8 August 1992
Madstock, Finsbury Park, London, UK

You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side
Glamorous Glue
Girl Least Likely To
The National Front Disco
November Spawned A Monster
We'll Let You Know
Sister I'm A Poet
Suedehead
You're The One For Me, Fatty
Morrissey was supporting Madness for this event celebrating their reunion. There weren't many Morrissey fans at Finsbury Park because he was added to the bill only after the tickets were put up for sale. So the park was filled with Madness fans who didn't necessarily like Morrissey or were impatient to see the band they paid to see. After a few songs the heckling started and all kinds of items were thrown on stage, including coins, bottles, a carton of orange juice, etc. Is it debatable whether or not this heckling and pelting had anything to do with Morrissey, as opening band Gallon Drunk suffered the same treatment. The verbal abuse came from all sides, from anti-racists as well as from the racist faction of Madness fans. For both sides the skinheads backdrop and Morrissey wrapping himself in a Union Jack during "Glamorous Glue" seem to have made things worse. The mounting abuse forced Morrissey to walk out after only nine songs. The mess was discussed considerably in the UK music papers (notably the NME who appeared to be out to get him at the time) during the following weeks, even months, adding even more fuel to the rumours of Morrissey being racist. The singer never gave in to the pressure, he actually boycotted the publication for 12 years and only addressed the subject a few years later, to a different publication.

Now that the "Your Arsenal" album was released Morrissey increased the number of songs from that album in the set back to eight. However because of the early termination of the concert, "Certain People I Know", "Seasick, Yet Still Docked" and "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful", as well as earlier song "Such A Little Thing Makes Such A Big Difference" and the Suede cover "My Insatiable One", all on the planned setlist, were not played.

Besides thanking them twice Morrissey didn't say a single word to the audience over the length of this aborted show. He changed the line "Someone kindly told me that you wasted eight of nine lives" in "You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side" to "Someone kindly told me you've collected very sharp bread knives" as he would be doing often throughout the upcoming tour. "Sister I'm A Poet" was done rockabilly-style, as on the previous year's Kill Uncle tour. Before going into "You're The One For Me, Fatty" Boz or Alain picked a few notes from the American National Anthem.

 


There are two different audience recordings of the complete concert out there. The best one, also the scarcest, sounds quite good and was recorded by DJ. The other one sounds fair at best, but it captured very well some of the heckling from the audience (recorder unknown).

An audience recording of the complete show is circulated on bootleg DVDs as well as in digital format on the internet (recorder: Chris A). The filming was done from the left and is rather steady. It has occasional head obstruction.

Professionally shot video footage of "You're The One For Me Fatty" was shown in a MTV Europe newspiece about Morrissey's appearance at Madstock and him walking off. This is usually found on bootleg DVD collections of various television material.

 

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