Born May 22, 1959, Mr. Steven Patrick Morrissey turns 55 today. You may have heard of his old band, The Smiths.

To commemorate, we offer this footage of his first solo gig, in 1988 at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, which also kinda doubled as The Smiths’ farewell. The rhythm section here is a pre-lawsuit Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, and the guitarist is Craig Gannon, who served the Smiths as bassist during Rourke’s brief 1986 ouster from the band, and became their touring rhythm guitarist thereafter. As The Smiths split up before the release of their final album, Strangeways, Here We Come, this was the only live performance of some of that material ever undertaken by this many Smiths at once.

Per the wonderful online Smiths/Morrissey archive Passions Just Like Mine:

Admission was free to anyone wearing a Smiths or Morrissey shirt. Only half the fans who traveled to Wolverhampton made it inside the venue. Outside the queuing and organisation almost turned to chaos. The atmosphere inside was obviously very charged. There was a great deal of cheering and chanting Morrissey’s name to the English football tune. Throughout the short set many fans made it on stage, much more than for a typical Smiths concert.

Morrissey came on stage to a thunder of applause, after a long period of cheering and chanting. In the first song, “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”, he sang “And so I drank one, or was it four?” instead of “... it became four”. He actually sang that line as it had been originally written and not as it appeared on “Strangeways Here We Come”. Before “Interesting Drug” which had yet to be released and was unknown to the fans, Morrissey started “This song is called…” but never managed to finish his introduction. In that song just like in the previous one, “Disappointed”, Morrissey missed many lines because of the mayhem with the fans on stage.

It’s true—Morrissey gets manhandled worse than Dead Kennedys-era Jello Biafra here. Having touched the garment of their messiah, I’m sure most of those kids turned out OK.