On Sept 17 & 18, Morrissey performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Both concerts were real events, particularly because Steven Patrick Morrissey is slowly turning into a recluse. In a recent biography Morrissey admitted to preferring the company of animals to the company of man and he joked about residing in Spain. With his typical preference for 'grandeur' from the past, he now lives in Hollywood, in a house that once belonged to actress Carole Lombard (the misantropic Norma Desmond in the movie 'Sunset Boulevard' was modelled after Lombard).

In and around the Hall, that great gold-and-red-coloured building, one could cut the tension with a knife. The audience is really 'wide to recieve', to paraphrase one of Morrissey's songs. In the audience I spotted countless Morrissey-clones: some of them really look like extreme caricatures of their idol (I recount seeing one who could've been Morrissey's twin - if it wasn't for the 20 kilo's of overweight that he was packing... Maybe he was just trying to bring the song 'you're the one for me fatty' to live, who knows.)

A couple of fans - out of Nerd Central - were drawing applause for raising a banner which read 'There is a light that never goes out' now and again. The famous foortball-hymn 'Here we go...' is transformed in the chanting of 'Mor-ris-sey...'. Countless of the faithful at hand are carrying gladioli (a botanical preference that Morrissey shares with good old Dame Edna). One overheated fan even falls out of his loge - a quite intriguing sense of foreplay -but he miraculously gets away with nothing more then a broken ankle.

Morrissey loves grand gestures, therefore his arrival is anounced by ringing bells accompanied by the voice of the late 'poet laureate' Sir John Betjeman reading out his poem 'Portrait of a dead man'. Then, Morrissey trudges onto the stage like a twenty-first century hunchback while the audience goes mad. First impressions: he's still sporting his trademark quiff, his voice sounds phenomenal and his band sounds really great - as if they've practicing and rehearsing for twenty-five hours a day over a period of the last years. Our always-likable sadomasochist Morrissey is still more eloquent than anyone else in the world of rock music, with his preference for sardonic one-liners: 'Next time we'll bring an applause-machine' he quips (after a hysterical reaction from the audience to one of his new songs - still to lukewarm according to Moz himself).

For 90 minutes Morrissey performs some of his best Smiths- and solo-material: 'Everyday is like sunday', 'I want the one I can't have', 'Hairdresser on fire', 'Suedehead', 'Late Night, Maudlin Street'... Sometimes Morrissey seems to be in very good mood, like a modern Noel Coward, at other times he looks like a combination of Dracula and Casanova, the night-time mayor of Doomstown, a Mozferatu for these troubled ages. He really indulges in his image : the maladjusted living anachronism. He even introduces his musicians in archaic English ('Hither, one perceives, on lead guitar...'). When you hear him talking, it seems impossible to comprehend that this man and those cavemen in Oasis are coming from the same city, Manchester.

All gossip that Morrissey would be 'dried up', 'a bitter old man' or even 'over the top' gets swept of the table, almost without effort, as he performs five absolutely incredible new songs. They are just as good as their titles, and in Mozzer's case that means that they are extraordinary: 'The world is full of crashing bores', 'The first of the gang to die', the cynical 'I like you' and espacially the sinistre epic 'Mexico' are top songs. One of his new compositions is called 'Irish blood, English Heart', even though he's been living in the US for a couple of years now...

The concert had three climaxes: first of all, a majestic rendition of 'Jack the ripper'. Secondly, Morrissey anouncing 'If you're a good soul and a kind person, one day, eventually, you will become a vegetarian' and then starting a crushing performance of 'Meat is murder'. The song's a showcase for the enormously talented guitarists, Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer, who produce a wall of sound that even proves to be superior to the best of The Edge and Radiohead. The last three minutes of this nine-minute heartbreaker, we can see Morrissey writhing on his back like an animal in pain while Boorer is dangling his guitar over his head as if it were a chainsaw. After a well deserved standing ovation, Morrissey states - not hindered by any form of false modesty - that: 'Burt Bacharach would have shat to be able to write such a song'. Indeed. The third time that the crowd goes berserk, is during the one and only encore, the wonderful 'There is a light that never goes out'. This hymn for martyrs all over the planet is sung - word for word - by literally everyone in attendance.

All night long Morrissey-devotees try to climb onto the stage to touch their Messiah. Morrissey acts as if he doesn't notice any of their efforts and the security seem to take their job quite seriously. Still, Morrissey touches hundreds of hands in the front rows, almost as if he's giving his fans a blessing. One girl, seated right next to me, comes back from the stage in trance. She's crying and holding up her trembling hand to her friends, triumphantly: 'He touched me!'. There's quite a high percentage of 'professional homosexuals' in the crowd, but there's also loads and loads of heterosexual girls and women, close to fainting. Morrissey is so 'poofter' as one can be, yet he seems to get women all hysterical. Hats off to the man!

During his last verse Morrissey rips his shirt from his chest and throws it in to the masses. Then he runs backstage, as if he's just a little embarrassed by the fact that he seems at least 10 kilos heavier then all those years ago (were those love-handles?). Curtains close and the audience leaves the Hall on the sounds of Sinatra's 'My way'...

Well, we all get older and wiser. I myself once had a discussion with Marc Mijlemans (a legendary Belgian rock journalist), about fifteen years ago: He was thirty, I was nineteen. I thought Morrissey was a poseur, a queer and a misantropic bore. Marc thought he was a visionary with unlimited musical talent. I was wrong. Marc was right. This, my dear friends, was the best concert that I've seen in the past five years.

Serge Simonart