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Pete Townshend has to Battled break between The WHO and drummer Zak Starkey expressed and described the situation as “a chaos”.
In April, The WHO – Townshend and Roger Daltrey – announced that they had “decided together to part with ZAK” after it had belonged to the band for three decades. Townshend announced three days later: “Rapid registration! Who support ZAK again!”, To confirm only a month later that Starkey had got out. The drummer himself explained that he was “put into retirement” by Daltrey before the farewell tour The Song is over.
The origin of the creation was in the dissatisfaction of the band – especially Daltreys – with strong keys performance at two benefit concerts for the Teenage Cancer Trust in March in the London Royal Albert Hall. “”[Daltrey] Four bars got on too early, ”Starkey told Rolling Stone at the beginning of the month.“ But he just got lost. He pushed it out that the drums were too loud, and then this gave this huge matter on social media. ”
“I will miss Zak terribly”
In conversation with Inews, Townshend spoke about the Royal Albert Hall shows, which ultimately led to strong keys. “I couldn’t see anything wrong. What you see is a band that has not played together for a long time. But I think it had to do with the sound. That’s why I lost my sound engineer,” said Townshend.
“I think Roger just got lost. It is difficult for him. I have to be careful what I say about Roger because he gets angry if I say something about him at all. He fires me as next. But that doesn’t mean that he fired Zak. It was a decision to make the Roger and I tried together, but somehow it got out of hand.”
“I really don’t know what the story is”
Townshend continued to find that it was Daltrey who originally brought Starkey into the band – “I didn’t invite him, right? Roger invited him,” said the guitarist – nevertheless: “I will miss Zak terribly. But I don’t know what exactly the story is again. I really don’t know.”
The WHO had previously announced that Scott Devours – drummer in Daltreys Soloband – would accompany the group on the upcoming farewell tour. A tour for which Townshend itself can obviously have little enthusiasm. “I don’t know if I had wanted to do something with The WHO since 1973,” he told Inews with a wink. “But I’m looking forward to it. Not because it is the end, but because I hope that we can continue to explore new things.”