Keith Moon and Oliver Reed created rock and roll’s greatest drinking contest
It’s easy to count on one hand the number of rock stars who stopped themselves from overindulging during their heyday. Living on the road is no picnic, and rockers tend to do whatever they need to anaesthetise themselves whenever they’re off the stage. Some rock stars use booze to escape, but Keith Moon was a human hurricane whenever he hit the booze.
The escapades of The Who drummer were the stuff of rock legend, including a few times in which he fired cherry bombs in hotel rooms and threw televisions out of windows. Though Moon was always up for a good time, he wasn’t one to back down from competition, especially with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
Around the time that The Who were making the rounds on the strength of Tommy, the conversation began about turning Pete Townshend’s rock opera into a movie. Although most of the cast comprised their fellow rock stars like Elton John and Tina Turner, Oliver Reed was added as Tommy’s domineering stepfather, always turning a blind eye to his son’s afflictions and more focused on the attention he’s getting from Tommy’s mother.
Outside of filming, Moon got into a friendly competition with Reed, who had been known to enjoy a drink or ten. After meeting at Reed’s home, he introduced Moon to a pub located close to his house and challenged him to see who could drink the other under the table. Roger Daltrey recalled that the drink of choice was brandy, and it didn’t take long for them to fall, telling Howard Stern: “Apparently, it went down to the third bottle of Brandy, and Oliver Reed passed out under the table. Then Moon stood up and said, ‘Fuck you, Ollie. I’m going to the pub for a real drink’ because Moon had a pub at the end of his drive”.
Despite Reed and Moon’s friendship blossoming, Moon was about to go down a very dark path. Outside of his wacky personality, Moon was wildly insecure and would choose to hide behind the bottle, a decision which culminated in him being in really rough shape by the time the band was wrapping up albums like Quadrophenia.
Daltrey would later say that he would become worried that Moon was testing the limits of his body a little too much, saying, “He obviously had an addictive personality. I’ve never known anyone who would take the amount of drugs and booze that Moonie did. People would take one pill and be high as a kite for a day. He would take a handful of them and be drinking with it too”.
After ballooning in size towards the end of Who Are You, Moon was found dead in a hotel room, overdosing on painkillers that were supposed to help him get off the booze. Although the band continued for a few more albums without Moon behind the kit, Townshend had mentioned the band treading water at that point, eventually dissolving in the early ‘80s and only resurfacing to play the odd reunion show or album.
These days, though, Daltrey prefers to remember the good times with Moon, going on to tell Stern, “He was such an enormous character. Every facet of his personality was way up there. He was the most loving, spiteful, caring person. It was all like fireworks going off”.
