24 October 1986
Brixton Academy, London
The Queen Is Dead
Panic
I Want The One I Can't Have
Vicar In A Tutu
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Ask
(Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame/Rusholme Ruffians
Shakespeare's Sister
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
What She Said (with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
Is It Really So Strange?
Cemetry Gates
London
Meat Is Murder
I Know It's Over
/The Draize Train
/How Soon Is Now?
//Still Ill
//Bigmouth Strikes Again
The Smiths decided to make a minor change to the setlist. The slower number "Never Had No One Ever" was dropped in favour of the rocking "Shakespeare's Sister" which was being played for the first time on this leg of the tour. Actually the overall delivery of the songs was also harder. Morrissey growled many lines. It must be said that the band started to look exhausted, and tensions behind the scenes were starting to show on stage. Johnny Marr made numerous guitar miscues and Morrissey seemed rather unenthusiastic.

Morrissey changed a line in "The Queen Is Dead" from "hemmed in like a boar between arches" to "stuck like a boar between arches". Before going into "Shakespeare's Sister" Mike teased the audience with the drum intro to "Reel Around The Fountain", a song that wasn't played on this tour. In the latter number Morrissey repeated "Throw your skinny body down!" instead of "Throw your white body down!". He introduced "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" with the words "This song isn't too bad, 'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side'."

Before "Is It Really So Strange?" Morrissey said "Thank you for requesting 'Handsome Devil', but we dropped it three years ago." The yet-to-be-released "London" was introduced with the words "This is a new song..." and in it Morrissey growled "She knows that when he goes, my God he goes!". Johnny started "Meat Is Murder" with a slowed-down version of the verse of "The Headmaster Ritual".

After "I Know It's Over" everyone took a break and a second set of drums was wheeled onto the stage. When the band minus Morrissey returned for the usual first encore, the instrumental "The Draize Train", there was someone else with them, Fred Hood from the Marr-produced Impossible Dreamers. He acted as second drummer for "The Draize Train" as well as the following song, "How Soon Is Now?". He left after the first encore and didn't return for the second one. When Morrissey came back on stage for that second encore he was wearing a t-shirt featuring radio DJ Steve Wright on the front, with the words HANG THE DJ. At the beginning of the final song "Bigmouth Strikes Again" he removed it and tossed it into the audience.

Brief footage from this concert was shown in November 1986 on the French programme Les Enfants Du Rock, alongside an interview with Morrissey.

 


A reasonably good audience recording of this gig is out there, and supposed to have been recorded by bootlegger DJ. It was first made more widely available on the manufactured double LP bootleg "Brixton Academy Friday 20/10/86" (yes the date is incorrect). This featured the complete concert except for "Cemetry Gates". A bit of Billy Bragg talking to his audience was found at the end of side 4. This was transfered onto fanmade compact discs with similar artwork.

The recording is also found on the manufactured bootleg cd titled "Genius Steals", without the Romeo And Juliet intro and the Billy Bragg snippet. This title is also offered with the same artwork in black and white instead of orange.

Both bootlegs are available on file sharing networks on the internet. A remastered version of "Genius Steals" is also available there. The pitch was slightly slowed down and a few glitches were removed.

This concert was filmed from the left balcony and the footage is circulated in its entirety on bootleg VHS and DVD (recorder: Steve from Soundsville International). It is more easily found in 'remastered' form, where the audio track was replaced by the better audio-only fan recording mentioned above.

A different audio bootleg to the one above is very scarcely circulated on the internet at this point in time, via different transfers. It may or may not have been lifted from the video recording.

 

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