Read Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon Online
Authors: Tony Fletcher
Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (101 page)
Keith as ‘wicked Uncle Ernie with Oliver Reed, on the
Tommy
film set. “Keith showed me the way to insanity,” said Reed.
(Courtesy of Peter Butler)
The good life in California. “Keith had everything,” says Howard Kaylan, “and to not act the proper British gentleman was to go back to the coal mines… “
(© Mirror Syndication International)
With Annette Walter-Lax, on holiday in Tahiti. Annette: “He was so sweet when he was sober that I was just living with this wish that one day he would kick this craziness.”
(© Mirror Syndication International)
Below: Keith’s California beach house at Victoria Point Road, Trancas. Dougal Butler: “We were living somewhere we’ve all of us always dreamed of owning. You’ve got Steve McQueen next door, a multi-millionaire the other side of you, this is paradise, but in this house we were in, to be honest, we were the loneliest guys in the world.”
(Courtesy of Peter Butler)
The end of another Who concert, 1976. “… the whole band was fucking amazing,” says John of the Who’s final US tour with Keith. “Usually someone would like it and someone would hate it, but we could have gone on playing forever. That, to me, was the peak of the Who’s career.”
(© Bob Gruen, Star File)
Keith backstage in Miami, August 9, 1976. Forty-eight hours later a ‘mentally disturbed Keith was admitted to a Florida psychiatric hospital.
(© Bob Gruen, Star File)
Below: Keith mixing with fans at the ‘Who’s Who’ exhibition at the ICA in the Mall, London, August 1, 1978. “There were never tears far from Keith’s eyes,” said screenwriter Ray Connolly. “And I never knew what was in them. It could have been pure alcohol.”
(© Barry Plummer)
Keith with Kit Lambert. “Kit taught Keith about wine, about fancy restaurants,” says Chris Stamp. “But Keith turned Kit on to pills. They always had a strange affinity.
(© Rex Features)
Below: September 6, 1978: Keith with Annette at the party preceding the British première of
The Buddy Holly Story.
Within 24 hours Keith would be dead.
(© Rex Features)
The Mad Hatter: “Our great comedian, the supreme melodramatist… the most spontaneous and unpredictable drummer in rock,” said Pete.
(© Bob Gruen, Star File)
Dougal left them to it and went off on his afternoon’s errands. When he came back, several hours later, Keith was still talking. The man from AA had a look of terror on his face, as if he had been held hostage the entire time. He seemed anxious to escape.
“That was great,” Keith told Dougal once the visitor had left. “I feel much better for getting that out of my system.”
And he carried on drinking just as he always had.
The Who’s unease with handling the new material live –
The Who By Numbers
was still being mixed up until the last minute – meant that only three new songs from the album were performed when the Who kicked off their world tour in Stafford on October 3, 1975. By the next night two of them had been temporarily dropped as had, permanently, two of the four songs initially deemed worthy from
Quadrophenia:
‘The Punk And The Godfather’ and ‘Bell Boy’. Upset by the removal of his one vocal contribution, Keith wound the audience up to demand the crowd-pleaser; within days Townshend was sniping back to the crowd: “I’m sick of all this shit about ‘Bell Boy’.”