Leeds - First Direct Arena (Mar. 6, 2020) post-show

Post your info and reviews related to this concert in the comments section below. Other links (photos, external reviews, etc.) related to this concert will also be compiled in this section as they are sent in.

Setlist:

You'll Be Gone / I Wish You Lonely / The Boy With The Thorn In His Side / Jim Jim Falls / At Amber / Morning Starship / Lady Willpower / That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore / Once I Saw The River Clean / If You Don't Like Me, Don't Look At Me / Munich Air Disaster 1958 / World Peace Is None Of Your Business / Seasick, Yet Still Docked / I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris / Home Is A Question Mark / Love Is On Its Way Out / Back On The Chain Gang / Never Again Will I Be A Twin / I've Changed My Plea To Guilty / Some Say I Got Devil / Jack The Ripper / Jacky's Only Happy When She's Up On The Stage // Half A Person / Irish Blood, English Heart

Setlist courtesy of Anon & Setlist.fm

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• Morrissey Central: "Live at Leeds" (March 8, 2020). 2 photos. Link posted by Famous when dead.
• Flick Of The Finger: "Live: Morrissey Storms Leeds First Direct Arena." by Rhys Grover (8 images) - March 7, 2020. Link posted by @NealCassidy
• The Telegraph: "Morrissey, Leeds Arena, review: a peculiar night with the king of bedroom melodrama." by James Hall (3 of 5 stars) - March 7, 2020. Transcript provide by joe frady here.
• Morrissey airs new songs and rare Smiths favourites as he kicks off European tour in Leeds by Will Richards - NME. Link posted by an anonymous person.
• Photos (3 total) - @snapagig1 / Twitter.
  
• Photos (4 total) - @DavidJMarkham / Twitter. Link posted by NealCassidy. From the review by David J Markham:
  Age Shall Not Weary Him Nor The Years Condemn - Yorkshire Times. Link posted by joe frady.
  
  
  
• Tweet posted by Pippistrella:
  

 

[Deleted member 29417]

Yorkshire Times 2018

He's a Painter, Arts Critic, Photographer. No obvious Dodwell connection that I can see.
He also did a review for the 2018 Moz concert (February 2018), also in Leeds, so he has some professional interest, if only in providing commissioned Arts reviews for the YT.

Interestingly, the show then, again started off with You’ll Be Gone & some of the setlist from 2018 was repeated in 2020. Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage, Munich Air Disaster 1958, & Pretenders song Back on the Chain Gang.

If it's in a newspaper it's not a fan review. Doesn't matter if the reviewer is a fan or not.

 

[Surface]

If it's in a newspaper it's not a fan review. Doesn't matter if the reviewer is a fan or not.

Thats funny as when the review is negative, you call the reviewer out as a hater?

 

[Similar2Sunday]

First sentence let you down big time pal.
Never mind you deserve a reply.

Nobody is willing to invest money in him anymore for fancy stage sets/screens/lighting etc.
You obviously have never seen him at his best when he had all these things.
They created a great atmosphere around Quarry and Ringleader times.
So just for you I’ll repeat
Last night was very low price budget airline no frills.
He can’t get his head around how business works and basic maths and this is why he is now in this position. ( No record company/financial backing )
The songs are no longer up to it. It’s sad but he just can’t write em or think where to go to steal the lines from anymore and the record companies have rightly so said “No more Mr Morrissey thank you very much”.
And why should he write those songs now he has sold out and lives in 5* global luxury.

Gotta go I need a pee.
And don’t be so cheeky next time pal, do your homework and show some respect.

??

The first sentence was sarcastic. Sorry about that.

I really would have loved to see the giant red MORRISSEY lights too and I agree that the past (Quarry, etc.) was a strange and sometimes better place. I am not saying we should not criticize and hope for better, just that many of these issues have been sounded for a long time and are no big surprise. Cheers and I hope you can enjoy the music despite being truly disappointed.

 

[Anonymous]

If it's in a newspaper it's not a fan review. Doesn't matter if the reviewer is a fan or not.

More stupidity. The guy is a Morrissey fan or you going to argue with him and tell him that he's not? Of course you are? When did writing something for a newspaper automatically preclude the writer from being a fan of the subject?

When Morrissey wrote his New York Dolls articles to the NME did that preclude him from being a fan? "it was in the newspaper" so therefore to follow your argument (as puerile as it is) as soon as he acknowledged his fandom he could be a fan no more?

What it must be like living the dreary life of a twenty-something know it all that knows nothing.

 

[Anonymous]

Thats funny as when the review is negative, you call the reviewer out as a hater?

Yeah, but that's totally different because ....

 

[Deleted member 29227]

If it's in a newspaper it's not a fan review. Doesn't matter if the reviewer is a fan or not.

Yes, I get that but I was posting it in response to the anon poster who said it "reads like a fan review".
As far as I'm aware, a fan review would never make it to a newspaper. It would need to be commissioned by the 'paper.

 

[Deleted member 29417]

43 pages? What?

Only just noticed this review which is sort of lost in the opening header post. Credits to @joe frady.

Looks like a decent & honest review though:

Yorkshire Times Review

That's fabulous. Such a blokey review; messing about with his camera, badly behaved pensioners & some artist on Twatter calling him a racist & then having to delete.

There is a wee group running round saying if you like Morrissey, you're a racist. Which makes them look nuts. Which is a good thing.

 

[Deleted member 29227]

That's fabulous. Such a blokey review; messing about with his camera, badly behaved pensioners & some artist on Twatter calling him a racist & then having to delete.

There is a wee group running round saying if you like Morrissey, you're a racist. Which makes them look nuts. Which is a good thing.

Yeah I thought it was a decent review, but lost in the clutter of the opening thread header...I missed it, so suspected others might have too.

 

[Deleted member 29417]

Yes, I get that but I was posting it in response to the anon poster who said it "reads like a fan review".
As far as I'm aware, a fan review would never make it to a newspaper. It would need to be commissioned by the 'paper.

Sorry I was making a comment about the comment you were making a comment about. ?

He's obviously desperate to believe that nothing good can be legit.

 

[Benny-the-British-Butcher]

Didn't he sing who will protect us from the police? Seems that ones been forgotten.
You lent forward.I sang along.

So sorry but that was not me.

??

 

[Deleted member 29227]

There is no real Dodwell connection - only that he is a fan, one that spends his own money to travel to see Morrissey, it's unlikely that'd he'd write anything overly negative. He even put a spin on the 4 slow songs that 'lost momentum' but somehow the 'hero' shone through and won the day.

He's a fan. It's his opinion. I didn't perceive it as a review. I perceived it as a fan boy musing. Much like Dodwell's fan girl musings.

Well, as with anything which you might read, anywhere, you can 'perceive' it in many different ways & any way which you like...depends where your head is.

This line in his 2018 review was interesting though:

"I have to confess that The Smiths were not totally my cup of tea but it’s an undeniable fact that they wrote some unique and memorable songs".

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, I get that but I was posting it in response to the anon poster who said it "reads like a fan review".
As far as I'm aware, a fan review would never make it to a newspaper. It would need to be commissioned by the 'paper.

.... but would someone who is a fan of an artist be precluded from writing an article about said artist in a newspaper? This writer is clearly a Morrisey fan. He is going to all 4 UK/EU shows. Are you suggesting The Yorkshire Post is paying for all 4 shows and is expecting reviews of all? The writer is not at staffer at the paper, at best he's freelance and the commission probably went something like this:

Writer to Yorkshire Post: I'm going to a Morrissey gig in Leeds and was going to write something up. Interested?

Yorkshire post to writer: OK.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, as with anything which you might read, anywhere, you can 'perceive' it in many different ways & any way which you like...depends where your head is.

That's exactly what I did.

 

[Anonymous]

There is a significant group stating, based on Morrissey's comments, that he is racist. Some Morrissey fans claims there is no way his words are, or or can be interpreted as, racist. This denial makes some Morrissey fans look like morons.

They're blind blind blind

 

[snoddywilko]

Look let’s just face facts. If I didn’t attend last night and then came on here spouting nonsense I would rightly so get a good hiding.
So I had an opportunity to go along and witness the sad event for myself and I took it. ( are you still with me? )
I am now in a position to report back what I observed and I am genuinely sorry that you and many, many others on here are upset but I can’t tell lies.

The venue was to big for him.
The stage was budget airline standard. In house lighting, no big screens, the biggest expense was a smoke machine for Ripper.
The set list was 85% pure torture.
No atmosphere on the floor whatsoever.
To many covers.
His voice was spot on.
Band just went through the motions.
Apart from the awful set list it was all so so predictable,
There was absolutely zero effort put into it.

I’d love to hear more from Carlisle Baz because he was genuinely gutted and made no attempts to cover his disappointment giving his honest opinion which I totally agreed with. In the past we haven’t seen eye to eye but I do know he was really looking forward to this with his Daughter. Hope you both got home safe and well

??

Let’s face it: you hate Morrissey & you knew you’d hate the gig before you went. Probably the only reason you went was so that you could come on here & tell everyone how much you hated it; feeling like attending the gig would somehow make your hatred more justified.

But in reality it just shows you up as the confused person you are.

 

[Deleted member 29417]

Well, as with anything which you might read, anywhere, you can 'perceive' it in many different ways & any way which you like...depends where your head is.

This line in his 2018 review was interesting though:

"I have to confess that The Smiths were not totally my cup of tea but it’s an undeniable fact that they wrote some unique and memorable songs".

The Smiths are far more art school studenty, with their jangle, angst, cries for help, literary quotes, charity shop androgyny, animal rights & red wedgey gigs.

Once Moz goes solo, all he really keeps is the animals. The sound goes glam, punk, pyschobilly, he gets more interested in sex, violence, skinheads & crime. And he doesn't want your useless help anymore, you can drop dead.

I prefer the darker solo stuff. But I wish he was less fixated on sounding like a classic crooner. One of the great things about him & why he's always worth listening to live is the way he can make a line conversational & change its tone depending on his mood.

 

[Deleted member 29227]

Let’s face it: you hate Morrissey & you knew you’d hate the gig before you went. Probably the only reason you went was so that you could come on here & tell everyone how much you hated it; feeling like attending the gig would somehow make your hatred more justified.

But in reality it just shows you up as the confused person you are.

I'm finding the BtBB review totally mystifying to be perfectly frank, it really does not hold up to any form of scrutiny.

...why would a known hater, travel from wherever it lives to Leeds, spend c.£100 on say 2 tickets (assuming he took Little Benny for example), maybe another c.£50 refreshments, c.£20 parking, or more if they travelled by train, so c.£200 ...to go & watch a Moz gig, an artist they hate with a passion, & which they have absolutely no interest in?

Just to see what it might be like, or how bad it actually could be, to then write, justify, and expect us to actually believe, their 'review' on here?

Lunacy of the highest degree, or sheer fantasy? It makes no sense whatsoever & so my conclusion is it's all fakery of the lowest order with mischievous intent.

 

[Deleted member 29417]

I'm finding the BtBB review totally mystifying to be perfectly frank, it really does not hold up to any form of scrutiny.

...why would a known hater, travel from wherever it lives to Leeds, spend c.£100 on say 2 tickets (assuming he took Little Benny for example), maybe another c.£50 refreshments, c.£20 parking, or more if they travelled by train, so c.£200 ...to go & watch a Moz gig, an artist they hate with a passion, & which they have absolutely no interest in?

Just to see what it might be like, or how bad it actually could be, to then write, justify, and expect us to actually believe, their 'review' on here?

Lunacy of the highest degree, or sheer fantasy? It makes no sense whatsoever & so my conclusion is it's all fakery of the lowest order with mischievous intent.

He's just trolling. It's a relief though, because some of his posts were so violent, you'd suspect he was a stalker IRL.

 

[Deleted member 29227]

He's just trolling. It's a relief though, because some of his posts were so violent, you'd suspect he was a stalker IRL.

Yeah guess there's some societal consolation in that last bit.

 

[Surface]

I'm finding the BtBB review totally mystifying to be perfectly frank, it really does not hold up to any form of scrutiny.

...why would a known hater, travel from wherever it lives to Leeds, spend c.£100 on say 2 tickets (assuming he took Little Benny for example), maybe another c.£50 refreshments, c.£20 parking, or more if they travelled by train, so c.£200 ...to go & watch a Moz gig, an artist they hate with a passion, & which they have absolutely no interest in?

Just to see what it might be like, or how bad it actually could be, to then write, justify, and expect us to actually believe, their 'review' on here?

Lunacy of the highest degree, or sheer fantasy? It makes no sense whatsoever & so my conclusion is it's all fakery of the lowest order with mischievous intent.

Bennys been to lots of Morrissey gigs over the years, 2 of them the same ones I have attended. Have you or Nerak been to any?