The Who’s drummer Zak Starkey has been fired from the band for a second time, just one month after he was fired then quickly reinstated.
In an Instagram post on Monday, the group’s guitarist, Pete Townshend, announced that Starkey was no longer part of the band, just months shy of their farewell tour across North America.
“After many years of great work on drums from Zak the time has come for a change,” Townshend’s post read. “A poignant time. Zak has lots of new projects in hand and I wish him the best.”
Starkey, the Who’s drummer since 1996, later claimed his departure was not a mutual decision.
“I was fired two weeks after reinstatement and asked to make a statement saying I had quit to follow my other musical endeavours,” Starkey wrote on social media, an hour after Townshend’s statement.
“Not true. I love The Who and would never have quit and let down so many amazing people who stood up for me through all this madness.”
He added there had been “weeks of mayhem of me going ‘in and out and in and out’ … like a bleeding squeezebox”.
He said while he did have other projects on the go, he often did and “none of this has ever interfered with the Who and was never a problem for them. The lie is or would have been that I quit the Who – I didn’t. I love the Who and everyone in it.”
In April, Starkey was fired from the band over a disagreement about his performance at their Royal Albert Hall gig earlier this year.
A review of the band’s March gig in the Metro suggested the Who frontman Roger Daltrey complained onstage about Starkey’s performance, reportedly pausing during their final song, The Song Is Over, to tell the audience: “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”
The incident caused an immediate rupture: Starkey labelled his bandmate “Toger Daktrey” and complained he was “bringing formal charges of overplaying” against him.
Three days later, Starkey was reinstated, with Townshend saying: “There have been some communication issues, personal and private on all sides, that needed to be dealt with, and these have been aired happily.” Starkey later thanked Townshend and Daltrey.
Starkey, the son of Ringo Starr, first joined the Who full time during their 1996 Quadrophenia tour. He was introduced to drumming by the band’s former drummer Keith Moon, a family friend who gifted Starkey a drum kit for his eighth birthday.
This is the second high-profile firing of a drummer in just days: the Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese was let go from the band last week, after filling in for the late Taylor Hawkins for the last two years.
“I enjoyed the past two years with them, both on and off stage, and I support whatever they feel is best for the band,” Freese wrote. “In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I’ve never been let go from a band, so while I’m not angry – just a bit shocked and disappointed.”
