It was a live bootleg from late 1983 I think (Morrissey mentions This Charming Man has entered the charts). Joyce probably improved after they toured and played together more or maybe it was an off night. Anyway, I don’t think you can determine his ability from albums because you don’t know to what degree they used session musicians and studio tricks (even Rank - probably overdubbed to some degree). According to wikipedia, Joyce didn’t play drums on This Charming Man, for example.
Anyway, I don’t think he was terrible, just that he could have been replaced by any other competent drummer - I wouldn’t call his playing “brilliant” and certainly not in the same league as Johnny Marr.
Andy Rourke is debatable - his bass-lines add a lot but the Smiths would probably have been successful with less complex bass-lines.
Maybe not the same league as Johnny Marr (who is), but Joyce, in my opinion, is criminally underrated. We’ll just have to disagree, because I find his playing brilliant and he’d probably make my top ten rock drummers list.
As for Rourke, would the Smiths have been as successful with simpler bass parts? Maybe, but I don’t think I’d be as enamoroued by them. For me, Rourke & Joyce really made the band. I’m just a sucker for a great rhythm section. I feel the same way about Zeppelin. Forget Page & Plant, it’s Bonham and JPJ that make that band for me.
There’s a discarded uptempo version of “Hand That Rocks The Cradle,” recorded with Troy Tate, I believe, that is practically another song. I love that version and wonder why Marr opted for the mellower version that appears on The Smiths.
The coda at the end of “Pretty Girls Make Graves” is pretty spectacular.
I know there was recently a remastering of selections of the back catalog (which appeared on The Sound of The Smiths), but I would love for Marr to go back to those Tate sessions and apply some spit and polish - there could be a reissue of The Smiths with the Porter recordings and an extra CD of the Tate recordings. In fact, PGMG on the new CD is the Tate version. The song “Jeane” was only recorded by Troy Tate. So if you like that sound, you’d love the Tate recordings.
Apparently Marr slated Tate’s production and made him feel pretty bad about it. Shame, that. I don’t think Troy Tate is known very much outside of being a member of The Teardrop Explodes and the guy who recorded The Smiths… look what working with The Smiths did for Stephen Street…