by Morrissey
Throughout my cross-examination I notice John Weeks repeatedly nodding to Davis. A small nod always seemingly pleased Davis. By return, Davis smiled meekly at the judge. Crucified by his own enormous teeth, Davis is further weighed down by a colony of purple boils decorating the back of his neck. His most irritating quirk is to repeatedly and repeatedly go over old ground in an effort to wear out the witness or to force the witness to say the wrong thing, or – as had seemed to work with Marr – simply force the witness to agree so that we might all go home and shower this wretchedness off us. The task for Davis is to make confusion seem like a strength for Joyce but a weakness for Morrissey, and to persistently convince the witness that anything they might say by way of reply has no value. When we think we are guilty we can then be easily controlled, and by complicating every question Nigel Davis can first demoralize and then make inferior. Everything is expressed by Davis with a tone of intolerance, as if his presence in court encroaches greatly upon his precious flower-bedding time. Davis insists that a solicitor whom Johnny and I met only once (but whom we did not engage) was, in legal fact, our acting representative. Joyce’s case involved Davis arguing that this solicitor fully and absolutely represented the wishes of Morrissey and Marr, a falsehood upheld throughout the trial with dismal imperfection by Davis and then Weeks.
Verbal flights from a flurry of defendant witnesses were supplied. Firstly, by Patrick Savage (the Smiths’ accountant), who spoke directly to the judge and said, ‘Andy Rourke told me “We get 10 per cent”.’ Judge Weeks decided that such a conversation between Savage and Rourke ‘never took place,’ thereby dismissing the evidence of the Smiths’ accountant. Further evidence from Scott Piering, Geoff Travis, Joe Moss and Andrew Bennet-Smith all maintained that Joyce and Rourke were not equal partners to Morrissey and Marr, and that the division was palpable no matter which way the circumstances were viewed.
With his venomous face game for controversy, it seemed deputy Weeks would dismiss all witness evidence against Joyce – from all of the above key witnesses, not allowing this healthy gathering of plausible sources to have the most remote effect upon the will of Weeks. In effect, John Weeks quite impossibly deemed the evidence of Savage, Travis, Bennet-Smith, Piering and Moss to be ‘unreliable’. By contrast, Joyce had no witnesses and nor did he need them. Neither his wife nor his accountant (who both held great importance in his written testament) is called upon to give witness testimony. For Joyce, the less that anyone spoke for him the better. A sane voice would ask why Joyce’s accountant – who had apparently stirred the action in the first place – was not called to court. Yet sanity was not required as one painfully unjust day bled into another.
Why was Weeks disinclined to accept anything at all that was said against Joyce by a slew of enlighteners; by, in effect, those who were witness to the truth of these affairs? Their presence in court was due only to their profession, and not due to any obliging friendship that they may have with Morrissey or, less importantly, Marr. On the other hand, any evidence spoken in my favor was somehow very skilfully turned against me – as if the witness had been misled or mistaken in thinking anything positive of me. When Joyce himself admitted that he found me to be ‘too honest’ a person, the crumpled Weeks assumed that Joyce meant ‘artistically honest’ but not personally honest, and Weeks settled for this assessment without finding out whether Joyce’s meaning differed to the one chosen by him. At this point, with Weeks insisting that Joyce meant ‘artistically honest’ (even though Joyce had made no reference to art), it is interesting to wonder what John Weeks had known of my ‘art’, and why it seemed safe for Weeks to attribute honesty to my art, but not to my character. For a deputy judge who admitted that he hadn’t heard of Top of the Pops, it seemed unlikely that he would know anything about Morrissey – unless privately enlightened by his friends. It is also interesting to wonder why Weeks found it impossible to link honesty in art to honesty within the person who had created the art, or that he could not see how one automatically led to the other.
For John Weeks, nothing spoken under cross-examination had provided anything at all in my favor, yet the constant inaccuracies and assumptions vomited out with leaden fatigue by Joyce had said so much to the judge. The extraordinary zeal with which Weeks battered out his final judgment raised questions on how far judges should be allowed to go in their assassination of a defendant. Certainly, a witness such as I, with no criminal record, and one who believed that he had always acted with kindness and generosity towards the plaintiff, could not possibly have deserved the skewed and vile attack as spewed forth from John Weeks. If such actions as mine are ultimately not thought to be correct it is only because they are ultimately not thought to be, but this does not show that they were originally designed to be incorrect, and certainly, nothing I had ever done had broken any existing laws. So why did John Weeks use words so violent and apparently preferential in his final judgment? Why did Weeks not simply admonish Joyce for failing to sort his own personal business out all those years ago when the time was right? Why was the failure of Joyce to organize his own personal life deemed to be the responsibility of Morrissey and Marr in 1996 – even though the judge also said that he had no doubt that Joyce had always been equal to Morrissey and Marr? If, as the judge insisted, Joyce had always been equal to Morrissey and Marr, why would that same judge also deem Morrissey and Marr accountable for the supervision of Joyce? How could this ever be the case if all three were of equal partnership liabilities? And if indeed they were, why did the judge not take Joyce, as an ‘equal partner’, to task for any alleged business failings made by Morrissey and Marr? If all three were ‘equal’, how could there ever be a point when that equality separates? Weeks wanted it both ways: he mysteriously sees unquestionable equality from the very start of the Smiths, yet all supervision and responsibility were the duties only of Morrissey and Marr, and not Joyce.
If anything, this ought to have lowered Joyce further into the mud in the mind of John Weeks, because it underlines how Joyce had ‘failed’ to uphold his business partnership duties. Instead, it appeared that all failures on the part of Joyce were shifted over to Morrissey and Marr, without even a suggestion from Weeks that Joyce had ever been careless. Emerging from all of this, I came to the very basic realization that any personal wish from Joyce was going to be granted by Weeks. This was a civil case, not a criminal case. Placing the evidence of Morrissey and Marr aside for one moment, and assessing the case on the opening pleas of Joyce alone, surely it could not be possible for any judge to listen to the stumbling and incomprehensible Joyce and correspond those blunders with truth? A demented child of six years old would see the circuitous deviancy in the Joyce pleadings. So why couldn’t Weeks see this? Stuck in blame thirteen years after the event, it was hard to comprehend how anyone could believe anything at all that Joyce had said in relation to the events of 1983. Without any understanding of knowing when not to speak, Joyce had prattled on, trying to make the notion of sacrifice work to his advantage. Did John Weeks really not see how confusion and guilt are often the same thing?
Comically, Weeks sought to emphasize a considerable disparity in age between myself and the other three Smiths, referring to Morrissey as ‘an older man’, which would of course set the stage for decisive corruption. That the other three each had grammar school education compared to my secondary, and that they all held bank accounts at the Smiths’ formation whereas I had lived without such security, were points given no weight by Weeks. In actual fact, of the four, I was the least worldly, and it was only because I was the oldest of the four that Weeks could labor this fact as if it should have an obviously dark meaning. Several days in, it is generally acknowledged that the case is Joyce versus Morrissey, and those present will know that any defeat I may suffer within these walls shall be as important to onlookers as any triumph I may have had elsewhere. There is not one friendly face, nor one shrug of sympathy towards me from the lines of predators seated with such propriety
on the benches. I am entirely and utterly alone. Marr has neatly edged his way over the dividing line, and is safely tucked away as everyone’s friend – yet no one’s. Even as Davis points out my personal sense of pride, Weeks later ridicules such an idea as if not one word in my support must be allowed air. It is crystal clear to me that this case must go against me even if I am right. Joyce is indecisive; I am fully decisive. My clarity annoys the judge, whereas the fog offered by Joyce only seems to help him. Joyce cannot remember, and says so three hundred times, yet his self-willed lack of recall does not annoy the judge at any stage, whereas my clarity aggravates. I can vividly remember, and I say so three hundred times.
DAVIS: You are very careful with your words, Mr Morrissey.
ME: Well, I’m in court.
Being careful with words is sneered out by Davis – as if it were in itself an anarchic act, as darkness descends all afternoon, and Davis attempts to divide me from Marr – which I am determined will not work. I have already been set adrift from everyone else. I have nothing to hide, and I have nothing to reveal that is not already as plain as day. Cross-examination is really only badgering, and it only takes place because the barking barrister is paid good money to badger. It is unlikely that he even believes the words that he speaks, yet his vocation is to badger in return for money – as with a common bailiff – and this is what Nigel Davis does for a respectable living. Surely unable to fist-fight, he feels safe in the world of words where his cross-examination slaps the face of another over and over again, until they tire and give in. It is an unchristian way of grinding people down, but this is how the legal system makes its money – and a colossal amount of it. Perhaps the wrong verdict is reached, perhaps injustice wins the day, but barristers and judges have little concern for the cruelty of their sport as long as they have the boyish joy of concluding it on their own terms, even if law clashes with truth. Their time in the courtroom is a grand performance, whilst outside is the world they rarely inhabit, and which they more than likely know nothing about. Cross-examination by a barrister is a game whereby the first one to blink is the loser. It really is that silly.
Weeks decides that he ‘prefers’ the ‘evidence’ of Joyce, yet Joyce’s evidence is that he can’t remember anything. My vivid recollections do not fit in with how John Weeks wants to wind up the case, and so I therefore receive derision. Back in the witness stand, Joyce still cannot remember, cannot remember, cannot remember. Why force a case into the High Court if you cannot remember anything about it? Joyce ‘just presumed’, and then ‘can’t remember’, and then ‘just assumed’. Quite apart from turning up at the High Court with neither evidence nor witnesses, Joyce’s presumptions and assumptions are tolerated by the presiding adjudicator, even though Joyce has nothing in writing, has no evidence to support his claim, and does not appear on any Smiths recording contracts! At what point does the absurd become psychoneurotic? Surely the law should not entertain presumptions and assumptions under any circumstances because they are not evidence, they are meaningless, and they are a waste of the court’s time?
Yet deputy Weeks, applying the Partnership Act, ‘prefers’ the assumptions and presumptions of Joyce, and what a great moral task it must have been to bark out laws from 1890 at a time, now, when nothing else from 1890 applies to modern life. Why is such silliness allowed, when usually a court of law requires written evidence? When faced with the evidence of a host of professional functionaries, John Weeks will consider accountant Patrick Savage to be imaginative, and Weeks ‘prefers’ Joyce’s inability to recall. The Smiths are brutalized not by Joyce, but by Weeks, whose judgment marks me out for prolonged and eternal milking by Joyce. As if not enough, Weeks will also make me an easy target for lifelong jokes in the press by carefully shaping and delivering his own description of me as being ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’, which amounts to a very deadly first-degree assassination of anyone’s character.
Three words were used that had never previously described me, thus their weight as a catchphrase for eternity. Had Weeks described me in words befitting my character, no one would care or give any attention. The meaning of ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ is to present a description so patently unlikely that ears prick up. We all know that, if repeated often enough in print, words are bound to eventually be believed, and it seemed obvious his quote would indeed be printed often enough. In the event of any future court action shading my life (fame = money = lawsuits), the ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ stinger alone need only be used once by any opposing party and my defense would come unstuck, because ‘devious, truculent and unreliable’ in judicial parlance means ‘evil, aggressive and a liar’. What was the reason for this attack on me, so aggressively fueled and so overdone that it appears to want to bring a life to an end? Surely judges have no need to unleash thoughts that are actually more violent than anything done or expressed by either plaintiff or defendant. What, then, was John Weeks thinking of? In the quiet room of his final years he will be delighted that his potential was realized by a famously recurring quote. It is a quote powerful enough to poison everything. Weeks could have merely said that someone was right and someone was wrong – or, indeed, that both parties were wrong. Instead he leaves a quote that might be rancid and powerful enough to cause one subject to be unable to ever again conduct business; to never again be trusted, or – even better – to kill himself with the brandishing shock of it all. It doesn’t take much to force someone over the edge, but Weeks’ judgment in itself could have constituted manslaughter.
I had done no harm. I was decisive. Joyce was indecisive. Would the judge not accept one solitary word of my exhaustive evidence? The pounder-drummer will become up to £3 million richer because he said ‘I just assumed it was 25 per cent’ – and that’s all it took. By ‘just assuming’ it was 25 per cent, he was now awarded 25 per cent. Having accepted a 10 per cent cut throughout his entire career – and beyond – it was only when the Smiths broke up that Joyce decided upon a 25 per cent gamble – after all, what is there to lose when the case is funded for Joyce by other people?
Joyce may not thank God, but he has much to thank John Weeks for, since it was Weeks who postmortemed the cobwebbed crates of the nineteenth century to give meaning to a case that was not won by Joyce himself, but that was made easy for Joyce. Without this anachronous act, the case should have collapsed seconds after Joyce first opened his mouth. In puerile rambling the hearings had dragged on and on. Like an irritable child on a hot day, Johnny took to the witness box for a second time, his newly primed approach resembling a sea-dog with news of a sinking ship: ‘Well, Morrissey’s mother, and Morrissey’s mother, and yes, Morrissey should’ve sorted it out,’ and with this the hounds are now fully snapping at my heels, my mind’s eye wandering to late August of 1983 when I inch back the curtains to see my mother and Johnny’s mother driving off together in order to get to know one another. I think of my mother helping Johnny on the day he turned up at her house in a terrible state, and now here he was dragging her into this vile scenario as if it were all she deserved. By now, Marr, Rourke and Joyce have magically transformed into the Beverley Sisters, each chanting how that awful Morrissey had destroyed their lives – and just when they were all doing so well with their musical careers. It is an inferno of betrayal that I can bear no more, and I walk out of the court, the human mess of it all now so overcooked and grotesque – as if the subject all along had been discovery of human remains in someone’s potting-shed, and not simply a chubby drummer chancing his arm. What would they say at Salford Lads’ Club if they caught the stench within these walls – Johnny Marr crying off for being held accountable for his own actions, and all Mancunian camaraderie shafted. It was true that Johnny may have run a little wild, but people who were angry with him always forgave him, and here he was in late repentance – folding for Nigel Davis, his head to one side, seemingly imploring credit for at least being friendly. The shapeless Weeks brought his eyes to bear on Mar
r as if to question why Marr had made him wait so long. Johnny tunneled his way towards Weeks, a child again, wanting anything at all except the disapproval of complete strangers. Now, like Joyce, he too speaks with the voice of a child begging forgiveness, and the hunchbacked Weeks now looks as if he has his catch.
It takes courage to make yourself unpopular with your legal bully-boys for the sake of mere loyalty, and Johnny did not have that courage. A virtuoso of to-ing and fro-ing, you might swear that you are in the company of identical triplets as Johnny stands before you. I think of the happy months recording Strangeways, Here We Come, and I think that at least we had those times. Now, in this sunless and seditious High Court I had endured enough insults from people who had only ever profited from knowing me. Like royalty at the opera, the suffering face of John Weeks increases the web of sorrow as his deferential orderlies and his tide of little helpers are sworn to silence around him. Behind a bundle of oh-so-terribly-important papers, the huge teeth of Nigel Davis appear to expand at signs of fatigue and collapse in Marr – as if the only point of the exercise was to wear the witness down and to make him say what wasn’t true. I imagine barristers and connoisseurs of honor and civil scurvy roaring with laughter in their civic backrooms as they think of the clownish playthings that gather before them in search of justice in the godly Great Halls.
Alone, I left the court’s moldering walls. I left behind its odious gasses and I stepped out into new air, leaving the gabbling gargoyles stewing in their pitiful little warren; barristers soaked in fake humility, Johnny goaded by his little clan, Weeks wringing his creased little hangman’s hands whilst resembling a pile of untouched sandwiches, Joyce telling the world over and over again how he spent his Smiths years in a state of assuming and mis-hearing and mistaking and presuming, playing the daft-as-a-brush card up and out to the balcony, announcing ‘It’s not about money,’ and ‘I just a-shoe-mmmd,’ and ‘I just want my money,’ as if his personal wishes were in themselves law. Leaving the court’s yard, a squirrel of a solicitor who is representing my lawyer (who did not appear at the hearing) tugs my arm.