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{“It was terrifying,” shares Mike Joyce, seated in the grand accommodations of the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester. The percussionist is talking about his most memorable gig with the Smiths: the night in July 1986 when The Queen Is Dead tour played at Salford Maxwell Hall. “They didn’t collect ticket stubs off people coming in. So they were redistributing tickets through the toilet window.” The show ended up at double capacity. “They had to evacuate the bar downstairs because the bouncy dance floor was collapsing. Frenzy! There were people weeping openly, strangers hugging each other – and that was prior to ecstasy!”

A Celebration of the Smiths

{Joyce, cheerfully talkative company, has just written a warm, engaging memoir, The Drums, chronicling the Smiths. It’s a “ideal circumstances” story of his recollections as the influential independent group tore down the boundaries of British guitar music, with Johnny Marr’s masterfully complex playing combining seamlessly with Morrissey’s words, leading to powerful, heartfelt and clever vignettes that brilliantly depicted everyday life.

Some guy opened the door and told me to fuck off

“I wanted the book to be about the majesty 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 infamously chequered legacy of court cases, spats and the ongoing drama of Morrissey’s divisive opinions. “From what I’ve learned, he’s certainly got very opposing views 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.”

Childhood and Inspirations

Joyce was born in Manchester in 1963, into a “strongly Catholic” Irish immigrant family. “The religious dread was absolutely embedded in our lives,” says the drummer, although he does still remember a “joyful youth full of love”. It was not without its challenges: Joyce spent six months in hospital after being struck by a vehicle outside his house, an unnoticed internal damage causing internal blood loss that nearly killed him. The convulsions faded after a year.

Attending Buzzcocks live was his initial inspiration, John Maher’s drumming inspiring him to buy a kit. Joyce became so enamored by the band, he once found 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 became part of punk bands, first the Hoax and then Victim, before a friend who also knew Marr asked him to try out 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 see visions. Band dynamics were already in place: Marr as MD (“I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that”) and Morrissey, then still ordinary Steven from Stretford, an aloof presence. “He barely talked to me.”

Joyce says he found it hard to characterize Morrissey in the book. “I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t like Morrissey. He was absolutely brilliant. Very witty person, biting sarcasm. But it was such an unusual relationship. There was a gap. I accepted we were just very opposite personalities.”

I took the case to court to claim what I deserved – and what was correct

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 pajamas. You’d be like, ‘That’s amazing. What’s that?’” Then there were Morrissey’s lyrics. “Distinctive. Nobody writes like that. The introduction of gruesome, handsome, vile, charming elements. A brilliant voice. Stage performance interesting, intriguing, incredibly skilled. It’s a strong mixture.” Andy Rourke, a permanent ally who Joyce writes about lovingly, was last to join on bass. “I’d heard bass played like that, but I’ve never seen it played like that.”

Legal Struggles and Internal Issues

It all left Joyce feeling slightly intimidated. “I had difficulties because Andy and Johnny were significantly more advanced of me.” But he says he never felt unappreciated as the Smiths quickly became successful. 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 music income 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 salary reduction, 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 sneaky? “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 concert and album income – they had subsequently discovered they were paid 10%. Morrissey and Marr argued the band members were not shared stakeholders, though that’s not how Joyce sees it. “I think it sounded like the Smiths because of the four of us.”

Rourke settled out of court (under “significant pressure”) but Joyce continued with the case in 1996. He says if he’d lost, he would have been ruined. “But I thought that if I didn’t, then nobody would ever know what happened. I just wanted what I thought was rightfully mine, and what was right.” Despite calling him “uneducated and financially inexperienced”, The presiding judge ruled in Joyce’s favour after a intense seven-day case, awarding him £1m. Weeks famously stated he found Morrissey “underhanded, confrontational and inconsistent” and Marr “willing to embroider his evidence to a point where he became less credible”.

Consequences and Thoughts

The case caused a division that is still playing out. Joyce says he regularly gets targeted by Morrissey fans on social media. “I wish you were dead, how dare you, all that stuff.” He says he last properly spoke to Morrissey in 1992 when they bumped into each other in Altrincham. Aside from rare glimpses in the crowd at Manchester City matches, he had no contact with Marr until the funeral for Rourke, who succumbed to cancer in 2023 aged 59.

“It was good to see him. Because it wasn’t about legal battles 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 personal cost? “Yeah,” he says tentatively. “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.”

Cherished Memories

Joyce, now 62, chooses to take a upbeat view, talking enthusiastically 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 touched he started crying as he sat on his drum stool. “I’m getting shivers 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 totally unlit so we couldn’t see him.” Then he’d start singing. “Mindblowing,” says Joyce. “When he did I Know It’s Over for the first time? Crying.”

The Smiths’s split was sudden. Marr summoned them all to a fish and chip shop in Notting Hill, London, and told them he was leaving. Joyce was shocked – “I thought we were going for chips” – and writes about feeling bereaved. 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 business interests in the Smiths, inviting interested parties to send an email. “I’ve got no direct involvement,” 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 negativity and damage”. Does he wish that? “I don’t,” Joyce says. “I’ve