“Without getting into a war of words,” the drama of White Wizzard continues after laying dormant for a few years. Including allegations of theft, this time the band is airing it all out on Facebook. But what we could decipher out of many grammatically angry and obviously hastily written posts and emails is that Joseph Michael is out and his replacement, Giles Lavery, has already been hired.
Amongst the change in lineup, Michael is claiming in a publicly emailed statement that bassist Jon Leon is making false accusations about him on the band’s Facebook page and is also “stealing” money from the White Wizzard Indiegogo account. The band was also accusing Michaels of stealing a bag that included the personal belongings of a fan, Charlotte Croucher, that has since been returned. “The Fact is he has taken money and not kept receipts and just basically made up numbers since the first tour I did in August,” Michael claims about Leon in his email statement. “I had read all the horor stories about Jon and his past issues with members… I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt…. but after continually watching him skim profits from every tour i decided to speak up. He then fired me last night on the night off… Then announced that I was refusing to sing… It’s all lies… I was fired and he couldn’t find someone to sing so he begged me 5 minutes before they went on…”
But this band has not been without its share of spats, so much so it’s hard to even keep track of who is in, who is out, who is in what clique and who isn’t invited to the other’s next birthday party. We combed through to find the most intelligible of the Facebook posts regarding the situation and found this one the most informative:
White Wizzard want to release a brief statement on singer Joseph Michael. Last night in Cardiff Wales, Joseph Michael left a crowd of fans sitting in the venue waiting to see White Wizzard, sat in a pub across the street and refused to perform the show for extremely selfish reasons. The band soldiered on with Peter Ellis and Jon Leon handling vocals. It was hugely unprofessional on his part. Due to these actions, we have secured another singer for mainland europe named Giles Lavery. Sadly, due to this any many other problems over the past several months, it is without question we must move on and immediately make a change. Joseph is making very false and erroneous claims on his facebook site unfortunately about Jon and the band, but without getting into a war of words we will just simply say he is lying and making a desperate attempt to hurt the band and Jon to cover up his very unprofessional actions. The rest of us are determined to move on, and we all assure you we are united and everything is fine within the rest of the group. We will do our best to move on. See ya out there! Thanks for all the fans support last night and beyond.
But that’s just one of many posts made accusing Michael of stealing. There’s even a post from the fan who claims her things were stolen by Michael thanking Leon for his help in retrieving her things. All of this would be pretty shocking… if it wasn’t for the fact that White Wizzard’s name is attached to it.
