Morrissey’s latest hissy fit in his never-ending battle against Johnny Marr took a kind of hilarious twist in the last few days… following Marr’s recent “statement” about the possibility of a Smiths reunion (said statement, you may recall, having been a photo of Nigel Farage in response to someone speculating on Twitter), Morrissey couldn’t resist escalating things by claiming Marr had more or less nicked the Smiths’ band name trademark:
On Sunday night, a statement written on Morrissey’s behalf titled “THE PLOT THICKENS” was posted to his website claiming Marr has “successfully applied for 100% trademark rights / Intellectual Property ownership of The Smiths name.”
“His application has been accepted on whatever oaths or proclamations he has put forward,” it continues. “This action was done without any consultation to Morrissey, and without allowing Morrissey the standard opportunity of ‘objection.’ Amongst many other things, this means that Marr can now tour as The Smiths using the vocalist of his choice, and it also prohibits Morrissey from using the name whilst also denying Morrissey considerable financial livelihood. Morrissey alone created the musical unit name ‘The Smiths’ in May 1982.”
All of which is interesting, obviously, but Marr responded with receipts to the contrary. According to him and the paperwork he provided, Marr discovered that no one in the band actually owned the trademark—apparently some unnamed third party had tried to make a claim for it, which was how he found out—so he contacted Steven Patrick about it; when the latter failed to respond, Marr acquired the trademark to make sure the aforementioned third party didn’t… on top of which Marr agreed to sign some document back at the start of this year that would actually give Morrissey joint ownership, but for reasons best known to himself (probably because he doesn’t want to share) the latter hasn’t signed on the dotted line yet. As for Marr touring as The Smiths with a new vocalist… I think that if he were going to do that, he would already have done it, given that he’s evidently had the trademark since 2018. And frankly I suspect Morrissey would be more likely to tour under that name with a bunch of ringers…
Anyway, the latest development is that now Morrissey has fired his management for reasons not yet stated, but presumably because it’s their fault he’s such a thunderchud and they had no idea how to stop him from behaving like his own stupid self. They had a client and then they were looking for a client, and heaven knows they’re probably glad to be shot of him now…
