Pete Townshend has weighed in on the acrimonious split between the Who and drummer Zak Starkey, admitting of the situation, “It’s been a mess.”
Back in April, the Who — or Townshend and Roger Daltrey — announced they “made a collective decision to part ways with Zak” after the drummer’s three-decade tenure with the group. Three days later, Townshend proclaimed that “News Flash! Who back Zak!” but then reversed course again a month later to re-confirm Starkey’s exit, with the drummer himself confirming he was “retired” by Daltrey ahead of the Who’s The Song Is Over farewell tour.
The root of the fallout was the Who (and specifically Daltrey) being unhappy with Starkey’s performance when the band played a pair of Teenage Cancer Trust charity shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March. “[Daltrey] came in four bars early,” Starkey told Rolling Stone earlier this month. “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.”
Speaking to iNews, Townshend discussed the Royal Albert Hall shows that led to Starkey’s dismissal. “I couldn’t see anything wrong. What you see is a band who haven’t played together for a long time. But I think it was probably to do with the sound. I’ve lost my sound man as a result,” Townshend said.
“I think Roger just got lost. Roger’s finding it difficult. I have to be careful what I say about Roger because he gets angry if I say anything about him at all. He’ll be sacking me next. But that’s not to say that he sacked Zak. It’s a decision Roger and I tried to make together, but it kind of got out of hand.”
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Townshend went on to note that it was Daltrey who enlisted Starkey to join the Who in the first place — “I didn’t invite him in, right? Roger invited him,” the guitarist said — but still, “I will miss Zak terribly. But quite what the story is, I don’t fucking know. I really don’t know.”
The Who previously announced that Scott Devours, the drummer from Daltrey’s solo band, will join the group for their upcoming farewell tour, a trek that Townshend himself doesn’t seem overly enthused about. “I don’t know whether I’ve been up for doing anything with the Who since 1973,” he quipped to iNews about the tour. “But I am looking forward to it. Not because it’s the end, but because I hope that we can continue to explore other things.”
