Autobiography (35 page)

‘I don’t understand it,’
says Vicki, ‘
it’s not as if anyone ELSE is doing anything interesting.’
No, but this doesn’t mean that I am, either. Although I love
Maladjusted
, the artwork is out of my hands and terrifies anyone who gazes upon it. Vicki is stumped and can’t drum up any ideas. I pay her £80,000 and say goodbye to her. She takes the money and runs – the first time I see her in action.

For the single
Alma matters
,
on-the-beam Willie Garcia takes me to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles for a back-alley photo shoot where I lounge against a hep automobile that stands neglected and stranded in time. A sullen, idle posture is wasted as a seven-foot homeless blackface jumps in with:
‘You show up on these streets one more time and I will have you killed.’
I am impressed by my own composure, and by how at least
some people
have the nerve to get straight to the point.

Having left the band for better things, Spencer sends a note:

Listen luvvy, I have decided to go to drama school. I am going to Chicago as I have a couple of interviews out there. How’s your screenplay coming along?

It would be great to see you again.

Spencer

This is a surprising communication from Spencer, because he had evidently left the band in a huff – he did most things in a huff – giving up the drums forever and cursing me for holding him back in his bid for stardom. I do not ever see Spencer again, but he joins the familiar cycle of musicians who walk away but somehow refuse to leave the building, and instead tag on with tatty tales as the years go by – unable to flap their own wings, after all. Morrissey is indeed the mother ship, from which every act of compassion must be followed by yet another act of compassion –
or else.

Maladjusted
had been recorded once again at my spiritual home, Hook End Manor. Time at Hook End had always been a time to reflect on velvet lawns of dreaming spires where the quiet winds its way. The most bucolic spot of winsome British charm, the lithely blithe Hook End shelters specters dating back to the 1700s, and an underground tunnel from the 1200s. Unmarked by the injuries of time, the bosom of Hook End melted everybody’s heart with its greenest of greens against the bluest of skies; a paradise of deafening birdsong around the red- and mellow-bricked splendor of jutting chimneys and latticed windows – all leftovers from the Jacobean era of liturgical dramas. Silence always, except for the occasional 747 waved off at Heathrow, or the caws of crows as they chase off a bird of prey.

There are lush lawns for games never played, and majestic trees blocking out the ugly outer world. To live this way forever, amid lavender and foxglove, cracked flagstones and fluted birdsong, jet-trails and giant snails, batty bats just missing your hats, show-off peacocks on outhouse sheds, where watching television seems like a sinful waste of life. The staff and their pets, the owners and vets, all change with time, yet I remain, a constant of three decades of waxed floors and soothing mid-day soup. The photographs for the original
Kill Uncle
are taken on the Hook End lawns; the smiling
Greatest Hits
cover taken in the White Room; the lounging
Piccadilly palare
cover taken in the same room; the
Our Frank
cover taken in the woods behind the house; the
Ouija board
video filmed in those same woods; the
Sing your life
photographs taken further into the same woods; an
NME
ad sees me emerging from the dining-room doors; the sleeve for
Interesting drug
taken in the Brown Room upstairs. Hardly a yard of Hook End stands without its Morrissey mark, a history full of sentiment for me, if no one else, with tears always gathering at the final umbilical slash.

With
Maladjusted
, I attempt to get on with my life, but the seaweed of Joyce clings like a parasitic tagtail. Although John Weeks had allotted Joyce 25 per cent of all the Smiths’ past earnings, no provision had been made by Weeks for how such money would be found, or collected, or if such money even existed almost ten years after the demise of the band. Therefore Weeks kindly yet clumsily left it to Joyce to find the money for himself, and Joyce was allowed to add on any penalty fees and legal fees as Joyce might see fit during his time of recovering. In essence, Joyce was suddenly free to bleed both Morrissey and Marr forever. Immediately Joyce sent his lawyers to close down my London bank account, and empty it of every last penny. With the words of Weeks behind them, they had no trouble. Joyce then took legal action to seize my mother’s house – assuming it to be in my name. My mother steps into her garage one day to access her car, and is startled to notice one of Joyce’s legal lice trespassing at the back of the garage, half shadowed by darkness. My mother threatens to call the police and the solicitor runs off in a fit of guilt.

The word
TRUCULENT
appears painted in six-foot-high letters across the wall at the front of my mother’s house. My mother’s cat crawls into the kitchen having been doused with deadly paint that almost kills her. Eggs are splattered across my mother’s front door. When Joyce discovers that my mother’s house is not in my name, he makes a further charge on the grounds that the ownership was switched to avoid paying the
‘it’s not about money’
drummer. When further legal scrambling proves that the house had not been in my name for many years – long before the court action – Joyce withdraws his attack, leaving me with new legal bills of £200,000 for defending myself against his whims. Joyce then takes action to claim my sister’s home, where she lives with her two children. The process begins again, and once again Joyce is thwarted since that house, also, is not registered to me.

Once again I must lay out up to £100,000 deflecting his harassment. Finally, he lays claim on all of my royalties from Smiths recordings, and as Warner comply with his wishes (although they quite interestingly
do not
contractually take him on as a recognized Smiths partner!) Joyce grabs all he can, and this continues unchecked and unmonitored for over a decade to come, thus I no longer have free possession of any royalties for Smiths sales. Insatiable, Joyce collects approximately £3 million – or thereabouts, since Warner don’t clarify the situation with me. It is a farce of unimaginable proportions, with the dominion of Joyce enjoying eternal command because John Weeks, deliberately or accidentally, laid down no boundaries for the smash ’n grab.

In January 2001, Joyce utilized his own private website to disseminate defamatory statements by email that would foment contempt towards me. When asked (by ‘fans’ of the Smiths) about his latest musical venture, Joyce replied that both he and Rourke were part of a group called Aziz, but he said:
‘We are not a part of the record contract, which technically makes us session musicians.’
Here was Joyce tripping himself up yet again. If Joyce had considered himself to be ‘only’ a session musician in his new group, why was he not considered to be so during this time with the Smiths, given that the contractual standing of both positions was identical? Also, if he had honestly thought himself to have a rightful claim of equality in the Smiths, why would he not make similar demands in ensuing ventures? Further still, if the axle upon which the relationship between Morrissey and Marr as the Smiths swiveled had been the main bearing of the written songs, and Joyce had no rights to publishing, how could equality ever exist if two group members are naturally excluded from the central pivot that maintains the group’s success and existence?
It couldn’t. Publishing was not a minor Smiths facet (the songs are why the Smiths are remembered), but was, in fact, the essential center of the Morrissey–Marr partnership, without which nothing else existed. How can any judge see an equal partnership in any business where one entity (Joyce) is unconnected to the central work of the relationship that, in itself, gives existence to that relationship – and without the aid of Joyce? It cannot be argued that Joyce is equal in all things except publishing, because publishing (or songwriting)
is 100 per cent of why the Smiths became the Smiths, and if someone is not a part of the publishing then they could never be found to be equal partners under any circumstances.

It is difficult to find legal professionals who will now represent me against Joyce, because to fight Joyce is to fight the judgment, and it feels like no lawyer or solicitor is allowed to question the word of a judge.

I ask one lawyer,
‘Why not? Why can’t the actions of Weeks be scrutinized?’

She replies,
‘Because he might lose his position.’

At my appeal against the Weeks decision, Lord Justice Thorpe had said:

There is one submission advanced on behalf of the appellant (Morrissey) that attracts a response of a family lawyer.

Although not highlighted in the skeleton argument Mr Rosen (Morrissey’s barrister) did in his oral submissions eloquently expressed his client’s sense of injustice at what he in effect labelled a gratuitous and unwarranted character assassination of his client by the trial judge (John Weeks). Since this was a straightforward money dispute between two former partners the complaint, if substantiated, would deserve strong support and due remedy in an appellate court
...
A distinction is to be drawn between an assessment of credibility, an assessment of demeanor and an assessment of personality. In my opinion the judge in the passages under review was stating his assessment of Mr Morrissey’s credibility
...
I am quite clear that the judge was expressing no more than an impression of the value of Mr Morrissey’s oral evidence
...
The circumstances in which a judge is entitled to make a personality assessment in civil litigation must, in my opinion, be much more limited.

Peter Gibson, LJ, then spoke:

No dishonesty was imputed to Mr Morrissey by Mr Nigel Davis QC for Mr Joyce, nor do I read the judge’s comments amounting to a finding of dishonesty.

However, John Weeks described me as ‘devious’, which, in any language, is understood as meaning ‘dishonest’. What makes this attack harder to understand is that Weeks concluded the case based on the 1890 Partnership Act, yet he also went on to foul the air with personality assessments, the latter seemingly unnecessary once the 1890 Act had been presented as the final word. Rounding off the case with personality assessments would only be necessary if those very assessments were the reasons why the case must conclude as it had, but why is there a need for personality assessments if the wording of the 1890 Partnership Act supposedly said all that need be said?

Although the comments of the appeal judges in their own shy way cleared my character of dishonesty, this aspect of the events went unreported in the newspapers. Each man kills the thing he loves, and Joyce had murdered the Smiths.

In 1999, a case similar to the Smiths’ circus reaches the High Court, but is swiftly booted out by the judge who examines the relationships within Spandau Ballet. Justice Park concludes:
‘It is unconscionable for the [ex-members] to lay claim to large sums of money that they knew the group founder [Gary Kemp] had regarded as his own
.
’
The rationale and intelligence of Mr Justice Park further highlighted the wayward will of Weeks, and, at the same time, Michael Stipe is interviewed in
Q
Magazine where he describes John Weeks as ‘a fuckhead’.

Years later, when fattened and bored and watching the clock, Joyce manages to get two letters to me, one of which begins
‘I know you must hate me’
(which reads as ‘you have every reason to hate me’), and he continues with a plea for renewed friendship, whilst making public declarations in favor of a Smiths re-formation. Johnny, too, tells me that he is ready for a re-formation. But neither were ready for a re-formation during the trial or in the immediate years that followed, when neither felt any obligation to prevent the Smiths’ ruin; when Joyce denies 10 per cent whilst accepting 10 per cent, when sad-eyed weakness is utilized as an instrument of power, when Joyce finally makes himself count only via disagreements, when Nigel Davis suggested that I had considered Rourke and Joyce to be as replaceable as parts of a lawnmower (a quote which the national press then gleefully attribute to me). Joyce, Rourke and possibly Marr were too simple to realize that the repercussions from these High Court days would be felt for the rest of their lives, and with Morrissey dishonored in a million ways – his ruin made certain from the start. In 1996 and 1997, Joyce and Marr set their own terms, allowing court events to justify their lives more than
The Queen is Dead
ever could. Self-confirmation was found only in the wobbly words of Weeks, the life of Joyce justified by hateful ingratitude to those who were his companions in pleasure and success. He spoke as if accompanied on harp, exclusively absorbed in self-pity, present in court because he had nothing else to do.

Yes, time can heal. But it can also disfigure. And surviving the Smiths is not something that should be attempted twice
.
If the Smiths split was designed to kill me off, then it failed. If the Smiths court case was a second attempt to kill me off, it too must fail.
There is another world, there is a better world;
well, there must be,
and even if the passing of time might mellow you into forgiveness, it doesn’t mean that you ever again want to be friends.

Sickened, I left England. The good life is out there somewhere. I found increasing strength as I purchased 1498 North Sweetzer Avenue in the West Hollywood zone of Los Angeles – the city of promises. Mercury Records had sacked its president and had also fired all of the artists that he had signed – one of which was I. I had no idea then that seven years would pass without a new label. But I have a real home with hardwood floors, and I am momentarily free from the petty wars of England. Palm trees range around each window of 1498, a house steeped in Hollywood history since 1931. I wake surrounded by weightlessness and a long-forgotten feeling of relaxation. I am alone, of course, but that is quite usual. My neighbor is the very famous Johnny Depp, who looks away should I ever appear. When my seven-year tenure at Sweetzer ends, Johnny Depp will buy the house for use as a guest annex.