What a great interview with Mike Joyce (November 6, 2025) in the Guardian!
Joyce, who has just released an autobiography called “Drums,” gives an up-close description of Morrissey’s recording process.
Moz liked to record in a pitch-black studio! It’s fitting. Morrissey’s memoir of a few years back had it’s good points, including a beautiful, empathetic description of the people he grew up with. Largely poor and universally war-haunted, the denizens of Manchester braved job scarcity and bleak council housing.
In this atmosphere, music wasn’t just window dressing. It was the first ingredient in happiness and essential for survival. Morrissey grew up in an Irish Catholic family. He’s remained religious all his life, though his idolatry is directed not at God but at musicians, long-dead writers and the odd criminal or movie star.
Morrissey is more than generous in “Autobiography” (a suitably sardonic title) when it comes to sharing his musical influences. His life story has a soundtrack. He doesn’t spend quite enough time talking about his writing process, or his remarkable voice.
So it’s touching to hear Mike Joyce get past band drama and talk about the magic of the moment. The Smiths created something special, all four of them. He knew it at the time, and he knows it know.
In this article, he shares a poignant memory of his five years with The Smiths.
The band had been tinkering with one of it’s most epic hymns to melancholy, “I Know It’s Over.” It’s quite a musical production, full of dynamics and no less than four distinct passages. Mike Joyce’s drums are tasteful, intimate, subdued and slow enough to still time. Johnny Marr’s starts with a funereal strum, builds toward his his trademark jangling arpeggios–which sprinkle –then ends on clear, chiming notes that strum our pain with his fingers. The result is an elegy as sad and uplifting and cathartic as any classical composer’s requiem.
When Joyce first heard Morrissey’s vocals on the song, it was a surprise. Moz had had secretly laid down the track. Morrissey’s keening, tender delivery of the desperately human lyrics made the hair on the young drummer’s arm stand up.
Mike Joyce was moved to tears.
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