At Curzon Place, Annette cooked a meal of lamb cutlets, after which they went to bed. Keith insisted on watching a movie of his own choice, The Abominable Dr Phibes, a camp horror flick starring Vincent Price, from the bed. He swallowed some Heminevrin. “He had his usual glass of water and bucket of pills,” says Annette. “He fell asleep and I turned the telly off because I couldn’t stand this film, turned over and went to sleep.” It was now somewhere around four in the morning.
At approximately 7.30am, Keith awoke and proclaimed himself hungry again, insisting Annette get up and cook him something. She complained and he swore at her: “If you don’t like it, you can fuck off,” as she later recalled. Familiar with Keith’s temper even at the best of times, she put this down to the effects of his new favourite drug. “When he took Heminevrin, he acted drunk, and when he was drunk he wasn’t always very pleasant.” She also feels – though she will never know for sure – that Keith was somehow angry at her for making him go to the party, perhaps for leading him to temptations he didn’t need when he had wanted to avoid all that scene for a while. In the end, Annette cooked him some steak, which Keith ate in bed while watching more of Dr Phibes.
When Keith finished the steak, Annette took the tray into the kitchen. When she came back he was, she says, asleep once more. (His routine, even without the brandy and champagne, had not changed much since Larry Hagman took him in to detox.) Though she says she did not see him take them, he had swallowed more – many, many more – Heminevrin to help him.
When Keith then started snoring, Annette moved to the sofa. It was not, she says, an uncommon scenario, though one cannot discount that she was made to feel unwanted and resentful by his outburst. She awoke at 3.40pm. “I went in to look at him and he was lying on his tummy,” she recalls. “His left arm was hanging off the side. And I was getting agitated, worried, because I thought he was going to wake up hungry. I had this menu from a Chinese restaurant and I sat there with this menu by the phone thinking, ‘Should I order something now, because he’s going to be hungry when he wakes up.’ Then I looked at the cat, Dinsdale. The cat was being very wary, not himself at all. Then I went in the bedroom again, and there was this awful quietness. You can normally hear when someone is asleep. But it was stone quiet, it was a silence I can’t describe. And then when I went up to him and turned the light on, turned him around, that was when I saw he was dead.
“He wasn’t breathing. I lifted his eyelids, and the eyes were in a funny way. I’d never seen a dead person before, but when I saw him I knew he was gone. There was no breathing, no heartbeat, no nothing. His skin had a big shifting. I was shaking, my whole body. I couldn’t believe it was true. I couldn’t get it into my head that he was actually gone.
“I panicked, of course. I can’t remember who I phoned first – the doctor, I think.” It was apparently Geoffrey Dymond, who then called for an ambulance. Which of them arrived at the flat first is uncertain. “I jumped on him, I sat over his belly, I pushed on his chest, I gave him mouth to mouth, I screamed at him to come back, I was hysterical, absolutely gone. Then the ambulance came and the doctor came, Dr Dymond. And when the ambulance people came they asked me to get out of the bedroom, they had these electric shockers, they didn’t want me to see what they were going to do.”
The resuscitation attempt made no difference. Keith Moon was dead.
Bill Curbishley was on his way back from a meeting with Polygram Films that afternoon. He had just finalised the funding for Quadrophenia, which was to be directed by a newcomer, Franc Roddam, with a credible young actor, Phil Daniels, starring as Jimmy, and was to be authentic in its recreation of London and Brighton during the mod heyday. There were plans also afoot for a movie, McVicar, the story of a former armed robber turned author who was a hero of Daltrey’s. Who Are You was off to a solid start in the UK and exploding in America, where it was the highest new entry this very week. Shepperton was positively booming with activity. There was every chance that the Who were going to be the first rock group in history to successfully invest their profits back into the music and media business. Curbishley had every reason to feel exuberant as he walked into the office.
He found his wife and partner Jackie instead tending the biggest disaster of their professional career. She had called Keith at around 5pm to try and set up a meeting and got Dr Dymond instead. He had given her the devastating news. Dymond also warned her to be ready for the press barrage; there was no way a corpse could be removed from a plush Mayfair apartment near so many hotel entrances and not attract attention. As Keith’s body was taken by ambulance to nearby Middlesex Hospital (not to be confused with his birthplace at Central Middlesex), where he was pronounced dead on arrival, a taxi was sent to collect Annette, who was in hysterics. Jackie Curbishley called Pete Townshend; fighting back tears, the group spokesman offered to call the others. Keith Altham came up to the office and began to field the phone calls that instantly came in from around the world as the word spread like wildfire.
John Entwistle was conducting an interview at his home in Ealing when he was interrupted with word that Pete was on the phone. He went next door and took the call. In total shock, he then resumed the interview, hoping to complete it quickly without giving the news away so as to be left alone to grieve. Instead, he was asked about the Who’s future plans, and immediately he broke down in tears. There was no future, he was forced to say. Keith had just died.
Pete’s conversation with Roger was terse. “He’s gone and done it,” said Pete. “Done what?” “Moon.” No more needed to be said.
The hardest call was to Keith’s mother. Kathleen Moon had been so very close to her son over the years, forgiving him his excesses even as she was embarrassed by them. He in turn had made his affection for her well-known; she was the only person he had ever been able to turn to, throughout his life, without having to put up a front. It was up to Pete Townshend to tell Kathleen that for her, every mother’s worst nightmare had come true.
Kim Moon, for that was still the name she used despite her divorce, came home from work that evening, and almost immediately heard the phone ringing. It was Ray Cole.
“Kim,” he said softly, “Keith’s died.”
“Yeah, you already told me that,” she blurted out, thinking of her recent dream. Then it hit her. She wasn’t dreaming. This had to be the truth.
The shock of it caused her hair to fall out.
101 Treatment Approaches to Alcohol Problems, by Nick Heather, Centre for Alcohol and Drug Studies, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
39
Keith’s face stared out from the front covers of the tabloid press and the quality papers alike that Friday, September 8. The Daily Mirror sizzled with the surprisingly appropriate headline ‘Drugs death drama of pop wild man Moon’. The Times gave him an official obituary, the ultimate mark of establishment respect. And the Guardian’s well-respected music critic Robin Denselow, echoing the immediate views of many Who fans who recognised the integral importance of each individual member, wrote that, “Without Moon, it is impossible to conceive of the Who continuing.”
That same day, 24 hours after Keith’s death, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle locked themselves away in a meeting at Shepperton and emerged with a press statement. Townshend wrote, in part: “We are more determined than ever to carry on, and we want the spirit of the group to which Keith contributed so much to go on, although no human being can ever take his place.”
Daltrey elaborated. “We can’t bring Keith back but, if he could have his say, he would want us to go on with the same ideals he helped to establish.”
There are those who might have thought such a statement of intent premature. Keith’s body was hardly cold and already the group were looking ahead, beyond and without him. Even among those who thought they did want the group to continue – and I say ‘thought’ because no one is usually certain about the future the day after losing a loved one – there was the feeling that this was, perhaps, a touch eager. Surely n
obody was forcing them into an instant decision?
But everybody must cope with bereavement the way they feel best. The three remaining members of the band had known each other a full eight years longer than they had known Keith, and they concluded that day that they loved each other and what they had stood for too much to let go. They were a Truly Great Band, in it for life. Keith Moon had exercised the only escape clause that existed.
They were, also, a large corporation. The Who Group of Companies, as the administering business was called, had recently invested a million pounds in a studio complex, had just finished one film, had another about to begin, and a third in the offing. They owned PA and trucking businesses and recording studios. A considerable number of people were in their employment. It is rare for a business of such magnitude to dissolve itself, particularly when on the crest of a wave, just because of the death of one of its directors. Immensely complicated, too. It seemed that the Who had little choice but to continue. In case people were getting the wrong idea, however, their publicist Keith Altham stressed that “It would be completely inappropriate to take on a new drummer.”
While the group was deciding upon its future, the circumstances of Keith’s death were rapidly being pieced together by a voracious yet courteous British media that treated Keith’s loss like that of a statesman – which in regards to his culture, he certainly was. A post-mortem was carried out at Westminster Hospital that Friday by pathologist Professor Keith Simpson, who reported a drug overdose; the specific drug, he warned, would not be known until the inquest was held.102 When Keith Altham, who had initially put forward the notion that Keith had died of natural causes [as if one normally does at age 32), then admitted that Moon was taking Heminevrin to help him sleep, Saturday’s papers reported a Heminevrin overdose as if it was fact.
The Sunday Times immediately contacted what it called “one of Britain’s most distinguished experts on alcoholism”, a Dr Max Glatt, who was scathing in his appraisal. While noting that Heminevrin would probably have been a very good treatment for Moon if given to him in hospital, he insisted that, “This drug is widely misunderstood by general practitioners. It is suitable for use for a limited period of days but should not be used by patients who are not confined to bed. It is quite wrong to give it in this way.” One reason for such strict conditions was because of the risk of patients drinking alcohol while on it. “Alcohol actually multiplies the effect of the drug,” said Glatt. “It does not just add to it. Together they depress the central nervous system and the collapse of breathing and circulation may follow.”
The Sunday Times, in that report on September 10, noted that as well as being a sedative, and in addition to treating alcohol withdrawal, Heminevrin was used for drug withdrawal too. It reported Keith Altham as insisting that Moon did not use heavy drugs. “He did not need to,” the newspaper then acerbically opined. “Heminevrin was heavy enough.”
Moon’s popularity among the younger generation, at a time when so many of the old guard were being shunned or ridiculed, was evident at the annual Knebworth Festival that took place that weekend. Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke kicked over his kit at the end of the group’s set, crying, “That’s for Keith Moon.” The Tubes closed their show with a Who medley. At RAK studios, where Who Are You had floundered, the Jam recorded a version of ‘So Sad About Us’ for the B-side of their classic single ‘Down In The Tube Station at Midnight’. The back sleeve showed Keith Moon in his young and handsome prime. It was a touching memorial from a group that had never met him.
Keith’s popularity among his own generation was on display at his funeral on Wednesday, September 13, at Golders Green Crematorium. The service was kept secret and private to avoid a media circus, to which extent it was successful. Among the fellow musicians to attend were Eric Clapton, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. Many other stars, respecting the wishes for a small gathering and/or not wishing to draw media attention, and some of them in denial as well, sent their commiserations in the form of flowers. These came from various ex-Beatles and other Stones, from Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, and even from those with whom Keith was not particularly friendly, like Fleetwood Mac and the Moody Blues. Keith’s favourite charity, Make Children Happy – an apt slogan for his life – sent a display of rosebuds.
Roger Daltrey, who cried throughout the service, supplied the most poignant floral tribute, a champagne bottle embedded in a television set. Annette Walter-Lax was allowed the most personal, a heart-shaped bouquet of red roses placed atop the coffin. Annette met Kim that day for the first time. “You poor thing,” was the only thing Kim could think to say. Annette, who had been heavily sedated for the last few days while staying in hiding with her girlfriend Sally Arnold, eventually had to be helped away from the Garden of Remembrance after collapsing.
A wake was held at Hendon Hall. As drinks were poured, and stories told, the gloom lifted somewhat. It was hard not to tell a tale involving Keith without finding oneself smiling at the end of it. John Schollar realised he was shedding tears of laughter through his tears of sorrow when he saw Keith’s mother approach him. He immediately apologised.
“No,” Kit said reassuringly. In later years she would say she wished her son had stayed with the Beachcombers, that he’d still be alive if he had. “That’s Keith. If there’s something funny to say, say it. If Keith had known this was going to happen, he would have hired Wembley Stadium, sat in a coffin and blown himself up.”
If Keith had known … That was Mrs Moon’s way of telling the wake that Keith had not intended to kill himself.
Cause for speculation will, however, always remain. The last few years had been an almost unbearable uphill struggle for Keith. His marriage had collapsed and he was estranged from his daughter. California had been a disaster, particularly for his health. The return to England was meant to signal a turn around, but he had spent a large part of the year back home in and out of hospitals, clinics and health farms, all of which failed to cure his addictions or help him find steady emotional happiness. He had been threatened with expulsion from the band, that which he loved most in his life, and informed that he would not be going on tour again in the foreseeable future, which was for him almost as bad. Though a new record had just been released, the group’s future remained desperately uncertain, and should they have decided to call it a day, he would have been at a total loss in life. His drumming ability, his biggest contribution to the world, had deteriorated of late, and given the energy required for it, it was not guaranteed to return to prior form as the years went by. His acting talents had not taken him beyond the occasional cameo appearance.103 His comic skills he had squandered in attempts to live up to his image as a hell-raiser. The fact that he was widely loved and adored just for being himself, a warm and wonderful human being, never seemed to register.
In the weeks prior to his death, he had bounced in and out of sobriety with ever-varying results. He was finding abstention to be the most difficult hurdle he had ever encountered, and it was far from certain he would ever get beyond it. He had taken to phoning some of those who had been closest to him, clearly confused and uncertain, and often in tears. The last night he spent alive, Keith went to a celebrity party honouring someone who became immortalised after dying young; it is not too contentious to suggest that only those rock’n’roll stars who do die young can be guaranteed immortality. Keith, on the other hand, was rapidly growing old. As he contemplated his future that night, what might he have seen? Was he genuinely excited about the film projects and ‘other’ enterprises that Shepperton offered? Or did he feel that the Who’s future, in the shape of retrospective movies and soundtracks, was ever more a slave to its past, that the greatest group in the world had come full circle and was about to grind to a halt? He hadn’t even wanted to attend this party in the first place, all too aware that it would be alive with ghosts of past glories, and the ‘anger’ Annette feels he possibly held toward her for coercing him into going could also have contributed to a final despairing decision
.
And it’s vital to note that while Keith was never noticeably suicidal as such, he was prone to half-hearted attempts to do away with himself which were easily recognised as cries for love and attention. That he misjudged the intake necessary for another such performance cannot be ruled out.
We will, of course, never know his real thoughts at the end of his life. But personally I side with the majority who believe his death was a mistake. Keith Moon loved life too much to cut it short. He was a fighter, a winner, or at very least, until that fateful night, a survivor.
A quick look at the flip side of the argument for suicide shows all the reasons he would not kill himself. He was in love. He had just told friends of his intent to re-marry; he had even talked to his intended bride about having children. He was coming to terms with his age, showing real determination to tame his excesses, pleased with the band’s recent work, excited about the notion of film enterprise and still hoping to get himself back in shape to go on tour again. Several months earlier, when the band threatened him with expulsion and Annette walked out on him, he would have been at the lowest of low ebbs; then, if ever, would have been the time. Now, with a new Who album just released (and importantly, selling far better than its difficult birth might have justified), and Annette lovingly back by his side, he was on top of his world again.
True, it only takes a moment of decisiveness to do away with oneself, but those who knew him well, even the few who saw him in his darkest depression, were adamant that Keith never ever contemplated taking his life for real. It simply was not in his character.104
On Monday September 18, at Westminster Coroner’s Court, coroner Dr Gavin Thurston heard Professor Simpson’s testimony that the post-mortem had revealed 26 undissolved Heminevrin tablets in Keith Moon’s stomach amidst a total of 32. The drug level in his blood was twice the danger level. (Keith’s alcohol blood level contained merely the equivalent of a pint of beer, which would have been the couple of glasses of wine and champagne he had drunk the night before. There was no report of any cocaine.) “The quantity was enormous,” Simpson said, referring to the Heminevrin, “and constituted a vast overdose.”
Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon Page 83