“For him, it was effortless fluidity…”

Smiths drummer Mike Joyce remembers his friend and bandmate Andy Rourke.

THE FIRST DAY I met him, in Drone Studios, I was expecting Dale Hibbert, the original bass player. And it was, “This is Andy, he’s playing bass.” And that was it, we just kind of locked in from that very moment.

He was an incredible player. Frightening. And for him it was like, effortless fluidity. He was a bit like Johnny [Marr, guitar] – he’d put on the bass and just play the most ridiculously fantastic bass lines. It’s a bit like the Charlie Watts thing, people just took how good he was for granted. I saw him saying that Barbarism Begins At Home was his favourite bass line. Obviously, it’s mesmerising, like four-on-the-floor house music,

“He was a dream as a mate.” MIKE JOYCE

the repetition is absolutely scorched into your brain. It is phenomenal, but it’s probably my least favourite.

I was listening to [posthumous Smiths live LP] Rank a couple of weeks ago, I think I Know It’s Over is my favourite bit of bass that Andy ever played. Where Morrissey sings, “If you’re so funny/Then why are you on your own tonight?”, Andy plays this fretboard slide, and it’s like an audible sigh, like a call and answer between him and Morrissey. It’s just a stunning piece of playing. The Hatful Of Hollow version of This Charming Man is another one of his best. It reminds me so much of James Jamerson, the Motown bass player.

And his melodic playing was so beautiful. The intro to Well I Wonder, the chords, he was kind of playing a string section. He created something undeniably brilliant on every song really. He never kind of played the root note and pedalled along. What he did was so musical and so melodic and so brilliantly percussive. He was such a massive part of the sound that we had – me and Johnny grooving with each other, with Andy’s melodic bass line sitting on the top. They were very, very beautiful times, you know, in terms of what we created.

It was funny because Andy being Andy, we never really kind of registered what was happening. There were no histrionics with him. He’d put down a brilliant bass line and we’d listen back to it and I’d say, “Andy, that’s incredible mate,” and he’d probably go into a Spinal Tap-ism and go, “I envy us.” He was always having a laugh and joking – he couldn’t help himself, it was like having Eric Morecambe in the band – but he knew when to be serious. He was a dream as a mate, as a drinking partner, interested, knowledgeable. He had everything and was completely faultless in terms of his character. He was such a self-effacing character, he never kind of realised just how good he was. That just wasn’t in Andy’s psyche or his personality.

I think he felt a bit stifled in Manchester, going out and partying with the same people all the time. He actually mentioned that it was like a real Coronation Street. When he went over to New York, I thought he’d really kind of further himself [playing sessions and working with bands], but Andy will do what he wants to do. The distance kind of made a difference in terms of our relationship, and he’s rubbish on Skyping or WhatsApp, but face to face he really opened up and just became, like, Andy again.

I went over to see him earlier on this year. I knew he was very ill, and I thought, I really need to see him. It was lovely, and we just kind of carried on as we did, like it was yesterday. We were still laughing about the same daft things that we used to laugh at. But he was so weak, and it was very sad, you know, to see your mate looking so frail. I did my grieving then. He was such a massive part of my life. It’s such a rarefied atmosphere to be in a band of that ilk, and nobody really knew what it was like apart from us.