The Who member Pete Townshend disapproved of: “What a fucking prat”
Is there enough “prat” to go around for all of The Who?
Each member can claim to have wound up the band’s guitarist and principal songwriter. Perhaps it’s the time when frontman Roger Daltrey’s fist connected sharply with Pete Townshend’s face during a particularly fraught 1973 rehearsal session, knocking him out, although to be fair, after he’d swung his guitar at the singer. Could it be the effects of John Entwistle’s lavish tastes? Reportedly, the bassist’s material spending habits would often put pressure on The Who to hit the road again to fund his collection of exotic pets and luxury cars.
We all know who likely exasperated Townshend, and indeed all The Who most. His music teacher said it about as succinctly as anyone could. According to Tony Fletcher’s 1998 biography, an old report card from Alperton Secondary Modern School stated that the young Keith Moon “has great ability, but must guard against a tendency to show off.”
Such advice was never heeded. A natural virtuosity on the drum kit would prove essential in The Who’s powerhouse alchemy, countering Entwistle and Townshend’s steady and rhythmic bass and guitar attack with a primative approach to his percussion heft. Double bass drum pummel, crash symbols used as a hi-hat, and thrashing arms across the multi-toms wherever his lightning intuitions guided him, Moon’s wildman whirlwind on the sticks would ensure a rock and roll stature long after he died in 1978.
Yet, such prowess was eclipsed by his destructive reputation. Developing a taste for booze and amphetamines not long after joining The Who, Moon’s boyish fascination with partying excesses and carnage in its literal definition began to fatigue the band, no less than Townshend when reflecting back on Moon’s life years later on his penchant for hotel room obliteration.
“As the television went through the window, I would look at Keith Moon and go, what a fucking prat,” Townshend told The Big Issue in 2019. “What a waste of time.”
Townshend was no stranger to destruction. While he dabbled with a little recreational TV lobbing “two or three times” and feeling “a fucking prat!” himself afterwards, The Who guitarist knew how mesmerising some on-stage havoc could land in the midst of the counterculture, routinely smashing instruments for the sheer gripping spectacle of it, as well as knowing full well what such musical wrecking does for publicity.
For Moon, however, something much deeper was satiated whenever a stick of dynamite was shoved in a toilet. From starting an epic food fight on his 21st birthday to packing his drum kit with illegal amounts of flash powder on The Who’s Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour appearance, a childish delight in both wanton irresponsibility and the thrill of flying debris stirred the ever-restless and easily bored Moon that went beyond mere ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ theatre.
A force of nature compounded by the excesses of the 1970s rock scene in all its giddy highs and darker ebbs, it’s easy to imagine The Who drummer earning his ‘Moon the Loon’ nickname, whatever path he had chosen, standing as both the life, soul, and prat of any given social occasion.
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