“An absolute fanatic”: Keith Moon’s favourite band
Every music fan can claim to have witnessed at least one outrageous drummer in their time. All of us have been to grassroots venues and surprisedly caught the work of a flamboyant stickman doing their very best to outdo their bandmates with an array of animated facial expressions, from Derek Zoolander-esque pouts to pained grimaces. One man had a key role in this breed of peddler becoming so ubiquitous: Keith Moon.
In the story of the drums, only a select few stand out as the instrument’s definitive greats, and The Who’s late dynamo is undoubtedly one of the most revered. A tradition-defying rhythmic architect, he fused the influence of jazz, big band, and surf rock, which first inspired him with frenetic energy to create one of the most pulsating styles that drums have ever seen.
He also instilled tangible heaviness into the kit by increasing its size and adding a double bass drum, something that Graham Bond Organisation and Cream whizz Ginger Baker was also one of the first to employ. This approach to playing and general sound was then augmented by Moon’s colourful onstage tendencies, which often meant total obliteration for his immediate setting, and saw him regularly smash up and sometimes even blow up his drums.
It would be easy to concentrate on Moon’s extra-musical life, which saw him come to embody the most extreme corner of rock ‘n’ roll excess and leave a trail of wanton destruction in his wake. Tragically, it culminated with his death at age 32 in September 1978. However, the Londoner’s musical work made him so much more significant than a sad symbol of a bygone age.
Accordingly, it’s fascinating to delve into the range of music that inspired him as it paints a much more complex picture than the rather two-dimensional image he is afforded due to his antics. One of the most telling aspects of his personality and its great depth was that his favourite band was The Beach Boys.
Moon is on record as a big fan of surf rock, but the thought of him being into the sunny sounds of Brian Wilson’s troupe of Californians adds an intriguing dimension to his career and character. This is because The Who were known for their defiant intensity, which was largely opposed to The Beach Boys’ airy and juvenile work before their 1966 masterpiece, Pet Sounds. Even more interesting is that Moon wasn’t as blown away by that record as you might think, telling Melody Maker the year it came out that “there’s nothing revolutionary in the album”. There was clearly something specific about early 1960s surf rock that appealed to his character.
In light of his widely reported youthfulness and energy, it is possible to understand why Moon’s favourite band was The Beach Boys. Their early work distilled the optimism of the era’s youth despite its distinctly American nature. This is something that The Who frontman Roger Daltrey has also suggested, and he once revealed that his old friend was such a “fanatic” of the ‘Sloop John B’ group that he even wanted to leave The Who for them.
Daltrey told Uncut in 2015: “The funny thing about Keith, though, he was a total Beach Boys nut. Even in the ’70s, if The Beach Boys had asked Keith to join them and leave The Who, he’d have left us. He was an absolute fanatic. That first night he joined us, his hair was bright ginger ’cos he’d gone out and bought a bottle of peroxide to become a Californian bleach blond – but with his jet black hair and the peroxide, he’d gone like a bloody carrot.”
While Moon would never get his wish of joining The Beach Boys, he would cover their 1964 track ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ on his sole solo album, Two Sides of the Moon, in 1975. Although the song is more like a drunken cover, you might hear it down a boozer on a Friday night. It is filled with the youthful enthusiasm for The Beach Boys that the drummer clearly harboured.
