Morrissey abruptly cancelled a concert in Spain after claiming a sleepless night during a local festival left him unable to perform.
Per Rolling Stone, the singer was scheduled to play Valencia’s Palau de les Arts on Thursday night (March 12th) as part of his ongoing European tour. But hours before the show, a statement posted to his ‘Messages from Morrissey’ page said the performance had been derailed by extreme sleep deprivation – reportedly thanks to the city’s famously loud Las Fallas celebrations.
The festival kicked off on March 1st, and features parties in the street and fireworks. It will end on March 19th with the burning of papier-mache sculptures.
According to the statement, Morrissey had travelled to Valencia after a two-day drive from Milan, only to find himself unable to rest once he arrived at his hotel.
It explained that the “scheduled show in Valencia has been rendered impossible due to sleep deprivation”, with festival activity including “loud techno singing (and) megaphone announcements” continuing late into the night. “This experience has left Morrissey in a catatonic state,” the statement reads.
In a separate post, the singer described the night as an “indescribable hell”, adding: “It will take me one year to recover. And that is an understatement.”
The gig had been one of three Spanish dates on Morrissey’s current tour, which is supporting his latest album Make-Up Is a Lie, his 14th solo album since The Smiths broke up. Despite the disruption in Valencia, upcoming shows in Zaragoza and Seville are still scheduled to go ahead.
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The album finds him wearing all his favourite guises: eternal romantic, tireless crank, fragile old soul, free speech martyr, rock-nostalgia torchbearer, heavenly miserablist. In a 3.5-star review, Rolling Stone wrote: “This album isn’t going to do much to change his strange place in the world, but his pain is real too.”
