Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (40 page)

Freedom from Talmy did bring the Who a couple of immediate gains. The first was the appearance of short-term financial profit (as opposed to the reality of long-term financial loss): fresh advances from the British and American record companies. According to Richard Barnes’
Maximum R&B
biography, £50,000 came from Polydor in the UK (via Reaction), and $50,000 from Decca in the USA. (Keith Moon had written to Kim in February 1966 stating that the group were in for a “£2,000 advance to be received [the following] Monday, £50,000 to be received in August”, which appears to substantiate the intention – if not the actual execution – of at least the Reaction deal.) The combined total of about £62,500, or $250,000 at the period’s rate of exchange, was a considerable sum of money in the mid-Sixties, when wages of £100 a week outside Swinging London’s élite were unheard of. With these advances in the bank, the Who should have been able to pay off their debts, finance their clothing allowance, pay for a second-hand Bentley or two, give themselves each a pay rise, and still have cash left over to smash up a few guitars and drums when the mood took them. The fact that the group remained in debt, or rapidly returned to it, suggests that either these advances were not as hefty as reported – the £50,000 referred to by Keith may well have been for delivery of an album that the Who would not complete for many months – or that the Who’s spending habits and those of their management were even more extreme than people seem to realise.

The second immediate result of the settlement was felt in the studio. Put simply, without Talmy’s overwhelming presence, the Who suddenly began to enjoy the recording experience.

Chris Stamp having turned his attentions to the American market, it was Kit Lambert, as expected, who took control of the group’s creative direction. ‘I’m A Boy’, the new Who single recorded and released in August, was the first to feature Lambert as producer, a role he would maintain for many years. The influence of the classical composer’s son was not clearly evident in the musical structure of a relatively rudimentary song that alternated two-chord verses with three-chord choruses and the now standard Who instrumental interlude. The producer’s authority was apparent, however, in the lyrics to this song of sexual confusion, which Townshend claimed to be part of an opera he was writing called
Quads
, about a future time when parents could choose the sex of their children. Many managers and producers might have discouraged their clients from dallying with classical forms in a strictly pop idiom. Lambert not only encouraged Townshend to push the musical and lyrical boundaries, he all but demanded him to; taking into account the pair’s combined upbringings and intellect, it was no surprise that opera – or more precisely, a ‘pop’ or ‘rock’ opera – should prove to be the artistic middle ground on which they decided to make their mark.

For all its highbrow inspiration, in isolation from its operatic origins ‘I’m A Boy’ sounded elementary, almost facile. But then so do most classic pop singles, and as the Who continued to destroy their equipment nightly in a successful bid to become the world’s most aggressive live band, the contrastingly cheerful sounds of ‘I’m A Boy’ proved particularly palatable to the public, rapidly climbing the charts until it reached no. 1 on the
Melody Maker
, and no. 2 on the NME and
Record Retailer
charts.
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The B-side to ‘I’m A Boy’ broke further new ground for the Who. For the first time, Keith Moon and John Entwistle took their friendship in a musically creative direction, writing and then recording, without the assistance of the other members, a song called ‘In The City’.

Although Entwistle claims Moon contributed only one line of the lyrics (the wonderfully incomplete “and they go …”) and no doubt the bass player’s musical expertise was necessary to wrestle chord patterns from anything Keith might tunelessly whistle, still the surfer Moon’s influence is all over this delightful west coast rip-off. A combination of Californian lingo (replete with references to surfing and dragging, superstocks and the highway) and Swinging London repartee (“the kids are hip and they can dance all night”), later overdubbed with Townshend’s guitars and the Who’s increasingly tight harmonies, ‘In The City’ is throwaway, fluff. “I was so disgusted,” recalls John Entwistle. “It was a total Jan and Dean rip-off.” But it was a charming Jan and Dean rip-off at that, and should not be unnecessarily belittled. With the possible exception of ‘The Ox’ (which was smothered in aggression), ‘In The City’ was the first occasion on which the Who were captured in the studio clearly enjoying themselves. Of course, that might have been for the very simple reason that they weren’t all there at the same time.

Regardless, the sunny surfing disposition introduced by ‘In The City’ spilled over into the next release, an EP celebrating a
Ready Steady Go!
special dedicated to the band.
Ready Steady Who
, the television show, was recorded on October 18 (and broadcast three days later), and culminated in the Who’s auto-destruction which, though much discussed, had never previously been seen in full force on television.
²⁴
Ready Steady Who
the EP was released three weeks later, and although it featured one stunning new Townshend composition, ‘Disguises’, it is generally remembered as the Who’s surf record – and the nearest that Keith Moon came to fronting the band.

The drummer was featured as lead singer twice – on the group’s rendition of ‘Barbara Ann’, where his falsetto vocals were almost swamped by the others’ enforced harmonies, and on the Jan and Dean hot-rod number ‘Bucket T’, singing with neither distinction nor embarrassment. His comic book-surf music fanaticism was then further served by the group’s faithful rendition of the instrumental ‘Batman’ theme, an American hit for the Marketts earlier that year.

None of these three recordings has stood the test of time any better than has any other basic surf or hot-rod music. In fact, to be releasing an asinine interpretation of the indubitably basic ‘Barbara Ann’ the very same week the Beach Boys’ stunningly innovative ‘Good Vibrations’ went to number one in the UK showed just how reactionary Keith Moon’s tastes really were in that he favoured the former over the latter. On a purely musical level, it appears his belated conversion of the Who to surf threatened to drag the group backwards at a time when pop music was galloping forward.

But that’s to place over-emphasis on a record that was released in exactly the format that one-offs and throwaway ideas were at the time intended for -the EP. And it didn’t stop ‘Bucket T” from going to number one in Sweden, which made Keith even more of a pin-up than he already was over there. For him, the surfing songs on
Ready Steady Who
were about more than just the music anyway. They were a crucial strike for the valued ideals of Entertainment! Fun! Pleasure!, the positive aspects of being in a band, the pure pop thrill that should resonate as much with the producer of music as the consumer. Pete Townshend, whose hot temper had been losing him friends as fast as it was gaining him fans, later observed that he played surf music with the Who “to feel like a member of the gang”, by which he was referring to Keith and John’s close friendship. His positive stance towards surf not only won him entrance into that gang, it allowed him to experience some of its camaraderie, understand the importance of laughter and share the uncomplicated pleasures that were embodied in the duo’s love of vacuous but enjoyable surf music. In short, it enabled him to lighten up. As a result, the sense of merriment that had previously been so notably absent within the Who’s recordings suddenly proved contagious; having extended from a B-side to an EP, it would now go on and infect the entire mood of the group’s second album.

Having spent most of the last two years on the road, Pete Townshend was genuinely short on songs: although he wrote three classic singles in 1966, he initially came up with just three more numbers for the second album, of which only ‘So Sad About Us’ matched his usual high standards. He later blamed his lack of creativity on too many mind-expanding but creativity-sapping acid trips. Yet finances also played their part in the solution. Either the other three members, having seen the monetary rewards that came with songwriting, determined to make their own contributions and share in the proceeds, or else the debts had got so bad – again – that money for the group had to be found from somewhere just to survive. New record deals having been negotiated, television and concert fees being as high as they were likely to get for the time being, and merchandising tie-ins not yet a recognised source of income, a publishing deal was the only option left. Stamp and Lambert therefore negotiated on everyone’s behalf with the established Essex Music company, which advanced each band member £500 on condition they supply two songs for the new album.

Roger Daltrey wrote just the one song – the disposable ‘See My Way’ – and immediately spent his advance on a brand new ‘Saint’ Volvo, as made famous by Roger Moore in the television series of the same name. John Entwistle showed that behind his grave exterior lay a lovable black humour with the enduring ‘Boris The Spider’ and the more ephemeral ‘Whisky Man’, a self-mocking reflection on the amount of alcohol he and Keith were putting away on their endless nights on the town.

Keith Moon took Entwistle’s latter topic further when he composed, on his own this time, ‘I Need You’, a paean to the Ad-Lib, the Scotch of St James and all the other honey spots frequented by the perpetual ravers, complete with impersonation of John Lennon halfway through: such were Keith’s powers of mimicry that he was well known to be able to ‘do’ any one of the Beatles upon demand.
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He was certainly spending enough time in the clubs to perfect these impersonations: his song was initially titled ‘I Need You (like I need a hole in the head)’ after one of the in phrases among the in crowd at the time.

Keith was quite open about his devotion to the clubs. “I enjoy them,” he explained, as if anyone had doubted otherwise. “They’re colourful. It’s like going to the first night of the opera – everybody puts themselves about! So many incidents happen to me down the clubs. We [he and John Entwistle] usually sneak into a corner – like water on oil. We’re just there, like part of the fittings.”

Indeed, Keith spent so much time around the honey spots that a Who concert programme from the Seventies, quoting a list of outstanding bills from the mid-Sixties, showed Keith’s tab at the Scotch to have reached £320, not much less than a school leaver’s annual salary in an average blue-collar job. And when he wasn’t running up bills inside the clubs, he was running them up directly outside. His delight at co-owning a Bentley was such that he was forever inviting fellow celebrity friends to come and admire it. On one occasion at the Scotch of St James he insisted on borrowing the keys to do so. Reluctantly John Wolff lent them, with strict instructions not to drive. “He came back rather sheepishly about half an hour later and gave me the keys back,” recalls Wolff in a story confirmed by Entwistle. “By that time he’d wiped out a Porsche and an Aston Martin, someone else’s Bentley and a Jaguar, coming out of the very confined space outside the Scotch. He ripped half the undercarriage on the little narrowing bollards on the entrance to St James’ Yard there, pulled out and smashed across the road and left the car up on the side of the road. I was pissed off ‘cos it was then surrounded by police and I was the one accused of putting it there. Every time we went back to the Scotch after that there were people queuing up to get their money. I had to keep changing my wig!”

While the car was being repaired, they borrowed another Bentley from John Mason, car dealer to the stars. “Don’t let him drive this one,
please,”
begged Mason, and Wolff was as good as his word. After the incident at the Scotch, nobody ever imagined letting Keith drive ever again.

Keith had written ‘I Need You’ way back in the spring; ever the self-promoter, he was proud enough of the demo version to give a tape to three of his former band-mates from the Escorts (Colin Haines, Rob Lemon and Roger Painter, now playing in a band called Trend) when they turned up supporting the Who at the Morecambe Winter Gardens over the May Bank Holiday. Even though Trend were struggling to get a foothold in the business, they did not think enough of the song to take Keith up on his offer of producing it for them; in fairness to their judgement, it should be noted that ‘I Need You’ has passed into history as one of the more obscure songs from the Who’s most obscure album.

Keith’s second ‘solo’ effort from A Quick One was more memorable, if only for its lunacy. ‘Cobwebs And Strange’ was a sub-sousa of an instrumental with a nursery rhyme of a tune that captured the Who at their most expendable. Indeed, placed against ‘The Ox’, the Who’s only other recorded instrumental thus far, it sounds almost embarrassing. One senses that Keith was given sole authorship of what must have been at least partly a group effort only because none of the others dared claim responsibility.

Yet, just as with ‘In The City’, ‘Cobwebs and Strange’ is, for all its tomfoolery, totally endearing, lovable even, concrete proof that the Who had cast off the weight of the world from their shoulders and learned instead to play with a skip in their step. If ‘The Ox’ had been a musical flexing of the band’s considerable muscle, then ‘Cobwebs And Strange’ was a tickle of its funny bone, a fundamental transformation of the band’s character in only 12 months. Kit Lambert was influential in this aspect too, endorsing a creative silliness that had been strictly forbidden under Shel Talmy. For ‘Cobwebs And Strange’, Lambert encouraged the group to capture the spirit of the tune by actually marching in formation, Pete Townshend playing the recorder, John Entwistle the trombone, Roger Daltrey the trumpet and Keith Moon crashing two cymbals together as though he was back in the Sea Cadets marching band.

A Quick One
was ultimately saved from infamy as a complete throwaway by the title track. With nine songs in the bag (including a cover of ‘Heatwave’) yet only 25 minutes on tape, Kit Lambert told Pete Townshend to go away and write something that would take them over the half-hour mark.