Mike Joyce on life in The Smiths, and the bonding power of the band's Irish backgrounds
The Smiths: L-R, Andy Rourke, Morrissey, Mike Joyce, Johnny Marr.
Mike Joyce is talking down the line from Manchester about his time as drummer of The Smiths. "It was the little things like the flowers,” says the 62-year-old about the band's frontman waving gladioli during live performances. “I remember Morrissey was asked about it and just said: 'It's better than smelly socks.' I thought ‘good answer’. It was a lovely aspect of it, along with cadence, the rhythm and inflection of his voice … and his words.”
The drummer was still only a teenager when he joined The Smiths in October of 1982. As a punk and post-punk fan at the time, his tastes were of the moment when he became part of the band, providing a solid backbone for the musicianship of Johnny Marr and late bass player, Andy Rourke, who died in 2023.
His new memoir The Drums is very much a celebration of his former bandmates, as Joyce admits he remains their "biggest fan". That sentiment has endured despite a very public fall out with Morrissey and Marr in 1996, when he successfully sued the songwriting duo for a bigger share of the defunct band’s royalties, and was awarded damages of around £1 million.
"The superlatives tend to come out when people are no longer with us", explains Joyce, who remained close with Rourke. "Myself, Johnny, and Morrissey thought he was outstanding. He made it look effortless and the most natural thing in the world; there was never any need to work on anything."
Last year, Rourke was immortalised with a mural painted in north Manchester by street artist Akse P19. Joyce helped crowdfund the image of the bassist taken at Dundee's Caird Hall in September 1985.
"Andy was a guitarist first," adds Joyce. "He adapted what he knew to the sonics of the bass, and it gave fluidity to his playing. If you listen to hidden gems like the John Peel version of This Charming Man, his playing is outrageous, and it's completely different from the single version. He was also a great bloke, very engaging, funny, and the perfect mate".
The former altar boy unpacks the full story of his family's Irish history for the first time in The Drums, as well as the band's deeply rooted working class Irish Catholic identity. All four members of The Smiths were of Irish stock.
"I came from a very strong Irish community next to the Holy Name Church, which is the one Morrissey writes about in Vicar In A Tutu. My parents had a strong connection with the church and the social aspect of it, and that filtered down to me and my siblings. The priest would come to our house, and we would reenact stories from the Bible, they wouldn't turn out how they should have.
“The family also went to the Holy Name social club, going out dancing and having the craic. I had an English mate who said: 'my mam and dad don't do that'. It was important with Irish bands coming to play, Irish dancing and bingo nights.” When the family moved house, they recognised the need for a social club in the area. "My dad and his mates built it from scratch," adds Joyce of a building that still stands. "It was a massive part of my background."
As a second-generation Irish lad in Manchester, Joyce began to notice cultural differences with friends; the fact that The Smiths all came from the same background was a boon to the band. "We had an affinity before we even met," says Joyce, "we all had a similar upbringing in terms of our surroundings and council estates, and that really cemented us."
There was a sense of outsider status among the members of the band; not only were they Irish but also working class, and in an economically deprived Manchester, it was what Morrissey described as 'Dickensian squalor' in his 2013 autobiography. "People didn't come to Manchester," says Joyce. "You wouldn't visit places that didn't have anything to offer. People didn't go there for the weekend, that didn't happen, when people did come for a football match, it was tribal 'you're not from here' kind of thing, and that often transposed into violence."
Another dark shadow that was cast over the city concerned a series of child murders committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. The victims were only slightly younger than Morrissey at the time, who later wrote about what became known as the 'Moors Murders' in Suffer Little Children.
The song was regarded as contentious by some at the time, but as Joyce suggests, the band's intentions were to remind people that those dark deeds shouldn't be forgotten. "It shouldn't be swept under the carpet, the horrors of what happened should be spoken about. Morrissey was inspired by the book Beyond Belief, which captured Hyndley and Brady perfectly. The shock of it still resonates now.
“Morrissey would approach topics that were kind of taboo; he brought subjects like corporal punishment to the fore on The Headmaster Ritual and Barbarism Begins At Home. I became a vegetarian the day we recorded Meat Is Murder; that song is the reason why my children and grandchildren are vegetarians."
When The Smiths toured Ireland in 1984, they were approached by republicans to speak before a gig in Letterkenny. While the band declined the offer, Morrissey had given an interview where he came out in support of the IRA's bomb attempt on British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. “"The only sorrow of the Brighton bombing is that Thatcher escaped unscathed," said the singer.
Not surprisingly, the comments created a storm of controversy. "It was difficult,” says Joyce. "I wasn't experiencing the things people were going through in Belfast, you can't imagine it, but Morrissey's statement was quite heavy about not doing the job [the assassination] properly.
"Of course I didn't agree with Thatcher's policies, my dad was a miner," adds Joyce.
Beyond that controversy in Britain, the band enjoyed a memorable Irish tour. "When you play places like Cork, Letterkenny, and Galway, it becomes more of a celebration and appreciation from fans for you taking the time to go there; it's not like New York or London. People would be saying: 'Why are you here?' kind of thing, they really appreciated those shows more because they don't get them very often."
The Drums covers Joyce's life in The Smiths up to their split in 1987, when Johnny Marr left the band. He admits "nothing was showing" leading up to the surprise parting, adding that it "completely blew our minds".
Joyce has in his possession the only known unreleased and complete track from the band's back catalogue. "I kept a lot of cassettes and there's a cool song which is quite Stonesy called Matter of Opinion. Johnny's songwriting was so good, it was one of the few songs that we shelved."
We won't be hearing it any time soon, as Joyce was reprimanded by Marr for playing a clip of another unreleased instrumental on a BBC radio show in 2006. "I got a letter from Johnny about it, and he was not happy; he was furious."
While Joyce won't be playing any more unreleased tracks, he is on better terms with Marr today. The pair were interviewed together alongside Noel Gallagher and Billy Duffy from The Cult at a Manchester City game last season.
"Just a couple of weeks prior to that, I had a call from Andy's wife, Francesca, about a memorial service in Manchester. It was a private affair for family and close friends. She said: 'Johnny would like you to come down?' I'd seen him at City games, but it would just be a civil 'hello'. That day was all about Andy, and it was nice to see Johnny again."
A short time later, Joyce would meet his former bandmate when watching Manchester City lift their fourth title in a row last summer. "I'd been invited to do an interview pitch-side and the media asked if it was okay to do it with Noel [Gallagher]. I said: 'Yes, of course'. I could see Noel coming down the tunnel with Billy and then Johnny. To most people, this didn't matter, but we hadn't spoken properly in over 30 years, and then we met twice in a short time."
When the interviewer suggested they should work together, Joyce quickly responded, "We did; I was in a band with him once."
- The Drums by Mike Joyce is released on November 6.
