In a 2018 appearance on Sam Delaney’s News Thing, The Smiths drummer Mike Joyce admitted he hadn’t spoken to his former bandmate Morrissey in “quite some time.” Nearly a decade later, Joyce has revealed exactly how long it’s been: 33 years.
Speaking to The Guardian about his new book, The Drums, Joyce said he hasn’t properly spoken to Moz since 1992, when they bumped into each other in Altrincham.
Despite his distance from Morrissey, Joyce declined to condemn his former bandmate’s controversial views. These have included calling Hitler “left-wing,” mocking London mayor Sadiq Khan’s speech, and endorsing politician Nigel Farage.
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“From what I’ve gleaned, he’s certainly got very different politics to mine,” Joyce told The Guardian. “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.’ If that’s how you feel, that’s fine.”
He added, “I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t like Morrissey. He was fucking great. Very funny bloke, cutting humor. But it was such an unusual relationship. There was a distance. I accepted we were just very different people.”
Part of that distance could be attributed to Joyce’s financial standing in The Smiths. Because only Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr signed the band’s contract with Rough Trade, Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke were told after the group split that they couldn’t expect royalties in perpetuity.
“I think it sounded like The Smiths because of the four of us,” he said about filing a joint lawsuit with Rourke. “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.”
Rourke settled early, but Joyce saw the case through to trial in 1996 and was awarded £1 million.
That legal battle led to an estrangement from Marr as well, with Joyce not speaking to him again until Rourke’s memorial service in 2023: “It was good to see him. Because it wasn’t about court cases or who did what. It was about Andy.”
Unsurprisingly, Joyce wasn’t in the loop last year when Morrissey revealed that The Smiths were offered a big payday for a reunion. “I forfeited that with the court case,” Joyce said, adding that he has “no skin in the game” regarding the band’s business interests.
As for Morrissey’s intention to sell his entire stake in the band, Joyce commented, “I thought it was a strange thing to do.”
The Drums will be released this Thursday, November 6th. Pre-orders are ongoing.
