Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before
Disappointed
Interesting Drug
Suedehead
The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
Sister I'm A Poet
Death At One's Elbow
/Sweet And Tender Hooligan

Admission was free to anyone wearing a Smiths or Morrissey shirt. Only half the fans who traveled to Wolverhampton made it inside the venue. Outside the queuing and organisation almost turned to chaos. The atmosphere inside was obviously very charged. There was a great deal of cheering and chanting Morrissey's name to the English football tune. Throughout the short set many fans made it on stage, much more than for a typical Smiths concert.

Morrissey came on stage to a thunder of applause, after a long period of cheering and chanting. In the first song, "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before", he sang "And so I drank one, or was it four?" instead of "... it became four". He actually sang that line as it had been originally written and not as it appeared on "Strangeways Here We Come". Before "Interesting Drug" which had yet to be released and was unknown to the fans, Morrissey started "This song is called..." but never managed to finish his introduction. In that song just like in the previous one, "Disappointed", Morrissey missed many lines because of the mayhem with the fans on stage.

Just before "Suedehead", as the band was waiting for Craig Gannon to be ready, Mike Joyce teased the fans with a few notes of the drum intro to "The Queen Is Dead" (the song would not be performed by Morrissey for another 9 years) and Morrissey told the audience "love you all". Morrissey changed the "oh so many illustrations" line in "Suedehead" to "Oh so many blank pages". Before "The Last Of The Famous International Playboys" he started "I'd like to say hello..." but did not finish his line and instead introduced the next song.

Before "Death At One's Elbow" Morrissey finally managed to say what he had originally started: "I'd like to say hello to Julian and hello to Mouse, your mother's letter arrived today, she has a good hand...". Morrissey changed a line in the latter number from "you'll slip on the trail of my bespattered remains" to "you'll slip on the trail of all of my entrails". After that number and its final lines "Goodbye my love, goodbye my love", Morrissey just said "goodbye" and everyone left the stage. They were called back with much insistence and performed one more song, a very rocking "Sweet And Tender Hooligan".

The backstage passes on this date featured famous Carry On actor Charles Hawtrey.

Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.

Opening band was Bradford. Their debut single titled "Skin Storm" released earlier in 1988 was covered by Morrissey in 1991 and made available on the "Pregnant For The Last Time" single for most of the world and the "My Love Life" single in the USA.

None.

Morrissey and his one-off band walked on stage after intermission music that ended with Cilla Black's "Love Of The Loved" and Klaus Nomi's "Der Nussbaum". The fans exited the venue to Shirley Bassey's "You'll Never Walk Alone".

The backdrop photo for this show only was the little boy from the cover to the "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" single. View in situ.

This is one of the concerts fans say they would like most to see released in video or audio form. It was filmed by Tim Broad and the BBC have the rights to the audio. Hwoever, at this point in time we will have to do with only one song in video and another one in audio only.

The live performance of "Sister I'm A Poet" can be seen on Morrissey's compilation of early promotional films titled "Hulmerist". The promos on the compilation are also interspersed with footage of fans queuing outside the venue and Morrissey's arrival in an old fashioned bus.

"Sweet And Tender Hooligan" from this show was released in audio form on the "Interesting Drug" 12" single and cd-single.

Up until April 2013, only one recording of this concert was available on bootlegs, an audience one featuring the complete setlist. The sound quality was average at best, and the recording captured the bootlegger's screaming neighbour better than it did Morrissey and his band. This recording was first made available on a bootleg LP titled "Untitled". The set was also featured on the Smiths bootleg LP "A Nice Bit Of Meat 2", in same poor quality, but with more content of mixed origins (radio sessions, live material, soundchecks). This material was available on cd on "Wolverhampton '88" and "The First Solo Show", as well as on many other fanmade cd-rs. Many fans had attempted to 'remaster' the recording to improve its sound, so versions of varying quality and volume were available.

In April 2013 a soundboard rip from an official record company inhouse video of the concert was pressed onto bootleg vinyl, making the above audience recording useless. This new vinyl bootleg was not given a title (not to be confused with the audience one mentioned above which was titled "Untitled"), although the back of the LP sleeve and the record's labels state, title-style, "Live At The Civic Hall Wolverhampton, England December 22, 1988". The audio was immediately ripped from this LP to be distributed on the internet where bootlegs are shared.

The footage from some official record company inhouse video of the complete concert was ripped and distributed in MP4 video format on the internet in May 2013.

Quotes

In an interview published in the NME in February 1989, Morrissey said "The concert was a very impulsive thing... all the best things happen on impulse I find. I was interested to see how people would react towards me. There was no intention to cause chaos. It wasn't an attention-seeking device, I just needed to see some particular faces. It was nice to be kissed repeatedly. (...) It was Wolverhampton, it wasn't London and it wasn't Manchester which I thought was an important gesture. It was free which, for someone of my status, is unheard of. So I think those two elements added greatly to the event. There was no heavy security and it wasn't an imposing venue. It wasn't a theatre and it wasn't an aircraft hangar. It was dear old sweet dumpy Wolverhampton. (...) It was (...) senseless aggro. It was frothing admiration building to the brink and beyond. It wasn't provocation or dangling a carrot. I felt in order to get in you had to make a slight effort, it wasn't going to be that easy. So I knew that the people who made the effort were the important ones. It was like The Krypton Factor, it was a test of endurance. But nobody seemed to mind, apart, obviously, from the ones that didn't get in. That was inevitable. The T-shirts were a simple way of getting over who could get in the venue because otherwise it would have had to be tickets."

Morrissey, in an interview published in Record Mirror on 11 September 1989:
Q: What was it like playing live again when you appeared in Wolverhampton in December?
A: "It was nice. I did enjoy it. It was nice to be fondled."
Q: Was it good to be back on stage?
A: "No, it was just nice to be fondled. I was a bit wobbly. I thought that as I was walking on stage I'd change direction, but I didn't. It was great to be back in the natural habitat."
Q: How did it feel with Andy Rourke, Mike Joyce and Craig Gannon backing you?
A: "Very tearful. There was a radiant feeling on stage. You knew where everybody was and who they were, which was astonishingly good. It was a really comfortable feeling. No, comfortable sounds like an old cardigan... but it was nice."

In an interview given to Q Magazine in December 1989, Morrissey said "I thought a free concert was a very good gesture. I couldn't think of anyone who'd done it in recent years. I was and still am in a situation where I could sit down with some very heavy money moguls and organise huge tours with highly inflated ticket prices. I don't do that because it's against my nature. So I thought above all people would see a free concert as a very welcome gesture, regardless of who got their sandals stolen or dropped their crisps in a puddle. In the hall that night there was a great aura of love and gentleness, and all the people who came on stage treated me in a very gentle way. I wasn't kicked or punched or dragged, although they were very emotionally charged. I came away with no bruises."

In an interview given to Len Brown in 1990 Morrissey said: "Wolverhampton was not really a concert, it was an event at which I didn't really sing."