{"id":205977,"date":"2025-06-22T20:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T20:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/205977\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T20:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T20:45:09","slug":"pete-townshend-on-the-whos-split-with-zak-starkey-its-been-a-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/205977\/","title":{"rendered":"Pete Townshend on the Who’s Split With Zak Starkey: ‘It’s Been a Mess’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPete Townshend<\/a> has weighed in on the acrimonious split<\/a> between the Who<\/a> and drummer Zak Starkey<\/a>, admitting of the situation, \u201cIt\u2019s been a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in April, the Who \u2014 or Townshend and Roger Daltrey<\/a> \u2014 announced<\/a> they \u201cmade a collective decision to part ways with Zak\u201d after the drummer\u2019s three-decade tenure with the group. Three days later, Townshend proclaimed that \u201cNews Flash! Who back Zak!<\/a>\u201d but then reversed course again<\/a> a month later to re-confirm Starkey\u2019s exit, with the drummer himself confirming he was \u201cretired<\/a>\u201d by Daltrey ahead of the Who\u2019s The Song Is Over farewell tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe root of the fallout was the Who (and specifically Daltrey) being unhappy with Starkey\u2019s performance when the band\u00a0played a pair of Teenage Cancer Trust charity shows<\/a>\u00a0at London\u2019s Royal Albert Hall in March. \u201c[Daltrey] came in four bars early,\u201d Starkey told Rolling Stone<\/a> earlier this month. \u201cBut he just got lost. He blamed it on the drums being too loud, and then it got made into this\u00a0huge\u00a0social media thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to iNews<\/a>, Townshend discussed the Royal Albert Hall shows that led to Starkey\u2019s dismissal. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see anything wrong. What you see is a band who haven\u2019t played together for a long time. But\u00a0I think it was probably to do with the sound. I\u2019ve lost my sound man as a result,\u201d Townshend said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think Roger just got lost. Roger\u2019s 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\u2019ll be sacking me next. But that\u2019s not to say that he sacked Zak. It\u2019s a decision Roger and I tried to make together, but it kind of got out of hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tTownshend went on to note that it was Daltrey who enlisted Starkey to join the Who in the first place \u2014 \u201cI didn\u2019t invite him in, right? Roger invited him,\u201d the guitarist said \u2014 but still, \u201cI will miss Zak terribly. But quite what the story is, I don\u2019t fucking know. I really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Who previously announced that Scott Devours, the drummer from Daltrey\u2019s solo band, will join the group for their upcoming farewell tour, a trek that Townshend himself doesn\u2019t seem overly enthused about. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether I\u2019ve been up for doing anything with\u00a0the Who since 1973,\u201d he quipped to iNews about the tour. \u201cBut I am looking forward to it. Not because it\u2019s the end, but because I hope that we can continue to explore other things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pete Townshend has weighed in on the acrimonious split between the Who and drummer Zak Starkey, admitting of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,14569,14572,14566,16,15,14567],"class_list":{"0":"post-205977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-pete-townshend","11":"tag-roger-daltrey","12":"tag-the-who","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-zak-starkey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}