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{“It was frightening,” explains Mike Joyce, sitting in the grand accommodations of the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester. The drummer is talking about his most memorable gig with the Smiths: the night in July 1986 when The Queen Is Dead tour arrived at Salford Maxwell Hall. “They didn’t collect ticket stubs off people coming in. So they were passing tickets back outside through the toilet window.” The show ended up at double capacity. “They had to clear out the bar downstairs because the bouncy dance floor was failing. Frenzy! There were people crying their eyes out, strangers hugging each other – and that was prior to ecstasy!”

Honoring the Smiths’ Legacy

{Joyce, enthusiastically lively company, has just completed a heartfelt, captivating book, The Drums, celebrating the Smiths. It’s a “right place, right time” story of his experiences as the influential independent group broke through the boundaries of British guitar music, with Johnny Marr’s beautifully intricate playing combining seamlessly with Morrissey’s words, resulting in devastating, romantic and witty vignettes that accurately portrayed everyday life.

A man answered the door and cursed at me

“I wanted the book to be about the majesty of it,” explains Joyce. “How it was wonderful and interesting and crazy and weird. Not the negatives.” That’s why The Drums stops just 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 continuing saga of Morrissey’s controversial worldview. “From what I’ve gleaned, he’s certainly got very different politics to mine,” Joyce says. “But that’s his opinion. He just seems very upset 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 considering it from a very different perspective.”

Formative Years

Joyce was born in Manchester in 1963, into a “devoutly Catholic” Irish immigrant family. “The religious dread was absolutely entrenched in our lives,” says the drummer, although he does still remember a “happy childhood 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 unidentified spleen injury causing internal blood loss 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 recalls, “and told me to fuck off.”

Entering the Band

In his teens, Joyce entered 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 played well enough to get the job, before he started to hallucinate. Band dynamics were already in place: Marr as leader (“I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that”) and Morrissey, then still regular Steven from Stretford, an aloof presence. “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 disliked Morrissey. He was incredibly talented. Very witty person, sharp wit. But it was such an peculiar connection. 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 comfortable talking about his bandmates’ talents, in particular Marr’s endless creativity. “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 dark, attractive, repulsive, appealing elements. A outstanding singing ability. Stage performance interesting, intriguing, incredibly skilled. It’s a powerful combination.” Andy Rourke, a friend for life who Joyce writes about affectionately, 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 overwhelmed. “I faced challenges because Andy and Johnny were far superior of me.” But he says he never felt unappreciated 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 crazy performance at the Haçienda. But in 1984, Joyce was called into a meeting with the band’s accountant. He hadn’t paid too much attention 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 refused point blank.

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 lawsuit 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 shared stakeholders, 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 proceeded to trial 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 due to me, and what was right.” Despite calling him “unintellectual and not financially sophisticated”, The presiding judge ruled in Joyce’s favour after a intense seven-day case, awarding him £1m. Weeks famously stated he found Morrissey “devious, truculent and unreliable” and Marr “likely to embellish his statements to a point where he became less credible”.

Aftermath and Reflection

The case caused a schism that is still ongoing. Joyce says he regularly gets harassed by Morrissey fans on social media. “Death threats, angry comments, the usual.” 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 funeral for Rourke, who died of pancreatic cancer 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 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.”

Treasured Experiences

Joyce, now 62, chooses to take a optimistic perspective, 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 moved 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 completely dark 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? Tears.”

The Smiths’s split was abrupt. Marr gathered 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 twist 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 direct involvement,” says Joyce, referring to any business interests. “But I thought it was a odd decision 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