Rock bands have unsurprisingly turned out to be poor examples of how to fire people. Slipknot, for instance, has made a couple of messes of terminations, including letting drummer Jay Weinberg go in 2023. The Who have recently made a calamity of firing Zak Starkey.
Or was he fired? Did he, instead, retire? That depends on who you believe.
Starkey said in April he had been booted from the iconic band, but shortly afterward, guitarist Pete Townshend said that Starkey was still in the group. He wasn't. In April, Townshend confirmed Starkey had left and implied he had been terminated by using the phrase, "...the time has come for a change."
Pete Townshend makes a greater mess out of the Who possibly firing Zak Starkey
Vocalist Roger Daltrey later said that the drummer had not been fired, but had "retired" from the Who to work with supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, which features Oasis's Noel Gallagher. Starkey, meanwhile, denies all this and says he was fired.
Townshend recently gave an interview to i Paper and admitted the entire situation has been a "mess." He also insinuated that the call to have Starkey let go belonged to Daltrey, which makes sense based on the accusations that Starkey has made, saying it was Daltrey's decision in the first place.
The chaos appears to have started during a Who show in March at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust concert series. Daltrey seemed a bit off from the rest of the band, and he blamed Starkey for this. Oddly, the drummer just kept the beat, and the rest of the band was fine.
Townshend stated as much in his recent interview as well.
He told i Paper, "I couldn’t see anything wrong (with the concert). What you see is a band who haven’t played together for a long time. But I think it was probably to do with the sound. I’ve lost my sound man as a result. I think Roger just got lost."
The guitarist also joked that he might need to watch what he says about Daltrey, too, or Townshend might get fired, too.
Townshend added, "I have to be careful what I say about Roger because he gets angry if I say anything about him at all. He’ll be sacking me next. But that’s not to say that he sacked Zak. It’s a decision Roger and I tried to make together, but it kind of got out of hand."
So, the Starkey situation is obviously no clearer now than it was when the mess began. Townshend says he and Daltrey both terminated Starkey, but at first, the guitarist said the drummer had not been canned.
Ultimately, the Who will be using a new drummer for their 2025 tour, Starkey will likely keep saying he was fired, the band will say he was and then say he wasn't, and the world will carry on as normal.