Morrissey Cancels Iceland Show Because Venue Serves Meat

Jim Dyson

Morrissey Cancels Iceland Show Because Venue Serves Meat

Jim Dyson

Morrissey doesn’t exactly need excuses to cancel shows, but this time, he has one. The man has long insisted that any venue he plays be vegetarian, at least for the night, which led to some controversy when he played the Staples Center in L.A. in 2013. He was planning a show at Reykjavik, Iceland’s Harpa Concert Hall, but he’s pulled out, claiming that the venue refused to stop serving meat that night. He’s left them with a typically Morrissey statement: “I love Iceland and I have waited a long time to return, but I shall leave the Harpa Concert Hall to their cannibalistic flesh-eating bloodlust.” Zing!

UPDATE: The Harpa Concert Hall spokesperson and gig promoter both claim that Morrissey never officially booked a show at the venue and the topic of food never surfaced. Spokesperson Halldór Guðmundsson made the following statement in an NME article:

I was never asked to speak to the restaurants here about whether they would serve meat on the night of the gig. There was no contract or anything. The date mentioned to us was towards the end of March. It’s totally his decision, but it was strange for us to read about it on the internet before we were asked about it.

Promoter Lisa Hanson added:

We were just starting to look at venues for him and we thought this one [Harpa Concert Hall] would be good… The restaurant there is three floors up on the other side of the venue, it’s not like they sell hamburgers right outside. He said he didn’t want to play there and we said ‘fine.’ It was never a date. It was never booked.

Read more details over at NME.

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