Hong Kong welcomes Morrissey – unrepentant and still as bristling as ever
A sold-out concert in Hong Kong this week is testament to the enduring popularity of the former Smiths frontman – and age has neither wearied nor filtered his outspoken views
Morrissey’s sold-out concert in Hong Kong this week comes at an interesting time in the life of the former Smiths frontman.
Manchester’s favourite son spent most of last year being uncharacteristically quiet after news emerged that he’d been treated for cancer. But that silence was broken in spectacular style earlier this year with the announcement of a major world tour. Since then it’s been hard to avoid him – and the good news for his fans is that he’s just as cantankerous as ever.
While he’s largely shunned interviews with newspapers (he’s had a prickly relationship with the press since the influential Smiths emerged in the mid-1980s, and didn’t respond to requests for an interview with SCMP.com), he’s hit the headlines with onstage pronouncements on everything from the state of his health to the US election (“Trump is staying in my hotel,” he told one audience recently. “I’ve never been so close to an open grave.”)
And 30 years after the release of the Smiths’ greatest album, The Queen is Dead, Morrissey remains unflinching in his hatred of the British royal family.
“I don’t know anyone who likes the ‘boil family’,” he recently told the Australian news portal News.com. “You either buy into the silliness or else you are intelligent enough to realise that it is all human greed and arrogance. [Prince] Harry killed 34 people in Afghanistan and the UK press called him a hero. If he ate 34 poor people in Haiti the UK press would still call him a hero. It is insufferable.”
