The Who song too difficult for Keith Moon to play
When we say people are born to go into a particular profession, it’s rarely ever meant in a literal sense. However, when you watch a performer with the sheer restless energy of Keith Moon, it’s hard to imagine him being able to hold down any profession other than being the drummer in a band. Watch a live performance of him with The Who and then imagine those hands doing any form of manual labour – it would be nothing other than carnage.
Of course, the role of a drummer for the most part is to hold a steady rhythm for the rest of a band to follow, but when a drummer is bursting with personality and an urge to steal the limelight from the rest of the band, then you’ve got to allow them the occasional opportunity to show off everything they can do, and Moon was given ample space to do just this during The Who’s live performances.
He was the final piece of the jigsaw when assembling the band, since Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, and John Entwistle had all known each other since early childhood, but given the overblown and theatrical style that the band developed for themselves, he appeared to be the perfect fit for the band. However, there were apparently times when his style was so out of control that Daltrey had to take drastic action in order to salvage a song from being scrapped.
In 1977, the band began work on their eighth studio album, Who Are You, and while much of the album saw the band move increasingly towards the progressive rock stylings that their concept albums from earlier in the decade had flirted with, this caused problems for the erratic Moon, who was seemingly only ever able to follow his own methods of drumming.
The song ‘Music Must Change’, which appears at the end of the first side of the record, had a slightly more complex rhythm that Moon wasn’t used to being demanded of him, and in a 2015 appearance on the Howard Stern Show, Daltrey revealed that he had to bring in a session musician to step in for the incapable drummer.
“Keith couldn’t play the drums to it,” Daltrey claimed. “It was in a three-four. Keith couldn’t play normal drums. Keith could play great Moon drums, and that was it.”
While the waltz pattern isn’t that hard to wrap your head around, even if you’re not an accomplished drummer, Moon was unable to perform on the song because it didn’t fit with his usual style. As a consequence, there isn’t much drumming on the final recording, save for some percussion, but the replacement drummer who was brought in to perform on the track remains uncredited on the album to this date.
However, while they chose to stick with Moon for the remainder of the album, it would end up being the final release that he appeared on for the band before he tragically passed away in 1978 at the age of 32, only three weeks after the release of the record.
