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{“It was terrifying,” shares Mike Joyce, seated in the grand accommodations of the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester. The drummer is reflecting on his cherished gig with the Smiths: the night in July 1986 when The Queen Is Dead tour arrived at Salford Maxwell Hall. “They weren’t taking ticket stubs off people coming in. So they were passing tickets back outside through the restroom window.” The show attained double capacity. “They had to evacuate the bar downstairs because the bouncy dance floor was collapsing. Euphoria! There were people sobbing uncontrollably, strangers hugging each other – and that was pre-MDMA!”

A Celebration of the Smiths

{Joyce, enthusiastically lively company, has just authored a personal, absorbing account, The Drums, honoring the Smiths. It’s a “perfect timing and location” story of his experiences as the legendary alternative act tore down the boundaries of British guitar music, with Johnny Marr’s beautifully intricate playing blending perfectly with Morrissey’s words, producing moving, loving and humorous vignettes that perfectly captured everyday life.

A man answered the door and cursed at me

“I wanted the book to be about the splendor of it,” says Joyce. “How it was amazing, fascinating, insane and bizarre. Not the negatives.” That’s why The Drums concludes right after the 1987 split, before Joyce went on to work with the likes of Sinéad O’Connor and Julian Cope, and before the Smiths’s notoriously troubled history of court cases, spats and the ongoing drama of Morrissey’s debated perspectives. “From what I’ve learned, he’s certainly got very contrary beliefs to mine,” Joyce says. “But that’s his opinion. He just seems very angry about a lot of things. Of course I hear it – people saying, ‘I can’t listen to the Smiths. I can’t {separate the art from the artist|distinguish the music from the musician|divorce the work from the creator.’ If that’s how you feel, that’s fine.” Does that make sense to him? “Not to me. But I’m hearing it from a very different perspective.”

Formative Years

Joyce was born in Manchester in 1963, into a “strongly Catholic” Irish immigrant family. “The divine apprehension was absolutely ingrained in our lives,” says the drummer, although he does still remember a “happy childhood full of love”. It was not without its traumas: Joyce spent six months in hospital after being struck by a vehicle outside his house, an unidentified spleen injury causing internal bleeding that nearly killed him. The seizures faded after a year.

Seeing Buzzcocks live was his initial inspiration, John Maher’s drumming inspiring him to buy a kit. Joyce became so obsessed with the band, he once located frontman Pete Shelley’s house. “Some guy opened the door,” he remembers, “and told me to fuck off.”

Becoming Part of the Smiths

In his teens, Joyce entered punk bands, first the Hoax and then Victim, before a friend who also knew Marr suggested he audition for the Smiths. Before he got there, he consumed psychedelics but “not enough to require medical help”. He demonstrated enough skill to get the job, before he started to experience altered perceptions. Band dynamics were already in place: Marr as musical director (“I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that”) and Morrissey, then still regular Steven from Stretford, an distant figure. “He hardly spoke to me.”

Joyce says he found it challenging to portray Morrissey in the book. “I don’t want it to sound like I had issues with Morrissey. He was absolutely brilliant. Very funny bloke, biting sarcasm. But it was such an unusual relationship. There was a separation. I accepted we were just very distinct individuals.”

I pursued legal action to receive my fair share – because it was just

He’s more happy to speak about his bandmates’ talents, in particular Marr’s inexhaustible productivity. “Every day, you’d go round the house and he’d play some riff relaxing with cannabis in his sleepwear. You’d be like, ‘That’s amazing. What’s that?’” Then there were Morrissey’s lyrics. “Unique. Nobody writes like that. The introduction of gruesome, handsome, vile, charming elements. A exceptional vocal talent. Stage performance fascinating, captivating, highly proficient. It’s a potent brew.” Andy Rourke, a friend for life who Joyce writes about fondly, was last to join on bass. “I’d heard bass played like that, but I’ve never seen it played like that.”

Legal Battles and Band Dynamics

It all left Joyce feeling slightly intimidated. “I had difficulties because Andy and Johnny were far superior of me.” But he says he never felt undervalued as the Smiths quickly caught fire. In November 1983, the band played This Charming Man on Top of the Pops, the same night as a wild show at the Haçienda. But in 1984, Joyce was called into a meeting with the band’s accountant. He hadn’t paid too much heed when only Morrissey and Marr signed the contract as the band joined Rough Trade.

“I thought it was on behalf of all of us,” he says. “I was wrong.” Now he and Rourke were being told they couldn’t expect album earnings in perpetuity after the band split. “I just said, ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ It was never mentioned again.” In 1985, he took a call from Rough Trade employee Martha Defoe, who on Morrissey’s behalf suggested Joyce take a income decrease, from 25% to 15%, because he didn’t do interviews or create artwork. He rejected immediately.

Does he mean to imply, in the book, that they were being underhand? “You can call it that. I mean, that’s why I went to court.” Both Joyce and Rourke began a legal action against Morrissey and Marr in 1989, claiming a 25% equal share of performance and recording royalties – they had subsequently discovered they were paid 10%. Morrissey and Marr argued the band members were not joint owners, though that’s not how Joyce sees it. “I think it sounded like the Smiths because of the four of us.”

Rourke resolved privately (under “significant pressure”) but Joyce went to court in 1996. He says if he’d lost, he would have been bankrupted. “But I thought that if I didn’t, then nobody would ever know what happened. I just wanted what I thought was owed to me, and what was right.” Despite calling him “uneducated and financially inexperienced”, The presiding judge found for Joyce after a brutal seven-day hearing, awarding him £1m. Weeks famously stated he found Morrissey “sneaky, aggressive and untrustworthy” and Marr “likely to embellish his statements to a point where he became less credible”.

Consequences and Thoughts

The case caused a schism that is still ongoing. Joyce says he regularly gets trolled by Morrissey fans on social media. “Hostile messages, insults, typical abuse.” He says he last properly spoke to Morrissey in 1992 when they ran into one another in Altrincham. Aside from rare glimpses in the crowd at Manchester City matches, he had no contact with Marr until the memorial service for Rourke, who passed away from illness in 2023 aged 59.

“It was good to see him. Because it wasn’t about lawsuits or who did what. It was about Andy.” Is he still glad he went through with the case? “Yeah. I don’t regret it.” Even with the emotional toll? “Yeah,” he says uncertainly. “But I didn’t take Julian Cope to court and I haven’t spoken to him for 30 years. To not be in touch with people you’ve been in bands with isn’t that strange.”

Treasured Experiences

Joyce, now 62, chooses to take a upbeat view, talking passionately about his favorite Smiths moments, from the studio playback of debut single Hand in Glove, which was the first time they’d heard themselves recorded as a band, to the time a rendition of I Don’t Owe You Anything made him so moved he started crying as he sat on his drum stool. “I’m getting goosebumps talking about it now,” he says. From 1985, he adds, Morrissey would record his vocals without the rest of the band knowing what he was about to do. “He never had any light in the studio. It would always be pitch black so we couldn’t see him.” Then he’d start singing. “Astonishing,” says Joyce. “When he did I Know It’s Over for the first time? Weeping.”

The Smiths’s split was unexpected. Marr summoned them all to a fish and chip shop in Notting Hill, London, and told them he was leaving. Joyce was surprised – “I thought we were going for chips” – and writes about feeling grief-stricken. Having been a radio DJ in Manchester, Joyce has just come out of a 21-year touring retirement to drum for Pete Doherty. Yet Smiths reunion rumours haven’t stopped. Last year, AEG offered a reported $25m for the band to tour. Joyce learned of this via the press and doubts he’d have been asked to join. “I think I sacrificed that chance with the court case.”

In September, there was another turn to the saga. Morrissey announced his intention to sell his financial stakes in the Smiths, inviting interested parties to send an email. “I’ve got no personal investment,” says Joyce, referring to any business interests. “But I thought it was a peculiar move to do.” The drummer was mentioned directly: naming “Marr, Rourke, Joyce”, Morrissey said he “would now like to live dissociated from those who wish me nothing but harm and ruin”. Does he wish that? “I don’t,” Joyce says. “I’ve