The Who fire Ringo Starr's son again, two weeks after rejoining

When the Who fired their drummer Zak Starkey only to bring him back into the band twenty-four hours later, we said they might as well leave it here for this ridiculous act. A band with so much legend behind them doesn't deserve such an end. But Roger Daltrey and company seem determined to bury all their glory with a final stage marked by indecision and lack of direction.

Starkey has been dismissed from the band for the second time, just a month after he was fired and then quickly reinstated. In an Instagram post published Monday, the group's guitarist, Pete Townshend, announced that Starkey was no longer part of the band , just months before their farewell tour of North America.

"After many years of hard work on Zak's drums, the time has come for a change," Townshend's post read. "A moving moment. Zak has many new projects in the works and I wish him the best."

Starkey, the Who's drummer since 1996, later claimed his departure was not a mutual decision: " I was fired two weeks after rejoining and asked to release a statement saying I had left to pursue my other musical endeavors," Starkey wrote on social media, an hour after Townshend's statement. "It's not true. I love The Who and I would never have quit and let down so many amazing people who supported me through all this madness." He added that there had been "weeks of chaos of me going 'in and out and in and out' ... like a bleeding squeezebox."

Starkey says that although he had other projects going on, it was something he did often and "none of this has ever interfered with the Who and was never a problem for them. The lie is, or would have been, that I left the Who, and I didn't. I love the Who and everyone in them."

One of Starkey's side projects is the supergroup Mantra Of The Cosmos , who recently featured Noel Gallagher on a song titled 'Domino Bones (Gets Dangerous)', which also features Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder on vocals, former Oasis guitarist Andy Bell, Sir Ringo's son Zak Starkey on drums and Happy Mondays' Mark "Bez" Berry on percussion.

In April, Starkey was fired from the band following a disagreement over their performance at the Royal Albert Hall earlier this year. A review of the band's March concert in the Metro newspaper suggested that Who frontman Roger Daltrey complained onstage about Starkey's performance and reportedly paused during the final song, "The Song Is Over," to tell the audience: "To sing that song, I need to hear the key, and I can't. All I've got are drums going boom, boom, boom. I can't sing along with that. Sorry, guys."

The incident caused an immediate rift: Starkey labeled his bandmate "Toger Daktrey" and complained that he was going to "press formal charges for overacting" against him. Three days later, Starkey was reinstated, and Townshend said, "There have been some communication issues, personal and private on all sides, that needed to be addressed, and these have been happily aired." Afterward, Starkey thanked Townshend and Daltrey.

Starkey, the son of Ringo Starr, first joined the Who full-time during the 1996 Quadrophenia tour. He was introduced to the drums by former Who drummer Keith Moon, a family friend who gave him a drum kit for his eighth birthday.

This is the second high-profile drummer dismissal in as many days: Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese was fired from the band last week, after replacing the late Taylor Hawkins for the past two years. "I enjoyed the last two years with them, both on and off stage, and I support whatever they feel is best for the band," Freese wrote. "In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I've never been let go from a band, so while I'm not mad—just a little surprised and disappointed."