A little over a year after the Who got into a very public spat with longtime drummer Zak Starkey, where they fired him, re-hired him three days later, and then fired him again the following month, a surprising new chapter in the saga has begun.
While playing a solo show at the Encore Theater in Las Vegas on August 26, Roger Daltrey told the crowd that the Who recently rehearsed with Starkey for a possible European leg of their Song Is Over farewell tour. “It sounded great,” he said, according to a review in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Starkey shared an image of that review on Instagram. “Nice one Rog,” he wrote. “Lookin forward to tearin it up with the Who again. The rehearsal was great.. I don’t think we’ve ever rehearsed as tough as that. Usually we drink tea and talk about what time we’re going home! Fantastic vocal from Roger here on his song ‘Certified Rose.’”
The Who haven’t performed since the U.S. leg of their farewell tour wrapped up in October 2025. Daltrey just kicked off a run of solo shows stateside, but told the Arizona Republic that the Who aren’t over. “We had a rehearsal recently to make sure we can think about doing some shows in Europe because we’ve still got to say goodbye to them and goodbye to some other countries in the world that we had success,” he said. “And the rehearsal went extremely well and sounded fantastic. So, I mean, it’s not over by any means. It’s just that was the last tour of America for the Who.”
The Who last played with Starkey on March 30, 2025, during a Teenage Cancer Trust benefit show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The show included the live debut of the Who’s Next deep cut, “The Song Is Over.” It was a messy rendition, marred by technical issues, and Daltrey reportedly assigned some of the blame to Starkey.
“He came in four bars early,” Starkey told Rolling Stone in an extensive interview conduced after he left the group. “He just got lost. He blamed it on the drums being too loud, and then it got made into this huge social media thing. And it freaked him out and he’s going around doing solo shows, and saying it’s ‘fake news.’ But it wasn’t me. I was in the car and gone before they finished the last acoustic song. There was no argument in the dressing room. Nothing. I was halfway home by the time they finished.”
Starkey said he got the news he was out of the band a couple weeks later. “It was all a bit vague,” he said. “It was just like, ‘You’re getting fired.’ And Pete had to hang in there with Rog because I think it was…I don’t know. I’m not going to name names or who did what…I don’t blame anyone. I don’t hold any grudges. It’s the Who. Weirder shit than this has gone down. I’ve heard them say weirder shit than this. It’s the Who — the maddest band there’s ever been.”
The loss for Starkey was the opportunity of a lifetime for Scott Devours. “It’s hard to express the tsunami of emotions that I’m processing since that incredible news,” he wrote on Instagram after he was announced as their new drummer in May 2025. “The amount of positivity thrown my way has been overwhelming, I truly thank you all from the bottom of my heart…It really is a strange contradiction of emotions to have the greatest moment of my professional career also be one framed with some sadness and shadowed by someone else’s loss. It’s tough to put into words actually, but I know it’s there and it’s real.”
Devours remains Daltrey’s solo drummer. He was onstage in Vegas when Daltrey told the crowd about Starkey’s rehearsal with the band, surely doing his best to maintain a neutral facial expression. But how any of this is going to play out in the future remains an open question. As Starkey said, the Who are “the maddest band there’s ever been.” This story might have another three or four major twists and turns before the Who take the stage again, whenever or wherever that happens.
