Without any sleep it was at Liverpool airport I found myself at 5.30am, and why? For Rome! My equally Morrissey obsessed friend Sarah suggested this to me a couple of days ago and I found it impossible to resist - Moz himself was playing Rome, the city where he now lives. It was bound to be a great gig, and so she dared me to join her on a hit-and-run trip to Italy to see him and, baring in mind it would be irresponsible of me to allow her to travel alone, I said yes. It was the gentlemanly thing to do and had nothing with my insane wanderlust and love of seeing fantastic and exotic new places. No, I acted out of charity.
But here I was, not the best person in the world at staying awake long into the next day without any sleep - pint in hand in the departure lounge - waiting to get on a bargain bucket Ryan Air flight to Rome. The plane wasn't even in the air before I was passed out, awaking when the trolley came along for a gin and tonic, but then out again and finally woken by a heavy impact landing on the runway at Ciampino Airport. It's not such a bad way to start the day.
Rome was in the midst of a month long taxi strike when we arrived, stumbling out into the Roman brightness, and so this meant getting a coach to the city centre. I hate coaches, my friends. Hate coaches, hate buses. Worst way to travel. And of course, being no taxis, the cue for this coach was huge and when we got to the front were told we had to buy tickets in the terminal building, etc, etc, and so we trudged off there and came back and yadda, yadda, yadda. The long and short of it is that we got to the Termini station in Rome a good while later and it was only after a short walk to the Piazza Della Republica and a beer at an outdoors café it dawned on me to say "Good Lord! I'm in Rome! Oh maGod, this is amazing!"
And it is. How to describe Rome on first impressions? Well it's a scatty, messy thing of outstanding beauty. It's a squabble of divine buildings, held together with exhaust and sirens. It's an orange coloured heap of ancient history doused in ice cream and revving engines. It's an immaculately dressed Mediterranean play pen. It's unspeakably cool, and yet the music you hear coming from cars is most likely to be by Kylie or Wham. It's completely and naturally itself. And it's got good reason to be, it used to be the capital of everywhere the Roman's chose to call theirs. To say it's got history is wrong, it made and therefore wrote history for chrissakes! There was a time when this dirty great pile of warmth, beeping horns, statues and shuttered windows was the centre of world, and sitting down for a drink, for the first time, you feel like it still might be. The best way to describe Rome is to say it feels important. It is important. You know you've arrived somewhere very significant. It knows it. You know it. You only have to say the word to remind yourself - ROME. Is there anywhere else that sounds so solid and sure of itself? ROME. That's how it feels when you're there. You know you're somewhere.
And you know you're somewhere when you're standing by The Coliseum. This dates back to about 70AD and the scenes its bared witness to don't even bare thinking about. Actually they do, it's fascinating to think you're standing by the building where gladiators fought with Lions and even elephants, as well as hacking the living bejesus out of each other, but it's unsettling at the same time and quite hard to even picture. But looking at the arches around the base, all with the original gate numbers engraved above them, one half on the building is in such astonishing condition that it takes little imagination to take yourself back two thousand years, even if the events that went on inside are beyond our comprehension. You can pay to go inside and have a tour but for one thing it was terrifically hot and for another we needed to think about getting back to our hotel, the art deco Bettoja Hotel Mediterraneo on Via Cavour which was on special offer on Expedia, and getting ready for the Moz gig tonight.
We had a cat nap and overslept. It was gone eight when Sarah stirred me and we knew one thing, the gig was miles away, outside of Rome. Quickly dressed in the black tuxedo, cummerbund, bow tie, Sarah in an evening dress, we rushed to the main train station, catching the Metro four stops to Piramide and the connecting train station where a local rattler took us out to the suburbs. There wasn't a sign of a Morrissey fan on the train, indeed it was only weary locals headed home, and as the journey continued, mile after mile, with the clock ticking, I secretly thought we were flogging a dead horse. Where were we going? Good God was there air conditioning on this old thing, I'm melting? Is there even a gig? Eventually we got to Ostia, a costal town, and got out to find the small station deserted. This didn't look good at all. There was a café nearby and I asked for the Teatro Romano to be pointed over the duel carriageway and straight ahead. He walked, there still being so sign of a concert anywhere, but did come to a street with some lights on it and a couple of policemen standing around. They indicated we should carry on, and sure enough, there was a box office and entrance. A small picture of Morrissey proved this wasn't a dream.
We had our tickets torn and proceeded into some parkland, more people joining us now, through ancient ruins - pillars and inhabitance deserted hundreds of years ago, now rubble. In a musky, hot night this was rather surreal. But not as surreal as the sight that met us as we turned the corner - a Roman amphitheatre, full with three thousand people on stone steps, visible from our perspective as we approached from behind the open stage. A Morrissey gig, in an ancient amphitheatre, in a garden of ruins. This was going to be an odd one.
We got a beer outside and made our way up some steep stone steps at the rear of the structure to appear at the top with a semi-circle of packed granite terraces before us, gliding down to a standing area at floor level, and a large stage with an open back, naturally bordered by trees and more pillars. There was a good half an hour before Moz came on, and with each song on the intro tape the anticipation built. The Pretenders' version of Everyday Is Like Sunday was played and the crowd clapped and sung along, something I've never heard happen in the UK. This was going to be great!
The Smoking Popes' version of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' was played loudly through the PA, the house lights cut to blackout half way through to crazy cheering and whistling, and then - after a long minute of darkness and silence, Jobriath's 'What A Pretty' began to play and the backdrop of pillars and trees were illuminated in turquoise. It was quite spectacularly beautiful. Stage lights up and Morrissey strode on with the band to thunderous Roman appreciation, declared "Mamma Roma!" before launching into The Smiths' sing-a-long 'Panic'. And what a night it was.
Morrissey was wonderful, as ever, very charming and funny. He was only two songs in when a girl evaded security and ran onto the stage to hug him before being led away. A couple more made it soon after (it's far from easy - the security do all they can to stop you) and one guy pushed past to pelt at Moz across the stage before being tackled by one security member, flung around by the T-Shirt, and crashed to the deck. He still got a handshake and "Nice try" off Mozzer as he was led away.
Flowers were flung onto the stage - everyone was screaming - it was an amazing and typically short show.
The thousands filed out of the theatre and headed back for the train station, but there were no trains - all finished. Oh dear. "You have to get a bus" an Italian told me, and yep, there was the queue. About four hundred people waiting for a bus back to Rome. One eventually came and it was stampeded, we didn't stand a chance of getting on. We sat around for over an hour in the night waiting for the next one, which was miserable and desperate, we even tried flagging passing cars with money waved at their windscreens, and when one eventually did come it was charged again. But this time it was us doing the charging and, holding Sarah's hand, we pushed on and the doors managed to close behind us. The relief was such that the football chant of "Morr-is-sey! Morr-is-sey! Morr-is-sey!" immediately went up followed by a chorus of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out; "And if a double decker bus / crashes into us / To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die!"
Back in Rome a good while later, but only as far as Stazion Ostia Lido, where we'd caught the local train out initially. The Metro was shut and so we had about an hours walk through the night back to the hotel, past a gloriously lit and deserted Coliseum, before falling onto the bed at about half three.
But these trips are what will live so long in the memory. It's always worth it. Yeah, I've just come back off my American holiday but so what? Bargain flights, Morrissey in a Roman amphitheatre, a beautiful day in Italy, what the Hell else am I supposed to do? Pray for death? You should always act on instinct, get an overdraft, extend an overdraft, sell the family silver, and do these things. Regret isn't on the menu. Pasta is.
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