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Zak Starkey is angry: After almost 30 years as the drummer of the British rock legend The WHO, the son of Beatles-Drummer Ringo Starr was fired by the band. The reason that the status of Starkey was his performance at the band’s concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. “After playing these songs with the band for so many decades, I am surprised and sad that someone had a problem with my performance that evening. But what should you do?”
But what was the problem with Starkeys performance? Good enough for Oasis, but not good enough for The Who? That can be doubted. We can only speculate about the actual reason for dissatisfaction, but videos of the two concerts provide information on what could have been. The absurd thing about it: If this is actually the case, Starkey can do little for it.
Daltrey has problems
As videos from the appearance on March 30 show, the who singer Roger Daltrey seem to have been too loud. As “metro.co.uk” reported, Daltrey, who, like Pete Townshend, suffers from hearing loss, which, like Pete Townshend, suffers the performance during a song. “We’ve got a big problem up here. I can sing to some things, but i can’t sing to that f *** ing racket,” he says. By the “fucking racket” he says Starkey’s game. Daltrey later complains that he could not hit the right key because the drums were too dominant.
ZAK Starkey too loud-on the e-drumkit?
Of course, it is difficult to assess the volume conditions from YouTube videos. The fact that Starkey did not stroke the drums can be heard and suspected. In the recordings, his sound looks quite present, sometimes massive. The curious: Starkey played an electronic drums on these evenings. An e-drumkit can be controlled and throttled significantly better than an acoustic one-actually the sound engineer responsible for the mix would have to bear more responsibility than strong. Even if the band (like that evening) plays with monitor boxes instead of in-ears: the sound can be precisely regulated with the e-drumkit. Starkkey finally drummed up on rubber pipads that hardly give more acoustically than a quiet plonk – the noise actually makes the noise here.
Overplaying? What was again with Keith Moon?
Others accuse Starkey “Overplaying” – a playful, hectic drum game to be played. But that doesn’t quite convince either. The-who-downrummer Keith Moon was not exactly known for a cross-brave accompanying game in a pensioner volume. And that Starkey is not a capable drummer would seriously say. “The standard was not as high as they wanted,” it also says. Maybe Starkey played the band too energetically? Here too: Keith Moon?
We don’t know what was actually going behind the scenes. Maybe Daltrey and Townshend have been annoyed for a long time. Perhaps they wanted strongly to play more reduced – and the volume was only the drop that caused the barrel to overflow. After viewing the recordings, however, it seems more like Daltrrey’s hearing problems-and possibly also his moodiness-have made a decisive contribution to the fact that Zak Starkey had to vacate his drum seat at The WHO. Because if Daltrey couldn’t hear, a gesture would have been enough for the monitor mixer and Starkery’s E-Drum could have been made quieter.
ZAK Starkey – not good enough for The Who? Nonsense, it probably had it in completely different places – and they may not have as much to do with Starkey themselves as Roger Daltrey wanted to believe that evening.