My Band T-Shirt

Ah, 1992 … the year of the Maastricht Treaty, the L.A. riots, the New Musical Express’s fortieth anniversary and George H.W. Bush puking into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister. On a more personal level, it was the year I took my GCSEs, consolidated the previous year’s experiments with smoking and drinking and witnessed, outside a Ned’s Atomic Dustbin gig, an exceptionally wasted girl from school pointing at the sign reading ‘Doors – 8pm’ and gasping, ‘Wow … the Doors are playing.’ Heady days indeed.

However, 1992 was also the year in which I belatedly discovered a little-known singer/songwriter from Manchester named Morrissey, and attended a small musical gathering called Glastonbury. Moz was scheduled to be playing the Pyramid Stage on Saturday night (the evening headlined, in a true reflection of the turgidity of the time, by Shakespear’s Sister) and it was as much to do with his presence as Carter USM’s on Friday and that of 808 State on Sunday that my chum Luke and I booked our tickets.

Of course, in-between the day of purchase and the day we embarked on a series of bus journeys from the Midlands to Worthy Farm, Morrissey cancelled (an eerie precursor of what was to happen on my next trip to Glastonbury) and was replaced by James. Although this was fairly disappointing news – or rather, as we were sixteen, A MORTIFYING, END OF DAYS TRAGEDY – we somehow coped with the heartache and had a great weekend anyway, watching bands good and mediocre, and drinking frighteningly opaque local cider. Yet although Morrissey wasn’t there in person, he still made his presence felt. On the merchandise stand by the second stage, I spotted a beautifully minimalist black t-shirt featuring just the NME logo … only with ‘music’ replaced with ‘Morrissey’. I got the in-joke and a minute or so later, I got the t-shirt.

For the next few years, the garment occupied pride of place amongst my band t-shirts (briefly sharing the top slot with a none-more-monochrome Ride number) and it outlasted all of them, surviving my A-levels and subsequent departure from my mum and dad’s house without being binned, burned beyond recognition by hot rocks or lost at nightclubs – fates which tragically befell several of its peers. In fact, it was still part of my wardrobe when I made my second visit to Glasto in 1995.

This time it was the Stone Roses who caused a flutter of horror by pulling out at the last minute (thanks to John Squire busting his arm cycling, an event which briefly became one of our masturbatory euphemisms) but by the time me and my pals, Steve, Alex and Kate arrived, the glorious weather and generally giddy Glastonbury vibe had assuaged any spiritual trauma the Roses’ no-show might have caused. Not even the purchase of what I thought was acid but turned out to be nothing more powerful than aspirin put a dampener on the first part of the weekend. The accompanying photo, taken during some amyl downtime on the Friday afternoon, shows the t-shirt in almost its full glory. (I’ve got a better picture, but for some horrendous and unfathomably ‘90s reason, I’ve got the t-shirt tucked into my jeans, Cowell-style. For this reason, it’s being confined to the archives.)

Things went wrong that evening, during Oasis’s set, when Alex was mugged, and became irretrievably pear-shaped the following night, as while we all huddled together in one of our two tents for security, the second was pinched. The sun had gone out on that year’s Glastonbury and we went home early, missing the Cure, Elastica and, erm, Tanita Tikaram. My guitar had gone in the stolen tent; so had Steve’s camera and some of Kate’s clothes; but the New Morrissey Express t-shirt survived to be worn another day … and another … and another.

What eventually became of it, I don’t know. It was certainly long gone by the time I finally stopped buying the paper which inspired it, in the last year of the century. However, it saw a great deal of service during the 1990s, and 20 years after I bought it, it remains as much a part of my memories of those distant, dreamy days as the bands which soundtracked them and the cloudy cider that did its best to obliterate them from my mind.

David Lewis