Mike Joyce shares his long-awaited memoir ‘The Drums’, offering a deeply personal account of life inside The Smiths from the perspective of their drummer. Rather than retreading the band’s well-documented history, Joyce focuses on the lived experience, capturing the humor, tension, joy, and disbelief of being part of one of the most influential groups of all time. Written with warmth and wit, the book asks the question Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke often returned to: “Where did it all go right?”
As the final member of the band to publish his autobiography, Joyce brings a fresh and human lens to familiar moments, conveying what it actually felt like to be there. His reflections are frank, funny, and quietly vulnerable, grounding the myth of The Smiths in everyday reality. ‘The Drums’ lands as an honest and engaging portrait of a self-confessed superfan who went from a kid in suburban Fallowfield to the rhythmic backbone of a generation-defining band.