We are failing: Rod Stewart, Morrissey and the indescribable hell of the late gig cancellation

Of course, his condition doesn’t necessarily preclude watching a football game with 64,000 like-minded souls, though it presumably stopped him contributing to the 125-decibels the Scottish fans reached during the singing of Flower of Scotland. But it does seem particularly tin-eared to boast about hopping on a Lear jet to a game while some of your fans are still attempting to get home via public transport from your gig that never happened. 

When it comes to explanations that don’t engender much sympathy, we need look no further than Manchester’s finest (who else?) Morrissey. Coping with a minor bout of laryngitis seems like positively dicing with death compared to the reason for Moz’s recent no-show at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia (cheapest ticket €103) – what he described as the “indescribable hell” of a slightly noisy hotel room. 

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Morrissey was left unable to perform after the sound of people enjoying themselves outside his hotel hell left the serial-canceller “in a catatonic state”. To be fair, enjoyment is a sound he probably hasn’t heard for a while. 

One can only speculate how the worry of Moz’s condition must have added to the burden of those fans who had to travel half the night to get home before going to work the next day. At least they’d have gotten over it in a couple of days – Morrissey himself reckoned he would “take one year to recover. And that is an understatement.”  In that case we can only marvel how quickly he got over the ulcer, Barrett’s oesophagus and double pneumonia that saw him scratch more than fifty concerts in 2013. 

Some rock stars do seem to have a knack for contracting illnesses which take hold inordinately quickly, don’t come with a name, and clear up in next to no time. One could point to Elton John’s “unusual bacterial infection”, for instance, or Lana Del Rey’s recent “medical anomaly”. Try putting one of those ailments on a sick note next time you’re under the weather and let’s see what HR makes of it.    

Is there anything less likely to arouse sympathy than a pop star who feigns illness because they can’t quite get it together to do the thing they’ve managed their entire adult life? Why yes, there is – a singer who cancels a gig after the punters have already taken their places because of unspecified difficulties boarding his private jet.

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Sadly – you’re ahead of me here, aren’t you – Morrissey’s cancellation of his concert at Benicàssim International Festival in 2004 left hundreds of fans weeping at the foot of the stage. If this was from shock rather than anything more than slight disappointment, then they clearly weren’t real fans. 

Though they always stress how much they love their followers, some acts, with recent examples including Neil Young and Meghan Trainor, wake up one morning and realise that now is just the wrong time to tour. It’s a shame they rarely realise that the last three months was the wrong time to sell tickets. Neil has previous in this regard – in 1997 he scrapped an entire European tour after injuring himself making a ham sandwich. 

For contrast, we need look no further than the latter stages of The Fall’s illustrious career. While no-one can deny that the 40-odd years of their existence meant that some of the band’s concerts were inevitably less successful than others, the show almost always went on. Indeed, their final gigs saw Mark E Smith take to the stage when his cancer meant he was clearly so unwell he probably shouldn’t have left his bed, never mind the house.

 On occasion he performed in a wheelchair, with his arm in a sling. Sometimes he was too ill to manage even that, and had to complete the bulk of the set from the dressing room. No one would have begrudged cancellation under those circumstances, but MES was clearly made of sterner stuff. Let’s hope there was no noise outside his hotel window, eh?

Paul Hanley’s books include Sixteen Again: How Pete Shelley & Buzzcocks Changed Manchester Music (and me), published by Route. He drummed in The Fall from 1980-84 and now is one of three drummers in House Of All