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{“It was frightening,” shares Mike Joyce, seated in the grand accommodations of the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester. The musician is reflecting on his most memorable gig with the Smiths: the night in July 1986 when The Queen Is Dead tour played at Salford Maxwell Hall. “They failed to collect ticket stubs off people coming in. So they were giving their tickets back out through the restroom window.” The show attained double capacity. “They had to empty the bar downstairs because the bouncy dance floor was giving way. Frenzy! There were people sobbing uncontrollably, strangers embracing one another – and that was prior to ecstasy!”

Remembering the Band’s Greatness

{Joyce, enthusiastically lively company, has just written a heartfelt, captivating book, The Drums, honoring the Smiths. It’s a “ideal circumstances” story of his memories as the influential independent group tore down the boundaries of British guitar music, with Johnny Marr’s masterfully complex playing merging immaculately with Morrissey’s words, resulting in powerful, heartfelt and clever vignettes that accurately portrayed everyday life.

Someone opened the door and shouted obscenities

“I wanted the book to be about the majesty of it,” notes 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 infamously chequered legacy of court cases, spats and the ongoing drama of Morrissey’s divisive opinions. “From what I’ve understood, 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.”

Childhood and Inspirations

Joyce was born in Manchester in 1963, into a “strongly Catholic” Irish immigrant family. “The divine apprehension was absolutely embedded in our lives,” says the drummer, although he does still remember a “pleasant early years full of love”. It was not without its traumas: Joyce spent six months in hospital after being involved in a car accident outside his house, an unnoticed internal damage causing internal hemorrhage that nearly killed him. The fits faded after a year.

Watching Buzzcocks live was his ground zero, John Maher’s drumming encouraging him to buy a kit. Joyce became so fixated on the band, he once found frontman Pete Shelley’s house. “Some guy opened the door,” he states, “and told me to fuck off.”

Joining 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 took mushrooms but “not a call-an-ambulance amount”. He demonstrated enough skill to get the job, before he started to experience altered perceptions. 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 hardly spoke to me.”

Joyce says he found it hard to characterize Morrissey in the book. “I don’t want it to sound like I disliked Morrissey. He was fucking great. Very humorous individual, cutting humour. But it was such an peculiar connection. There was a separation. I accepted we were just very distinct individuals.”

I went to court because I wanted what was due to me – and what was right

He’s more at ease discussing 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 jimmy-jams. 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 outstanding singing ability. Stage performance interesting, intriguing, incredibly skilled. It’s a powerful combination.” Andy Rourke, a permanent ally 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 Struggles and Internal Issues

It all left Joyce feeling slightly intimidated. “I faced challenges because Andy and Johnny were miles ahead of me.” But he says he never felt undervalued 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 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 heed when only Morrissey and Marr signed the contract as the band joined Rough Trade.

“I believed 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 pay cut, from 25% to 15%, because he didn’t do interviews or create artwork. He declined outright.

Does he mean to imply, in the book, that they were being deceptive? “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 equal partners, 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 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”, Judge John Weeks found for Joyce after a brutal seven-day hearing, awarding him £1m. Weeks famously stated he found Morrissey “devious, truculent and unreliable” and Marr “willing to embroider his evidence to a point where he became less credible”.

Consequences and Thoughts

The case caused a rift that is still playing out. Joyce says he regularly gets targeted 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 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 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 positive outlook, 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 emotional 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. “Incredible,” says Joyce. “When he did I Know It’s Over for the first time? Tears.”

The Smiths’s split was abrupt. Marr called 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 devastated. 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 forfeited that with the court case.”

In September, there was another twist to the saga. Morrissey announced his intention to sell his commercial holdings in the Smiths, inviting potential purchasers 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 detached from those who wish me nothing but negativity and damage”. Does he wish that? “I don’t,” Joyce says. “I’ve