The Who‘s longtime drummer Zak Starkey, who was part of the band’s touring line-up for 29 years, was fired twice a couple of months ago. One week after the first time he was fired the band announced he was back but one week later fired him again. Everything started during a show where Roger Daltrey felt he was playing some wrong parts.
Starkey also noted that he was playing it right and it was Roger who got the song wrong, probably because he couldn’t hear most of the instruments. In an interview with AARP, the band’s songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend gave more details about what happened.
Pete Townshend gives more details about Zak Starkey’s firing
“One of the difficulties Roger had was (Zak) jumped straight into Instagram and started to mouth off and defend his position in a cheeky, chatty manner, which belies the seriousness of what actually happened. Roger had asked us to rehearse ‘The Song Is Over’ because that’s what we were calling the tour. We shortened it to three-and-a-half minutes.”
“And about halfway through (playing it live at the Royal Albert Hall in March), it appeared that Roger got completely lost. He stopped, he complained, spoke to his own sound engineer, and started to rage. It looked like he was raging at Zak, but that’s not the case. It became a story among fans, and it looked like Roger made a mistake, but something technical went wrong. (Zak’s) handling of it, was, I suppose, light-hearted, but you know Roger,” Pete Townshend said.
Starkey was replaced by Scott Devours, who is Roger Daltrey‘s solo band drummer. Devours is one year younger than Starkey and is American. He was previously part of bands like Oleander and IMA Robot. He is a good friend of the band and works with Daltrey for more than a decade already.