Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (118 page)

‘Who Are You’ the single was released in the middle of July, the album in late August, both to considerable fanfare. The first new material from the band in almost three years, it was also the first since the punk explosion. As such, in the UK there was much discussion about the lyrics – particularly ‘the punk(s) and the godfather’ story behind the title song – and the Who’s overall place in the scheme of things. These were exciting times, but if you were one of the only surviving bands from the glory days of the Sixties, they were challenging ones too. No one knew how long a rock’n’roll group was meant to continue and as such there were some, even among their loyalest fans, who felt the Who had now fulfilled all expectations and could not continue much longer without tarnishing their almost spotless reputation. Just as many others believed that for as long as they cared about what they were doing – and everyone knew that the Who
cared –
they should keep going forever.

In America, where punk’s impact was marginal – the Sex Pistols had imploded while touring the States, and no other act seemed close to a commercial breakthrough – the angle was not the Who’s relevance, which was never in doubt, but their decision not to tour. Pete, Keith and Roger found themselves continually asked to explain this almost blasphemous position when they travelled to New York and Los Angeles in the middle of August for press duties. (John Entwistle stayed behind, wrapping up the soundtrack for
The Kids Are Alright?)

Pete gave
Rolling Stone
the justification that “the last three years have been the happiest of my life as far as my family goes”, to which Daltrey, apparently forgetting his promise made almost a year earlier, challenged in Los Angeles: “Physically, I still think I’ve got about three or four years left for going on tour and I think we should do it while we can.”

Keith played referee. “Just like old times, those two are at it again. Never mind, I shall talk some sense into them.”

But in talking to Dave Marsh of
Rolling Stone
, Moon was more serious. “I feel I’ve got a sense of purpose … In the two years off, I was really drifting away with no direction, no nothing … Nothing ever came close to the feeling I get when I’m working with the guys. Because it’s fun, but at the same time I know I’ve gotta discipline myself again. And also, it teaches me to take it as well as dish it out – that’s rock.” In the past, he admitted, “I’d fantasize that it was Pete’s problem, or John’s problem, or Roger’s problem. And it wasn’t. It was my fault, ‘cause I couldn’t take it. So I’ve grown up a little, from learning that.” The honesty was as disarming as it was endearing. Live on ABC’s
Good Morning America
a few hours earlier, he had been even more candid.

“Are you in control of your life at all?” asked the presenter, David Hartman, evidently well prepped as to Moon’s reputation.

“Oh yeah,” replied Keith. Then a caveat. “On certain days.”

“What are you like on the other days?” came the natural follow-up.

“Quite out of control… I mean, amazingly drunk.”

That particular day he appeared to be veering between the two extremes, drinking wine before the breakfast show, during his interview with Marsh at the Navarro and over a lengthy lunch, but he maintained sufficient composure that in the afternoon, on arrival at radio station WNEW, DJ Scott Muni remarked on air that Moon was looking healthy.

“Yes,” replied Keith in his best ‘dear boy’ accent. “Surprising, seeing as how I keep reading all these reports of how I’m supposed to be close to death.” He gave a laugh, a most undeniably nervous one. No one else joined him.

Back in south London, Ian McLagan and Kim Moon were contemplating emigration to California. The Faces had long ago split up, and given that a Small Faces reunion on the coat-tails of punk had just ground to an unsatisfactory halt, it made sense for McLagan to be in Los Angeles, the global base for session work, where he was in constant demand for his keyboard skills.

But when Kim mentioned their plans to her friend Penny Wilson, a barrister, she was reminded she would need Keith’s permission to take Mandy, now twelve, out of the country. Although Keith had made no attempt to see his daughter (or ex-wife) in the year he had been home, it was unlikely he would agree to let her move away. That’s just the way he was.

A few nights later Kim had a dream. She was with Keith in Africa, at an art gallery. They were happy together, it was just like old times. And then in that dream, a friend of Mac’s, a roadie called Ray Cole, telephoned her to say that Keith had died. “He can’t have,” she told Ray in the dream. “I was just with him.”

The very thought of Keith dying was so upsetting that she woke up in tears.

Later that week she had lunch with her friend Penny, whom she told about the dream in which Keith died. In an attempt to cheer Kim up, Penny cracked a morbid joke. “Well, if that happened, you wouldn’t have to worry about taking Mandy to America.”

On August 12, as
Who Are You
entered the British top 20, and while three-quarters of the band were in America, Pete Meaden died from an overdose of barbiturates. Though the group’s first mentor had been back in the Who camp, co-managing the Steve Gibbons Band with Bill Curbishley, he had seemed desperately unhappy all the same. It could have been many things, not least that he was so near control of the Who, yet so far – just as he had been back in 1964. The coroner, failing to find evidence of intended suicide, delivered an open verdict. Meaden’s friends said he knew too much about drugs to have overdosed by mistake. Pete Meaden was 35. Or 36. There seemed to be some confusion about his age.

When the Who came back to London, in the midst of mourning for Meaden they sat down to watch a rough edit of
The Kids Are Alright.
“It must have been horrific for Keith,” said Daltrey later. “There was this young drummer, great looking kid, going bananas, who turns out at the end of the film a fat old thing, falling off the drums, being held up. He’d gone to seed and he wanted to get it back. We were going to get a gym together at Shepperton.”

Moon became yet more forthcoming in his interviews; in tandem with regretting his time in America was admittance that he was human after all. “It’s the fear of insecurity and loneliness that depresses me,” he said in one instance, naming four of his biggest problems in one sentence when previously he would have admitted to none.

In another interview, Keith was highly tactful when asked about touring. “We’ve been doing that for 15 years and you can get a bit bored, especially when there are so many new directions opening up for us. I mean, let’s not count it out, but let’s not put it too high on the agenda.”

In private, he proclaimed a renewed enthusiasm for the road, especially to John Entwistle. “I’m fed up with being a fat pig,” Keith told his friend, announcing his intention of going to a health farm – yet again – to lose the weight.

“If he was under control he could drop ten pounds in a week,” says Entwistle, who clung to the memories of how fantastic the band had sounded at the end of 1976 and was eager to perform some Christmas shows that were strongly rumoured to have been booked. “He was determined, I could tell. He was absolutely disgusted with himself. Whenever he’d got in that state in the past he’d gone for it. It didn’t really matter if it was for good. You go a tour at a time.”

The ‘new directions’ of which Keith had spoken included, for him, an autobiography. He asked Bob Henrit to write it with him; Henrit, as well as owning a store, was one of the few drummers who doubled as a journalist. Keith made the same offer to broadcaster and journalist Annie Nightingale, who had long been a friend. The book was to be called
The Moon Papers.
Of all the characters in rock, certainly no one had more sordid and hilarious stories to tell. But he did not explain why he wanted to tell his life story at this particular stage. Maybe it was just another idea for self-promotion. And maybe, just maybe, he was finally ready to put the lock on ‘Moon the Loon’ and move into maturity.

If so, it was no less a struggle than ever before. “Keith used to go on the wagon every week,” says John Wolff of Keith during that summer. “And of course he would pontificate about how clean he had been for the last eight hours. The periods were very short because ‘mine host’ would find himself in a situation where he wouldn’t have had a drink but was in a situation where other people were, and he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to join in.”

The relentless pattern of heavy binges followed by attempted withdrawals increased the number of seizures, the
status epilepticus
attacks. Annette went to the Hilton one day to do some shopping, “And when I came back up to the flat he had had another fit because he had this big bump on his forehead, and that confused look you have when you come out of not knowing where you are or what happened, and I just knew that he had had another fit although he didn’t want to admit that was what had happened.”

At some point during August, Keith cut himself at home again. This appears to have been in a fight with Annette, who was later quoted by the
Sunday Mirror
saying how “He had to be put to sleep by a doctor to save him from maiming me.” This quote, she now admits, is an exaggeration in that while Keith might destroy everything in a room in a fit of fury, including throwing objects at her, he never ever laid a hand on her or gave any indication that he would. But that particular night, frightened of Keith’s potential to inflict damage on himself or others, she called Richard Dorse just as she had called on Dougal in the past. Dorse came round and “He held Keith back, he tied him down, he told him, ‘You’re going to stop this, you silly bastard,’ “as Annette recalls. A doctor was promptly called.

That doctor was a certain Geoffrey Dymond, previously unknown to Keith, who recalls another doctor also being summoned to the flat, but that he was the one with whom Keith decided to pursue a relationship. That evening, according to both Annette and Dymond’s subsequent recollections, the doctor ended Keith’s rampage by injecting him with a sedative. Subsequently taking Moon on as a client patient, Dymond put him on a course of Heminevrin, the brand name for the compound chlormethiazole, which is officially described as being for use ‘in the treatment of insomnia, psychosis, alcohol withdrawal symptoms and
status epilepticus.’
Given that this almost perfectly described Keith’s problems, it would appear to have been the right drug for him. And it might well have been, had it been administered as it usually is: under direct supervision, during a hospitalised detoxification process, for the short period of time – a few days – during which withdrawal can provoke epileptic fits.

Any other form of prescription was inherently dangerous. According to a book on alcohol treatment distributed by the World Health Organisation,
¹⁰¹
“Chlormethiazole should not be used in home detoxification because of a significant risk of respiratory depression when mixed with alcohol; it also has a high dependence potential and should not therefore be used in outpatient detoxification.” In other words, the drug should not be left in the hands of alcoholics both because it can be deadly when mixed with alcohol and because the patient’s addictive tendencies and the drug’s addictive qualities might easily result in an overdose. Keith Moon was given complete control over a full bottle of 100 tablets.