Music

Zak Starkey isn’t the only one who has had enough of The Who. In a new Rolling Stone interview posted on Monday (June 16) the veteran session and touring drummer who was fired, rehired and then fired once more by The Who in a head-spinning span of several weeks earlier this year opened up about his current relationship with the band and how his dad feels about the tabloid tussle.
Asked what his father, former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, thought of the bizarre back-and-forth, Starkey said, “He [Ringo] said, ‘I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band,’” in seeming reference to The Who singer Roger Daltrey.

Trending on Billboard

After The Who “made a collective decision” to part ways with Starkey in April after his nearly 30 years behind the kit, guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend relented a few days later and rescinded the firing, saying Starkey was “not being asked” to step down from his position. Then, a month later, Townshend took it all back and said after many years working together “the time has come for a change.” A week later, Starkey claimed that he hadn’t been “fired” from the band, but had “‘retired’ to work [on] my own projects.”

It has all been a bit hard to keep up with, even for Starkey, who revealed to RS that even after all the firings and re-hirings he still has no idea where he stands. “I spoke to Roger last week,” Starkey told the magazine. “He said, ‘Don’t take your drums out of the warehouse, we might be calling you.’ What the f–k? These guys are f–kin’ insane! I’ve been fired more times than [late Who drummer] Keith Moon in ten days.”

It’s all a bit unclear at this point, especially since The Who recently announced that Scott Devours, a veteran of Daltrey’s solo band, will join them on their upcoming farewell tour. In the interview, Starkey once again noted that he had to sit out Oasis‘ eagerly anticipated reunion shows this summer because of his gig in The Who.

“I was in the Who. And last time they asked me, I was in the Who, and it got a bit weird,” he said of whether he’d hoped Oasis’ Liam and Noel Gallagher would invite him back into the fold of the Britpop band he kept time for from 2004-2008. “But this time, I talked to them both. I did tell them both on text, ‘Why the f–k aren’t I in your band, man, helping make it the greatest rock band in the world again?”

Starkey said the Gallagher’s again noted that he couldn’t join their band because of his gig in The Who, plus singer Liam is “happy working with Joey [Waronker],” the session and live veteran drummer who will be behind the kit for the band’s first tour in 16 years.

Frankly, Starkey said being in the Who sometimes kept him off-kilter. As an example, he described the rehearsals for the Royal Albert Hall gigs in March at which Daltrey apparently took issue with his playing, reportedly complaining from the stage that Starkey’s loud drumming was throwing his vocals off.

“There’s nothing normal about them. These are the most crazy… you’ve got an abstract, conceptualist artist who thinks the band is an art installation. And then you’ve got another guy who is a street fighter. It’s all very weird,” he said, respectively, of Townshend and Daltrey. “But if you look at the group ever since they started, it’s the craziest group. And they’ve undertaken the crazy ideas, whether the rest of the guys understood it or not. Pete has taken so much on himself. He’ll lock himself away for two years, come away with Quadrophenia, and go, ‘You guys can just play on top.’ You’re dealing with two very, very different people. And when me and Pete catch fire, probably anyone’s going to get lost. And probably anyone will. But we won’t. When we’re onstage, it’s like we’re f–king. Offstage it can be a little awkward after those 15 minutes. But onstage, It’s like, ‘Cigarette, darling?’”

And, for the record, Starkey claimed that it was Daltrey who came in “four bars early” during the Royal Albert Hall shows, after which the drummer sent the singer an e-mail, writing, “I watched you on TV last night, you were off.”

“It’s 30 years in the group. It’s like a family. But he came in four bars early. And he just asked for the drums to be turned up, and he couldn’t hear the piano,” Starkey said of Daltrey. “But I love Roger. He never misses a note. His voice is still so pure. It’s like a laser beam. He always nails it. They’ve not changed one key since the start of conceptual art as rock & roll. But he just got lost. He blamed it on the drums being too loud, and then it got made into this huge social media thing. And it freaked him out and he’s going around doing solo shows, and saying it’s ‘fake news.’ But it wasn’t me. I was in the car and gone before they finished the last acoustic song. There was no argument in the dressing room.”

Starkey said he was fired two weeks later for dropping “two beats,” though he noted, “I’ve watched that film three times. I’m looking on the floor, and I can’t see it. If I drop two beats, where the f–k are they?” In the end, Starkey said he doesn’t blame Daltrey, or anyone from The Who, for what happened. “I don’t hold any grudges. It’s the Who. Weirder s–t than this has gone down,” he said. “I’ve heard them say weirder s–t than this. It’s the Who — the maddest band there’s ever been.”

But would he come back if they re-re-rehired him?

“Of course I would. I said to Pete, ‘Thirty years. In the 30 years, you put the bar so f–kin’ high. What the f–k do I do now?,’” he said. “The Who, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. If you think something is going to happen, the opposite happens. If you second guess Pete, he will play the opposite. You have to go with whatever you’re doing, and not think.”