Nobody Loves Us #13: There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends

Well hello again my 25-50 year old, kinda sad, white friends. The Nobody Loves Us countdown continues today.

If you don't know what you're looking at right now, I've decided to countdown my 20 favorite Morrissey Non-Singles each weekday until the Mozfather's concert October 29^th at The Orpheum.

Here's what the list looks like so far:

20. One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell

19. Driving Your Girlfriend Home

18. Munich Air Disaster 1958

17. Seasick, Yet Still Docked

16. I Don't Mind If You Forget Me

15. Sister I'm A Poet

14. On The Streets I Ran

Which brings us to #13 on the list:

#13: There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends (Morrissey/Nevin)

From the album Kill Uncle

Key Line: “When we go, we all will go, so, you see, I'm never alone...”

Calling Kill Uncle an “up-and-down” album is a little bit like describing coffee as “caffeinated” or my blogging style as “tedious.” It seems obvious. Still, the spotty album ends on a high with “There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends.”

After trying on many different hats over the course of the album, Morrissey finds himself back in the same place that gave us songs like “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” and “I Won't Share You.” While “There Is A Place” is not on par with those classics, it does share the same structure (just some sparse instrumentation and Mozzer's pleas) and the same bizarrely backward optimism. It even punches in under 2:00.

Over what sounds vaguely like a church hymn, Morrissey seems prepared to lament the fate awaiting him & his company. However, he quickly makes it clear that the “place reserved for me and my friends” is more badge than a banishment. “When we go, we all will go...” is a line used to justify the way of living he's undertaken. You see, he's not alone. Something akin to the old, “50,000 Elvis fans” cliché.

This being Morrissey, of course, his biting English sense of self-deprecation delivers the most memorable line of the song. “All that we hope is when we go our skin, blood, and our bones don't get in your way, making you ill, the way they did when we lived...” There is no way Morrissey was taking his place in the underworld without taking one last shot at those who took him for granted.

While the song is a perfect closer for Kill Uncle, a slight, understated moment on an album sorely lacking both. When the track re-emerged a few years later in rockabilly form it seemed, on it's surface, to be a bit of an injustice. Try to imagine a rockabilly version of “Please, Please, Please...” or “I Won't Share You.” Seems blasephemous, no?

(Quick live sidenote: When I saw Mozzer in Chicago on the Ringleader tour the show closed with an expanded, full band version of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.” Now, that song is so good that even a dubstep version of it would kill, but I was still left with a bad taste in my mouth that such a perfectly fragile song could be pounded into submission like that.)

And yet, I'm actually a big fan of the rockabilly version that appeared as a b-side to the My Love Life single. As I mentioned in the “Driving Your Girlfriend Home” post, my love of Mozzer stems from his ability to wrap that voice around a hook more than the actual lyrics in the hook. I feel like the braggadocio aspect of the song really shines through on this version. Listen to the way he elongates “bonneesss...” The seething is palpable. Anyway, I'm firmly in the “Rockabilly Version” camp. But that's just me.

Nobody Loves Us #19: Driving Your Girlfriend Home

Hello again, everybody. Welcome back to Nobody Loves Us. If you didn't catch the first post, basically, I'm making a list of my 20 favorite Morrissey Non-Singles from throughout his solo career. I'll be counting down the list each weekday until October 26^th, at which I point I will have to spend two days preparing myself both mentally and physically for Mozzer's show at The Orpheum on the 29^th.

Also, if you didn't catch the first post, this bit was initially titled Found Found Found.

So, that's what's happening here. So far the countdown looks like this.

20. One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell

On to number 19 then (click the title to check out the track):

19. Driving Your Girlfriend Home (Morrissey/Nevin) 

From the album Kill Uncle

Key Line: “I'm parking outside her home, as we're shaking hands goodnight so politely"

(Click that video to give the song a listen)

Anybody who has paid attention to my rantings about music over the years knows that, deep down, I love pop music. I've always, ALWAYS been a sucker for a good hook.

Even though almost all fans found their way to The Smiths & Morrissey via they lyrical content, it was his ability to wrap his voice around a good hook that really got me... er... hooked.

For example, as teenagers, MinneSarah and I disagreed on most music.  She was always listening to British stuff that I didn't care for while I was drowning myself in pop-punk.  For reasons that completely escape me now, I just couldn't get enough Lagwagon.  I know, I can't explain it either.

Anyway, The Smiths were one of those bands that MinneSarah loved that I just couldn't stand.  A few years later, when I was probably 20 or so, I was driving from Red Wing to Duluth to visit a girlfriend and found myself looking for something new to listen to on the drive.  I stopped at a Best Buy in the Twin Cities and started looking around.

For whatever reason, the "I really don't know and I really don't care..." line from "Hand In Glove" started kicking around in my head.  On a whim, I went and picked up a copy of Louder Than Bombs.  As you know now, this turned out to be a bizarrely important moment, as I've been borderline obsessed with Mozzer ever since

Why do I bring this story?  Well, thanks for asking.

Being a person who's always been a fan of Morrissey (the singer) first and Morrissey (the lyricist) second, "Driving Your Girlfriend Home" was, for me, the standout track on Kill Uncle.

"Driving Your Girlfriend Home" is, initially, a pretty languid pop tune.  The acoustic strums and swaying bass provide a lovely foundation, but they are far from attention-grabbers.  Morrissey's initial verse does little to grab the listener.

Listening to it now, it's obvious that it grabbed me with the chorus.  Moz builds to the chorus by vocally imitating the aforementioned swaying bass line.  "'Turn left,' she says/I turn left/And she says..." are straight from the Lou Reed school of hyper-literal lyrics.  However, with Linder Sterling providing some lovely backing harmonies, Mozzer delivers the chorus beautifully.

"So how did I end up so deeply involved in the very existence I planned on avoiding?"  The lament of his friend's girlfriend is given both the weight & humour it deserves by Morrissey's lightness.  The broadness of such a complaint is certainly laughable, but the underlying emotions that would lead to such a complaint are very real.  The fact that he's able to toe the line between the two is one of the more underrated aspects of Morrissey's vocal ability.

Morrissey himself alludes to this delicate line in the second verse by observing that the woman is, "laughing to stop herself crying..."

In the second verse, the woman's narrows her complaint from the entirety of her existence to her dissatisfaction with her boyfriend.

"How did I end up attached to this person, when his sense of humour gets gradually worser?"

Two things come to mind here:

First, given Morrissey's notorious preference for solitude, it's no surprise that he would write a song in which a person's all-encompassing misery & confusion would later be boiled down to said person's companion.

Second, given Morrissey's equally-notorious inability to deal with conflict on a face-to-face level, it should come as no surprise that, after both questions, "I can't answer"

The song ends echoing this same sentiment:

"I'm parking outside her home/and we're shaking hands goodnight so politely"

Of course, the only way Morrissey could handle this woman's personal crisis would be with sterotypical English reservation and politeness.  With just two and a half verses and two choruses, Morrissey has painted a brilliant vignette about himself.