Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before: Morrissey’s show Saturday at MGM Music Hall is canceled.
But the reason this time is quite serious. According to a note posted on the venue’s Instagram page, there has been a “credible threat” to the singer’s life, forcing the former Smiths frontman to cancel his show tonight at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and tomorrow at MGM Music Hall.
On Wednesday, the Ottawa Citizen reported that a 26-year-old man named Noah Castellano had been arrested for making a threat against Morrissey on social media. The story, citing court documents, says Castellano warned Morrissey that he would be at his show at the CityFolk festival in Ottawa “and I will attempt to shoot you many times and kill you with a very large gun that I own illegally.” In the end, Morrissey performed the show without incident.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, Castellano was eventually released on $5,000 bail. Reached by the newspaper in Washington, D.C., where he lives, Castellano declined to comment, telling a reporter: “I’m not interested.”
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The Smiths broke up in 1987 and never reunited, in part due to Morrissey’s strained relationship with his songwriting partner, guitarist Johnny Marr. Both have continued to make music, but never together, and Morrissey has become an increasingly polarizing figure due to repeated statements deemed by many to be racist. He has also angered longtime fans by frequently canceling shows or, sometimes, playing only an abbreviated set. (In 2007, at the Seaport venue known at the time as the Bank of America Pavilion, Morrissey performed just seven songs before walking off stage, complaining of a sore throat. He returned a month later and played a full show.)
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Earlier this month, a post on the singer’s website announced that he is trying to sell his share of the Smiths lucrative songbook, saying Morrissey has “no choice but to offer for sale all of his business interests in ‘the Smiths’ to any interested party/investor.” Artists ranging from Bob Dylan to David Bowie have sold their catalogues for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.