{"id":366568,"date":"2025-12-24T19:41:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T19:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366568\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T19:41:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T19:41:27","slug":"ex-who-touring-drummer-zak-starkey-ringo-starrs-son-shares-a-surprising-admission-about-his-dads-famous-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/366568\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Who Touring Drummer Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr\u2019s Son, Shares a Surprising Admission About His Dad\u2019s Famous Band"},"content":{"rendered":"

For nearly 30 years, Zak Starkey<\/a> served as the touring drummer of The Who<\/a>, until he and the British rock legends parted ways earlier in 2025. Starkey, whose dad is The Beatles<\/a>\u2019 Ringo Starr, now is focusing on other projects, including a one-man show he\u2019ll be doing on February 20, 2026, in New York City.<\/p>\n

Starkey recently was interviewed<\/a> about his upcoming gig by DJ Jonathan Clarke on the New York rock radio station Q104.3. During the conversation, Zak also shared a surprising revelation about his father\u2019s famous band.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: The Who\u2019s Roger Daltrey Fires Back at Zak Starkey for \u201cIncredibly Upsetting\u201d Remarks Following Drummer\u2019s Firing]<\/a><\/p>\n

Starkey, who turned 60 in September, admitted that growing up, he purposely avoided listening to the Fab Four\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be honest. When I was a kid, The Beatles were in my way, if you see what I mean,\u201d he explained. \u201cI was in groups from a young really young age, and I was getting press attention, but they were only paying me attention and they weren\u2019t paying the rest of the band attention. And I got bit resentful of this, and that sort of got me into a place where I sort of shunned The Beatles for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cA few people have said that\u2019s why I have an identity of my own, you know. But at the end of the day, when I did listen to The Beatles, when I was about 25, it was like, \u2018Wow, these guys are amazing! \u2026 I should have been listening to this forever.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That being said, Zak added, \u201cI\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t, you know, because I got into other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starkey\u2019s Thoughts on the Restored Beatles Anthology Docuseries<\/p>\n

Clarke also asked Starkey if he\u2019d watched the newly restored and expanded version of the 1990s docuseries The Beatles Anthology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the premiere the other night, actually,\u201d he shared. \u201cI thought it was fabulous. I thought it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

The updated Beatles Anthology series is streaming now on Disney+.<\/p>\n

About Starkey\u2019s Upcoming One-Man Show<\/p>\n

Starkey\u2019s one-man show, which is cheekily dubbed \u201cZak Starkey \u2026 Who?,\u201d will take place at the Gramercy Theatre. The event will feature Zak chatting about his long career in music, and playing drums along to recordings of songs by some of the famous groups he\u2019s performed with, including The Who and Oasis.<\/p>\n

The show also will feature at least one special guest, plus a video presentation including archival photos and film footage.<\/p>\n

Tickets are available now at TheGramercyTheatre.com and LiveNation.com.<\/p>\n

During the Q104.com interview with Starkey, Clarke read a description of the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe show will be drums and conversation, and will feature stories, unseen photographs, homemade movies, [and] songs from your extraordinary life,\u201d the DJ noted. He also pointed out, \u201cYou will \u2026 be playing along to tracks, including some prepared by the man himself, [Who guitarist] Pete Townshend<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCorrect,\u201d Starkey replied. He then explained Townshend had given him permission to use backing tracks for eight to 10 songs Pete prepared that were played during Who concerts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people will be quite surprised at how integral [the tracks] are to, actually, a Who show,\u201d Zak noted.<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cSo, what I\u2019m trying to do is show how a Who show works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starkey added, \u201cI\u2019ve [also] sampled a little bit of [late Who bassist] John [Entwistle] and stuff, and \u2026 I\u2019ve got hundreds of hours of home movies, which I never watched. And it\u2019s mostly every tour I ever did, you know. \u2026 So, I\u2019m gonna cut that into it. And \u2026 I was going to be doing a few Oasis tunes as well, with footage. It\u2019s all stuff that I played on originally, apart from obviously the Who stuff, which was done by the greatest drummer of all time [Keith Moon].\u201d<\/p>\n

(Photo by Kevin Mazur\/Getty Images for Desert Trip)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For nearly 30 years, Zak Starkey served as the touring drummer of The Who, until he and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,7021,75,341,12444,19463],"class_list":{"0":"post-366568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-classic-rock","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-the-who","14":"tag-zak-starkey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}