Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon (2 page)

Taking apart the myths that made up Keith’s life and re-arranging them as facts has not always been easy. Moon tended to surround himself with characters equally undisciplined whose memories can sometimes be found lacking; these were not people to keep diaries. And Keith was forever at the centre of a hectic storm. The well-worn cliché that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t there could just as easily apply to the mid-Seventies Los Angeles in which Keith installed himself.

To be as certain of my story as possible, I reviewed every single anecdote for credence. Where two or more recollections of events differed, I checked the circumstances to decide upon the most likely. Those tales that did not seem plausible according to the situation, however witty or shocking, were left on the hard-drive equivalent of the cutting-room floor.

The same applies in the areas where the story diverges into the history of the Who. It was never my intention to concentrate too much on the band: the greatest compliment I could hope for would be that this biography is enthusiastically devoured by people who do not come to it as Who fans, but as readers looking for a story, pure and simple, with all the soaring heights and plummeting depths of a great novel, yet every part of it true.

Having said that, it was impossible to write about Keith’s career without establishing it in the context of one of rock’s most important and influential groups, that which Keith lived and died for, and as I did detail those developments within the Who that I thought essential I found that, as in the drummer’s own life, many evidently false stories had been allowed to prosper unchallenged, the natural consequence of constant repetition. If certain aspects of the Who’s history that I report appear to run counter to previously ‘authoritative’ accounts, it is because I believe my version to be the truth. For with the benefit of ever-increasing hindsight, history reveals itself more clearly, written evidence becomes more readily available, and those modest souls who were not shouting falsehoods from the rooftops at the height of the madness finally get to distribute their clear recollections. It is with these elements in my favour that I feel this story to be as accurate as possible while allowing that it is, of necessity, a story about self-perpetuated myth-making and the continual conversion of perception into reality.

I was at first tempted to tell Keith’s story purely as narrative, reliving it in ‘real’ time. But, although it would read as greater fiction than many a novel, too much of his life was lived without other people knowing enough of what was going on, and far too much of it exaggerated to far too great an extreme, for me not to take advantage of the benefit of hindsight. For that same reason, I have allowed my own perspective or opinion to cast itself among the pages as necessary: the biographer’s pursuit is half crazed obsession and half detached detective work, and the failure to either share one’s passion for (or theories on) one’s subject after chasing it relentlessly halfway round the world would be nothing short of romantic or professional cowardice. Finally, as all biographers and journalists recognise, a story cannot be told without hearing large parts of it first from others. While, in a life as mercurial as Keith’s, no two recantations can ever be quite the same, there are times when one particular person’s memory provides the most trenchant – or, as so often in Moon’s case, the funniest – way to tell the story. I was fortunate so many people who were close to Keith were willing to share their insights; if we are to make some sense of Keith’s triumphant yet ultimately tragic life, their words deserve to be heard.

Of the many subplots which will hopefully reveal themselves as part of the bigger picture over the pages that follow, perhaps the one I am most keen to paint is of Keith Moon as a symbol (albeit an extreme one) of his times – an extrovert teenage pop star let loose to fend for himself in the uncharted sea of rock stardom, with no map and no compass, just a bunch of equally wild and unschooled pirates for company, and a ship’s hold full of powerful intoxicants, fame hardly the least potent. Those who remember the Robert Newton impersonations of his youth and who saw Keith’s transformation over the years into the living personification of Newton’s Long John Silver will maybe find it all the more poignant if I suggest that Keith’s own unscripted journey ended with him marooned on a private Treasure Island, materially rich beyond his dreams and emotionally poor at heart, unable to successfully communicate with the world at large, craving love yet unable to return it, demanding attention without realising that he had it. The scene in which he was rescued from this isolated existence to live happily ever after was unfortunately never written. In true-life dramas there often are no happy endings.

TONY FLETCHER
Brooklyn
February 1998

I
t was a life built upon the perpetuation of frequently embellished, often entirely fabricated stories, many of them emanating from his own lips. As such, it should come as no great surprise that the myth begins with his birth. Keith John Moon came into the world at Central Middlesex Hospital on Acton Lane in what was then the Urban District of Willesden, during the peak of the post-war baby boom, on August 23, 1946. Put like that, the details appear almost inane, reassuringly irrefutable. Except for the date. It has been written into history, including all major and official documentation of the Who
¹
, that Keith was born a year later, in 1947. He wasn’t; that is a fact. But that this ‘mistake’ has persevered into history demonstrates how easily lies are established in the sensationalist world that is rock’n’roll. A falsehood spoken often enough with conviction, printed frequently enough without research, quickly becomes a truth.

Keith knew this all too well. Somewhere down the line he decided it wasn’t enough to be the youngest in a young band; perhaps the mere 15 months between him and Pete Townshend did not seem sufficient given the songwriter’s evident maturity compared to the drummer’s retentive juvenile behaviour. That Keith was a bona-fide British pop star at 18, touring America by chartered jet at the time of his 21st birthday, and a fully paid-up member of rock’s aristocratic landed gentry at 25 clearly did not offer adequate comfort in an industry forever obsessed by the latest crop of ambitious teenagers.

So he simply subtracted a year from his life. And everyone believed him. Once he realised how easy it was to rewrite the truth, he never stopped. Falsities and fibs fell from his mouth with ever-increasing regularity. Keith was not so much a compulsive liar, however, as a compelling liar, one whom people
wanted
to believe, with the press especially gullible. But Keith was wrong if he thought his life needed fictionalising. While the embroidered, elaborated, exaggerated picture he later painted of himself is revealed as such the moment the surface is scratched, the real Keith that lay underneath was equally fascinating: it was just that the insecurities that festered throughout his life provoked him to erect barricades to prevent it being revealed.

Though loquacious and hospitable, the adult Keith Moon never made a particularly referential interviewee. Asked in the early days of fame for his opinions about the latest Who record, he would generally reply with a stock description about how “We’ve had a lot more fun recording” or “We’d be very disappointed if it didn’t sell.” His publicists soon grasped their subject’s limitations and learned instead to simply let journalists loose into Keith’s private world – be it at his inimitable house Tara in Surrey, his pub in the Cotswolds, on a film set perhaps, holding court at a nightclub after a show, even at a country fête – and hope for the best. The nigh-impossible task facing anyone sent to ‘cover’ the man was to convey in mere words the sight and sounds of Keith Moon in constant motion, to capture on paper the maniacal laugh that peppered his rambling monologues, to duly note his facial expressions as he ran through a variety of impersonations, to report his humour in black and white when his jokes rarely involved punch lines – all of which the writer usually attempted through the haze of the following day’s hangover. Given that rock journalism as any kind of art form didn’t take off until the mid-Seventies, by which point Keith was lauded as a clown worthy of wildly inventive photo shoots and ludicrous publicity stunts but certainly not considered a rock spokesman (particularly given the lengthy shadow that Townshend cast in this respect), then it’s no surprise that Keith left little legacy as to his own version of his childhood. It would seem no one thought – or dared – to peel away the veneer of that heavily coated self-portrait.

Judging by Keith’s own accounts, his life only began when he discovered the drums and left school, in quick succession, at the age of 14. To the extent that he had found his vocation in life, that may have been true. Even so, it is surprising just how thoroughly absent Keith Moon’s family is from any discussion he subsequently entered into on his youth. We know his parents supported him: Keith would never have become such a precocious young drummer without their financial and emotional help. We know he loved them, too: later in life, he would buy them their council house. (His mother, a stolid, self-sufficient, unfussing working-class woman to the core – indeed, the exact opposite of her son – refused to be moved anywhere more fancy.) But he chose not to talk about them. Perhaps he was worried that they were boring. Perhaps there was just nothing to say.

To a large extent, this was true. His parents, unlike their famous son, chose anonymous lives, loyal to each other and without distraction to the rest of the world. They were born just a year apart: Kathleen Winifred Hopley (‘Kit’ to her friends), the youngest of three girls, on November 4, 1920 at 72 St John’s Avenue in Harlesden; Alfred Charles Moon arriving fifth in a hefty brood of four girls and three boys, delivered on Brook Farm in Hernhill, north Kent, on November 30, 1919. Harlesden was then an outpost of north-west London with much employment provided by the railways, both national and underground, that converged on nearby Willesden Junction; Kathleen’s father Harry, the ancestor from whom Keith most likely picked up any ebullient characteristics, worked as a railway guard. The Kent countryside in which Alf was raised stood in considerable contrast, the family farm (Moon being a not uncommon name in the area) just one of many intrinsically linked to neighbouring Faversham, a market town of just over 10,000 people with a trade primarily in corn, hops and wool, and a fortnightly cattle market.

Alf and Kit met during their late teens when the Hopleys took a family holiday to the north Kent seaside, where destinations like Heme Bay and Margate have always been popular with working-class London families. War was looming ominously on the horizon at the time, and young couples nationwide were throwing themselves into new relationships with an almost spiritual vigour, sweethearts rushing to the altar as if the wedding vows could serve as a talisman during the men’s impending absence.

Alf Moon had the luxury of avoiding the war, at least first hand. Farming was considered a ‘Reserve Occupation’, farmers themselves exempt from conscription. Had he immersed himself in the family business, Alf could have observed the Battle of Britain from the relative safety of the fields of Kent. But he looked on that option as cowardice. His country, he believed, needed him. Besides, he had never wanted to be a farmer. He preferred the allure of the city. He signed up.