The Drums by Mike Joyce (Nov 7, 2025)

The long awaited Mike Joyce’s autobiography, The Drums, came out on Friday (November 7, 2025). The book, published by New Modern, is available in print (but not in the USA), digital, and audio book. As a physical book collector, I’ll have to track down the print someday.

As a The Smiths and Morrissey fan, I did join Audible (own by Amazon) using a free trial to get Joyce’s book. I just have to remember to cancel the subscription in 29 days. I don’t listen to enough audio books to make it worth my while, but who knows. But thanks to Amazon for the free book!

The audio book, read by Joyce, runs about six and a half hours, but perhaps the first two hours probably can be skipped because Joyce didn’t really get his first drum kit until the second part of the book. The early chapters Joyce talks a lot about his father and his childhood. He grew up poor and said that his family were from Ireland, and he paints this picture that Manchester was not a great place at that time.

The book does pick up when Joyce first heard of The Buzzcocks and became an instant fan, having seen them in concert. He went on and on about Steve Diggle (I’ve seen Buzzcocks a few times and I’m also a big Diggle fan) and how he knew he wanted to be a drummer like John Maher.

It was pretty funny to hear how the Buzzcocks gave away their album inside helium balloons – so fans were fighting over to get a balloon. Joyce didn’t have any money at the time, so this was his opportunity to get the record (which he didn’t get at the time).

At the age of 16, Joyce, in the band The Hoax recorded and released their first single, “Only the Blind Can See in the Dark”, which he treated like it was a newborn baby. Joyce would eventually audition in Johnny Marr’s band. He took some mushrooms and met Dale the bassist, and Steve (Morrissey) the singer.

In Joyce’s own words, “Johnny seemed like he was a guitarist since he was born… I’ve never heard anyone or anything like Johnny before. It was unique. He sounded like four guitarist all at once.”

The next day, Marr asked Joyce to join his band… but Joyce was hesitant to join because he was committed to this other band Victim.

Joyce eventually gave in and officially joined when he ran into Marr at The Church concert at The Gallery, in Manchester. Maybe Joyce is misremembering, but the Church gig was on November 24, 1982, but the Smiths’ first gig was in October 4, 1982.

There’s a whole chapter on Andy Rourke, the bassist who joined and solidified The Smiths to the band we know today. And that’s the thing, Joyce had something descriptive and wonderful to say about everyone in the band. How amazing, friendly, and natural Rourke was. How brilliant Johnny Marr was, he was writing hit songs after hit songs. He didn’t have anything really positive to say about Steve. His relationship to Steve was that he was the singer and Joyce was the drummer. It became more evident when Joyce talked about their recording sessions. How Marr would come up with a song, and Andy and Mike would start to take the cue and add in their parts, creating pure magic. Basically, the three of them worked together as a unit… and then Morrissey would write and add his lyrics afterward.

Joyce did add his own theories on what made Morrissey tick. That Morrissey never had friends when he grew up. Morrissey is afraid of confrontation, so he prefers to put his demands on letters or fax machine or through other people. Joyce suggested it was Morrissey that had their manager Joe Moss fired. From Joyce’s account, Moss was instrumental in the Smiths’ success, but none of them ever had any formal or written agreement.

In the end, after the band recorded Strangeways, Here We Come, which everybody thought was their best work, Johnny Marr called in a meeting with everybody to announce that he was leaving the band. I’ve read from articles and books around this matter, and I’ve always had the impression that it was off the cuff/not planned. A decision made from a reaction to Morrissey.

I believe the real reason why Marr left the band (that he started) was because Morrissey made them cover Cilla Black’s “Work Is a Four Letter Word.” Years later, in an interview on Record Collector (Nov 1992), Marr is quoted, “‘Work Is A Four Letter Word’ I hated. That was the last straw, really. I didn’t form a group to perform Cilla Black songs.”

What I didn’t know, and what Joyce offered in his book, was that Morrissey suggested The Smiths continue without Marr. He suggested a replacement guitarist/new songwriter Ivor Perry.

I guess it didn’t work out. I looked it up, and Perry is quoted, “It was like they wanted another Johnny Marr” (which he couldn’t fulfill). According to the registered historical facts, Perry wrote the demo for “Bengali in Platforms”, but Stephen Street is credited as co-songwriter when that song appeared on Viva Hate.

I think Mike Joyce is playing it safe with his book The Drums. There’s really nothing that critical on Morrissey. Perhaps, maybe that he’s just a cold man. Maybe the biggest criticism was when one day, out of the blue, Steve asked everyone to just refer to him as Morrissey. Up until that point, everybody knew him as Steven or Steve, so it was just weird. Joyce then added, it was as if he didn’t like people calling him Mike or Michael, and now requests everybody to refer to him as Joyce.

The book doesn’t offer anything new to The Smiths’ history, nor was it advertised as such. Instead, if you want to know what made Mike Joyce who he is and what his views are, you can find it in his book. For Smiths disciples, of course, I can recommend it… but for casual Smiths fan, I think I would pass on it. Or perhaps wait for a paperback version, set for July 2, 2026.

The Drums by Mike Joyce is available now on New Modern Books. My only small complaint about my audio book, is that it does not have all the features of the printed book, such as reference photographs. That’s why I said earlier, that I would eventually like to track down the physical book.

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