The confusing situation with Zak Starkey has gotten even more confusing. After the drummer (and son of Ringo Starr) was fired from the Who in April for "overplaying," Pete Townshend announced shortly after that Starkey was back in the band. The following month he was fired again. Starkey then explained that he had a phone call with Roger Daltrey, who told him he "hadn’t been ‘fired’…I had been ‘retired’ to work [on] my own projects." He also said he was “gutted” about being excluded from the Oasis reunion tour (as he drummed for Oasis between 2004 and 2008). Now, he's saying he turned down the Oasis tour to tour with the Who.
When asked about what happened by The Telegraph, Starkey answered, “What happened was I got it right and Roger got it wrong,” referring to the Who’s April performance of the 1971 tune "The Song Is Over" at Albert Hall, where Starkey was allegedly overplaying. He said his bandmates "hate rehearsing," and Daltrey “took a bit out” of the song because it was too long and so “Roger [came] in a bar early.”
“I got a call from Bill [Curbishley], the manager, [and] he says, ‘It’s my unfortunate duty to inform you’ — it’s like Porridge or something — ‘that you won’t be needed from now on. Roger says you dropped some beats,’” Starkey expounded. “I watched the show and I can’t find any dropped beats. Then Pete had to go along with it because Pete’s had 60 years of arguing with Roger.”
Townshend eventually asked if he wanted the gig back, and Starkey said yes. “Two weeks later it was like, ‘Roger says he can’t work with you no more, and we’d like you to issue another statement saying you’re leaving to do your other projects’ and I just didn’t do it because I wasn’t leaving [of my own volition],” Starkey said.
Would Starkey have played with Oasis if he were not in the Who at the time? “Of course. Of course,” he answered. Starkey's supergroup Mantra Of The Cosmos with Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder and Bez and Ride guitarist Andy Bell just released the Noel Gallagher collab “Domino Bones (Gets Dangerous)” earlier this week. The Telegraph reported that Mantra have another single called "Rip Off" with Starkey's fellow sons of Beatles Sean Lennon and James McCartney on the way.
Meanwhile today Daltrey received knighthood from King Charles III.
