The bizarre night Keith Moon bit Steve McQueen’s dog
There are countless wild stories about Keith Moon. The Who’s infamous drummer had a penchant for chaos as he smashed his way through drum kits and hotel rooms, thrilling fans and pissing off staff. But even in his home light, the carnage never stopped. Just ask Steve McQueen, the actor who wound up as Moon’s neighbour and then enemy after a dramatic showdown involving a puppy and two sharp bites.
It feels like the start of a joke, but in the 1970s, Keith Moon and Steve McQueen were neighbours. With the spoils of his band paying off, the drummer splashed the cash on a Malibu mansion that happened to be right next door to the actor. But the Hollywood heartthrob wasn’t too pleased to have the famously wild musician ruining his peaceful retreat. He wouldn’t let any of Moon’s antics intrude on his calm haven, so when they eventually and inevitably did, it was explosive.
The story goes that Moon was planning a party because, of course, what else would he do? After buying a beachside mansion, the drummer wasn’t going to let it go to waste without a huge welcoming blowout for all his friends. As a good neighbour, he was obviously going to extend the invite to McQueen.
“Somewhere in the middle of arranging the event, Keith Moon walked the 50-odd yards next door to the McQueens’,” a biographer wrote in Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon. The plan was to hand over an invite and say hello, but no plans ran smoothly for the drummer; there was always chaos on the brain.
“But encountering only Chad, McQueen’s 16 year old son from his previous marriage, Keith succeeded in antagonizing the boy no end through offers of – or a request for – drink and drugs,” he continued. That alone would be enough to annoy a neighbour and leave a terrible impression. Winding up a teenage son is one thing, but when pets get involved, it’s a whole other story.
“There were reports that Keith pushed into the house, that a fight broke out,” the biographer wrote, which is all dramatic yet standard stuff. But then the next line gets weird as there were reports that “the McQueens’ dog bit Keith and Keith bit it back.”
They say that entertainment is a dog-eat-dog world, but it’s not meant to be taken so literally. To adequately unpack what on earth went down here, I fear we’d need to bring in a psychologist to analyse why Moon’s response to a dog biting him was to not run away or push the dog away but to instead turn into a dog himself and get revenge the animalistic way. Who knows whether the drummer got down on all fours to launch his response attack, or what this savage fight back looked like, all his biographer wrote was, “Certainly a confrontation took place.”
Obviously, McQueen wasn’t happy. But as a sign of just how much of a nightmare neighbour Moon was, this wild incident was only the beginning of a feud so tense and so melodramatic that someone could make a movie about it.
