Mike Joyce Of The Smiths On Their Final Album
Mike Joyce of The Smiths has spoken about the band’s final album, Strangeways, Here We Come, to mark its 35th anniversary.
The drummer told BBC North West Tonight that it had been “a great experience recording that album”, despite the band splitting before it came out.
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Joyce added it was a very different collection to the three that had come before it, describing it as “a story album”.
“I think it’s just an unusual-sounding album,” he said.
“There’s great songs on the others, but it just pips it for me, in terms of what we ended up with as an album and the whole thing in its entirety, rather than individual songs.”
Joyce went on to describe how much of Strangeways came together during recording sessions, “A lot of it was written in the studio. I know Johnny had a lot of ideas ready to go, but it was an album that was written in the studio.”
He said that looking back at the album, he felt like it had only been recorded “five years ago”, adding, “It’s pretty timeless in terms of the sounds. You couldn’t really put it in any decade. Every band has to end at some point and what a way to go out.”
Joyce is raffling off his silver disc marking 60,000 sales of Strangeways, Here We Come to raise money for charity Back On Track, which supports people who have been homeless or had mental health problems.
While Joyce said that he would like the disc to “go to a Smiths’ fan,” he added that “ultimately this is about generating funds”.
“This charity does literally save lives. It helps people trying to get out of that deep well of despair and back into society.”