Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (52 page)

With their businesses booming, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp moved operations for both the label and the management from Chesterfield Gardens in Mayfair to 70 Old Compton Street, a four-storey sliver of a building in Soho opposite the old 21s coffee bar. It made sense to locate themselves there in the pulsating heart of central London – and to nobody more so than Keith Moon. Shaftesbury Avenue, where he had wandered the music stores as a child, Denmark Street, where he had hung around the coffee bars hoping to spot famous faces, the Flamingo, where he had played with the Beachcombers opening for the great Geòrgie Fame, the Scene, where the Who had cemented their mod following, and then the Marquee, which they had helped turn into a world-famous rock venue, De Hems and the Ship, where the musicians still hung out, the nightclubs where Swinging London had celebrated itself, and now La Chasse and the Speakeasy, musicians’ members clubs of the moment, all were a mere drumstick’s throw from the new offices, and it became almost a daily routine for Keith, when there were no other commitments, to make a mid-afternoon appearance at the office, frequently just after the banks had closed so as to ‘borrow’ some cash, then whittle away the early evening hours in the Ship or La Chasse, meet up with other musicians and ravers there, and move on after closing time to the Speak, until they were all kicked out in the early hours.

Keith so loved his nights out he didn’t want them to end: frequently he would invite half a club back to the flat at Highgate to ensure as much. Convoys would pull up outside Pearl Garages and Kim would be raised from her sleep to reluctantly put on the kettle and start making sandwiches because it was easier to do that and keep the noise down than have a fight for refusing and wake Mandy in the process.

It could come as no surprise then – to anyone but Keith Moon – that there were times when Kim wouldn’t be there at all, but back with her own parents in Bournemouth, Mandy in tow. On those occasions, Keith would be morose, and he didn’t care if it showed. Chris Welch, a
Melody Maker
journalist who had been writing favourably about the Who since 1965, found himself with Keith one night “talking in the bar at the Speak and he was quite miserable and sad, I thought, and he genuinely wanted some company”. It was unusual for Keith to let anyone see him in less than exuberant form, and Welch correctly assumed something was seriously wrong.

“He had just split with his wife and he couldn’t face going back to the place on his own. So I came back with him to his flat. We arrived there in the early hours of the morning when it was dark. It was like the average musician’s digs. Clothes lying about. There was no family around. He seemed very down and unhappy. He just wanted to keep drinking.

“We sat down and talked about classical music – because there was a big thing for classical music at the time, mostly instigated by Kit Lambert. We were all listening to Debussy a lot,
La Traviata
was the big thing. But he was still stomping and pacing round the flat, he couldn’t relax at all. In the end I had to go to sleep. I went to sleep and woke up hours later and he was still awake – he hadn’t been to bed at all.”

With Keith’s marriage now public, John Entwistle wedded to Alison and Pete Townshend about to tie the knot with Karen Astley, only Roger Daltrey remained single, and even he would be married (again) within a couple of years. The notion that the Who were all growing up gained further credence when Pete Townshend was turned on to the Indian guru Meher Baba (by Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces during the tour of Australia, among others) and became a passionate devotee of an Avatar believed to be the living reincarnation of Buddha, Christ and Mohammed among other great religious leaders. In many ways the renowned cynic Townshend seemed the least likely of rock’s figureheads to choose such spiritual enlightenment, especially given the negative experiences of the Beatles and the Stones in their well-publicised dalliance with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But then Meher Baba was not a cult of personality, as were many of the other ‘gurus’ who had been adopted, almost like fashion accessories, by various members of the musical élite during 1966 and ’67. Baba made no demands for property or money, and insisted on no wholesale change in lifestyle other than the abandonment of hallucinatory drugs – a call which necessitated Townshend giving up pot, reluctantly so until he found he was more creative without it. Though he had not spoken a word since 1925, Baba’s simple message of compassion, love and introspection found a willing convert in a Pete Townshend who wanted to correct the less pleasant aspects of his capricious personality without having to abandon the on-stage aggression which provided him and his band-mates with so much emotional release. As his love for Meher Baba grew, Townshend even took to wearing a button badge with the guru’s face on it.

“Who’s that?” Keith Moon inquired of Pete when he first saw the Indian’s smiling visage emblazoned on his band-mate’s chest.

“Meher Baba,” replied Pete.

“Is it?” He peered closer. “Well, you won’t see me walking round with a picture of Vidal Sassoon!”

Pete Townshend’s new-found spirituality was certainly not evident on the single the Who released in the UK in June ’68. In fact, ‘Dogs’ was the weakest and most juvenile record of their career.
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A cockney ode to the greyhound track, and an apparent attempt to emulate the exuberance of the Small Faces’ recent hit ‘Lazy Sunday’, ‘Dogs’ fell short of its target by several laps. It instead sniffed around the lower twenties of the British charts before limping off into obscurity, by far and away the worst ever showing for a self-penned official Who release.

Still, there was always America. The Who returned to the States yet again at the end of June and though they initially had only three weeks of dates to fulfil – Keith and Kim had a holiday planned for the second half of July – they ended up spending more than two months out there, at the vanguard of a ‘second British Invasion’ alongside Jimi Hendrix and Cream. Their set growing in length as well as volume, the Who reverted to including some of the rock’n’roll/rhythm & blues classics with which they had first cut their teeth: ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’, ‘Daddy Rolling Stone’, ‘Fortune Teller’ and Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’. But these numbers were being prolonged now on stage, Townshend, Moon and Entwistle having enough instinct for each other’s playing to be able to strip them right down to their core (for all their blistering noise on stage, the Who were equally adept at casting giant swathes of near silence), and take them in a new direction, for several minutes if need be, before reining them back in again and building up to a furious finale.

The equipment was no longer being destroyed by rote every night; having established themselves with shock tactics, the Who were keen to be taken as serious musicians. Moon continued to pour his heart and soul into every song, throwing sticks so high in the air between beats that he amazed the audience whenever he caught them, pointing them almost vertically down to the skins as he played, offering a comical running commentary as the other members introduced the songs, all the time pulling these fabulous faces that assured he got as much of a TV camera’s attention as anyone else. Townshend had long perfected the windmill right arm that was now virtually his trademark, but he had taken to engaging in graceful athletic on-stage leaps as well, timed to land him back on terra firma right on the down beat of the power chord he was thrusting through. Significantly, Daltrey too was finally beginning to discover an on-stage personality of his own, letting his hair grow out naturally curly, sporting fringed jackets unbuttoned almost to the waist. The Americans loved it; more than a few began comparing him to a Greek God.

Half-way through the tour, the American record company rush-released a new single, ‘Magic Bus’, a significant change of direction for the Who, with Keith Moon banging out the classic syncopated Bo Diddley riff on woodblocks, Pete Townshend throwing down a bluesy riff on the acoustic guitar, John Entwistle staying anchored mostly on one note, and Roger Daltrey singing a call-and-response lyric with Pete that owed just a little bit to the Motown song ‘Leaving Here’ that they used to cover. It was a musical ‘jam’, a song both representative of the Who’s roots in the blues and of their current live show, and as such it would always be more popular in concert than on record, where its good-natured energy was tempered somewhat by its old-fashioned sound (the Rolling Stones had popularised the Bo Diddley riff five years back) and lack of musical progression. Still, it quickly cruised to number 25 in America in the late summer, the group’s second biggest hit there to date.

Upon release in the UK in September, it ground to a halt at number 26, one place lower even than ‘Dogs’. Who singles, both bad and good, were simply not resonating with the British public the way they once had.

So successful was the summer American tour that Keith was able to start counting his savings again and unlike the previous year, when he came home empty handed, this time it seemed that the longer the group stayed out there, the more money he would bring back. From Springfield in Illinois, with three weeks still to go, he wrote to Kim: At the last count I had 8,000 dollars, which is around £3,200, more than enough to get the house, and by the end of the tour (HURRAY) the figure should be £5,500 at least.’ From the New York Holiday Inn in August, he thanked Kim for what appeared to have been the first letter from her in a month. ‘You look absolutely FANTASTIC in the photos and Mandy looks like the little rascal she is … I’ll post this now so you’ll be able to know how happy you’ve made me.’

It was while in New York that Keith and John came across their former driver Richard Cole, who had been working with the Yardbirds for the last couple of years. But that revered London rhythm & blues band was grinding to a final halt now, its various members having separate musical aspirations, and with Jimmy Page looking for new band-mates, there was some bar-room talk with Cole about Moon and Entwistle splitting from the Who to create a new ‘super-group’ with the guitarist. Significantly, Page himself was not in on the conversation, but either Entwistle or Moon (they both subsequently laid claim to it) went so far as to suggest a name for the prospective band: Lead Zeppelin, from the days when people would ask how a show had gone, and they would reply, “We went down like a lead balloon.”

After the Yardbirds split that summer, Page formed a new group with John Paul Jones and two comparative unknowns, including a 19-year-old drummer called John Bonham who over time would come closer than anyone to rivalling Keith Moon’s reputation for on-stage musical aggression and off-stage personal debauchery. Following a few contractual obligations as the ‘New’ Yardbirds, they adopted the name suggested by Keith and John, with a spelling change to avoid mispronunciation.

John Entwistle always maintained he was serious about leaving the Who at this point; as such it’s frequently been suggested that Keith was equally unhappy. It’s true that the Who’s status in the UK was waning, and as they watched other bands they had grown up with begin to fall apart, there must have appeared the distinct possibility that the Who’s time as a commercially viable recording act was up. Entwistle had the greater reason to feel frustrated: his songwriting was flourishing but his outlets weren’t, his darkly humorous compositions constantly being relegated to B-sides even as they were consistently being praised.
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But for his part Keith Moon was no longer an aspiring songwriter; he was enjoying the group’s overdue success in America, loving the reputation he was creating for himself, and besides, his growing friendship with Townshend gave him an extra reason to stay put. While Entwistle remained Moon’s ‘straight man’, the extent to which the drummer and the guitarist could provide their own double act was becoming increasingly noted.

In October, for example, the Who travelled to Bremen in Germany for a routine television appearance on the show
Beat Club
, and while getting drunk on brandy during rehearsals, Moon and Townshend went into a Nazi routine. For Moon to indulge in black comedy about the War in the exact location likely to cause most offence was to be expected, but for the teenagers in Love Affair, a new pop band that were also on the show, it was almost unbelievable. “We were just wetting ourselves,” says the band’s then 17-year-old singer Steve Ellis. “It was this Laurel and Hardy humour, the funniest thing we had ever seen.”

Moon’s creative humour excelled itself on a UK package tour that had been arranged months earlier when it was assumed the Who would have a new album ready for the Christmas market. (They were nowhere close.) Travelling with them, and receiving near-equal billing, were the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and the Small Faces. On November 19, towards the tour’s conclusion, Keith, John Entwistle and John Wolff set off in the Bentley from Newcastle to Glasgow. As always, the Who preferred taking separate cars around the country than travelling together by bus, and as always when leaving Newcastle, the Bentley made a stop at a favourite joke shop in Newcastle.