The Smiths
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Back in 1989, the Smiths as we knew them crashed into a double-decker bus because of a lawsuit jointly initiated by drummer Mike Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke, who claimed Morrissey and Johnny Marr owed them a higher percentage of the band’s royalties. Moz and Marr took a very un-REM stance and argued that their bandmates weren’t equal partners, and several years later, Rourke settled out of court and Joyce won his trial. Speaking with The Guardian in a new interview about his time with the Smiths and the impact of the lawsuit, Joyce, now a popular radio DJ, said he hasn’t spoken to Morrissey since 1992. “I think it sounded like the Smiths because of the four of us,” he explained of his hi-hats in court. “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.” Morrissey fans still regularly harass him on social media because of it: “‘I wish you were dead, how dare you,’ all that stuff.”
Joyce and Marr reconnected at the memorial service for Rourke, who died in 2023 from pancreatic cancer, after several years of estrangement. “It was good to see him,” he explained. “Because it wasn’t about court cases or who did what. It was about Andy.” Joyce was completely out of the loop, though, regarding the revelation that the Smiths were offered a huge payday to reunite — he learned about it when the story broke in the press. “I think I forfeited that with the court case,” he added. The light, indeed, has gone out.
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