The ex-Smiths drummer, Mike Joyce, publishes his memoir, The Drums, this week, and he’s been talking to the Guardian about life in the band, their sudden split and his broken relationships with Morrissey and Marr.
Joyce initially got the Smiths gig through a friend of Marr’s and explains that in the band’s early days, he was in awe of his new bandmates. He paints an evocative image of the guitarist as a young man: “Every day, you’d go round the house and he’d play some riff sat having a spliff in his jimmy-jams. You’d be like, ‘That’s amazing. What’s that?’”
As for Morrissey, though Joyce says that although there was a distance between him and the singer, his lyrics were: “Unique. Nobody writes like that. The introduction of gruesome, handsome, vile, charming elements. A brilliant voice. Stage performance interesting, intriguing, incredibly skilled. It’s a potent brew.” And Andy Rourke? “I’d heard bass played like that, but I’ve never seen it played like that.”
Joyce admits that all this was enough to make him feel slightly intimidated. “I struggled because Andy and Johnny were miles ahead of me.”
Though the Smiths’ lawsuit over recording royalties is not covered by the book, the drummer was told as early as 1984, at a meeting with the Smiths’ accountant, that he and Rourke were essentially hired hands. “I just said, ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ It was never mentioned again.”
Joyce and Morrissey last saw each other in 1992, and he hadn’t spoken to Marr for decades until they met at the memorial service for Rourke in 2023. “It was good to see him. Because it wasn’t about court cases or who did what. It was about Andy.” He says that despite these severed friendships, he’s still glad he went through with the court case. “I didn’t take Julian Cope to court, and I haven’t spoken to him for 30 years (Joyce played on Cope’s 1988 My Nation Underground album).
"To not be in touch with people you’ve been in bands with isn’t that strange.”
Despite all this, his memories of his time as a Smith seem to be positive. Joyce talks about how very often – after 1985, at least - when Morrissey recorded his vocals it would be the first time he’d hear his lyrics.
“He never had any light in the studio. It would always be pitch black so we couldn’t see him.” Joyce describes the experience as: “Mindblowing. When he did I Know It’s Over for the first time? Tears.”
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