Johnny Marr's Management response to Morrissey's allegations (September 17, 2024)

A statement from Johnny Marr's management:

Recent statements made by Morrissey on his website regarding the trademark of
The Smiths' name are incorrect.

Here are the facts:

In 2018, following an attempt by a third party to use The Smiths' name - and upon
discovery that the trademark was not owned by the band - Marr reached out to
Morrissey, via his representatives, to work together in protecting The Smiths' name.

A failure to respond led Marr to register the trademark himself.
It was subsequently agreed with Morrissey's lawyers that this trademark was held
for the mutual benefit of Morrissey & Marr.

As a gesture of goodwill, in January 2024, Marr signed an assignment of joint
ownership to Morrissey. Execution of this document still requires Morrissey to sign.

In the interests of accuracy and clarity regarding the trademark, and to answer
recent reports that Marr ignored a promoter's offer to tour as The Smiths, Marr says:

"To prevent third parties from profiting from the band's name, it was left to me
to protect the legacy. This I have done on behalf of both myself and my former
bandmates."

"As for the offer to tour, I didn't ignore the offer - I said no."

Additionally, speculation about Johnny Marr touring with a different singer as
The Smiths is not true. There are no such plans.

Johnny Marr also confirms that he declined a suggestion for another greatest hits
compilation from Warner Music Group given the number already in existence.

---

Related items:

• Morrissey Central: "THE PLOT THICKENS" - September 15, 2024
• Morrissey Central: "SMITHS NOT OK" - September 11, 2024
• Morrissey Central: "WAR IS OLD, ART IS YOUNG" - August 29, 2024

 

[Phranc & Open]

Be mad, be rash...

Resist or move on...

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

move on.

 

[Roman Holiday]

View attachment 111637

Given that the human race has two genders, notwithstanding the controversial margins, Morrissey (or any celebrity) is apt to be photographed with the opposite sex. I can do it for Liberace even. Look at Liberace: so much "less gay!"

 

[BrummieBoy]

Rambling now but when you look at Morrissey's difficulties, and how unlikely it was that he and Johnny would ever have crossed paths in their daily lives, it makes The Smiths even more special. From the outside, it's still insane - the depressed oddball and the pothead party boy?! It was mad, it was magic. Moz used to ask Johnny 'so tell me how you found me' and have him repeat the whole story over and over. And when people choose a 'team' and they hate on one or the other, they take some of the magic away. #TeamSmiths

...why aren't you even slightly sceptical about the 'origin story' of 'The Smiths', given all that's been revealed?

It's entirely plausible that it's invention- part of Morrissey's self-mytholigising attempt at a hagiography that he scripted, Marr concurred with and cannot now admit was bullshit?

'Saint In A Stained Glass Window'...some think it's all fabricated.

Morrissey is a windowlicker-charlatan-fraud: always has been...which is why he went batshit crazy about the Disco Diva haircut in his passport photo because he wasn't a Doomed Poet as a teenager, he just met a genuine Doomed Poet in Moseley and nicked the persona then accessorised it artfully.

He's a 'thieving magpie', artistically...the early lyrics lifted almost wholesale from other authors, actors, auteurs but presented as 'original'...etcetera...

Morrissey is a collage artist. He 'samples' others. The results are sometimes exquisite but sometimes cringe worthy nonsense.

Marr is also a collage-artist but he barely sets a foot wrong because he understands the limits of that approach. He was an analogue sampler using interpolated fragments then joined 'Electronic' to experiment in the digital domain before returning to analogue, very successfully. This is not a criticism of Marr- it's a compliment. He's been on an audio journey and will continue exploations: doubt that includes exhuming 'The Sounds Of The Smiths '...

Nothing wrong with Sound Collage. Everyone does it. Everything builds on everything else. Standing on the shoulders of giants.
Talent borrows...genius steals...etcetera...but...Morrissey is not a genius, not by any measure whatsoever...no matter how many breathless Fiona Dodwell fluff pieces he commissions by briefly granting her his lizard-eyed attention...

BrummieBoy

The Bull's Head
Meriden
Mercia
England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_collage

 

[BrummieBoy]

I guess you could say he was somehow "less gay" when he was writing songs about rent-boy polari, wearing gold lamé shirts, and dancing like a dancing queen among the desert rocks in a music video.

He was appropriating 'queer confrontational iconographies' as a commercial strategy- without responding artistically to the epochal HIV-AIDS crisis.

He was using this appropriated cultural and political rebel history history to tart himself up...'pour epater les bourgeoisie' or whatever the fcuk the quote is...

...he claimed to be celibate but saturated his Public Image with semen-soaked libidinous innuendo...in my opinion he's a total fraud...charlatan and/or hypocrite if he was taking it up the arse'n'all and blowing guardsmen in St James's Park on the sly like me...not saying he was doing that because...he refuses to divulge...even now on 2024 when being a homosexual is a career advantage in almost every occupation.

It's so boring. Steven, when will you Accept Yourself?

BrummieBoy
Stonebridge Island
1979

 

[gashonthenail]

I guess you could say he was somehow "less gay" when he was writing songs about rent-boy polari, wearing gold lamé shirts, and dancing like a dancing queen among the desert rocks in a music video.

Very true. The cover of 'Viva Hate' was originally going to be a pic of Morrissey at Charles Hawtrey's grave. And the album is full of sex. Whether it's humasexual sex is for the listener to decide. And then there was the Kill Uncle tour with Phranc, the self-proclaimed "All-American Jewish lesbian folksinger." And 'Bona Drag' as you mentioned. And the high camp of the video for 'November'. Then there was 'Your Arsenal', pun very intended. And 'Vauxhall and I', the area of London that is the 'gayest' in London. Those years from 1988 - 1994 were probably Moz at his most humasexual.

 

[April Snow]

Honestly some of the comments on here are just spiteful

I am going to sit and play my Queen is Dead - UK 1st Pressing I picked up today at a record fair - and celebrate the artistry that is Mozz and Marr, the rest just does not matter.

 

[gashonthenail]

And lest we forget. Could he be any 'gayer' than this? He's basically Oscar Wilde on Top of the Pops. I remember my dad looking up from the newspaper and saying - who's that bloody poofter? Got to be Moz's best ever TV appearance. Absolutely brilliant. Some people 'declare' everything just by being - and that is Morrissey. Any other 'declaration' is just redundant and 'ordinary'. And he could never be that.

 

[Amy]

...why aren't you even slightly sceptical about the 'origin story' of 'The Smiths', given all that's been revealed?

Mostly because a lot of the other people involved, in one way or another - Billy Duffy, Simon Wolstencroft, and so on - told the same story that Morrissey and Marr always have. And the actual "origin story" wasn't exceptional at all - they had mutual friends, Duffy greased the wheels, Johnny got on a bus, blah blah. The magic I referred to is in how it worked out, given such different personalities.

I don't doubt they've both romanticised it - editing Simon out in most retellings, for example - but hey, I love a bit of myth, all great bands have it. As for Moz exaggerating, well... In his memoir he said that he was he living on Valium and toast at that time, had no money, and felt like the only person who could understand or even tolerate him was his mother. When you look at the full picture of his life and how he seems to sleepwalk from one disaster to the next... I think that situation sounds more than truthful.

 

[Redacted]

I honestly didn't think he was gay, I thought he was just gender bending like a lot of people in the 80s. I thought the whole celibacy thing was a way of being opposite to Madonna, who was making a lot of money selling sex, and he was selling sex too, in his own way.

 

[Anonymous]

He was appropriating 'queer confrontational iconographies' as a commercial strategy- without responding artistically to the epochal HIV-AIDS crisis.

He was using this appropriated cultural and political rebel history history to tart himself up...'pour epater les bourgeoisie' or whatever the fcuk the quote is...

...he claimed to be celibate but saturated his Public Image with semen-soaked libidinous innuendo...in my opinion he's a total fraud...charlatan and/or hypocrite if he was taking it up the arse'n'all and blowing guardsmen in St James's Park on the sly like me...not saying he was doing that because...he refuses to divulge...even now on 2024 when being a homosexual is a career advantage in almost every occupation.

It's so boring. Steven, when will you Accept Yourself?

BrummieBoy
Stonebridge Island
1979

If you believe the gossip site crazy days and nights (who dropped info on Kevin spacey, nicki minaj and p diddy that turned out to be entirely accurate), morrissey is a closeted heteroflexible who has fathered 2 children with groupies he met on the road, and has a tendency to become a distinctly uncharming man with an excellent right hook when drunk

 

[Was I ever any good]

Honestly some of the comments on here are just spiteful

I am going to sit and play my Queen is Dead - UK 1st Pressing I picked up today at a record fair - and celebrate the artistry that is Mozz and Marr, the rest just does not matter.

You’ll get used with us

 

[Famous when dead]

If you believe the gossip site crazy days and nights (who dropped info on Kevin spacey, nicki minaj and p diddy that turned out to be entirely accurate), morrissey is a closeted heteroflexible who has fathered 2 children with groupies he met on the road, and has a tendency to become a distinctly uncharming man with an excellent right hook when drunk

Took the court information about having children listed as dependants heirs (ie: 2 nephews) and turned that in to being a parent.
FWD.

 

[Redacted]

Took the court information about having children listed as dependants (ie: 2 nephews) and turned that in to being a parent.
FWD.

Why would he list his nephews as dependents?

 

[Famous when dead]

Why would he list his nephews as dependents?

Sorry, that should say heirs.
But, possibly the same reason as having houses in other people's names.
FWD.

 

[Amy]

Why would he list his nephews as dependents?

He supported his Mum and sister from the money he made, I would guess this is part of that? If this info was taken from the 1996 course case docs, his nephews were children then, 13-15ish.

 

[Anonymous]

Took the court information about having children listed as dependants (ie: 2 nephews) and turned that in to being a parent.
FWD.

You guys are no fun. NO FUN!!!! Do you EVER have fun?

Gimmie my ball back, I'm going home!

 

[Famous when dead]

 

[gashonthenail]

View attachment 111684View attachment 111685

Pass the sick bag. That creep supports the mutilation of children in the name of gender ideology - and bullies women online who are gender critical. What a cun t.

 

[Young And Alive]

Very true. The cover of 'Viva Hate' was originally going to be a pic of Morrissey at Charles Hawtrey's grave. And the album is full of sex. Whether it's humasexual sex is for the listener to decide. And then there was the Kill Uncle tour with Phranc, the self-proclaimed "All-American Jewish lesbian folksinger." And 'Bona Drag' as you mentioned. And the high camp of the video for 'November'. Then there was 'Your Arsenal', pun very intended. And 'Vauxhall and I', the area of London that is the 'gayest' in London. Those years from 1988 - 1994 were probably Moz at his most humasexual.

Hawtrey died in October 1988, some seven months after Viva Hate was released.