Click on date for concert information:

Note: There is confusion about the dates of the first three concert in this section. The Waterford and 2 Dublin concerts are usually credited as having been held on the 12, 13 and 14 of November, but they actually took place on the 11, 12 and 13 respectively. The confusion stems from an incorrect advertisement in the UK music press.

James. A second guest band, called The Village, was added in Waterford only.

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The last song played before the band hit the stage was Prokofiev's "Romeo And Juliet" overture.

There is confusion around the setlists for the Irish dates of this section. Various sources give different information and what is presented here is the likeliest scenario. It is not impossible, and actually likely, that some Irish setlists given here are incomplete or listed under the incorrect date.

The highlight of these dates was the live introduction of two more tracks that would make it onto the "Meat Is Murder" album which the Smiths had just recorded for release in early 1985: "What She Said" and "I Want The One I Can't Have". The latter was at the time announced as the next single but those plans would be changed. With "Nowhere Fast" and "Rusholme Ruffians" added in September and "Barbarism Begins At Home" which was already almost one year old, this meant that five of the upcoming album's nine tracks were already given to the fans. Of this lot, it must be said that "Barbarism Begins At Home" was only played on and off during this leg. It was older and not a regular like the others.

Recent single tracks "How Soon Is Now?", "William, It Was Really Nothing", and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" were also played regularly along with older classics such as "Reel Around The Fountain", "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", "Still Ill", "Miserable Lie", "This Charming Man", "Hand In Glove" and "What Difference Does It Make".

The setlists were rounded up with songs played on a very few occasions throughout the tour. These were about to disappear after this leg, or early into the upcoming "Meat Is Murder" tour: "Jeane", "You've Got Everything Now", "These Things Take Time", "Handsome Devil", "Girl Afraid", "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "This Night Has Opened My Eyes". The latter was probably reintroduced into the set because of its recent inclusion on the just released "Hatful Of Hollow" compilation LP.

Here is the number of times each song was performed on this leg, in descending order of frequency. This is based on 6 concerts for which the setlist is known, plus 2 for which it is partially known.

Hand In Glove - 8
I Want The One I Can't Have - 8
Still Ill - 8
How Soon Is Now? - 8
Nowhere Fast - 8
This Charming Man - 7
What Difference Does It Make? - 7
William, It Was Really Nothing - 7
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - 6
Miserable Lie - 6
Reel Around The Fountain - 6
What She Said - 6
Jeane - 5
Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want - 5
Rusholme Ruffians - 5
These Things Take Time - 5
Barbarism Begins At Home - 4
Handsome Devil - 4
Pretty Girls Make Graves - 2
This Night Has Opened My Eyes - 2
You've Got Everything Now - 2
Girl Afraid - 1

See here for more tour statistics.

The musical highlight of this period is the medley of "Rusholme Ruffians" with "This Charming Man". At the end of the former Mike kept on playing the drum track for a few bars by himself, then Andy kicked in with the bass line from "This Charming Man". For a few seconds the rhythm track they played together sounded like the intro to the New York mix of "This Charming Man". Then after a few bars Johnny added the instantly recognisable guitar intro just before Morrissey started singing "Punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate...". This pairing was dropped after 1984 because "This Charming Man" would gradually disappear from the setlists.

Another interesting alteration is found in the reinstated "Jeane" which included a riff of the Beatles' "Day Tripper". "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want", which served as set opener was extended with a repeat of the second verse and ended abruptly without the instrumental outro from the studio version. The latter song's live performances were rather weak and, as for "How Soon Is Now?", they would benefit from the addition of second guitarist Craig Gannon when performed in 1986 on the Queen Is Dead tour.

In "Still Ill", besides making the usual change "If I were you I really wouldn't bother", Morrissey adapted a line to Ireland by singing "Dublin is mine, and it owes me a living" on one night, and "Ireland is mine, and it owes me a living" on another. In "You've Got Everything Now" Morrissey often made once again many lyric changes, such as "You've got nothing now", "You are your mother's only son and you're a miserable one", "well this is true and it's false". He also sang "No I've never had a job because I never wanted one" instead of "...because I'm too shy".

The new live addition "I Want The One I Can't Have" was often introduced by Morrissey as the band's next single, but as it turned out, the plans for the next single would change in favour of "How Soon Is Now?". At the end of "These Things Take Time" Johnny made a wall of noise with his guitar while Morrissey wailed in high pitched voice, marking the end of the main set or the whole show, depending on that song's position in the setlist. "Hand In Glove", the final song of the evening, included an extended outro. In that, instead of singing "but we have something they'll never have", Morrissey usually sang "we have something they never had". On the final date in Paris Morrissey changed the second occurrence of "the sun shines out of our behinds" with a repeat of "the Good People laugh". This change would become standard in 1985 and 1986.

Perhaps the most interesting thing - retrospectively - is that in his mumblings near the end of "Barbarism Begins At Home", Morrissey sang "...a crack on the head because of all the silly little things that you said, and you said the queen is dead..." Those last words were mumbled on certain nights, but were clearly sung on others. The song "The Queen Is Dead" was to be written one year later, so perhaps Morrissey was already putting together its lyrics. It's also possible that those words were somehow autobiographical and singing them gave him the idea to write a song around them.

Nothing from these dates was given an official release.

The only visual souvenir for this period is for the Paris concert which was supposedly recorded for television broadcast. However most of the filming is from little more than one angle only and includes very annoying video effects. It is only one of two visual documents for the Smiths in 1984 so despite all this, still very interesting to watch on bootleg video or DVD.

There is no 'official' audio bootleg for these dates but homemade CD-Rs produced from the audio portion of the Paris video mentioned above are well circulated and reasonably easy to find under the title "Versailles". The two Dublin dates are also fairly common. A partial recording of the Cork date is more limitedly found. The four concerts mentioned here are all found on the internet, but the first of the two Dublin gigs is often mislabelled Gloucester September 1984.