|
|
| Line 60: |
Line 60: |
|
| |
|
| After a seven-day hearing, Judge Weeks found in favour of Joyce, ordering that he receive around £1 million in back-royalties and 25% henceforth. The judge also volunteered character assessments of the four antagonists, which were highly favorable to Joyce and Rourke (who gave evidence in Joyce's support): | | After a seven-day hearing, Judge Weeks found in favour of Joyce, ordering that he receive around £1 million in back-royalties and 25% henceforth. The judge also volunteered character assessments of the four antagonists, which were highly favorable to Joyce and Rourke (who gave evidence in Joyce's support): |
|
| |
| He said of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke that they had impressed him as straightforward and honest. He continued: "Mr. Morrissey is a more complicated character. He did not find giving evidence an easy or happy experience. To me at least he appeared devious, truculent and unreliable where his own interests were at stake." The Judge was also critical of Mr. Marr as seeming to the Judge to be "willing to embroider his evidence to a point where he became less credible." He concluded that where Mr. Morrissey's evidence differed from that of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke, he preferred that of Mr. Joyce and Mr. Rourke.
| |
|
| |
| The judge also ranked the band members by IQ, with Marr "probably the more intelligent of the four", Rourke and Joyce "unintellectual", and Morrissey presumably somewhere in between.
| |
|
| |
| Morrissey offered a different interpretation in an interview eight months later:
| |
|
| |
| The court case was a potted history of the life of The Smiths. Mike, talking constantly and saying nothing. Andy, unable to remember his own name. Johnny, trying to please everyone and consequently pleasing no one. And Morrissey under the scorching spotlight in the dock being drilled. "How dare you be successful?" "How dare you move on?" To me, The Smiths were a beautiful thing and Johnny left it, and Mike has destroyed it.
| |
|
| |
| Asked some time before the trial whether he thought Rourke and Joyce had been short-changed, Morrissey responded: "They were lucky. If they'd had another singer they'd never have got further than Salford shopping centre." Morrissey's counsel, Ian Mill QC, conceded that his client's attitude "betrayed a degree of arrogance". Morrissey appealed against the verdict; Marr did not. The appeal was heard by the Court of Appeal in November 1998 and dismissed. Inspired by Joyce's success, Rourke sought legal advice on his own options. No further action appears to have been taken since that time. Rourke was declared bankrupt in 1999.
| |
|
| |
| In November 2005, Mike Joyce told Marc Riley on BBC Radio 6 Music that financial hardship had reduced him to selling rare Smiths' recordings on eBay. By way of illustration, Riley played part of an unfinished instrumental known as the "[[The Click Track]]". Morrissey responded with a statement three days later revealing that Joyce had received £215,000 each from Marr and Morrissey in 1997, along with Marr's final back-payment of £260,000 in 2001. Morrissey failed to make his final payment because, he said, he was overseas in 2001 and did not receive the paperwork. Joyce obtained a default judgement against Morrissey, revised his outstanding claim to £688,000, and secured orders garnishing much of the singer's income. This was a source of ongoing inconvenience and grievance to Morrissey, who estimated that Joyce had cost him at least £1,515,000 in recovered royalties and legal fees up to 30 November 2005.
| |
|
| |
|
| ==Discography== | | ==Discography== |