Zak Starkey Gets The Gold
Article from June 2016 DRUM! Magazine on Zak Starkey’s The Who drum kit for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London was a massive production that showcased dozens of Britain’s top performers, and the grand finale featured a powerful performance by The Who. Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey, The Who’s drummer since 1996, wanted a drum set worthy of the spectacle and significance of such a colossal international event.
He chose multicolored red, black, blue, yellow, and green clear acrylic drums to mimic the layout of the colored rings of the Olympic flag. Starkey later informed me that the flags of each country participating in the games contained one of these five colors.
However, his choice of clear acrylic drums posed a slight problem. Starkey had endorsed Drum Workshop drums for more than 20 years, but in 2012 DW didn’t actually make acrylic drums. So the company built the set using RCI acrylic shells and a combination of DW and PDP hardware. (Future Olympics performers take note: Drum Workshop now offers acrylic shell kits in its Design Series.)
This massive, ten-piece set features 12″ × 8″, 13″ × 9″, and 14″ × 10″ rack toms, four 18″ × 18″ floor toms, two 24″ × 18″ bass drums, and a 15″ × 10″ snare drum. Each bass drum is fitted with two AKG D-112 microphones mounted internally on May mounting systems. All of the drums are drilled for DW badges, but only the 12″ and 13″ toms and snare are actually fitted with badges.
The Olympic color theme also carried over to Starkey’s Zildjian cymbals. Each of the five cymbals has a colored ring around its edge to represent one of the five Olympic circles. The cymbals were originally all 22″ crashes, but Starkey felt the colored rings weren’t visible enough. So they were replaced with a larger set of five 24″ crashes, giving the set even more visual impact.
A record-breaking 750 million people worldwide viewed Starkey’s performance on his Olympic themed drum kit. Great Britain brought home 65 medals at the 2012 games, and Starkey brought home this amazing kit.
Donn Bennett is an eminent collector and dealer of rare and vintage drums. His collection is on display at Donn Bennett Drum Studio in Bellevue, Washington. donn@bennettdrums.com
