Keith Moon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Keith Moon | ||
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 Keith Moon in 1975
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Keith John Moon | |
| Also known as | Moon the Loon | |
| Born | August 23, 1946 | |
| Origin | London, England | |
| Died | September 7, 1978 (age 32) London, England |
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| Genre(s) | Rock, R&B, Hard Rock | |
| Occupation(s) | Drummer | |
| Instrument(s) | Drums, Percussion, Vocals | |
| Years active | 1964 - 1978 | |
| Associated acts |
The Who | |
Keith John Moon (August 23, 1946 – September 7, 1978) was the drummer of the rock group The Who. As a drummer, Moon became known for his chaotic but brilliant style of drumming and gained notoriety for his destructive lifestyle. He is regarded as "One of the greatest of all rock and roll drummers."[1]
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[edit] Biography
Keith John Moon was born on 23 August 1946 in London to Alfred and Kathleen Moon. He lived in Alperton as a boy and was extremely hyperactive and had a restless imagination as a child. As a youth, the only thing that could hold his attention was music. A report from his Secondary Modern school is not encouraging – his art teacher, for example, commented: 'Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects.'
Even at an early age, his teachers praised his music skills and acknowledged his chaotic style, even if one school report noted "he has great ability, but must guard against a tendency to show off". Moon failed his eleven-plus and left school in 1961.
On 17 March 1966, Moon married his pregnant girlfriend Kim Kerrigan in secrecy. Their daughter Amanda was born four months later, on 12 July. In 1973, Kerrigan left Moon, taking Amanda with her. They divorced in 1975.
[edit] Early musical career
At the age of twelve, Moon joined his local Sea Cadet Corps band as a bugle player, but quickly traded his position to be a drummer.[2] Moon started to play the drums at the age of 14, his mother bought him a Ringo drum kit, and was taught to play by one of the loudest drummers at the time, Carlo Little.[citation needed] During this time he joined his first serious band "Mark Twain and the Strangers".[citation needed] He later spent 18 months as the drummer for the "The Beachcombers", a London cover band most notable for their renditions of songs by Cliff Richard.[3]
Moon initially played in the style of American surf rock and R&B drummers, utilizing grooves and fills of those genres, but playing them much louder and with more authority. He was also heavily influenced by jazz drummer and fellow showman Gene Krupa.[citation needed]
[edit] The Who
Moon joined The Who in April 1964, at the age of 17, an early replacement for their original drummer Doug Sandom. Sandom had left the band less than a month earlier and the remaining members hired a session drummer to fulfil a run of gigs that they had already agreed to play. Keith Moon was in attendance at one of these shows. Townshend later described him as looking like a "ginger man" with ginger (brown) colored clothes and his hair dyed ginger.[4] The band knew that they needed Moon after seeing him practically smashing the drum set to pieces.
Moon started off on various 4 or 5 piece drumsets, but made the move to a British Premier double bass kit in late 1965. This was inspired by a conversation he had with Ginger Baker, who told Moon that he had ordered an American Ludwig double bass set and was waiting for it to arrive. Moon decided to simply take two Premier drumsets and put them together. This new equipment widened Moon's playing to an enormous degree. Specifically, he abandoned his hi-hat cymbals almost entirely and started basing his grooves more on a double bass ostinato consisting of eighth note flams, and a wall of white noise created by riding a crash or ride cymbal. On top of this he would play fills and cymbal accents.[citation needed] This would become his trademark style.
Moon's Classic Premier Setup comprised two 14"x22" bass drums, three 8"x14" (Tuna Can) mounted toms, two 16"x16" floor toms, a 5"x14" metal snare(usually Ludwig supraphonic), and one extra floor tom of several different sizes (but mainly 16"x18" or 16"x16"). Moon's classic cymbal setup consisted of two 18" crashes and one 20" ride (Paiste).
Early in The Who's career, the band developed the concept of "Auto Destruction", which had members destroying their equipment at the end of their more high profile shows. Moon showed a particular zeal for this activity, wildly kicking and smashing his drums. During an appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour television show, he overloaded a drum with explosive charges which were detonated during the finale of "My Generation", which singed Pete Townshend's hair and left the guitarist's ears ringing. Another time, he filled his drums entirely with water and used them as tanks for goldfish, actually playing them for the concert - when an audience member asked "What do you do with the goldfish?", he replied with a grin, "Even the best drummers get hungry."[5] These antics soon earned him the nickname "Moon the Loon".
Moon was enthusiastic about singing. His determination to add his voice to Who songs eventually led the other members of the group to ban him from the studio when vocals were being recorded. This led to an ongoing game, with Moon trying to sneak into the room to join the singing. At the tail end of "Happy Jack" Townshend can be heard shouting "I saw ya!", and it's said that he was noticing Moon once again trying to join in surreptitiously.[citation needed] However, Moon can be heard singing on several Who tracks, including "Bell Boy" (Quadrophenia, 1973), "Bucket T" and "Barbara Ann" (Ready Steady Who EP, 1966). He was credited as the composer of "I Need You", which he also sang, and the instrumental "Cobwebs and Strange" (both on A Quick One, 1966), and the single b-sides "Dogs Part Two" (1969) and "Wasp Man" (1972). Although Moon has also been credited with lead vocals on "Tommy's Holiday Camp" (Tommy, 1969), they were performed on the album by Pete Townshend.
[edit] A reputation for destruction
Moon quickly gained a reputation for being highly destructive. He was known to lay waste to hotel rooms, the homes of friends, and even his own home, often throwing furniture out of high windows and destroying the plumbing with fireworks.[citation needed] He frequently flushed powerful explosives down the toilet, and detonated toilet tanks for amusement. These acts were sometimes fueled by drugs and/or alcohol, but most of the time, Moon was simply living out his larger-than-life persona.
One of the most famous stories concerns him driving a car (either a Rolls-Royce or Lincoln Continental) into a swimming pool. It is currently disputed whether this event occurred, with his biographer, Tony Fletcher, denying it, and Roger Daltrey claiming to have witnessed the resulting $50,000 bill. However, given the circumstances, the incident seems physically unlikely. This event was most likely fabricated by Moon himself.[6] From his known behaviour, it is not hard to see how such a story could originate. It appears to have been two stories merged together. While in the USA, Moon was thrown a party after a Who show for his twenty-first birth day. The party - which was hosted in the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan - was going fine despite a food fight but all of a sudden some of Moon's friends from Herman's Hermits (with whom The Who were on tour) decided to pants Moon. Unfortunately Moon wasn't wearing any underwear. Moon, who was thoroughly embarrassed, started to run and fell on his face, resulting in him cracking his front tooth in half. John Entwistle and one of the members of Herman's Hermits then had to rush Keith to the dentist. While Moon was gone, the other people at the party left the ball room that they were in and began going on a rampage throughout the hotel by tipping over vending machines and taking fire extinguishers to cars, resulting in a several thousands of dollars fine.
According to the book, The Who In Their Own Words, Moon recounted the story above as having taken place at the Holiday Inn in Flint, MI and the car was a Lincoln Continental. He also claimed that this was how he broke his front tooth.
Much of his behaviour, though often outrageous, was in a more humorous vein in the company of his great friend Vivian Stanshall, of the Bonzo Dog Band. When Stanshall took over the John Peel radio show for a while, Moon appeared as Lemmy in Stanshall's ongoing saga of Colonel Knutt, idiot adventurer-detective.[citation needed] Moon also produced Stanshall's recorded version of Elvis Presley's "Suspicion".
On January 4, 1970, Moon was involved in an incident outside the Red Lion pub in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Trying to escape an increasingly hostile group of skinheads from the pub who had begun to attack his Bentley car, Keith accidentally ran over and killed his friend and bodyguard, Cornelius "Neil" Boland. Although the coroner said that Boland's death was an accident, and Moon was subsequently given an absolute discharge after having been charged with driving offences, those close to him said Moon was haunted by the accident for the rest of his life. However, Boland's daughter later tried to investigate and reported that Moon may not have been driving the car.[7]
Moon's penchant for the wild life would eventually be detrimental to both his drumming ability and his reliability as a band member. During the band's three year sabbatical from recording between 1975 and 1978 Moon also put on a great deal of weight.
Moon owned what may well be the only world's only lilac Rolls-Royce, which he painted with house paint. On an Episode (aired 2004/12/12) of Top Gear, Roger Daltrey commented that he liked to take upper class icons and make them working class. The car is now owned by Middlebrook Garages (based in Nottinghamshire, England).
[edit] Work outside The Who
Although his work with the Who dominated Moon's career, he participated in a few minor side projects. In 1966, he teamed up with Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck and future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones to record an instrumental, "Beck's Bolero", released as a single-double later that year. Moon is also said to have named Led Zeppelin when an early version of the band was being discussed that would have had himself, along with either John Entwistle or John Paul Jones on bass, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, with an undecided vocalist, as members; he stated the potential supergroup would "go down like a lead Zeppelin". Keith Moon also played on a few Zeppelin numbers at their June 23, 1977 concert at the L.A. Forum.[citation needed]
In 1974 he released his only solo album, a collection of pop covers entitled Two Sides of the Moon. Although this record featured Moon's singing, much of the drumming was left to other artists including Ringo Starr and session musician Jim Keltner, with Moon only playing on two tracks.
In 1971 he had a cameo role in Frank Zappa's farcical film 200 Motels. He acted in drag as a nun fearful of death from overdosing on pills. In 1973 he appeared in That'll Be the Day, playing J.D. Clover the resident drummer at a holiday camp during the early days of British rock 'n' roll. Moon reprised the role for the follow up film Stardust in 1974. The film also co-starred Moon's longtime friend Ringo Starr of the Beatles although he was replaced by Adam Faith for the more successful Stardust. He also appeared as "Uncle Ernie" in Ken Russell's 1975 film adaptation of Tommy. In 1976, he covered the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" for the soundtrack of the documentary All This and World War II. He was to have a part in Monty Python's Life of Brian and stayed in the Caribbean with the six Python members as they wrote the script. He died before it began filming. The published edition of the screenplay to Life of Brian is dedicated to Moon.
He also owned a hotel pub in Chipping Norton, near Woodhenge, where the band used to practise in the barn behind it.
[edit] Death
Keith Moon's final night out was as a guest of Paul McCartney at the preview of the film The Buddy Holly Story on 7 September 1978. After dining with Paul and Linda McCartney, Moon and his girlfriend, Annette Walter-Lax, left the party early and returned to a flat on loan from Harry Nilsson in Curzon Place, London. He died at the age of 32, having overdosed on Clomethiazole, a medication taken as part of a program to wean him off alcohol. When the police investigated the cause of his death they determined that there were about 32 pills in his system. Some of the pills were undissolved.
Moon died a couple of weeks after the release of the last Who album he appeared on, Who Are You. All four band members are shown on the album cover, with Moon seated on a chair back-to-front in order to hide all the weight he had gained in the previous three years, as discussed in Tony Fletcher's book "Dear Boy". Ironically, the chair was labeled "Not to be taken away".
[edit] Events after his death
The Who, before Moon died, always performed with four members. Following his death, not only was Moon replaced by Small Faces/Faces drummer Kenney Jones, but The Who also added keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick to the live band. The Who's drummer's position is currently occupied by Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr. Moon taught Starkey and purchased his first drumkit when he was young and was referred to as "Uncle Keith" by him.
As a tribute, one of the bars in the London Astoria music venue is named the "Keith Moon bar". Roger Daltrey recorded a song, "Under a Raging Moon" as a tribute to Moon.
A biography has been written about Moon by Tony Fletcher, entitled Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon. "Dear Boy" became a catchphrase of Moon's when he started affecting a pompous English accent around 1969, particularly when ordering drinks.[citation needed]
In early 2006, Keith Moon's signature Pictures of Lily drum kit was reissued by Premier Percussion under the name Spirit of Lily. This kit integrated modern features and hardware with a vintage appearance. [1]
Moon's ex-wife, Kim, was married to Ian McLagan of The Faces in 1978, the year that Moon died. She was killed in a traffic accident near Austin, Texas on August 2, 2006.
[edit] Keith Moon in popular culture
As of September 29, 2005, comedian and actor Mike Myers has been signed on to play the lead role in an upcoming biopic of Moon. The film has been titled See Me Feel Me: Keith Moon Naked For Your Pleasure. Scheduled for a 2009 release, See Me Feel Me will be produced by Roger Daltrey, Nigel Sinclair, and Paul Gerber.
American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist, Anthony Kiedis, released a memoir titled, Scar Tissue. The autobiography states that as a child, Kiedis would go to clubs with his Dad, where his dad would sell drugs to Moon.
On June 8, 2006, The Onion featured a Radio News piece titled, "Researchers At Keith Moon Institute Destroy Institute". [2]
London punk band Peter and the Test Tube Babies wrote a song titled 'Spirit of Keith Moon' based on his wild personality and indulgence in destruction.
In a strip of the comic Achewood from April 2006, character Ray Smuckles finds Keith Moon's head preserved in booze, available to buy on the fictional online-auction service, eBay Platinum Reserve.[3] The head later comes to life and flips around in the jar before being phased out of the strip, its final fate left unknown.
Internet cartoonist Jonti Picking's 2006 series of webtoon shorts (Anything Can Happen) On the Moon depicts the deceased Keith Moon (referred to as "Moon Keith Moon") living on the moon in the form of a metal urn of his ashes, labelled with the words "R.I.P. Keith".
In the 1997 PlayStation game Gex: Enter the Gecko, the lead character Gex can be heard saying "This one's for Keith Moon!"
In the 1993 film Wayne's World 2, a veteran roadie tells how he, David Crosby and Keith Moon broke into a sweet shop in Sri Lanka to steal one thousand brown M&M's to fill a brandy glass, otherwise "Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night".
Moon is referenced as one of the supernatural acts to appear in the television version of Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes in You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.
Late comedian Bill Hicks, as part of his act, once sarcastically imagined what it would be like to have 'real' rockstars endorsing products in TV commercials instead of popstars. Among those he mentioned was Keith Moon advertising Snickers.
In the TV series Psych, lead character Shawn Spencer makes a reference to him as a person who trashed his hotel room.
During a montage in School of Rock, the video shows a short clip of Keith Moon's drumming.
In the 2001 TV movie "Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story" drummer Rick Allen of Def Leppard is portrayed imitating famous drummers for his band mates. He hits the cymbals and then falls backwards off his stool as the rest of his band exclaims "Keith Moon!". Also, later in the movie, Rick Allen is shown struggling to get used to his new electronic drums since his accident that cost him his left arm and seemingly falls off his stool by accident. His band mates look alarmed until he looks up at them and says reassuringly, "Keith Moon".
In the comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, Edina remarks to Saffron, "You know, Patsy used to date Keith Moon," to which Patsy responds, "Well, sort of. I woke up underneath him in a hotel room once."
On the British automotive show Top Gear, presenter Jeremy Clarkson replicated the Rolls-Royce swimming pool stunt by driving a 1976 Silver Shadow into a newly refurbished swimming pool in his hometown of Chipping Norton. Clarkson claimed that he was inspired by Keith Moon's stunt. [4]
On Stella when the three guys thought they were sent to heaven, David Wain wonders what kinds of "jam sessions" they might have there. He thinks "on guitar, Jimi Hendrix; on drums, Keith Moon; and on lead vocals 'the guy from Blind Melon'," referring to the ethereal tone of Shannon Hoon.
British pop singer Robbie Williams mentions Keith Moon in his song "Good Doctor" from his 2006 album Rudebox. Good Doctor is a ballad about prescription drug abuse and the exact reference is in the first verse: "Robert Williams take one Adderall with water in the morning.. As if I’m goin’ to take one tablet, I’m Keith Moon!"
Clem Burke, original drummer for "Blondie", was a dedicated fan of Keith Moon. On the week of the Who drummer’s passing in Sept. 1978, Blondie played the huge Knebworth Festival in England. After their set, Burke kicked over his red sparkle Premier drum kit, crying out, “That’s for Keith Moon!”
Neil Peart, the drummer for the Canadian rock band, Rush, developed a drum set based off of Keith Moon's drum set for the R30 tour calling it his "dream set."
In one of his books, Rush drummer Neil Peart cites Moon as one of his primary early drumming inspirations. Peart tells the story of attending a Who concert and grabbing a piece of a cymbal that Moon had smashed, which he turned into a necklace that he wore at school.
[edit] References
- ^ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- ^ WhoCollection.com
- ^ Fletcher, Tony: "Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend
- ^ The Kids Are Alright
- ^ "Keith Moon and goldfish". 00:50.
- ^ npr.org
- ^ An interview with Jean Battye about the death of Neil Boland
Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend by Tony Fletcher
Anyway Anyhow Anywhere (Revised Edition): The Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958-1978 by Andrew Neill and Mathew Kent
[edit] External links
- thewho.net: Album Liner Notes and Song Information
- The Who Location Guide
- Punk in the Gutter: Discussion/News Repository Website about The Who, including a Keith Moon Appreciation Archive (registration required)
- The Who Forum: Includes Keith Moon news,views and discussion.
- The Who ("Towser") TV: Online Webcasts, including Moon footage
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles lacking sources from November 2006 | All articles lacking sources | English rock drummers | The Who members | People from Alperton | Accidental deaths | Drug-related deaths | 1946 births | 1978 deaths
