Ringo Starr has reportedly criticised the way “that little man”Roger Daltreyruns the Who after Starr’s son was sacked from the band.
Zak Starkey, 59, who was sacked as the Who’s drummer over adisagreement about his performance, said he was proud that his father had come to his defence.
The drummer has maintained that during the band’s now infamous “breakup” concert in London in March, it was actually the Who’s 81-year-old frontman, Daltrey, who got his timings wrong.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Starkey added fuel to the rift, saying that after he was sacked for the second time in the space of a few weeks, Starr told him: “I’ve never liked the way that little man [Daltrey] runs his band.”
Starkey, who had been with the Who since 1996, said Daltrey became “lost” during the concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Footage from the gig showed Daltrey turning in frustration towards his drummer during a rendition of The Song is Over and saying: “To sing that song I need to hear the keys and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom boom boom.”
Starkey wasfired two weeks laterbut he was reinstated after only three days, apologising on social media to Daltrey for having “dropped a few beats” – a mea culpa that was encouraged by the Who’s guitarist, Pete Townshend, who said Daltrey “did nothing wrong but fiddle with his in-ear monitors”. Townshend added that Starkey “made a few mistakes” and had apologised for them.
But the drummer said he was informed 10 days later that the reinstatement was “never going to work”, and was encouraged to put out a statement to say he was moving on of his own accord.
Starkey, the godson of the Who’s original drummer, the late Keith Moon, told Rolling Stone he was “very proud” of his father for “standing up for me”, adding that despite his apology he could still see no mistakes on his part in the concert footage. He said he had been blamed for missing his cue, when in fact Daltrey had come in “four bars early” after being unable to hear the piano.
“He blamed it on the drums being too loud and then it got made into this huge social media thing,” Starkey said.
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Starkey is due to be replaced before the Who’s farewell tour of the United States this summer. When asked whether he had been sacked for financial reasons, he said: “Roger is quite renowned … I once asked [former Who bassist] John Entwistle if Roger still had the money from the last Who tour. He goes: ‘He’s still got the money from the first one.’”