The Stone Roses are back..

[Meatus]

You are quite right about the case, It was never for songwriting royalties that Joyce claimed for only for performance royalties. Again people think that it is only Morrissey who is against Joyce, but Johnny Marr backs up everything that Morrissey says as does Geoff Travis who owns Rough Trade records & who signed The Smiths. Now Geoff and Morrissey have a very fracticious relationship & in fact Morrissey doesn't particularly like Geoff Travis. Apart from that there is absolutely no bad blood at all between Geoff Travis & Mike Joyce. Yet Geoff Travis backs up everything that Morrissey & Johnny Marr claim & he said that Mike Joyce & Andy Rourke both fully knew, were fully aware from the beginning that they would only receive 10% of performance royalties each & that Johnny & Morrissey would get 40% each. And not only were they fully aware but both readily agreed! Geoff Travis also points out that this was the biggest mistake of his personal career that "none of us ever got this down on a piece of paper, we should have done & all of this would be sorted". But alas it was never. Also Mike Joyce never had any proof though that it was to be an equal 25% split between the 4 of them. Its not as if he turned up in court & proved Morrissey & Johnny were wrong & were liars. On the contrary he had no evidence backing up his claims either. It was because of this that the judge went to the 1890 Partnership Act & awarded in Joyce's favour.

Morrissey also felt the judge personally didn't like him & was biased & the judge seemed to show this with his "devious, truculent and unreliable" quote. The case was not about Morrissey or Marr or Joyce's personality. So this was definitely another bee in Moz's bonnett. Again though, anybody who knows Moz knows he's extremely clever, sardonic, erudite, outspoken & intelligent. And these are not quite the personality traits that get one over in court. They certainly don't elicit much sympathy. I think Moz should have known this & kept his manner in check. I do think Morrissey has got a lot of complaints about this case & an awful lot of them right. But of course he is certainly a man who holds a grudge & i see him holding this grudge until the day he dies.

As a fan of the man & someone who has defended him wholeheartedly over the years i am big enough to admit he can be quite petty, he can clearly hold a grudge like no other & be ver embittered. But he's always been like that & its what makes him who he is. I understand thats not to everyone's liking. But its him & its always been him & i can't see him ever changing. But thats why his fans love him!

[Robches]

I suppose this only proves that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. I think that Morrissey and Marr signed all the deals with the record companies, and Joyce and Rourke were treated pretty much like session musicians. However, the fact is they were members of the band, and unless there was a written agreement to the contrary, the law states that all partners are equal. I'm sure that Morrissey and Marr thought a 40:40:10:10 split was fair, but they needed to get it in writing. They were all only about 20 back then, so it's not surprising the legal niceties eluded them.

[Arginald Valleywater]

Rather sad that most of the tickets are on Ebay and weren't bought by genuine fans.

[Robches]

Arginald Valleywater wrote:

> Rather sad that most of the tickets are on Ebay and weren't
> bought by genuine fans.

I know. It pisses me off when the news reports that "all the tickets sold out in 15 minutes." Who do they think bought them up? Touts and ticket agencies, inasmuch as they can be distinguished. It just means the fans have to fork out extra to bloodsuckers. Do they really think that within 15 minutes 50,000 genuine punters managed to order tickets?

[thecocker]

As I was never a fan of them in the first place, I can't really comment on The Stone Roses themselves.

There are usually two main reasons why groups / bands reform is that:

One - their careers away from the band has gone down the toilet and the money from days gone by has begun to run out. Even with with Take That, although Gary wrote the songs, it was Robbie Williams whose career took off when they originally split, but even his career started to decline when he split with Guy Chambers.

Two - it's a last minute pay-day to top up their pensions. We had constantly heard in the past that Genesis and The Police would never reform, but look what happened.

I don't really care why they reformed, but please don't call it an 'anniversary' tour. There's nothing I find more strange than when a band reforms and they call it a 25th / 30 th anniversary tour, when they haven't even been together or (even spoken to each other) for the last 25.

[Meatus]

You are spot on Robches. In the beginning when the band signed with Rough Trade it was only Johnny & Morrissey who signed, so they were essentially The Smiths. Thats what lead to Morrissey's later assertation of Mike & Andy being "Lawn Mower Parts". This comment was very unfair i feel. Although i am a Morrissey fan & i believe that Morrissey & Johnny were right about the split & feel they were wronged by the outcome of the Court Case. Because of that i'm not just saying this, but Mike Joyce was the weakest member of the band in my opinion musically. Though as the band grew he became a very essential ingredient in the group, he has some really great drum parts notably "The Queen is Dead", "Still Ill" "Bigmouth Strikes Again", "Nowhere Fast", "Handsome Devil" & "Death Of A Disco Dancer". But i do feel its unfair to claim he was a "Lawn Mower Part" as i don't think anyone else could have slotted into The Smiths without changing the dynamic of the group. However "The Lawn Mower Part" is totally inappropriate concerning Andy Rourke who quite genuinely is one of the finest Bass players who ever lived. He is easily in an all time "Top 5" Bass players & was one of the most influential Bass players on the indie scene. His bass lines take on such a melodic freedom in the group & they are an essential part of all the groups songs. Morrissey has recognised this & retracted his statement in regards to Andy & i think he is much more civil towards Andy, due to the fact Andy dropped his claim. He has even offered an Olive branch to Andy as such in that Morrissey's latest Best Of features a track "Girl Least Likely To" which was co-written by Morrissey & Andy Rourke. But while it is a great track, it was only a B-Side & i don't think it would have been on most peoples track lists if they were compiling a Best Of for Morrissey. So perhaps this is a small gesture from Morrissey to show the animosity is solely between him & Mike Joyce.

But you are spot on again Robches about an Oral Contract being worthless & you mentioned about them all being young & in their 20's then. But another crucial thing is, they never had a manager! As Morrissey distrusted them, so throughout their entire career Johnny Marr was their de facto Manager. This was one of the reasons he quit the group as he kept trying to install a manager only for Morrissey to find a fault in them & then ask Johnny to fire them. This proved too much when Johnny hired Scott Piering to be the groups manager. Morrissey was jealous & wanted him fired & Marr refused to do so. Retaining Piering as his own manager & leaving the group shortly afterwards. I think its safe to say though if they had a compotent manager in 1983 when they were signed, all of the contract/royalty nonsense would have been sorted out properly!

[Meatus]

I've always wondered about this as there has been a few times when a band or artist who i am genuinely a fan of & i'm desperate to see & i call as soon as lines are open & i end up with no tickets! And then they are on E-bay for double, treble the price! I often wonder how the touts always manage to get through? Why for at least a few gigs do the genuine fans not get on first & get them before the touts? The touts always see to get them, which leaves me wondering do they have "inside" people at ticket sites?

[max_tranmere]

It will be interesting to see how the shows go. If I was one of the Stone Roses I would be insisting on massive amounts of rehearsing so the set is so tight they can do it in their sleep when the forthcoming gigs come along. I remember when Blur reformed in 2009, Damon Albarn said the band could not go on stage and perform the gigs they were planning without 'putting the hours in'. They rehearsed and rehearsed and got their musicianship, and the set, perfect.

Blur even did a few warm-up gigs before Glastonbury and Hyde Park that year. The extensive rehearsing and hard work was necessary because (as far as I'm aware) two of the band hadn't done much musically for ages. Alex James, the bass player, had retired to a farm in Gloucestershire; and Dave Rowntree, the drummer, had tried to become a politician for the Labour Party and had also worked in a solicitors office (none of what Rowntree did was out of the need for a job, he has lots of money in the bank). I saw Blur at Hyde Park in 2009 and they worked brilliantly as a four-piece again.

I'm not sure what some of the Stone Roses have been doing in recent years. John Squire, the guitarist, has given up music as far as I know and has become an abstract artist. The drummer, Alan Wren (Reni) vanished and was not heard of for many years. I read he spent a few days in prison in the years following the break-up of the Roses aswell. The four of them need to work out their set, rent a large film studio somewhere, and practice every day for about 6 weeks or so. It will be very embarassing if they get back on stage and are all over the place as a band.

[max_tranmere]

A while ago I was reading an extract from "Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance" - the book that was written about the falling out they had and about the demise of The Smiths. I forget the name of the author. Morrissey said later that he hoped the author 'would die in a motorway pile-up'. One thing I remember from what I read was that Andy Rourke, the bass player, had a bad heroin problem which led to lots of problems when they were playing live in the later stages of the band. He was apparently so strung-out that he couldn't play properly. It is sad when drugs start to get involved in a band, it generally leads to major problems.

[Robches]

Meatus:

You are obviously the go-to guy for information on The Smiths and Morrissey!