Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Morrissey is the rock’n’roll rebel we need

(Credit: Getty images)

There was a truly electric moment at the Morrissey gig at the Palladium in London last night. Moz was introducing his new song, ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’. It’s about the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 people were killed. He looked out at the audience and asked us a question. How come you know the name Myra Hindley but many of you won’t know the name of the man who bombed the Manchester Arena? People looked stunned. I believe some looked a little ashamed. It is rare indeed for hush to fall at a Morrissey concert, but it did then.

It’s a question that demands an answer. Sounding a little emotional, Morrissey described the 2017 arena bombing as one of the worst things that has ever happened to Manchester, his hometown. It was an even more calamitous slaughter of Mancunian youths than that carried out by Hindley and Ian Brady. Those evil lovers murdered five. Salman Abedi – for that is his name, now strangely faded from many people’s minds – killed four times that number. The youngest was an eight-year-old girl, Saffie Roussos. Younger even than Hindley and Brady’s youngest victim, Lesley Ann Downey. Downey’s name is also better known than Roussos’s, of course. 

Five years after the bombing, Morrissey is still furious about it

Five years after the bombing, Morrissey is still furious about it. And about the culture of amnesia that surrounds it, to such an extent that the names of both the killer and his victims rarely trip off the tongue. The stark, disturbing title of his new song – ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’ – means it is likely to induce much Moz-bashing in the tabloids and maybe even the Guardian if it is ever released as a single. But it’s an incredibly haunting and moving song. Morrissey sings about society’s weirdly passive response to the barbarism in the arena: ‘And the silly people sing: “Don’t Look Back in Anger” / And the morons swing and say: “Don’t Look Back in Anger” / I can assure you I will look back in anger ’till the day I die.

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