When they erect statues to the heroes of modern Manchester, Sir Alex Ferguson is probably guaranteed a place in the pantheon and so, if results continue to go their way, is Manchester City's manager Roberto Mancini. A spot is possibly also reserved for Morrissey, who carries the flame for his home city around the globe. But whilst there may be 'no place like Hulme', he archly informed the audience at the Manchester arena that whilst he had recently been given the keys to the city of Tel Aviv, no such honour had yet been forthcoming from the good burghers of Manchester.
It may be that heroic status will be denied Morrissey because of his apparent willingness to grasp the nettle of controversy whenever the opportunity arises. His drummer's bass drums sported the Israeli national flag despite the mixed feelings some fans may have about him touring there. If that were not provocative enough, the band were sporting 'We Hate William and Kate' t-shirts and the singer acerbically remarked that he hoped his audience had survived the 'moronic Diamond Jubilee'.
His audience of devotees lapped it up. If Morrissey was not complaining about something, then that would suggest that their hero was not well. As it was, he seemed to be in fine form, launching into You Have Killed Me and Every Day Is Like Sunday before moving on to I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris and Ouija Board, Oiuja Board.
If anything, the band were too muscular, with plenty of mid set guitar histrionics wailing over material that was unfamiliar and bludgeoning the crowd into submission. The audience wanted to singalongaMoz but this was a request the self styled most curmudgeonly man in rock seemed disinclined to indulge. For much of the middle of the set he belted out less well known songs, making for a leaden twenty minutes or so, whilst the big screen video on factory farming that accompanied Meat Is Murder did nothing to lighten the mood.
But finally Morrissey relented and opened his box of magic tricks. The fairy dust that he can sprinkle over any performance is, of course, selections from the Smiths' back catalogue. After years of denial, these songs have increasingly featured in his concerts in recent years and the first to be unveiled was a pulsating How Soon Is Now, which ended on a throbbing synthesizer riff, to be followed later on by Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me before the show concluded with the massed choirs of the arena belting out the words to Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want and an encore of a vibrant Still Ill.
His legions of adoring fans will continue to follow him, but if Morrissey wants to attract gig goers other than those who merely wish to worship at his shrine, he needs to polish up that set list.
