Won’t get fooled again.
Drummer Zak Starkey has revealed where he stands with The Who after singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend fired him from the group last year.
“We’re still friends. We still talk all the time,” Starkey, 60, exclusively told The Post while promoting his upcoming one-man show at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City on Feb. 20.
“But The Who has an addiction to friction, and tempers flare,” he continued. “I’m not the guy with a temper, really. I’m just a guy who won’t be walked all over, and I don’t think that I should be treated unfairly and not be able to speak up.”
Starkey, who is the son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, was abruptly sacked by the “Baba O’Riley” rockers last April before being reinstated a few days later.
The following month, however, he was booted again – this time just weeks after Daltry, 81, and Townsend, 80, announced their 18-date “The Song Is Over” farewell tour across the US and Canada. That tour concluded in October.
Starkey claimed that his initial departure was connected to an altercation between him and Daltrey during a performance of the band’s 1971 hit “The Song Is Over” at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March.
“I got fired,” he explained to The Post. “I was asked to make a public statement apologizing for dropping beats, which I did, and I was rehired.”
The famous drummer went on to claim that Daltrey and Townshend wanted him to release a statement saying that he was leaving the group voluntarily after he was fired for the second time.
“So I said nothing. Then they made a statement saying I’d moved on, inferring I’d quit,” Starkey continued. “So I went back and said, look, I didn’t f–king quit, you fired me. That’s a lie, and I’m not going to f–king lie.”
Starkey suggested that he rejoined The Who a third time – and was fired a third time – shortly after an interview he did with The Telegraph was published in June.
“A little bit more time went by, and I spoke to Roger a few times, and then he basically said don’t take your drums from our storage facility because we probably want you back,” Starkey recalled.
“Then a couple of days later, an article came out in The Telegraph, which I had done a few weeks before, and I got fired, again, the next day,” he added.
Starkey first joined The Who as a touring drummer in 1996. His godfather, Keith Moon, served as the band’s original drummer from the group’s formation in 1964 until his tragic death from an accidental overdose at 32 in 1978.
The band’s original bassist, John Entwistle, died from a heart attack in 2002. He was 57.
During his nearly 30 years with the “Pinball Wizard” rockers, Starkey performed with Daltrey and Townshend for countless tours and concerts – including for the band’s Super Bowl halftime show performance in 2010 and the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics in London in 2012.
Starkey said that he remembers The Who’s Super Bowl halftime show in particular because the stage collapsed and his drum kit dropped 20 feet onto the ground below.
“I wasn’t sitting on it. I was approaching it, and the stage collapsed,” he told The Post. “Because they have to make that stage in 12 minutes and get it down in 12 minutes. It’s incredible. They have to practice it every single day.”
“But the middle of it, the section that I was sitting on, collapsed,” he continued. “I wasn’t there, but my drum kit was f–ked up, man. It was cracked.”
Although Starkey’s drums were left “badly damaged,” the band had a spare set. “We just put the cracked ones in the back so you couldn’t see them,” he said.
Besides drumming for The Who, Starkey has also played for Oasis alongside Noel, 58, and Liam Gallagher, 53.
He joined the “Wonderwall” group in 2004 and stayed on until the band’s infamous split following a backstage fight between the brothers at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris in August 2009.
Starkey praised Oasis and looked back at his half-decade with the “Champagne Supernova” rockers fondly.
“I played with them for five years, and all we did was laugh. They never even argued once. Not one time,” he told The Post. “We toured for 140 shows. We made two great records. We rehearsed. We hung out all the time. Never one. Never one cross word in five years.”
“Oasis never complained about anything, ever. I mean, ever,” Starkey, who played on the band’s 2005 album “Don’t Believe the Truth” and 2008’s “Dig Out Your Soul,” added. “And they’re never late. If it says on the sheet 5:30, at 10 [minutes] past 5:00, they’re there.”
Noel and Liam reunited onstage for the first time in nearly 16 years for the massive Oasis Live ’25 World Tour last year.
As for his upcoming one-man show at the Gramercy Theatre next month, Starkey described the gig as a “celebration of all the music I’ve been involved in” since Moon gifted him his first drum set at 8 years old.
Called “Zak Starkey… Who?: An Evening of Drums and Conversation,” the night will feature Starkey sharing stories, never-before-seen photos and home movies, and music from his time with The Who, Oasis, Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, Johnny Marr and the Healers, and more.
The night will culminate with a Q&A session with the English rock drummer.
“Music’s great, isn’t it? If you love music, it’s not a job. It’s more like a blessing,” Starkey told The Post. “I’ve never had a gig that I’d call a job, really.”
“It’s just been great people, great times, and great music,” he concluded. “And that’s what my one-man show is about.”
“Zak Starkey… Who?: An Evening of Drums and Conversation” debuts at the Gramercy Theatre on Feb. 20.
