CAN the combined forces of Morrissey and Radiohead sap the will to live? Trauma counsellors are being placed on standby when music’s leading miserabilists unite for tomorrow’s V Festival.

A wave of depression is forecast over England as fans gather in Chelmsford and Staffordshire for a weekend immersion in the dark arts of gloom-rock. Misery may love company but the organisers have called in St John Ambulance staff trained in depression counselling to cope with fans who find two days exposed to the world leaders in angst a little too much.

The misanthropic Oxford rockers Radiohead are the headline act tomorrow. The band are expected to premiere material that they describe as more terrifying than their acclaimed 1997 album OK Computer. The centrepiece of singer Thom Yorke’s new solo album is Harrowdown Hill, a song about the suicide of Dr David Kelly.

Morrissey, the “pope of mope”, will close the Chelmsford show on Sunday. The Manchester icon will perform classics by the Smiths alongside new anthems You Have Killed Me and Life is a Pigsty.

Fans will be “warmed up” for the headline acts by Editors, the icy black-clad band hailed as successors to Joy Division, Manchester’s other titans of gloom.

Early arrivers can sing along to a chorus of “You had a bad day, You’re taking one down”, when Daniel Powter opens the festival with his hit from 2005.

American rockers the Dandy Warhols will perform their song Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth, which contains the lyric: “If you think that I don’t know about depression and emotional pain, you’re insane.”

The up-and-coming indie band the Young Knives have a caustic song, Loughborough Suicide, just for the occasion.

Parents gatecrashing the show can wallow in a greatest hits set from Echo & The Bunnymen, the post-punk band whose fans adopted the black overcoat as their uniform. Terry Hall, the doleful singer with the Specials, and Paul Weller, not always the happiest camper, will also appear at the event, dubbed “mopefest”.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, has requested tickets. He has said previously that Morrissey and Radiohead are two of his favourite acts.

Alcohol-related injuries provide most cases for treatment at British rock festivals, but organisers of this one are prepared for a more existential form of malady.

St John Ambulance said: “We will have six medical centres and 125 volunteers on duty around the V site. We are there to help anyone who feels upset or overwhelmed.”

Gloomy rock, most commonly associated with the “gothic” style of music and clothing, has been given fresh impetus by the arrival of the American genre, “emo-rock”. An amalgamation of male lyrical angst and metallic rock, its leading exponents My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confessional will spread a little unhappiness at next weekend’s Reading and Leeds festivals.

DOOM ROCK AT V

The Smiths Heaven Knows I’m Miserable
Now Morrissey/Marr anthem for outsiders with gladioli

Radiohead Paranoid Android
“Rain down, come on rain down on me/from a great height”

Echo & The Bunnymen
When Ian McCulloch sang The Cutter, about how “We will escape our lives”, a thousand teenagers gently ran the knife along their wrists

Paul Weller’s dolorous depths were reached with Wasteland on the The Jam’s Setting Sons album, when pipes transmuted the horror of the aftermath of a nuclear war

Terry Hall of the Specials is at his most engaging when he delves into his shattered heart. On his second solo album, ironically entitled Laugh, Hall weeped gallons of tears into his ale

MORE DISPLEASURE

Tom Reynolds, author of I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You'veEver Heard, recommends:

Newsong The Christmas Shoes
Smug, saccharine 2000 hit, the most depressing song ever

Ray Peterson Tell Laura I Love Her
First and best of the teenage car-crash hits

Celine Dion All By Myself
“Audio equivalent of the fire-bombing of Dresden”

Metallica One
The screaming interior monologue of a blind, deaf and dismembered war veteran

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