Who was the first rock band to throw a TV out the hotel window?
Such was the financial decadence of the 1970s in music that televisions being thrown out the window became a regular occurrence of mind-altered jubilance. It’s hard to picture a modern artist, beholden to the scratchy streaming royalty figures standing over a 42” plasma without thinking of the subsequent repayments their moment of inhibition would cost. But for classic rock behemoths like The Rolling Stones, The Faces, and The Who, such consequences didn’t exist for the industry then, and they were brimming with opulence.
In the 1970s, a smashed television became the calling card for many of the industry’s hedonistic bands. While the ever-turning wheels of the commercial machine kept their pockets lined, it was necessary to remain bastions of the counterculture. So, the television, a symbol of burgeoning commercialism, became the appropriate victim for their vandalism, which, above all, hid their main aims of validating their lawless celebrity status.
When crowning the founder of the television toss, all roads lead to a pair of Keiths. In the early 1970s, The Rolling Stones and The Who had stormed global charts and arenas with their expansive power-pop that thrust careless young rock stars into the realms of stardom. Bouncing from hotel to hotel on drug-addled tours, Keith Richards and Keith Koon began to exercise their highs within the confines of their post-show hotels.
Ever since, Keith Moon – otherwise known as ‘Moon The Loon’ – has been crowned the king of hotel room smash-ups, nailing furniture to hotel room ceilings, bursting waterbeds in hotel lobbies, and even driving a Lincoln Continental into the swimming pool of a Holiday Inn. His legend was born from the creativity of his antics, and so the simple act of throwing a television out of a window became sparsely exercised.
While such tales would hint that Moon was the original television smasher, it’s hard to officially credit him. Especially when his Rolling Stone namesake has footage to back up his vandalism claims. In the video below, Richards can be seen with Bobby Keys, throwing a television set from the tenth floor of the Continental Hotel in West Hollywood during their 1972 tour in the earliest footage of a television toss.
It’s a somewhat underwhelming portrayal of a rock ‘n’ roll act so deeply mythologised that several questions are raised. How boring was the time spent in between shows? How potent were the drugs they were taking? And simply how much money were they making? It’s likely that the answers to all three are fairly predictable.
What happened when Keith Moon drove a car into a pool?
Turning 21 in America probably wasn’t as big of a deal for Keith Moon as it would be for everyone else. A night-life veteran by then, a simple popping of a champagne bottle wouldn’t have sufficed. Especially when you consider the run of form Moon beginning to develop that night at The Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan.
After jumping into the pool from rooftops and blowing up toilets with cherry bombs, Moon decided that a food fight was the natural next step. Barry Whitwam, the drummer for Herman’s Hermits, recounted the beginning of chaos, saying: “The whole tour gathered in the dining room to view all the cakes. Everybody was ready for a party. Keith Moon put his plate down on the table and stuck his finger into the cream on top of one of the cakes and casually flicked it at [Hermits bassist] Karl Green who was standing next to him.”
“The cream hit Karl in the face, and everybody laughed – apart from Karl, who stuck his finger into the nearest cake and flicked some back into Keith’s face,” he continued, “Within seconds, everybody in the room was throwing cake at each other. It only took five minutes to change the room into what looked like the inside of a cake.”
Not quite content with redecorating the halls of a hotel, Moon bounced around the premises like a cat on a hot tin roof looking for his next means of destruction. So when a fleet of parked – or what Moon considered abandoned – cars presented themselves, it was an opportunity too good to pass up for a prankster like Moon.
He said: “Half a dozen cars were parked around this swimming pool. I ran out, jumped into the first car I came to, which was a brand new Lincoln Continental… It was parked on a slight hill, and when I took the handbrake off it started to roll, and it smashed straight through this pool-surround fence, and the whole Lincoln Continental went into the swimming pool – with me in it.”
A sunken car is usually the point where proceeds are brought to an end. But the coming-of-age bash of one of music’s most legendary party animals obviously doesn’t abide by such rules. Sensibly, Moon decided to rip the trousers of a fellow party-goer from pocket to floor and laugh in their face. After they then responded by pulling down the trousers of Moon, leaving him half naked, an ugly and somewhat surreal scuffle broke out.
At this point, a police officer who, up until this point, had been protecting The Who from crazed fans suddenly turned his revolver on the drummer for breaking the law in Michigan for the exposure of his manhood. After sprinting away from the scene in a panic, the saga was brought to a close by the very thing that started it all: the cake. Moon slipped on the celebratory food, knocked out his front teeth and was left with nothing but an iconic anecdote.
