There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends

Co-written with Mark E. Nevin, ‘There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends’ was released in March 1991 as the final track on Morrissey’s second solo album, Kill Uncle.

The album version of the song was recorded at Hook End Manor (Oxfordshire, England) in the autumn of 1990.

Hook End Manor, location of the Hook End Recording Studios.

The producers on the Kill Uncle track were Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley with the aforementioned Mark E. Nevin on guitar, Mark 'Bedders' Bedford on bass, and Andrew Paresi on drums. Nawazish Ali Khan likely played violin on the recording along with either Steve Heart and/or Seamus Beaghen on the harmonium.¹

Back cover of the Kill Uncle studio album

The Kill Uncle version of ‘There's A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends’ is essentially a preemptive elegy for the very much alive Morrissey and his “friends”, sounding very much mournful in anticipation of what awaits them (a place in hell).

The thrust of the lyrics, shot through with gallows humor, is fatalistic resignation of the most profound kind; that death, followed by an eternity in hell, would be preferable to Morrissey’s temporal existence (where his mere physical presence is troublesome to those around him):

All that we hope is when we go
Our skin and our blood and our bones
Don't get in your way
Making you ill the way they did when we lived

An apparently oppressed Morrissey longs for a place where he be left alone, even if it is only to cry:

And if ever I just wanted to cry
Then I will because I can

The song’s economy of words and simple, slow-paced musical accompaniment is startling, packing an emotive punch despite being under two-minutes in length. Sometimes less is much, much more.

Listen to the Kill Uncle studio album version of the song here:

Another version of the song was recorded on June 3, 1991 at the Capitol Studios in Hollywood, California for KROQ² as part of a 3-track radio session broadcast the following day.

The musicians on the KROQ recording session were Morrissey's live band at the time: Boz Boorer (guitar), Alain Whyte (guitar), Gary Day (bass) and Spencer Cobrin (drums).

This version of the song is markedly different than that found on the Kill Uncle album. While the former is slow and morose, the KROQ version has an oddly upbeat, ‘bouncy’ sound, with Morrissey almost cheerfully singing of the loss of his soul. Indeed, some find it rather difficult to reconcile the music with lyrics (the author excluded). Moreover, the lyrics on the KROQ version are altered; Morrissey omits and replaces some words and lines here and there, as well as adding additional lines at the end. While the original album version of the song is 1:52, the KROQ version is 2:22 in length due to the additional lyrics.

Notwithstanding the song being a dirge, the KROQ version somehow works in its own quirky way with the aforementioned gallows humor found in its lyrics now flavoring the track’s sound and vocals - so much so that one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

An EP of this radio session called At KROQ was released only in the US on September 18, 1991.