Stop Morrissey If Your Girlfriend's In a Coma

Sure, there were plenty of tall, skinny, bespectacled guys at the final concert of Morrissey’s five-night stand in New York at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Sunday night. But what’s always surprising about Morrissey is the diversity of his audience—how many distinct kinds of people, that is, can identify with the former Smiths frontman’s famous melancholy. To my left, a grinning and eventually shirtless 30-something hugged his girlfriend over and over. To my right, an indisputably bro-y guy with a backward Yankees cap and Chinese characters on his bicep repeatedly threw the “devil horns” hand gesture at Morrissey with a fervor unparalleled since the last time Dave Matthews played anywhere.

Opener Girl in a Coma was unremarkable, save for the circumstances that got the band there—former opener and longtime collaborator Kristeen Young was asked to leave the show after saying onstage that Morrissey “gives great head,” and Girl in a Coma was a last-minute replacement. I speculated that they were chosen solely on the basis of their Smiths-quoting name, and fellow concertgoers voiced the same theory. They played grown-up punk that failed to engage the audience, and the lead singer too often relied on making crazy eyes to make up for the lack of variety in the band’s Joan Jett-ish repertoire.

Morrissey opened with “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”—more than a little ironic for the weary devotees who had seen that song open the other four Hammerstein shows earlier in the week. It didn’t fail to get fans screaming, however, especially as he transitioned into “Billy Budd.” That signature Morrissey wit was on display all evening, most notably in his references to the “Frankenstein Ballroom” and his cheeky assertion that no musical artist of significance has never appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. “So what does that tell us about Rolling Stone?” he inquired, before launching into “The World Is Full of Crashing Bores.” Other highlights included a raucous “Irish Blood, English Heart,” a prancing “The Last of the Famous International Playboys,” and a chilling, heartbreaking acoustic rendition of “You Have Killed Me.” The show was amazing, of course, but at some point you stop buying Morrissey’s assertions that no one loves him. Hundreds of exceptions packed in ever-closer to see him on Sunday night—including the shirtless man, the bro-dude, and me.