![]() ![]() I asked him how he played the ride cymbal part in “Glow Girl” from Odds & Sods. Zak: I never actually sat at a set of drums with Keith. MD: Once you started playing drums, did he give you advice? He wasn’t crazy in any way, except for that look in his eye. He was a really fantastic guy to hang out with. We would just hang out and talk about anything, really–girls, surfing, bands, drums. When my brother, sister, and I used to stay with my dad there, we would occasionally spend a few days at Keith’s house. MD: Speaking of Keith Moon, as a child, you were good friends with him. It was so different and it sounded so alive. Then when I was eight, I discovered The Who’s Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy. I loved all of those ’70s glam bands from England, like Slade and Sweet. That was it for me I wanted to be Marc Bolan. I would spend my days listening to records. You would go into the living room and find stacks and stacks of LPs. When I was very young there was music all around me in my parents’ house. I wanted to play the drums because of Keith. Zak: Keith Moon was my first big influence, definitely. MD: Did most of your early drumming chops come from playing along to Who records? Bridging the past with the present, Zak Starkey is a drummer, an artist, a wizard–and a true star. Like his dad, Zak can adjust to fit every gig, always playing with the right feel and a touch of his dad’s creative wit.Ĭurrently on tour with The Who in support of their new album, The Endless Wire, Starkey continues to listen to his favorite old blues and rock ’n’ roll records, play guitar, and practice the rudiments while writing music for his own glam band, Penguins. Starkey matches this feat with alternate patterns of thought on such albums as John Entwistle’s The Rock, Johnny Marr & The Healers’ Boomslang, and Steve Marriott’s One More Time For The Old Tosser, as well as his touring work with Ringo’s All-Starr Bands. Is this Starkey simply a basher? On Oasis’s latest Don’t Believe The Truth, he’s consummately tasteful, playing big-beat, tribal-folk rhythms rather than simple 2 and 4, complementing the band’s Beatle-ish melodies with thinking man’s grooves. His seemingly innate ability to improvise with Townshend and Entwistle (now replaced by Pino Palladino) recalls Moon on such Who classics as “The Real Me.” And his roaring full-set fills on “Pinball Wizard,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley,” and the whole of Quadrophenia are nearly perfect and always inspiring. More than chops or technique, Zak brings a dynamic sense of grand flash and fortitude balanced with a massive groove and an absolutely swinging fill conception. Indeed, Pete Townshend himself has called Zak “the karmic Keith Moon.” But Zak’s combination of organic cohesion and natural fluidity is closer to Moon’s than anyone. The other drummers who followed Moon in that exalted drum chair–great players indeed–displayed a keen knowledge of Keith’s kinetic drum fills and expansive time feel. On The Who Live: The Blues To The Bush CD and The Who Live At The Royal Albert Hall DVD, Starkey integrates within The Who as no one since the mad “Moon the loon” himself. Not surprisingly, Zak’s drumming is the best fit in The Who since Keith Moon pillaged and pounded the skins during the band’s ’60s/’70s glory days. Slogging away in the studio and on the road, Starkey honored his small-time obligations like any one else, until just over ten years ago, when late, legendary Who bassist John Entwistle heard him at a local pub and immediately invited him to join his band. ![]() He plays drums with two of the most popular bands in the world, names the late, great Keith Moon as one of his best childhood friends, and is so busy he can be impossible to reach, as when Modern Drummer tried in vain to contact the globetrotting musician after he’d left his cell phone on someone else’s private jet.īut before he landed gigs with The Who and Oasis, Zak Starkey played with ten years’ worth of unknowns and also-rans, dragging his kit all over England like any other ambitious drummer. But his famous name is trumped by his superb drumming.Īs the forty-year-old son of Ringo Starr, most would think that Zak Starkey had been handed stardom on a silver platter. But I am a very successful musician.” Deadpan, funny, and self-deprecating, as this quote shows, Zak Starkey is famous by both association and skill set. “I am not a rock ’n’ roll star,” insists Zak Starkey. ![]()
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