What was the last song by The Who that Keith Moon played on?
It’s impossible to imagine The Who without their one-of-a-kind drummer, Keith Moon. And one-of-a-kind might be putting it lightly.
As Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers rather plainly put it, “There will never, ever be another Keith Moon.” Adding for good measure, one final “ever”. Kenny Aronoff similarly praised his “craziness and unique rock ‘n’ roll passion” that put him in a league of his own, perhaps a league that will now forever linger in the wild west of the past.
From turning the drums into a lead instrument on the band’s seminal hit ‘My Generation’ to transforming The Smothers Brothers TV show into a bomb site, Moon’s ability behind a kit, combined with his antics elsewhere, made the band a whole different animal than they would have been otherwise.
Yes, Pete Townshend wrote the songs and came up with the riffs, John Entwhistle kept things lean, mean and tight as Roger Daltrey’s trousers, while the singer himself had a scream on him to rival James Brown. But Moon was on a different planet altogether, particularly when it came to the role of the drummer in a three-minute rock song.
For all the brilliance of Ginger Baker’s jazz interpolations, Mitch Mitchell’s fizzing hi-hats and breakneck snares, and John Bonham’s thunderous fills, Moon was lightyears ahead of them all. When his health began to decline during the mid-1970s, The Who’s music suffered as a result. They never returned to their earlier heights at the summit of hard rock, and Moon never got better.
On September 7th, 1978, he was found dead by his partner, Annette Walter-Lax, having taken a severe overdose of the sedatives a doctor had prescribed him to cope with alcohol withdrawal symptoms. He was trying to get clean and turn his life around at the time of his death, but it proved too little, too late. What’s more, the drug he was prescribed was dangerous and highly addictive for a recovering alcoholic, leaving him even more vulnerable to the tragic accident which transpired.
So, what were The Who recording when he died?
To add to the sense of loss brought about by Moon’s sudden death, The Who were experiencing a revival in fortunes at the time. Just over three months earlier, they’d played a now-iconic gig at London’s Shepperton Studios for a documentary of their career being shot by filmmaker Jeff Stein. Their newly released album Who Are You equalled their highest-ever position in the US album chart, while its single of the same name was their most successful worldwide since 1970’s ‘See Me, Feel Me’.
Who Are You came out in shops just 17 days before Moon died. His drum parts on six of the album’s tracks were the last part of its recording to be completed. He overdubbed drums onto ‘New Song’, ‘905’, ‘Sister Disco’, ‘Music Must Change’, ‘Guitar and Pen’ and ‘Love Is Coming Down’ in April 1978.
It’s highly notable that it is tricky to decipher the studio logs of the time and pick out a definitive closing contribution because he was struggling so much with the compositions at the time. The Who’s music had grown more complex, and the once capable Moon was struggling to fulfil the tracks, so plenty of overdubs were cut.
The Who have scarcely released anything new of note since their loose cannon fired dynamite at his drum kit. Moon might have been a loon, but he was among the best around with sticks in hand. And ultimately irreplaceable for the band he helped to define. As Roger Daltrey recently said with regret, “What’s the point of records? We released an album four years ago, and it did nothing.”
While there are several factors to that, losing the thunder of Moon’s unique, blustering blitzkrieg is certainly one of them.
