Zak Starkey is happy to have his job with The Who back.
The drummer, son of Ringo Starr, was briefly let go by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, before eventually being rehired, and he tells the U.K. outlet The Times why the gig is so important to him.
“I couldn’t bear to watch someone doing it and ruin it,” he says. “It’s not a job, it’s a calling. It’s a bit like being a nurse or a nun. It’s a calling to protect the music of The Who, that’s how I feel about it.”
The dispute between the trio stemmed from the band’s Teenage Cancer Trust shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and Starkey described the disagreement as “just business as usual.”
“Look at The Who’s history. It’s been going on for years, this kind of thing,” he says. “It was just a miscommunication, basically. It really was.”
He adds, “The Who’s a family you know. It was a stupid thing that got blown out of proportion and got too much oxygen and three days later we’re all back to normal again.”
Starkey will be back playing with The Who this summer. They have two shows coming up, both in Italy: July 20 in Padua and July 22 in Milan.
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