“Every day, you’d go round the house and Johnny would play some riff sat having a spliff in his jimmy-jams. You’d be like, ‘That’s amazing. What’s that?’”: Mike Joyce remembers the early days of The Smiths

Johnny Marr, English singer Morrissey, English drummer Mike Joyce and English bassist Andy Rourke of The Smiths pose for a portrait before their first show in Detroit during the 1985.

The ex-Smiths drummer, Mike Joyce, publishes his memoir, The Drums, this week, and he’s been talking to the Guardian about life in the band, their sudden split and his broken relationships with Morrissey and Marr.

Joyce initially got the Smiths gig through a friend of Marr’s and explains that in the band’s early days, he was in awe of his new bandmates. He paints an evocative image of the guitarist as a young man: “Every day, you’d go round the house and he’d play some riff sat having a spliff in his jimmy-jams. You’d be like, ‘That’s amazing. What’s that?’”