Read Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon Online
Authors: Tony Fletcher
Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (130 page)
It’s a pleasure to print such purely positive memories.
Unstated at the start of this addendum, but readily acknowledged as contributing to public interest in Keith Moon, was the Who’s decision to re-form in 1996. While the initial intent was primarily for Pete Townshend to present
Quadrophenia
in its entirety, as had been a failure back in 1973, the re-formation gradually gained its own momentum, receiving praise from fans and critics alike. Once the
Quadrophenia
shows had run their course, the group shrunk back down to a five-piece, and set off on an ongoing series of international Greatest Hits shows
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that carried them well into the 21st century, by which time they had reclaimed their status as one of the greatest rock bands ever.
Part explanation for the success of this re-formation lay in the new respect between the band’s two former leaders and competitors, Townshend and Daltrey. The animosity that had marked much of their professional relationship virtually disappeared once they entered their fifties, and the pair seemed keen to make up for lost time. Daltrey, certainly, had never wanted to do much else but sing with the Who, and though he would occasionally struggle to reach the high notes as he neared his sixtieth birthday, he could never be faulted for fitness, determination or enthusiasm. Townshend, meanwhile, he who had abandoned the electric guitar on the 1989 reunion tour, appeared to have beaten back his tinnitus; night after night through the late Nineties and early 2000s, he attacked his electric guitar with enough fire and skill to earn the respect of the most begrudging new punk on the block. The songs themselves may have remained the same, but Townshend in particular always seemed to find a new way to play them.
Of the founding members, that left John Entwistle. As with Daltrey, John had never wanted much more than to play with the Who – and he had long considered that job as his ongoing right. Interviewed for this book in 1996, as rehearsals got under way for the
Quadrophenia
show in Hyde Park, London -at a point when it was still not certain it would be billed as the Who, and with no further touring plans confirmed – he was openly hostile towards Townshend.
“If it hadn’t been for Pete Townshend making too much money, I’d be rich,” he insisted. “And that to me is the most selfish thing that anyone can ever do to a human being, deprive them of work because of their own selfish ideas. I can’t feel anything but bitter about what happened. And I know that Keith got the same way. The periods that we had off for ‘creating’ stuff … We’d be sitting on our arses for 18 months while someone actually writes something for their own fucking benefit.”
Townshend, of course, had never stopped the other Who members from doing their own thing while he worked on new songs (which then made them
all
rich through recording and touring royalties) and, in the Nineties, gave Entwistle and Daltrey his blessing to tour the Who’s music without him. To varying degrees, the pair tried this, but they knew there was no credible Who without Pete. And that’s what appeared to anger John – the thought that he could have played more consistently, and made more money, had he taken his talents to a band that desired to keep working well into middle age.
“Quite honestly, I consider I wasted my whole fucking career on the Who,” he said a few minutes later in this interview. “Complete fucking waste of time. I should be a multimillionaire, I should be retired by now.”
Asked about his legacy, he replied, “I’ll be known as an innovative bass player. But that doesn’t help get my swimming pool rebuilt and let me sit on my arse watching TV all day. I wouldn’t want to, but I’d like the chance to be able to.”
It should be noted that John was working his way through a bottle of Remy Martin during the course of this interview, which is one reason these comments have previously been kept private. Besides, once the
Quadrophenia
shows gathered steam and mutated into an ongoing Who re-formation, John Entwistle was again a happy man – a working rock star and so much more than merely an “innovative” bass player, surely the finest of his generation. Clearly back in his element, he lived up to his dual nicknames of Thunderfingers (for his amazing dexterity on the bass) and The Ox (for his hardy constitution) until the bitter end.
That came in Las Vegas, on the eve of a new Who tour in June 2002. John had hit the city a couple of days early, partly to attend the opening party for a show of his art. He died in his room at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on June 27 when a “significant amount of cocaine” (the Coroner’s words) brought on a heart attack. It transpired that Entwistle had been taking medication for a weak heart, which suggests he had a misplaced sense of immortality. It also transpired that a female ‘dancer’ was in the room with him at the time of his death – which suggests he had an undying loyalty to rock’n’roll hedonism.
Such revelations were surely in Roger Daltrey’s mind when he issued a statement after Entwistle’s death that included the following lines: “John made no compromises in the way he lived his life. He did it totally his way. Sad though it is, if he could have written an ending for himself it would have been very similar to the one he had. For those who knew him and his sense of humour they will raise a smile at that. He was a true rock’n’roll icon through and through and he was so proud that he was famous.”
Professionally, Roger and Pete reacted to John’s death in much the way they had to Keith’s: confounding fans with an instant decision to keep going. There was, certainly, the need for a quick response this time: unlike when Keith died in 1978, the Who were on the brink of a large arena tour that needed either to be honoured or cancelled. They opted for the former route, bringing in the highly revered bassist Pino Palladino. Still, the manner in which Townshend publicly made his decision – “I simply believe we have a duty to go on, to ourselves, ticket buyers, staff, promoters, big and little people,” he wrote on his website – and the fact that Pino was on board and playing John’s entire unique repertoire just four days after the bassist’s death surprised many observers.
So, too, did the news that Townshend and Daltrey would now record together again. Entwistle had made no secret of his desire to return to the studio with the Who, which means that even his own famously black humour would have been stretched to the limit had he known that his partners would only do so following his death.
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Who fans themselves were in open conflict about Townshend and Daltrey’s decision to carry on touring: those who felt that this group was no longer the Who were often the same people who admitted they would keep paying to see Roger and Pete for as long as the pair wished to share a stage together.
If there was one reason for believing that the Who remained a group at this point, and not just the continuation/ruination of a great name by only half its founding members, it was Zak Starkey. Since assuming Keith Moon’s role on the drums with the Hyde Park show in June 1996, Zak had become an integral part of the line-up. It was not just that Zak had been given his first kit by Keith, that he had viewed Moon as family, or that he was the son of a Beatle and thereby not easily cowed by the Who’s reputation. It was that Zak proved capable of playing the drums with the same sense of passion and power as had Keith. Or to be more precise, he was the
only
person who proved capable of playing the drums like that. He also provided a lifeline to a younger generation: while those in their twenties and thirties could only look up to the surviving Who members as first generation rockers now in the twilight of their performing careers, those same gig-goers could look across to Zak as one of their own.
In the 21st century then, Keith Moon’s presence looms as large as ever and in so many ways. His performing skills loom every night that the Who take the stage and Zak Starkey pays such sincere homage to his mentor’s talent. His playing technique looms every time the Who archivists re-master another back catalogue classic and unearth old demos or otherwise unreleased recordings, all of which are now listened to with an emphasis on Keith’s drumming.
His behaviour – as Moon The Loon – looms large in the media, however much books like this attempt to present the serious side of the story. When, for example, in 2004,
Q
Magazine ran a list of the 100 Most Insane Moments in Rock, it placed Keith Moon – in totality – at number one. And yet his worth can be measured in a more material manner, too. In September of 2004, Christie’s of London auctioned an incomplete
124
drum kit of Keith’s from the late Sixties – evidently the one Keith used during The Rolling Stones
Rock’n’Roll Circus
performance. The only physical evidence that the Premier kit had belonged to Keith was a bass drum transfer-printed with the Who logo. Christie’s duly placed an estimate of £10,000-£15,000 on the kit. The drums actually sold, to an anonymous bidder, for a staggering £120,000 – the highest price, to anyone’s knowledge, ever paid for a rock musician’s drum kit at auction.
One likes to think that Keith would have been proud of such a legacy. Every single aspect of it.
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I never understood how the two issues were connected. And it jarred with the BBC’s very public insistence that it was ‘independent’ of outside pressures, as during the run-up to the Iraq war.
112
My thanks to Andy Neill for putting me directly in touch with Peter Tree and Michael Evans.
113
The Beachcombers had been certain about the timing of their ad in the
Harrow and Wembley Observer, so I
scoured back copies of the paper, at The British Newspaper Library in Colindale, without success. Andy Neill, researching what would become
Anyway Anyhow Anywhere
, proved more patient, and eventually found the pertinent advert in the April 25, 1963 edition. It’s reprinted in his and Kent’s book.
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The
30 Years Of Maximum R&B
error over ‘Leaving Here’ was first noted in
Anyway Anyhow Anywhere;
co-author Matt Kent works with Pete Townshend and has access to much of the archive information. It now appears unlikely that ‘Leaving Here’ was ever recorded by the High Numbers. The version of ‘Here ‘Tis’, on which Keith’s drumming is impressive though not formidable, is indeed part of that June 1964 High Numbers session.
115
NPR archived the story online, along with the full, unedited interviews with Roger Daltrey and myself. Daltrey’s quote here is from the unedited version. At the time of this book’s publication, all three items could be accessed through this web page:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1420254
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It seems necessary to respond to Daltrey’s comments about biographers, specifically this one, “interviewing ex-alcoholics and drug addicts”. In his unedited interview, as preserved on the NPR website, Roger refers to all three other members of the Who – and the manager, though he doesn’t specify whether that means Kit Lambert, Chris Stamp or both – in similar terms. Is he suggesting that a biographer should not attempt to interview those who, despite their vices, knew the subject as well as anyone? (I very much regret that Daltrey himself declined to be interviewed for the book; I would have welcomed his own memories and observations.) Had I discounted ex-alcoholics and drug users from my research, I would have cut my list of prospective interviewees in half! I would also have lost the perspective that many of these people were able to offer about their addictions, and how Keith may have shared these traits. Finally, while Roger Daltrey may feel entitled to address his business partners in such terms, I don’t know that members of Herman’s Hermits, or Nancy Lewis, or Tom Wright, all of whom have also gone on record with their memories of Keith’s 21st, would want themselves referred to as such.
117
It can be accessed at
www.petercavanaugh.com
118
Such claims were indeed made at the Inquest, but there is no report of the Bentley’s condition to confirm or deny them.
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http://del_pasado.tripod.com/keithmoonwasnotdriving
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The flat, which belonged to Harry Nilsson, was a temporary refuge for Keith at this time; in 1978, he would move there permanently and, sadly, die there too.
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A well-known theatrical costumiers in London’s Leicester Square.
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Including the Who’s first ever visit to Japan and a return to Australia, some 36 years after the ill-fated tour detailed on pages 213–215.
123
The first results of these new recordings were issued as additions to the umpteenth Who compilation, this one entitled
Then And Now
, released in the spring of 2004. The songs in question, ‘Real Good Looking Boy’ and ‘Old Red Wine’, were adequate, but not worth waiting 22 years for.
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A bass drum, two floor toms and two side toms; no snare, cymbals or additional toms such as Keith would have used.
PRIMARY BOOK SOURCES
Barnes, Richard.
Mods!
(Plexus, UK 1979)
— The Who:
Maximum R&B
(Plexus, UK 1996)
—; with Townshend, Pete.
The Story Of Tommy
(Eel Pie, UK 1977)
Bromberg, Craig.
The Wicked Ways Of Malcolm McLaren
(Harper & Row, US 1989)
Burdon, Eric.
I Used To Be An Animal, But I’m All Right Now
(Faber & Faber, UK 1986)
Butler, Dougal; with Chris Trengrove & Peter Lawrence.
Moon The Loon: The Amazing Rock’n’roll Life Of Keith Moon
(Star, UK 1981)
—
Keith Moon: A Personal Portrait
(privately published, 2001)
Charlesworth, Chris.
Townshend: A Career Biography
(Proteus, UK 1984)
Cole, Richard.
Stairway To Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored
(HarperCollins, US 1996)