitting In My Pants & Listening To Moz)

  That Morris Man You Like

  Elvis Boxers & Matching Socks

  INTRODUCTION

  27th November 1995, Cardiff International Arena.

  Reach up.

  Reach your hand up.

  Reach your hand up and he will take it.

  Reach your hand up and he will take it and you’ll have done it.

  I KNOW that all I have to do is pull my arm out of the crush that is fast enveloping me and he will haul me up onto the stage. We’ve established the required eye contact, he sings the line detailing rumours that keep him grounded whilst looking at me, as he ponders why I’m not reaching my hand up further to clasp his. This is my chance, I know that. This is my chance to take my rightful place up on that stage like so many before me have done. This is the time for my 19 year old childlike frame to step up onto that stage and to embrace him.

  It’s him, I have to do this now. All those hours spent in my bedroom, howling to ‘Speedway’ have led to this moment. Just do it, don’t worry about your glasses falling off or not being strong enough to scramble onto the stage, just do it.

  Why won’t my hand move?

  Hesitation is never a winning option in such momentous situations but I can’t do it, I can’t reach up. My pulsating brain has lost control of my limbs and the utter perfection of getting up there to that song has caused a system meltdown. This is my sick way, it could change everything, I’ve dreamt about it and now it’s here, I can’t do it.

  I’ve been here since 2pm, waiting for the doors of the arena to open so that I could run to the stage barrier with the other diehards, whilst the hordes wander and mutter, uninterested in what he has to sing.

  No time to reminisce, this is happening now, in front of me, I can’t wait.

  And that’s it, he’s sung of strange, sick ways and the truth and it’s over. He’s just looked at me like I was insane for not taking my chance and he’s right.

  Now I need to slink away, make way for the next batch of desperate, sweaty youths who won’t waste their chance when it arrives.

  I will never make the stage, that urge within will never be satisfied and even when Moz tried to help me, I couldn’t help myself.

  1990

  Changes

  IT’S easy to blame my dad. For the first 13 years of my life I wasn’t really interested in anything other than football and Star Wars, with occasional breaks to watch Grange Hill and The Dukes of Hazzard.

  Then Dad decided to introduce me to music.

  On 26th March 1990, I found myself at the Docklands Arena sat in front of a figure that would change my life forever, and my dad. I wasn’t even meant to be at that David Bowie gig. My mum was an avid 1970’s Bowie fan and was due to attend with my dad so that they could re-live their youth, but fell ill on the day of the gig. As he couldn’t find any of his mates that fancied going, Dad decided to take me. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go, he made the decision for me. He had a spare ticket that he had shelled out £17.50 for and he wasn’t going to waste it whether I wanted to go or not.

  In the car on the way down to London, I treated it like a big adventure, heading off to my first concert, and to what Dad always referred to as “The Big Smoke”. During the journey, Dad fed various David Bowie tapes into the stereo and began to regale me with tales of seeing Elton John and Bowie live in the 1970’s. I’m not even sure he was concentrating on the traffic when, misty-eyed and wistful, he began to quietly repeat “Those were the days…” I snapped him out of his trip down memory lane by asking if he also liked to dress like Bowie and Elton back in the 70’s? At this point he refocused on the road and his inner heterosexual, working class man came racing to the surface and he dismissed me with a curt; “Don’t be so bloody stupid”.

  He then asked me what Bowie songs I knew, but the only one that I could recall was “Dancing In The Street”, the single that he released with Mick Jagger where the two of them appear to be having a pouting competition in the video. Dad was not impressed with my knowledge and rambled on about how Bowie would play all his hits as part of the “concert”, and that I should be grateful for having been given the ticket. I wasn’t overly excited as we reached the venue which, from the outside, looked nothing more than a huge warehouse in the middle of east London.

  We dutifully queued to hand over our tickets and made our way inside the cavernous arena. We found our seats, which were only about 20 rows from the front, just as the house lights were dimmed and Bowie took to the stage. Even with one of his musical heroes being only 30 yards away, Dad didn’t stop grumbling about the price of the bottle of Pepsi that I’d persuaded him to buy me from the concessions stand. As the crowd roared its approval, Bowie sang the opening lines of “Space Oddity” and I felt like I had been kicked squarely between the legs. This amazing noise and retina burning flash of lights was a revelation, a miracle happening in front of my eyes. Instinctively, I went to stand up and dance before being hauled back to my seat by Dad, who was gently shaking his head.

  In a blizzard of style, panache and power, Bowie paraded across the length of the stage and I sat in my seat open-mouthed. I was spellbound by this beautiful middle-aged man with a voice that could shatter glass from half a mile away. Who knew that Bowie was this good? Why had nobody told me before?

  I hadn’t found any women attractive up to that point of my life, (aside from Belinda Carlisle, naturally) let alone any men. Men in 1980’s po
p music had been either dressed as badly made-up women (Boy George/Robert Smith), like the young men who worked for the local insurance company (Rick Astley) or were just strange (Morrissey). Here was Bowie, the thin white duke, and I adored him from the moment I set my bespectacled eyes upon him.

  It turned out that I did know plenty of Bowie songs. Tunes like “Changes” and “Life On Mars?” had become such a part of popular culture that I’d heard them numerous times on the radio or the TV but just hadn’t associated them with him. I was loving the show, as were the rest of the crowd who were producing an electric atmosphere inside the arena. I had been to football matches and witnessed the fans playing a part in the main event but this was different. Here, the crowd were desperate to show their devotion. All around us were men in Bowie t-shirts, screaming their love for the man on the stage, much to Dad’s obvious discomfort.

  The whole crowd going absolutely bonkers as Bowie rattled through “Heroes” caused such a reaction deep in my adolescent chest that I wasn’t sure if I was having a heart attack or was about to wet myself. During the quieter numbers, most of the crowd in this enormodome sat quietly watching Bowie glide across the stage, but two rows in front of us was a woman who refused to sit down. She had a sharp Ziggy Stardust style haircut and danced with a crazed, hazy look in her eyes – the same kind of look that lads got on their face after their mates have spun them round 20 times in the playground. When Dad spotted me staring at her, he said: “Just ignore her, she must be on something!”. On something? I had no idea what he meant. The only thing I knew you could be “on” was the god-awful banana flavoured medicine that was used to kill all known childhood illnesses in the 1980’s. She was as captivating as Bowie despite her age, which was probably about 25. I spent the rest of the show alternating between watching Bowie and sneaking furtive glances at her. Both were provoking an odd, warm feeling deep inside me that I’d never felt before. Even before the gig ended, I had promised myself that I would do everything in my power to experience such feelings again in the near future.

  I left my seat buzzing from the energy of the show and the crazy dancing of the Ziggy Stardust woman. I was brought back to earth when, despite my boundless enthusiasm, Dad refused to buy me a tour t-shirt due to them being “12 pounds soddin’ 50, they must be joking!” He then completed my comedown by spending the next twenty minutes saying that Bowie had been, ‘Ok I suppose, but not as brilliant and bloody life changing as you are making out”, before reminding me that gigs were much better in the 1970’s.

  Some kids would have used the inspiration of such a life-changing gig to think: “I want to write songs or be in a band”. I didn’t, I thought “Fuck me – live music is superb”. I sat in the car, annoying Dad with my relentless adrenaline fueled splutterings about gigs and Bowie. He answered a few questions but after about an hour of the journey said that he’d heard enough of Bowie for the night and put on his new Genesis tape. That just provoked me to ask him if Phil Collins was still a miserable bald tosspot when he played live? In return I got a clip round the ear and a sly chuckle.

  I went home to Peterborough and dwelt in my bedroom for the next couple of days, listening to all of my parents music collection. In amongst the Pink Floyd and Whitney Houston CD’s, I would find the odd gem like Tracey Chapman’s debut album which I then proceeded to play until I knew all of the words. I would go up to my room after tea and listen to the indie and rock songs that were being played on our local radio station during the impeccable “Jive Alive” show. The DJ’s, Mick and Sarah Jane, would introduce a song and I would rush to press play and record on my tape deck. Even if it was a song I didn’t particularly like, I needed to record it, listen to it and drink it in. I had caught the music bug.

  In order to see if I could look like Bowie (or indeed any other androgynous space-rock being), I had a quick dabble with Mum’s make-up. I ended up looking more like George, the effeminate hippo from Rainbow, than Bowie or Bolan. I did though make some space on my bedroom wall, amongst the Star Wars and Peterborough United posters, for a postcard of Bowie in full Ziggy Stardust regalia. It felt like I had taken a huge step towards the almost mythical status of being ‘grown up’.

  Peterborough, My Peterborough

  THIS story begins in my home city of Peterborough. To be honest, the spectacular Norman Cathedral aside, it isn’t much to look at. My view of the old place is undoubtedly skewed by my love for Peterborough United, otherwise known as ‘The Posh’. Since my grandad first took me to watch them in 1983 at their ramshackle London Road ground, as a 6 year old, I’ve been addicted.

  Peterborians tended to be miserable, moaning gits who are very much in the “glass half-empty” camp. I fitted in perfectly.

  Up until 1989, my nuclear family had lived in an area of the city called Stanground. I had a terrific time growing up there, mainly because we had lots of playing fields for football and all my mates lived within a few hundred yards of our house. Ok, so some of the locals that you saw hanging around the parade of shops or outside the pubs weren’t the greatest but as long as you kept your bike close by you could make a quick enough getaway.

  We lived in an ex-police house which had a huge garden, ideal for football and re-enacting scenes from Return Of The Jedi. Dad even built me an aviary in the back garden, so that I could spend hours out there looking after our greenfinches and quails. As a geeky young kid, some of my happiest moments were spent sat on the floor of that aviary with my friends, the birds, flying and walking all around me. I fought like Frank Bruno (gallantly but ultimately unsuccessfully) to stay in that house. Alas, even the whining of their 13 year old son couldn’t stop my parents from climbing the social ladder. Mum and Dad both had the hangover from the 1980’s Thatcher bug that had engulfed dear old England and wanted to “better themselves”. So, we moved out of the centre of Stanground and onto a new housing development which was located just 300 yards from my secondary school. The one bonus to the dreaded move was that the new house had a spare room, which I quickly colonised into my own. After seeing Bowie, I would spend unending hours wedged under the wooden desk in that room, trying to find some peace and quiet in which to listen to music and contemplate the meaning of life. Under that desk was my favourite place in our house, it was my space, a spot to hide away and call my own. I would lay under there and write my thoughts on the underside of the desk, knowing that nobody but me would ever see them.

  My mum and dad had been childhood sweethearts who’d split up after they left school, before making their way back to each other a few years later and getting married. They created for me, and latterly my sister, a loving, stable household. We all got along pretty well, albeit with the usual family ups and downs. Some days in our house it would resemble Prime Ministers Questions with everyone trying desperately to get their points across above the noise, but at the end of the day we would generally sit down and watch Neighbours together.

  I’m 5 years older than my kid sister Erika, and from the day she was born she has been the princess of our family. I was as bad as my parents. When she was a small child anything she wanted, if I could get it for her, I would. As a toddler, she didn’t need to learn how to toddle; I would push her round in her walker like some kind of baby royalty.

  Dad was always happy with his own company and wouldn’t waste words by gossiping or talking when he didn’t need to. He played me the first song that I remember hearing regularly which was “Captain Beaky & His Band”. A song that Dad would put on his record player for me then change the names of Beaky’s band to fit in my name, much to my annoyance.

  From Captain Beaky I eventually moved on to buying my own music. For years I told anyone that asked that “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was the first single that I bought with my own money. However, that single was released in 1984 when I was only 8. Unless Woolworths accepted Panini football stickers in exchange for 7” singles, I am pretty sure Mum must have brought that single for “the house” and I borrowed it at some point and created
a memory out of it.

  In reality, my first purchase seems to have been an unusual piece of good taste for a 10 year old. For Christmas 1986 I bought Dexys Midnight Runners “Because of You” on 7” vinyl as a Christmas present for a girl called Grace at my junior school. In an entirely innocent way, Grace was my first girlfriend in so much as we got on ok, but we spent the vast majority of our time ignoring each other and hanging around with our friends. In return for this excellent gift, Grace bought me “Caravan of Love” by The Housemartins, which was also a cracking tune. So my first instance of music and the opposite sex hadn’t gone too badly. It was a fleeting romance, but we both got a magnificent 7” single out of it.

  From Mum, I picked up many things including pathological stubbornness and the ability to never give up on an argument even when you know you are in the wrong. This was to be a personality trait that was to play a big part in how I grew up.

  Music wasn’t a constant in our house. None of us could play an instrument but it was never far away, whether that be Steve Wright on Radio 1 in the car, or Mum playing her Harry Chapin records in the dining room. From such humble beginnings and without ever having formally invited it in, music was about to take over my life.

  Becoming a Braggist

  NOT only did that Bowie gig spark a new found passion for music, it also triggered my youthful hormones and I began to notice the girls at our school for the first time. I had always known they were there but I was far too busy with the aforementioned Peterborough United and Star Wars to pay close attention. After I turned 14 in the summer of 1990, it felt like everywhere I looked there were lumps, under ever tightening school jumpers, and gloss encased lips catching my attention. The gentle stirring in my loins inspired me to attempt to make an emotional and possibly physical contract with a girl by ‘asking her out’. The good looking girl I had begun to fancy also had the added attraction of being the only female supporter of The Posh in the whole school. Her name was Jo, and the fact that she owned the same England 1990 World Cup shell-suit as me made it seem that our getting together was written in the stars. Jo was an attractive girl with long blonde hair who, despite us being in the same class, was nearly a full year older than me and was a very worldly wise 15 years of age. She was a qualified lifeguard so was very fit and had the confident attitude to the world that, to my boyish eyes, all teenage girls seemed to possess.