He bangs the drum

Every great iconic happening of your life will one day wind up as a memento lost in the wilds of a messy bedroom floor, or thrown away and then regretted after some kind of decluttering fit, or it might (with luck) survive in a plastic bag in your parents’ attic for over 20 years. My one shining moment of teenage eclat is summed up by a tiny green ticket stub, signed by a band who would become even larger than the inherent promise of that early gig. And then there I was, the late-2007 version of me, handing the precious, shabby relic over to one of the gods who had graced it with an autograph back in the day. A Dublin day, Friday May 18, 1984.

To my huge relief The Smiths ticket set drummer Mike Joyce off into a storm of excited reminiscing.

“Oh my God! The SFX! That was a great gig. Number 14 too! At the end of it I fell off the drum-riser when I tripped over some lights. Johnny Marr’s Fender twin amp was on the deck and when I hit it, the reverb unit made this loud exploding sound like a rocket. I thought, ‘I look a real dick here, so am I going to stay down or dust meself off?’ Anyway the roadies came over. I got given a bootleg of it years ago and at the end you can hear everyone cheering and then a huge crash. It was more of a shit exit than a grand entrance.”

It’s easy to forget that the most spectacular of careers is made up of thousands of such moments strung together. Still staring at his name on the back of the ticket the memories tumbled out of Joyce – playing the second gig the following night, coming back to the SFX again later that year, the fans getting wilder, the media chasing harder...

“I remember then at the gig in The Stadium being interviewed by Dave Fanning and he was like, ‘So, Mike, The Queen Is Dead, what’s it all about?’ I thought, ‘You fucking bastard! OK, let me tell you what The Queen Is Dead is all about – I’ve got NO IDEA, ask The Man.’ Trying to dissect Morrissey’s lyrics, that’s not my department really. I did a programme recently with Paul Morley about ‘This Charming Man’ and he was talking to this poet asking, ‘So, a punctured bicycle, the leather runs smooth, whose seat is it? And who’s punctured?’ I was like ‘You what??!!’ It’s just a great song. About shagging.”

Is it about shagging?

“Of course it is. They all are. No, I don’t know. They could be...”

Did Mike ever wonder if the best of him had happened too soon?

“Yeah. When The Smiths first split up, I thought, ‘Right that’s it I’m afraid, the good times have gone.’ And then me and Andy Rourke did a bit of touring with Sinéad O’Connor, that was fantastic. I really enjoyed that, but her set didn’t really have the pace of The Smiths, because I really liked playing a lot of ‘up,’ big tunes.”

Did it feel better drumming Smiths music?

“Yeah, for me there’s a load of songs like ‘What She Said’ and ‘London’, these tracks are just coming from the heart. The technicality of them is up its arse really, drumming wise, I just don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a bit like the story of the girl with the red dancing shoes, she puts them on and she starts dancing and can’t stop and it’s fantastic!”

Er, except I think she died at the end..

“She did, didn’t she? (shrugs) Well, it’s inevitable isn’t it?”

Does he still have that room to be creative since The Smiths?

“It depends on the environment that I’m working in, and I think that’s why I wanted to work with Autocat, a Manchester band that have been around a little while. They had a great album out called Late Night Shopping and we’re now working on a new album, which is creative for me. When I was working with Sinéad it was great, but it didn’t really give me the scope to be creative because the material had already been written, so I was like a session musician really. I started working with Julian Cope who was a big hero of mine, and that was a massive buzz for me, because some of the songs I was playing I used to play along to at home before The Smiths.”

Does his ego ever get suppressed to the point where he craves a little more acknowledgement?

“No, because it’s really just a physicality, being at the back. If I stop playing my drums people stop dancing, so I’ve got that power. And I’m the loudest! But I think as long as people are digging the rhythm, then that to me is all I need really, to be the driving force rhythmically. My ego isn’t fragile, I like what I do.”

Does it feel fragile when certain things are written about him?

“Some of the things that Morrissey has said have not been particularly nice, but I think he’s so brilliantly funny. I let him get away with it because he’s a genius, so in that respect I give him that leeway. Really I just focus on my job, drumming.”

To a young person just starting out as a drummer, what would he say?

“The main thing for a drummer is to listen to the music. There’s a lot of drummers that really like just listening to themselves. They tend to think that a great drum fill is a great drum fill, but it’s only great if it sounds right within the song. I think a lot of drummers tend to be too flamboyant for their own good. People talk about Charlie Watts and they don’t say, ‘Listen to that drum fill,’ but he’s an amazing drummer, every Stones track that has ever been just sounds fantastic.”

Any drum sounds that have come out in the past few years that have grabbed him?

“I love the Go Team drum sound, it’s absolutely fantastic. Flaming Lips, again it’s all very distorted, and Beck is great, he uses loops in a really interesting way rather than an obvious way..”

Does he find it easier to play with certain bass players like Andy Rourke?

“We obviously have an affinity. I met Andy in the studio when we were first going to record. It was like – ‘This is the bass player’, ‘How do you do?’. We played and the recording sounds fantastic. It doesn’t happen that often. I’ve worked with other bass players who have been great, but for me playing with Andy is a one-off.”

When he plays drums at the back, does he ever feel left out or can he actually see the audience?

“Yeah, I can see everybody. I know that the front line find it difficult because the lights are on them so they can’t see much. I mean, Morrissey couldn’t see much anyway because he was practically blind, but for me it was a wonderful position to be in because I got to see The Smiths every night! And all my other favourite bands, seeing them perform while playing with them. I’m blessed, I’ve always had the best seat in the house.”