When Keith Moon bizarrely purchased a cemetery for John Entwistle’s birthday
Keith Moon never, ever stopped. Other famed rock ‘n’ roll hellraisers like John Bonham, Nikki Sixx and Slash probably all had moments where they took a breath, poured themselves a cup of tea, and spent a few days consuming a more leisurely quantity of booze and drugs. Moon, on the other hand, did not. He was ‘Moon The Loon’ all the time and took great pride in that fact.
You talk to any rock musician with anything resembling the kind of behaviour Moon codified in their past, and the majority of them will say something very telling. That at some point, all the stupid rock star behaviour went from fun to just keeping up appearances. A generation of guitar-playing Peter Sellers.
Given time, all of them devolve into the same thing. Two-dimensional characters with no idea of who they really are anymore, chucking TVs into hotel swimming pools because it was what people expected from them. Keith Moon was either the most complete example of this or the least. He was either completely lost in the character of “Keith Moon”, or that was just who he was in his soul.
Perhaps it was a little bit of both. One way or another, it made life with him pretty agonising, as you can gather from any romantic partner of his from pretty much any point of his life. However, they all eventually had their fill of Moon because that human nuclear bomb aspect of his personality never stopped. His bandmates, on the other hand, didn’t really have that option.
So, was Keith Moon wild all the time?
Of course, in the macro, they did. They could have always told him to sling his hook. They probably should have after he allegedly drove his car through an area of London known for its large Jewish population dressed as a Nazi. However, The Who seemed all too aware that without Moon, their awe-inspiring power both on stage and on record would be diminished.
On a deeper level, though, Moon was a mate of theirs and just as they saw him at his worst, they saw him at his best. They saw his generosity and sense of humour, and, in one memorable case, they saw him when those two aspects combined. In an interview, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman talked about his close relationship with The Who’s sticksman.
In amongst the sometimes hilarious, often harrowing reminiscences about Moon, he speaks of one of his more generous, yet bizarre acts. Wyman says, “One time he bought a cemetery in the West Country as a birthday present for John Entwistle.” Out there? Absolutely. The truth is, though, that with Entwistle’s famously macabre sense of humour, he probably loved it.
This was the uncomfortable truth about Moon. He lived life in extremes. While most of the time, those acts alienated him from everyone in his life, they could also show just how considerate he was and how much he knew how to cheer people up when they needed it. In the end, he was a man of deep and uncomfortable contrasts, and both sides of him should be remembered.
