Now 59, Starkey settles into the quietest corner of a Soho bar (“This ear isn’t very good,” he says, jabbing the left) as an alumnus of Johnny Marr & The Healers, Oasis and – until his very recent, very public departure – The Who. He’s also the fulcrum of his own all-star band, Mantra of the Cosmos, featuring main players Shaun Ryder, Bez (both Happy Mondays mainstays), and Andy Bell of Ride, the Independent reports.
“To me, he was a great drummer and that was it,” Ryder says of Starkey over the phone. “I didn’t know he was a f***ing amazing producer. Then when I got in the studio and he stuck a load of beats and tunes on, I f***ing loved it. It’s different from the Mondays, it’s different from what I do in Black Grape, it’s a f***ing buzz.”
“I don’t know what the f*** is happening,” he attests. “The thing is, this is The Who, man. The most unpredictable, aggressive, arrogant people, lovely people who are my family, but you never know what’s gonna happen, and that’s why it’s The Who. They have an addiction to friction.” It’s all par for the course for “the oddest, maddest group there is”, he says. “If you look at The Who through the years, all the way back, there’s four completely opposite people. One of them writes all the songs and thinks the other three are an art installation. And they don’t know what that means. They are the craziest, weirdest group there’s ever been. That’s what’s great, isn’t it, that they’re so untraditional with everything that they’ve ever done.”
Last month, Starkey insisted that he was “fired” from The Who, following Daltrey’s claim that the drummer had been “retired” so that he could work on his other projects. “This is fukin total bollox,” Starkey said, after some back and forth with his ex-bandmates about the situation.
During a new interview with Rolling Stone, the sticksman was asked what his Beatles legend father thought of the situation. He responded: “He [Starr] said, ‘I’ve never liked the way that little man runs that band’.” This is seemingly a reference to frontman Daltrey. bassist Andy Bell.
