Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon

by Tony Fletcher

  102 It opened on September 11 and was immediately postponed for a week.

  103 To the often-quoted, widely-accepted rumour that he was about to be cast in what would become The Life Of Brian, one must remember that he had already lost his last intended acting role to his health problems.

  104 The death of Michael Hutchence at the time of this book’s completion throws yet another question mark back onto this issue, for there too was a rock star who supposedly loved life, whose friends swore would never have contemplated killing himself, but who, at the end of a particularly harrowing night, did so anyway. Still, Hutchence left clear verbal clues. Moon offered none.

  105 Pete expressed his belief that Keith had choked in a Men Only interview in 1988. John Entwistle was open about it conversation with me: “As far as I know, he choked on his own vomit. He couldn’t throw up because his muscles were relaxed, so he choked. That’s the way I understood it.”

  106 He once told Larry Hagman, “I don’t do anything illegal – just lots of it!”

  40

  Keith Moon’s death gave the Who life. That, at least, appeared to be the initial gloss put on the tragic loss by his friends and partners.

  “In a way, it was like a sacrifice,” Roger Daltrey told Rolling Stone’s Dave Marsh, who flew to London and was granted access to the grieving group a few days after Keith’s death. “We can do anything we want to do now. I have very odd feelings. I feel incredibly strong, and at the same time, I feel incredibly fragile.”

  The underlying sentiment appeared to be that Keith had somehow tethered the group to a sound, an image and a lifestyle that the other band members had left behind. That without him, they would be free from those restraints, inspired to make something different of the legend that they often felt had become a burden. Pete was saying as much, quite bluntly, within a few short months. “Ironically, Keith’s passing was a positive thing,” he told Melody Maker’s Chris Welch the following January. “It meant that it was impossible to continue to be bound by Who traditions … I feel very excited about the fact that the Who is a well-established band with a tremendous history, but suddenly we’re in the middle of nowhere – a new band. I’m really excited about it.”

  In November, the Who officially hired Kenny Jones – who from now on elected to spell his name Kenney – to fill Keith’s shoes. “There was nobody else, in my opinion,” said Townshend adamantly. In as much as the Small Faces had been contemporaries of the Who, the two groups had toured together and got on with each other, and Jones was now unattached, it all made sense. Plus, he had played successfully with the Who sans Keith on the Tommy soundtrack.

  Jones did not play like Moon, however. Where Keith threw technique out the window, Kenney treated the rules with reverence; he was a solid, tight, no-nonsense kind of player. The Who appeared relieved by this, believing that in Jones’ orthodoxy they could point the backbeat in any direction they wanted.

  The Who immediately made Jones a full member of the band, guaranteeing him an equal share of the profits from his future work with them. It was the kind of solid job offer Keith himself claimed never to have received upon his own admission to the group (though of course, he was an equal partner throughout), it went against the group’s publicity statements issued immediately after Keith’s death and it was made largely upon the insistence of Townshend, who had the security of continuing to receive the extra publishing income.

  “Roger really resisted Kenney being brought in as a quarter member,” Townshend admitted to Charles Young of Musician a decade later.107 “He wanted Kenney on salary. I said, ‘No, I’m not ready for that. It means we’re still running the Who. It’s like we’re on a pilgrimage to find Keith. To be really unpleasant about it, I’m kind of glad Keith is gone. He was a pain in the ass. The band wasn’t functioning. This is a chance to do something new.’”

  If Keith might have turned in his grave to hear how readily he was described publicly as a ‘sacrifice’ and privately as ‘a pain in the ass’, by his band-mates no less, he would probably have risen from the dead to prevent Townshend following his instincts any further. In the band’s attempt to free itself – to which Jones’ installation as a permanent member was a blatant contradiction – they decided to hire a keyboard player. And seriously considered Ian McLagan. “I wanted him,” said Townshend in January ’79. “He’s a good guitar player too. I was very keen to get him.”

  Wiser heads prevailed, and the offer was never officially made. (The job eventually went to John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick.) McLagan was already being used by the Rolling Stones on tour. And he and Kim had made the decision to move to California. Indeed, to ease immigration problems, they got married.

  It was not something they had planned on before the American move came up and it was not something they could have planned upon. “If we’d wanted to get married before Keith died, it would have been completely out of the question,” says Kim, referring to Keith’s continual refusal, even after all these years, to accept that she could be in love with another man. But now, somehow it all made sense. They were officially wed at Wandsworth register office on October 9, 1978.

  For her first wedding, Kim had worn white but been forced to secrecy. This time, she was allowed to go public – the couple’s picture made the national press – but in respect to Keith’s passing, she wore black. And Kathleen Moon, in tribute to the daughter-in-law she had always loved as one of her own, attended, giving the couple her blessing. Mac reminded her of Keith at his sunniest. She would say to Kim of her new relationship, “It’s a shame it couldn’t have been like this with my son.”

  The two Mrs Moons (though Kim now became a McLagan) were appointed as joint executors of Keith’s estate. The absence of a will – the one he had torn up when Annette temporarily left had not been witnessed anyway – meant that Keith had died intestate. Not surprisingly for one of the rock world’s great spenders, he initially left behind considerably more bills than he did cash on hand.

  The Who’s management handled some of the debts. Among those settled was the account with Asprey. “It was a seven grand bill and there was no way they were going to see the money while he was alive,” says John Wolff “But once he was dead there was no way we were going to leave a stain on his good name.” The jewellers were so ecstatic to finally be paid they gave Wolff a gold watch in appreciation.

  The debts were considerable in California, too, where Keith had still not paid bills ranging from psychiatric treatment to interior decorating. It was Ian and Kim’s intention to sell the Trancas house to clear these debts and put money in trust for Mandy, who as Keith’s only surviving descendant, was the heir apparent to whatever funds would eventually be forthcoming. But the newly married couple were recommended to hold on to the property by their Californian lawyer. In a move that made perverse sense for a life and death as contradictory as Keith Moon’s, Ian and Kim moved to Los Angeles, and promptly settled into Keith’s vacant house in Victoria Point Road. They lived there for 18 months while Kim helped establish the Keith Moon Estate, and Mandy discovered a new habitat on the Pacific coast. The house was sold in 1980 for exactly $1,000,000; what had seemed his grandest folly turned out to be Keith’s one wise investment.108

  Annette Walter-Lax was mistakenly informed that she could lay claim on the Trancas property from being Keith Moon’s common-law wife during the period they lived there. But Annette decided not to pursue any such claim. “I was in sorrow,” she said. “I had pain. I just wasn’t there to fight for material things there and then.”

  In the short term, the Who treated her as though she was Keith’s widow anyway. After she had spent several weeks staying with her friend Sally Arnold, they put her up for a month in the bridal suite of the ultra-posh Kensington hotel Blake’s. When she was ready to move on, they bought her a car (she chose a Honda Civic), and paid rent on a flat (she chose a small one-bedroom apartment – in Knightsbridge).

  She tried not to ask for too much, and in the end she didn’t take wh
at she might have. She went to Shepperton to sort through Keith’s private belongings, and the sight of them, “tossed into a room at the top in there, just like a container full of rubble”, was too much for her to bear. “I just walked away. I didn’t have the strength.”

  Finally Annette got back on the social circuit. She met Gareth Hunt, an actor who made his name in the Seventies television series The New Avengers. She became pregnant, moved to Surrey with Hunt, married him and had a son, Oliver. Somewhere in the early stages of that relationship, the Who organisation recognised that she was back on her own two feet and took her off the pay-roll. It was the end of her relationship with the band.

  But not with the memory of its drummer. In early 1981, she sold the story of her love life with Keith to the top-selling British tabloid the Sunday Mirror.

  She needed the money, she says – although having just married a relatively successful actor, one might not have thought that to be the case. It would be more accurate to say that she felt she deserved the money, that although she had been well looked after by management immediately following Keith’s death, she was hurt that other people had become the beneficiaries of his income; she who had stood by Keith’s side through four traumatic years, who he had announced his intention to marry, who she says he wrote a will leaving much of his wealth to, was given no permanent recompense. She had, not surprisingly, been hounded by the press to tell her story ever since Keith’s death, and had consistently refused. In the end, however, “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  The resulting series was published in typically scandalous ‘kiss and tell’ fashion – though the actual contents were no more revealing than anything she volunteered for this book – thereby propagating the ‘Moon the Loon’ image and angering Keith’s immediate family.

  Kathleen Moon was particularly appalled. You’ve got a son of your own now, she told Annette. Just think what it feels like when people write that about your son. And you said you loved him. It was the end of Annette’s relationship with the Moons.

  Dougal Butler went one better than Annette. Financially hard-up, in no small part from his unpaid year in America, he sold the story of his exploits with Keith for a book, published in 1981 as Moon The Loon in the UK and Full Moon in the USA. Though the graphic descriptions of Keith’s sexual activity and drink and drug habits served to estrange him from both the group and the family, and though many of the anecdotes were either relocated in time and place, elaborated on or combined with others, the book (written with the help of two ghostwriters) found its way into the hearts of many Moon fans who appreciated the way the garrulous and outrageous narrative style seemed to reflect the chaos of Keith’s own life.

  The new Who, with Kenney Jones on drums and ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick on keyboards, ‘came out’ at the Rainbow in London on May 2, 1979, eight months after Keith’s death. The next week they went to the Cannes Film Festival to perform live and promote The Kids Are Alright and Quadrophenia, which were now ready for release. The Kids Are Alright, gloriously anarchic in both the group’s performances and in its lack of script or narration, cemented the Who legend and further immortalised Keith, who was already set to be its star even before his death made the film something of a public memorial. Quadrophenia, which had gone into production only days after Keith’s death, coincided with a full-scale mod revival among UK teenagers, for which the Who was a pre-dominant influence and a prime benefactor. When that revival played itself out, Quadrophenia was still a stunningly emotional and realistic movie about teenage identity crisis, and has gone on to be recognised as one of the UK’s great cult classics.

  Both films were accompanied by double album soundtracks, Quadrophenia featuring the first product of the new Who line-up’s recordings (three extremely average songs that sounded like nothing so much as filler). In the year after Keith’s death, the considerable success of the various albums and movies ensured that, given he was no longer around to spend the profits overnight, Keith Moon became in death the very wealthy man he always thought he was in life.

  Finally it was time to look to the future. The new Who played Wembley Stadium in August, a local venue Keith would certainly love to have conquered, and then did a week in New York and New Jersey. The ecstatic reaction suggested that even without Keith, the dynamics were still there to make them one of rock’s great spectacles. Such was the response and the sense of rejuvenation that Pete Townshend, so stubbornly opposed while Keith was alive, was persuaded to go back out on tour.

  To that end the Who returned to the States in December 1979. On December 3, at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, 11 fans were killed in what was referred to as a ‘stampede’ to gain first access to the arena’s ‘festival seating’ (which was actually an oxymoron for unreserved standing). The ‘stampede’ was more a desperate crush born of thousands of fans queuing outside a venue in freezing temperatures in a dangerous funnel design, their excitement fuelled by the general admission format of the arena floor, the sound of the group taking a late soundcheck and the limited number of opened doors. As such, it can be argued that the tragedy could have struck any band of similar intensity and legend in America – particularly at the Riverfront, which had had a series of disregarded close calls. Nonetheless, fate dictated that it happen to the Who. At least Keith Moon, who contributed so much to their legend, did not have to live with those deaths on his conscience. The memory of Neil Boland had been quite enough to chase him to an early grave.109

  Pete Townshend finally made a real solo album: Empty Glass, released in the spring of 1980, used most of the songs he had written in the last two years and was a substantial commercial and critical success, particularly in America. The solo Townshend seemed able to present himself as a fragile, introspective and mature superstar revealing his strengths and weaknesses with lyrical integrity and sublime arrangements. The post-Moon Who, meanwhile, appeared to be a great live band that struggled to transfer that excitement back onto tape. The album Face Dances, released in early 1981, had some passable pop songs, including the hit ‘You Better You Bet’ which helped it to sell as rapidly as any other Who album in history, but the group were not proud of it and indeed, quickly disowned it.

  When, on September 25, 1980, Keith’s fellow inebriate drummer John Bonham asphyxiated after one shot of vodka too many in a drinking binge at the age of 33, Led Zeppelin did not delay their decision or cast around for replacements. The most consistently successful rock group of the Seventies immediately disbanded.

  Now more than ever, Pete’s apparent newfound optimism seemed to many like cold-hearted betrayal. His immediate comments of excitement about the future in the wake of Keith’s death, his insistence on making Kenney Jones a full member, his sudden willingness to go back out on tour – and his apparent disregard for the tragedy of Cincinnati as displayed in a heartless Rolling Stone interview in June 1980 – all seemed to insult the memory of the man who had been, to the fans, the heart and soul of the group.

  Only over a considerable period of time did it become apparent that Pete’s apparent positivity was in fact pure denial. In Keith’s passing, he had lost not only a best friend, but his most passionate believer, his most vociferous champion. And more than that, he lost his foil. While Moon was alive, if Townshend ever wanted to get up to mischief or adventure – as frequently he did – he only needed to track down Keith. Chances were he could walk away again at the end of whatever chaos the pair would inspire and leave Moon to take the blame. (To which Keith didn’t care; it all just added to his legend.)

  But when Keith died, there was no one for Pete to bounce off like that. Absent his soul-mate, he lost his self-control. The recapitulation into the touring lifestyle, the deaths in Cincinnati, and the almost insane decision to record solo albums and Who albums concurrently combined for Pete with the loss of Keith to send him over the edge. No one quite realised what was happening until it was almost too late, but step by step, Townshend was absorbing Moon’s persona in addition to his own. It was
as if, after years of publicly disowning and denouncing Keith’s excesses and weaknesses, he felt compelled in his friend’s death to repeat them.

  Soon, his and Moon’s personalities were not even co-existing: Keith’s worst aspects appeared to have taken him over completely. Townshend became the fool instead of the teacher, the gadabout in place of the spiritualist, the destroyer rather than the seeker, and the adulterer where once he was the family man. He adopted the jet-set nightclub lifestyle more flagrantly than Keith ever had, was photographed falling out of trendy nightclubs on the arms of young blondes, to the horror of his loyal wife and kids, and in so doing he hardened his drinking habits until he was every bit the fully confirmed alcoholic Keith had ever been. At which point he began taking cocaine with a ferocity that would have shocked even Moon – and which he appeared to be doing in clear imitation of him.

  “It’s all right for Keith,” he slurred through grinding teeth to his art school comrade Richard Barnes when confronted backstage during the Who’s 1980 tour of America. “Why should he have all the glory?” On the return flight to the UK at the end of that tour, Pete behaved as embarrassingly as Keith ever had in transit. During the Who’s longest-ever British tour, on stage at the Rainbow in February 1981, he went through four bottles of brandy in a near-successful attempt to provoke Roger to fight him.

  The squalid death of Kit Lambert on April 27, 1981, from a brain haemorrhage almost certainly brought on when he was beaten up at a London gay bar two nights earlier, did nothing to bring Pete to his senses. Instead, he went a step further in his self-abuse, crossing Keith’s strict demarcation line (but, notably, not Kit’s): he became a heroin addict.

  It’s easy to pass judgement and pontificate at his stupidity. But Pete must have felt truly deserted. The three biggest influences in his professional and creative life – Pete Meaden, Keith Moon and Kit Lambert – had died within 20 months of each other, all of them from “fucking around with drugs and alcohol”, as he later described Keith’s cause of death. He seemed to have little desire for anything but to follow them in the same downward spiral towards oblivion.