Morrissey’s alternative Olympic vision

Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony was a wonderful celebration of British popular culture from the last five decades, from the Stones, Kinks and Beatles through to the Arctic Monkeys and Dizzee Rascal. Appropriately enough, there was a good showing for London-based music, with the Jam, the Sex Pistols, David Bowie, Underworld and Prodigy all getting their spot in the limelight.

While Miranda Sawyer in the Observer today picks up on the surprising omissions of Oasis and the Stone Roses, the other Mancunian band that was missing for me was…. The Smiths. I’m fairly certain that Morrissey would have cringed to have been anywhere near the setlist, but arguably his contribution to British popular music has been at least as significant as any of the above.

There was a certain piquancy therefore to hear that Morrissey played his home city of Manchester last night, the day after the Olympic ceremony, the only UK date on a world tour that stretches from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles. (According to one review, he told the audience last night that he “hadn’t been invited to the Olympic opening ceremony because my smile is too sincere”.) I’ve recently written an essay for a book on music, health and geography, exploring the different geographies at stake in Morrissey’s music. Specific places often feature in his songs, even as his emotional landscapes transcend territorial and ethnic boundaries (he has a significant following among Latino populations, for example). There are even tours of Morrissey’s Manchester, where fans can explore for themselves the settings for the early Smiths songs.

Morrissey in a humdrum town

The depressed landscapes that feature in Morrissey’s oeuvre – iron bridges, disused railway lines, out-of-season seaside towns, rented rooms in Whalley Range – might have fitted well into Danny Boyle’s choreographed social history of the British experience. Far from being health-inducing, however, I argue that these places are deployed as a form of anti-pastoral, with a depressing effect on mind and body. The early song, ‘Jeane’, for example, is a kitchen-sink drama worthy of A Taste of Honey or any other 1950s and 60s bedsitter tableau:

‘Jeane/The lowlife has lost its appeal/ And I'm tired of walking these streets/To a room with its cupboard bare…’

‘There's ice on the sink where we bathe/ So how can you call this home/ When you know it's a grave?’

Morrissey is not known for being an Olympic-style picture of health and efficiency. More often he is associated with misery and depression – being ‘The Pope of Mope’ or ‘Prince of Wails’. Not for nothing did he encore his show last night with Still Ill (‘Under the iron bridge we kissed, and although I ended up with sore lips, it just wasn’t like the old days any more’).  So much so that it came as a surprise to me when I first read in Johnny Rogan’s biography of the Smiths, The Severed Alliance – recently reissued - that Morrissey was in fact highly athletic in his youth – a fact that he alludes to on his first solo album (‘Captain of games, solid framed, I stood on the touch line….’)

Who put the M in Manchester?

For Morrissey, music was the great salvation from the industrial grime and murkiness of the landscape of his youth. As he was once quoted as saying:

‘In the history of my life the high points were always buying particular records and hearing records and being immersed in them, and really believing that these people understood how I felt about certain situations. So that’s the richness of records.’

This might well have been the overwhelming message of the Olympic ceremony too. We might have blighted our green and pleasant land with the chimneys of industrialisation, but at least we have produced some of the greatest popular music of the last five decades. Sadly, though, the Olympic Torch did not stop at Salford Lad’s Club when it passed through Greater Manchester in June – a venue that even David Cameron, before he became Prime Minister, found time to visit. 

PM, with Morrissey in background

PS  Fascinating to see Morrissey making a public statement about the Olympics the other day.  Somewhat predictably he adopts a stance that flies in the face of the public mood...

Rainham, London, the World

Rainham Hall in Havering is located not far from the legendary A13 (eulogised by Billy Bragg as the ‘trunk road to the sea’). It is a marvellous survival.

Rainham Hall, with flags

Standing next to a fine Norman church (reputed to have the second oldest door in the whole of London), it sits just off The Broadway, opposite the public library. Set back behind railings, it is too easy to disregard or pass by unnoticed, not least since it is open to the public for just three hours a week.

Rainham's Norman church

The house has been owned by the National Trust since 1949, a Georgian jewel in the midst of the industrialisation and transport infrastructure that surround the Rainham Marshes. And in many ways, the history of the Hall is the history of London itself, its economic power, its circulations and distributions, its comings and goings.

The Hall was built in 1729 by Captain John Harle, who dredged an inlet off the Thames nearby and built a wharf for his trading activities. The marble, wood and tiles that he traded are still evident throughout the house, which is a fine three-storey box in the Queen Anne style.

The painted staircase, Rainham Hall

The back door, Rainham Hall

 

Behind the house was originally a courtyard of buildings, probably used as stables and a brewhouse, and as part of his trading endeavour. It is now an attractive, well tended garden. The brewhouse features on the English Heritage buildings at risk register, but plans are afoot to convert it to a visitor reception area, café and community education space. Currently the house has none of these facilities, and so its potential as a community hub and tourism venture is under-exploited.

Rainham Hall gardens

I visited in order to attend a meeting with National Trust colleagues and others, to consider options for the development of the house. One issue was the absence of furniture, fittings and any indigenous collections. Another was the additional layer of significance left by 20^th century residents – a spate of restoration work, and then the use of the house during the war (as a banana depot) and afterwards (as a distribution point for health and welfare provision).

The team have devised some exciting options for bringing the house to life and telling the story of the Harles and their successors. One interesting story is that of the role of religion. A gate from the house to the Church is said to now be bricked up, because of the conversion of Harle’s son to Methodism.

The ghost of a gate at Rainham Hall?

For me, the house was a tangible reminder of the power of money and trade. As a ghost of a former era of London’s development as a world city, Rainham Hall is a residue of a time when Britain ruled the waves and drew vast stores of wealth from transatlantic exchange. It stands as a symbol of why the UK occupies the place it does in today’s world economy, an echo of an earlier wave of economic growth and development, no less than the nearby docks at Tilbury, City airport, and the Dartford Crossing, which all perform a similar function for more recent times.

Patrick Keiller’s three films ‘London’ (1994), ‘Robinson in Space’ (1997) and more recently ‘Robinson in Ruins’ (2010) explore similar territory, using architecture and landscape to essay politico-economic critiques of late-capitalist Britain. ‘Robinson in Space’ even briefly features Rainham Hall – it is mistaken by the eponymous Robinson for ‘Dracula’s House Carfax in Purfleet’ (until the narrator points out that in fact ‘we were still in Rainham’). Carfax was the house to which Count Dracula was transported from his Transylvanian Castle in 50 boxes of earth. Rainham wharf was where the nightsoil of Londoners was brought to be spread on the fields of Essex.

The Robinson Institute, Tate Britain installation to 14 October 2012

Transportation – of wood and marble, of earth, of bananas – seems central to understanding the role of Rainham Hall and the context in which it sits. Which is why I was delighted to hear of plans to recreate, for visitors, the sights and sounds of the River Thames – the A13 of the 18^th century.