The Smiths’ Mike Joyce on triumph, gladioli & Morrissey when he was still ‘Steve’

Morrissey and Marr both wrote memoirs but Mike Joyce hasn’t read either, preferring to publish ‘The Drums’, his version of one of the great success stories of the ‘80s, a book about “the beauty we’d given to people – and to ourselves”. At one point he and Andy Rourke shout, ‘Where did it all go right?”. He looks back here at …

… the fateful meeting in Geales fish bar when Johnny told them he was leaving – “none of us, not even Morrissey, saw it coming”

… the first Smiths rehearsal and impressions of “Steve” the singer

… how the songs were written - “we never asked what they meant”

… and how they were arranged: “I locked with Johnny like Charlie with Keith, and Andy played a bass song over the top”

... memories of Johnny at X Clothes in Manchester and Morrissey in ‘82 - “funny, dark, so Manc”

… the “almost anti-punk” appeal of the Buzzcocks and the urge for a John Maher red Premier drumkit

… “Morrissey’s articulacy was both his strength and his Achilles heel”

… echoes of Motown and James Honeyman-Scott in Marr’s guitar

… “Singers need to feel they’re the most important person in the room”

… on-stage gladioli versus “the austerity of the Hacienda”

… and Morrissey today - “very angry” - and the legacy of the Smiths.  

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