Forty years ago on Thursday 30 October 1986 The Smiths played their last ever Manchester gig, at the Free Trade Hall. It was the final date of The Queen Is Dead tour, and to mark the anniversary a previously unseen photo of Morrissey from that night has been made into a limited t-shirt and tote bag.
The photo was taken by Alison Bell, who was then a student at Manchester Polytechnic, now Manchester Metropolitan University, writing for the student paper PULP. She had blagged a photographer's pass by offering to review the show, and she turned down an invitation from her friend John Peel to a London gig so that she could be there. The picture has hung in her downstairs loo for years among photos from her decades in the music industry, and apparently nobody visits without commenting on it.
The shirt has a reproduction of the original concert ticket on the back. Alison made it with Mitch Harrison, founder of Mishmash Records. They met at the There's Music & There's People event at Salford Lads Club, which Mitch organised for the 40th anniversary of The Queen Is Dead. Alison says she has wanted to do something creative with the photo for some time.
The band played as a five-piece with Craig Gannon. They walked on to Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights and went straight into their new single Ask. The set had most of The Queen Is Dead plus Panic, Meat Is Murder and Rusholme Ruffians, and Morrissey brought two banners on stage, reading "THE QUEEN IS DEAD" and "TWO LIGHT ALES, PLEASE".
A photo that a student blagged her way into the pit for, then kept in a toilet for 40 years, is a lovely bit of Manchester music history, and I'm happy to pass it on to Smiths fans. Alison recently co-presented the BBC Sounds podcast The Rise & Fall of Madchester with Steve Lamacq, so she has plenty of stories about that night.
The shirt and tote bag are on sale from Mishmash Records: https://www.mishmashrecords.co.uk/products/untitled-oct16_07-50-50
The Manchester Evening News has also covered the story: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/rare-photos-smiths-final-manchester-34835773