The saga of Zak Starkey’s sacking/‘retirement’ drags on with Roger Daltrey now accusing the Who’s erstwhile drummer of “character assassination”.
Daltrey’s comments came in a new interview with The Times, in which, as well as his upcoming knighthood, The Who’s final American tour and his deteriorating eyesight, the 81-year-old frontman addressed the issue of their turbulent drummer.
“An audience can see what’s happening on stage and have a complete misunderstanding of what’s actually going on,” Daltrey said about the band’s Teenage Cancer Trust performance at the Albert Hall in March, before he said of Starkey’s subsequent comments that it was Daltrey who made the mistake that night, not him: “It was kind of a character assassination and it was incredibly upsetting.”
According to the singer, the drums that he heard in his in-ear monitors were electronic which is where problems began that night. “It is controlled by a guy on the side, and we had so much sub-bass on the sound of the drums that I couldn’t pitch.
"I was pointing to the bass drum and screaming at him because it was like flying a plane without seeing the horizon. So when Zak thought I was having a go at him, I wasn’t. That’s all that happened.”
Starkey simply claimed, during the subsequent back-and-forth, “I got it right and Roger got it wrong... he came in a bar too early”, while Townshend said elsewhere, “I think Roger just got lost. Roger’s 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".
When asked by The Times why Starkey was then sacked, reinstated and then sacked again, Daltrey countered by saying: “Pete and I retain the right to be the Who. Everyone else is a session player. You can’t replace Keith Moon.
"We wanted to branch out and that’s all I want to say about it. But (Starkey’s reaction) was crippling to me.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the singer addressed his own health issues. His sight, is “not good. I’ve got incurable macular degeneration.” And he’s been having other difficulties since he contracted meningitis back in 2016.
“It’s done a lot of damage,” he revealed. “It’s buggered up my internal thermometer, so every time I start singing in any climate over 75 degrees I’m wringing with sweat, which drains my body salts. The potential to get really ill is there and, I have to be honest, I’m nervous about making it to the end of the tour.”
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