The tragic final weeks of Keith Moon
“When you’ve got money, and you do the kind of things I get up to,” Keith Moon once expressed, “People laugh and say that you’re eccentric, which is a polite way of saying you’re fucking mad”.
As the lovable madman behind The Who’s drum kit, Moon had become known for his often-damaging behaviours over time, from the band’s early days that were consumed by his taking of amphetamines, to his merging of pill consumption with alcohol, which spiralled into alcoholism and drug addiction that hindered the band’s ability to play live.
Though Moon’s life was tragically cut short, passing away suddenly at 32 years old, his various escapades (however self-indulgent they tended towards) are remembered alongside his unparalleled proficiency behind the kit and his overall charming nature; he could be, by all accounts, at once destructive and charismatic. As Roger Daltrey later surmised of his bandmate’s talents as a musician, “Even at his worst, Keith Moon was amazing”.
Moon’s dual addictions began to inflict upon literal destructive behaviours, as it became common for him to destroy hotel rooms while The Who were on tour, as well as friends’ homes. In one infamous moment, Moon was headed to the airport when he demanded that the limousine turn around because he’d “forgotten something”, only to run back to his room and throw the television out of the window, into the swimming pool below. Returning to the limo, he simply said, “I nearly forgot”.
Whether it be the effects of drugs and alcohol on his consciousness, the insistence on shock-value or his desire to amuse people, Moon’s outlandish actions began to precede him. Peter ‘Dougal’ Butler, Moon’s personal assistant in the 1970s, described his behaviours to Modculture in 2012, recalling, “He was trying to make people laugh and be Mr Funny; he wanted people to love him and enjoy him, but he would go so far. Like a train ride you couldn’t stop.”
The train began to derail even further during The Who’s break, from late 1971 to mid-1972, as Moon’s alcoholism escalated and his physical health began to deteriorate. Long gone were the days of mere drinking and partying; instead, alcohol began to define every waking moment of Moon’s life, with him drinking from the second he awoke in the morning.
In the years that followed, several instances of his passing out onstage came about as his health waned even further and, by the Boston, Massachusetts, date of The Who’s US tour in 1976, Moon had not only passed out after two songs, but ended up being hospitalised the next day, having cut himself while trashing his hotel room and putting himself at risk of bleeding to death. With this instance, Moon’s role as the drummer of The Who was put into question, and while he was never fired from the band, the consideration lingered.
Moon, in turn, had many attempts to quell his addictions, checking himself into various rehabilitation clinics, a psychiatric wing and, in 1976, a sanatorium at Hollywood Memorial Hospital. From his move to Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1970s, his time in the city became a period that saw him sadly oscillate between detoxes and sobriety, and falling back into his old, destructive habits.
“You tried to put chocks under the wheels and stop the racing car running downhill, and he would get out and kick the chocks away and carry on,” Keith Altham, The Who’s one-time publicist, described Moon’s tendency to self-sabotage, quoted in Mojo, adding, “Towards the end of his life the darker side of Moon got out of control. In the last two years, he was the kind of man I wanted to avoid, which is sad because he was incredibly lovable.”
A month before Moon’s death, The Who released their first album in three years, and, what would be their last album with Moon, Who Are You. The recording sessions began that January, but, as his addictions had taken their toll, his playing on the album was severely lacking. He’d begun to have difficulty playing the drums at all, and while recording, he was replaced for one song, ‘Music Must Change’. With their drummer in such a condition, there was no feasible way in sight for The Who to embark on a tour, which left Moon in a state of depressive anxiety. His final performance with the band came in May, at Shepperton Sound Studios for their ‘rockumentary’, The Kids Are Alright, released in 1979.
Amidst pieced–together footage of past television appearances, festival performances and promotional clips, The Who’s last gig with Moon is immortalised on film, an explosive set that captures him in one of his greatest moments. In contrast, while he was in the studio overdubbing drums for the film, he struggled to get through the recording session, according to The Who’s roadie, Dave ‘Cy’ Langston. “After two or three hours, he got more and more sluggish,” he recalled, quoted in Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958–78, “he could barely hold a drum stick”.
“He was like a blubbering baby. He was crying. He was devastated,” Roger Daltrey remembered to Classic Rock, of watching the film with Moon, during a private screening just before his passing, “And I kept saying to him, ‘Keith, you’re the star of the fucking film, you’re brilliant. Without you in it, it would be as dull as dishwater’. And he’s saying, ‘Yeah, but I’m overweight, I can’t drum anymore’.”
By mid-1978, he had returned to London, moving into Flat 12 of 9 Curzon Place in Mayfair, tragically, the same place where Cass Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas had passed away four years earlier. Moon planned to rent the flat from the singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, who was hesitant to do so in his belief that the flat was cursed. Pete Townshend assured him by claiming that “lightning wouldn’t strike the same place twice” (as he recounted in his 2012 memoir, Who Am I), and soon, Moon moved in.
There, the drummer began to take Heminevrin as prescribed, a sedative meant to ease his symptoms from alcohol withdrawal. Having grown fearful of psychiatric hospitals, Moon undertook the course of Heminevrin from home, instead, though its addictive elements meant that there would be a danger of him taking the sedative unsupervised. His physician, Dr Geoffrey Dymond, however, was unaware of the full extent of Moon’s situation and thus, prescribed him a bottle of 100 pills, capped at three a day.
On September 6th, Moon and his girlfriend, Annette Walter-Lax, attended a party thrown by Paul and Linda McCartney at Peppermint Park, a Covent Garden diner, in honour of the new biopic, The Buddy Holly Story. The pair attended the screening of the film at the Odeon in Leicester Square that night, before returning to their flat for the night, where he fell asleep after “taking his usual glass of water and bucket of pills,” as Walter-Lax recalled to Moon’s biographer, Tony Fletcher. The next morning, Moon awoke demanding that Walter-Lax cook him food (lamb cutlets, to be specific) and, after an argument, she obliged. He finished his meal, took more of his pills, 32 tablets of Heminevrin, total, from the night before, and fell asleep, and was later found deceased by Walter-Lax that afternoon. He was just 32 years old.
