2008 – The Times: The story in this morning’s paper is on the ruses various celebrities use to evade reporters outside the main criminal courthouse in Manhattan. Actor Rip Torn, for example, once led paparazzi through a park and past a gaggle of chanting construction workers before jumping into the cab of an occupied 18-wheeler, jumping out again, and rolling underneath the truck. Kirk Jones snuck in a side entrance while his driver successfully impersonated the rapper to photographers, sultry actress Uma Thurman enlisted the help of court officers and producer Sean Combs has a mini secret-service brigade. But the most fascinating courthouse celebrity by far is criminally insane singer Courtney Love, who sashays in and out of the building as though surrounded by adoring fans:
Courtney Love used the sidewalk like a red carpet, chatting and joking with reporters…
Sometimes celebrities do what they do best: bask in the attention. Ms. Love latched onto her lawyer, Scott B. Tulman, as they left the courthouse and gushed as if they were an item:
“Isn’t he handsome? Isn’t he beautiful?” Ms. Love then suggested she was pregnant with Mr. Tulman’s child.
“Are you out of your mind?” Mr. Tulman recalled telling her. “What are you doing?”
Another day outside the courthouse she finished off a partially smoked cigarette that she bummed from a passer-by.
“It’s like having a wild kid,” Mr. Tulman said. “After a while, you just shake your head.”
PR consultant Eric Dezenhall told the Times Love’s antics are fine, since “anything that extends the half-life of her career is probably a net positive.” Uh, sure. Maybe even get charged with more crimes like disorderly conduct and so forth and get spotted outside the glamorous criminal courthouse even more often, maybe!
2000 – Metallica chat online with fans about their Napster woes. The metal band has also turned over a list of 300,000 Napster users to the company, asking them to be barred from the file-sharing service.
1997 – Ray Charles conducts his first-ever online chat at www.rhino.com. The pop music legend fields questions about his recently released, five-CD boxed set, “Genius & Soul: The 50th Anniversary Collection.”
1997 – Four Elvis confidants known as “The Memphis Mafia” commemorate the 20th anniversary of the King’s passing with a webcast interview. In the chat, hosted live at http://www.natsatinc.com, Lamar Fike, Marty Lacker, Marty Red and Sonny West discuss Presley’s humble beginnings, the women in his life, his fame and his drug problems.
1976 – Elvis Presley attracts a crowd at a gas station in Memphis, Tennessee when he stops to fill up his Harley. After chatting with fans for a few minutes, the King calmly drives away.
1970 – Emerson, Lake & Palmer give their debut performance in Plymouth, England.
Progressive rock can be a very disreputable subject. No other musical style has been so vilified by the critics and became a synonym for ‘pompous’ and ‘bombastic.’ Almost every music critic in the early ’70′s had something unflattering to write about it. None of them seem to have noticed that the genre combined the old with the new and brought things to popular music that simply wasn’t there before. Prog rock flourished during the early ’70′s but was wiped out almost completely by 1976- each of the bands who played it had to undergo changes in order to ensure their survival or else evaporate during the late ’70′s and the ’80′s.
It’s hard to decide which band best represents the genre. King Crimson’s debut In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969) might be considered one of the first pure prog rock album while Genesis’s Selling England By The Pound was the best prog album to my mind and Yes and Pink Floyd made a huge splashes on both sides of the Atlantic, but none of these bands was never really identified with the genre as closely as Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Johnny Rotten’s hatred of Floyd to the contrary). ELP shared prog rock’s great paramount and deep chasms, reflecting all that was good and bad in that time, which is known the age of the rock dinosaurs.
ELP, like many early prog bands, was an English group. Keith Emerson, its founder and keyboard player, began to take formal piano lessons when he was eight years old. He started to learn classical music but was fed up with “playing like Bach.” Later, he discovered jazz and started to perform in little clubs while he was in college. It was during that time that Emerson, searching for a new sound, purchased with the benevolent help of his father a new Hammond L100 electric piano. Later, Emerson would delve into the world of keyboards even further.
After playing in several bands, Emerson heard that P. P Arnold (then a successful solo singer and today a back up singer for ex-Floyd Roger Waters) was looking for players. He then formed The Nice, with the group playing behind Arnold. But after six months, they began performing by themselves. During late 1967 and early 1968, the band traveled in Britain with such names as Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. In January 1968, they traveled in the U. S and came back to Britain just in time to see the release of their first album The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (a pun on the band members’ names). They later recorded “America,” a work that combined Leonard Bernstein’s famous piece from the West Side Story with Dvorak’s New World Symphony and protest lyrics, making for a complex political statement (as well as a controversial once since Bernstein didn’t approve of it). During that time, Emerson began to use knives when playing. He nailed them to his keyboard in order to help him hold certain keys while he was playing. This was just one of his yet-to-come stage tricks.
The Nice recorded another two albums during the next couple of years, but in April 1970, Emerson decided that he had enough and the band ceased to exist. Nevertheless, their manager was able to piece together more albums based on live shows and out-takes and eventually try to piggyback ELP’s success to get some sales.
During a King Crimson/Nice show in 1969, Emerson met Crimson’s young bass player Greg Lake backstage. After a small chat, they have decided to form a new band in several months. Now with The Nice project finished, Emerson was ready to move on.
Greg Lake started his musical career when he was given a guitar by his mother. When he was just a school boy, he wrote the song that will later become one of ELP’s greatest hits, “Lucky Man.” During the late ’60′s, Lake played in several bands. One of these bands, The Shy Limbs, nearly got him killed. The band used to sleep in a van and eat from the hand to mouth. Eventually, Lake developed pneumonia and had nearly died before his mother sent him to a doctor.
When he played with another band, The Gods, he caught the attention of Robert Fripp who was searching a bass player for King Crimson. Lake sang and played bass on the band’s first album, In The Court Of The Crimson King. But Fripp’s tyranny made the members of the band bitter and Lake was searching for a way out. Eve after meeting Emerson and making plans with him, Lake still helped Fripp with recording the next King Crimson’s album In The Wake Of Poseidon (retained as lead singer but not bassist) and then went of to start his own new group.
But the duo was searching for a drummer. They met Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix’s drummer who didn’t want to join but tried to get Hendrix into the new band. After the couple decided to join Carl Palmer as their drummer, the British Press fantasized about a new band with two virtuosos such as Hendrix and Emerson and speculated that the band will be called Hendrix, Emerson, Lake and Palmer or HELP (which would have surely made for some hilarious headlines). But Hendrix died in September 1970, before this idea came to fruition.
Emerson and Lake found Carl Palmer after he was recommended to them. They bought an album of his band Atomic Rooster and liked what they heard so they asked him to join them. But Palmer said no at first; he has been working hard, along with Vincent Crane, to get his band running and didn’t want to throw it all away. He was playing professionally since he was 15 years old and just recently toured with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown which had a U.K. number one hit chart single, “Fire.”
But after continuing persuasion by Greg Lake, he decided to join them for a jam session. He enjoyed it very much and the trio began to practice until May 1970, when Palmer finished his work with Atomic Rooster and thus, ELP was born. Like another then-recent supergroup, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the English trio took the audacious move of using the group members’ names as the name of the group itself.
During 1970, ELP recorded its debut album, which was called, appropriately enough, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. They drew attention from the beginning because every one of its members played in a famous group before ELP. They were a super group, a term that was given to Cream in 1967 and was quite common during the late ’60′s and early ’70′s when music world was managed like the NBA. The first album included a modern version of a Bela Bartok piece called “The Barbarian.” It also included one of their greatest radio hits, “Lucky Man”. Lake was also responsible for the recording and it gave the album a very unique final sound. Another instrument which was innovatively used was the Moog Synthesizer. Although the Monkeys played it in 1967, no other musician has gained control over it as did Emerson. He was the first musician to use it on stage and managed to get amazing sounds out of this analog multi-switched instrument., becoming one of the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer (inventor Bob Moog himself though of Emerson as one of the great exponents of his Moog synthesizer).
The band gained wide public interest at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, during which Keith Emerson, dressed in shiny robe, fired two cannons (thus slightly injuring an Italian camera man) and played his keyboard like a madman.
In early 1971, they released their second album, Tarkus- their first concept album – which was recorded in only two weeks. The main theme of the album (the first side of the vinyl album) is, unsurprisingly, “Tarkus.” Tarkus is a bionic armadillo who fights other bionic creatures until it is convinced by the Manticore (a mythical hybrid creature that’s part human, part lion) to cease from its deviant ways. You may say that the story is a parable about wars and the ill-necessity of machines, but ELP claimed that it didn’t have any such exalted intentions. Significantly though, ELP later named its record label Manticore Records.
Tarkus was very popular in Britain and reached 9 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Six months after Tarkus, the band released Pictures At An Exhibition (1972), a newly rearranged version of the famous piece by Mussorgsky which was recorded during a live show in Newcastle City Hall. The band had already played it before at the Isle of Wight Festival (with the shooting cannons). Pictures was a very controversial album. Some people thought that it was a great achievement in rock while some classical fans thought that it was a disgrace to the original composer and some classic rock fans thought that it was self indulgent, masterbative crap that had nothing to do with rock itself. While I might understand some of the detractors’ opinions, I still think that they have ignored the most important thing in this album- the fact that these players combined two completely different types of music into a wholly amazing piece. Instead of classical masters like Liszt or Rachmaninoff who run in a raging fury on a classical keyboard, we had a new one who combines an amazing technique with amazing technicality and creating amazing, weird and feel accentuating sounds. We can get a great sense of pace from the rhythm section as well, which combines a deep electric bass with excellent drum work. And isn’t it true that many times, great art initially faces controversy when it first appears? If one is listening to this piece without comparing it to its antecedents, one can hear that Picture At An Exhibition is a very innovative work like no other.
Another anecdote about this album is that during a 1993 show in Budapest, Lake saw a man crying on the front row. After the show he asked the man why he was crying, and he told him that 15 years earlier he spend three months in jail because the Communist regime found out that he had had a copy of the album. That was the power of such music and how it was both loved and despised so strongly.
In 1972, the band released their third studio album, Trilogy. This was another eclectic album which drew on classical sources, combining the works of Ravel with the works of Aaron Copland and, of course, highly skilled playing by the members of the band. The album also contained ELP’s best selling single, “From The Beginning.”
From 1972 to 1974, ELP were one of the most popular bands in the world. With the exception maybe of other great showmen like Alice Cooper and Kiss, their shows were the most extravagant seen. Emerson was breaking keyboards like Pete Townsend use to break guitars while he also used a special remote which allowed him to play without even touching the instrument. Carl Palmer modified his drum battery by adding all kinds of bells, tubes and percussions. Capitalizing on their success, the band started its own label in 1973 to manage their music and to help new prog bands to achieve exposure, including Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield and Italian band PFM.
In 1973, ELP recorded another studio album, Brain Salad Surgery. The cover was designed by H. R Giger, which became one of the first high-profile gigs for the artists who later designed the set and creatures for the movie series Alien as well as David Lynch’s Dune and album covers for the Dead Kennedys and Debbie Harry of Blondie. The first side of BSS contains, like every ELP album before, a new version of previous works, this time William Blake’s “Jerusalem” and Alberto Ginstera’s “Toccata” (along with the stamp of approval from the composer himself). The rest of the first side contains two other short songs, including Lake’s lovely “Still… You Turn Me On” and a collaboration with Pete Sinfield. The end of the first side and entire second side of the album contained a 30 minute piece called “Karn Evil 9″ (a pun with carnival). The piece is divided into three parts and talks about the battle between men and technology (recalling Tarkus).
1974 was the best year in ELP’s history. The road shows were unprecedentedly grandiose, featuring twenty tons of musical gear. Lake played while standing on a 5000 pound rug because he was afraid two get electrified (he nearly did during an earlier show). Emerson’s piano flew and spun in the air while he was playing. In April 6, 1974 the band played at the California Jam rock festival after Deep Purple. 350,000 viewers watch their best performance and the show was broadcasted nationwide. Later on, they released a triple album to commemorate the tour with a title taken from “Karn Evil 9″ (Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends– Ladies and Gentlemen. Emerson, Lake and Palmer). ELP’s albums hit top of Billboard again and Melody Maker Magazine voted them as “Best Band” along with “Best Keyboard Player” and “Best Drummer” (leaving poor Lake in the lurch). But it was to be ELP’s, as well as the progressive rock’s, apex- from here the only way to go was down. Times began to change.
After the tour, the three had decided to take some much-deserved rest. During the next three years, they bought new homes, had some rest and worked on solo albums. When they came back, punk was the popular style of the day and one of the punk’s main targets were the progressive dinosaurs, who they painted as villains that were ruining rock and growing rich and fat from it.
During the next couple of years, the band recorded two “group solo albums” (1977′s Works) with a part for every member solo composition (and years before Outkast or Hella had the idea). A tour in 1977 was economically destructive for the band members, with a loss of nearly two million dollars. And then in 1978 came Love Beach, an album that was made because the trio was under contract and was forced to do the album. Even worse, from its Beach Boys title and sunny cover image, it’s the least convincing of all of their records. This was the end. In July 1979, ELP disbanded.
During the next 20 years the band reunited as Emerson, Lake and Powell (with Cozy Powell formerly of Whitesnake, Jeff Beck Group). Palmer was available as he was involved in the most commercial of all post-ELP projects- another supergroup called Asia (included former members of Yes and Crimson).Emerson, Lake and Powell disband in the late ’80′s but Emerson, Lake and Palmer reunited again. In the early 90′s, rthey ecording a new album (Black Moon) and embarked on a few tours during the 90′s, occasionally disrupted by Emerson’s problem with nerves in his right arm (no doubt brought on by years of his theatrical playing). ELP then ceased to exist once again in 1998.
The ELP phenomenon was not unique. Every prog rock band had to reinvent itself in order to survive the punk revolution and the shallow ’80′s. Of course, they had to do it because the bands members were accustomed to a certain living style they wanted to preserve, but the prog rock style itself became somewhat inadequate. In a world where punk could transfer the essence of a song in two minutes of guitar work, nobody needed a 15 minutes piece for the same task. The bright side is that today with the Internet revolution more and more bands can get exposure and the prog rock is more alive than ever, as witnessed by the subsequent math rock movement and groups like TV on the Radio and Radiohead who have picked up on prog’s threads.
But a parallel ELP can never exist. ELP symbolized progressive rock in all its glory, with thousands of fans, tons of technical music and a highly desired glamour. But here laid its weakness. ELP became literally too expensive to maintain. All the stage tricks, all the extra players and accessories led to a situation were the cancellation of one show could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The band’s pomposity was derided by almost many writers who instead of listening to the music as it was, tried to find the band’s faults. The fact is that few other bands has ever taught so many young men and women that classical music can correspond very well with modern rock and roll. No other band could have done it as good as ELP had.
Sure, you can say they were a bunch of self indulged hedonists and you might accuse them of plagiarism, but to me, ELP is one of the symbols of London during the ’70′s. Every time I am listening to one of ELP’s early records, all I have to do is close my eyes and I am there, walking from Oxford St. to Regent St. There you are, going through Soho, watching King Crimson perform in Hyde Park or David Bowie at the Hammersmith Apollo, or just wandering around in the streets of London at its peak; traveling in a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
1963-Beatles and Rolling Stones meet for the first time during a Rolling Stones performance at Crawdaddy Club. ‘We got all nervous’, says Bill Wyman, ‘but then we had a chat with them afterwards and stayed up all night rapping and became really good mates.’
1947 – Keith Moon of the Who is born in Wembley, England. He dies on Sept. 7, 1978 at age 32, from an overdose of the sedative Heminevrin.
Keith John Moon (August 23, 1946 – September 7, 1978) was the drummer of the rock group The Who. He gained notoriety for exuberant drumming and his destructive lifestyle. Moon joined The Who in 1964, replacing Doug Sandom. He played on all albums from their debut, 1965′s My Generation, to 1978′s Who Are You, which was released two weeks before his death.
Moon is known for innovative, dramatic drumming, often eschewing basic back beats for a fluid, busy technique focused on fast, cascading rolls across the toms and cymbal crashes. Moon was one of the first to play drums as a lead instrument in an era when drums were supposed only to keep the back beat. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most distinctive rock drummers.
Biography
Keith John Moon lived in Wembley as a boy, was hyperactive, and had a restless imagination. As a youth, one thing that could hold his attention was music. A report from his secondary modern school was not encouraging – his art teacher commented: ‘Retarded artistically. Idiotic in other respects.’[2] Teacher Aaron Sofocleous praised his music skills and encouraged 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 exam and left school in 1961.
On 17 March 1966, Moon married his pregnant girlfriend Kim Kerrigan in secrecy. Their daughter Amanda was born on 12 July. In 1973, Kerrigan left Moon. In 1974 he began dating Swedish model Annette Walter-Lax. The next year he and Kerrigan divorced.
Early musical career
At 12, Moon joined his local Sea Cadet Corps band as a bugle player but traded his position to be a drummer.[3] Moon started drums at 14 after his father bought him a kit. He received lessons from one of the loudest drummers at the time, Carlo Little, paying him 10 shillings a lesson.[4] During this time he joined his first serious band “The Escorts”.[2] He later spent 18 months as the drummer for “The Beachcombers”, a London cover band notable for renditions of songs by Cliff Richard.[5]
Moon initially played in the style of American surf rock, jazz, with a mix of reggae and R&B drummers, utilising grooves and fills of those genres, particularly Hal Blaine of Wrecking Crew. However, he played faster and louder, with more persistence and authority. Moon’s favourite musicians were jazz greats Gene Krupa, who inspired him to be the showman he was, and Sonny Rollins.
The Who
At 17, Moon joined The Who (in April 1964), a replacement for Doug Sandom. Sandom had left less than a month earlier after Moon had a disagreement with Sandom. A police report states Moon assaulted Sandom with a cattle prod repeatedly which left him unconscious. After the episode, without a drummer the remaining members hired a session drummer to fulfill shows they had agreed to play. Moon attended one of these shows. Pete Townshend described him as looking like a “ginger man” with his hair dyed ginger and wearing ginger-coloured clothes. As stated in Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, Moon looked up to Roger Daltrey during the show and said “I hear you’re looking for a drummer. Well, I’m much better than the one you’ve got.”[6] The band knew they needed Moon after seeing him practically smash the drum kit to pieces.[2]
Moon started on various three or five-piece kits but moved to a double bass kit, made by Premier, in late 1965. Moon took two kits and put them together. This widened his playing; he abandoned his hi-hat cymbals almost entirely and started basing his grooves on a double bass ostinato with eighth note flams, and a wall of white noise created by riding a crash or ride cymbal. On top of this he played fills and cymbal accents. This became his trademark.
Moon’s Classic Premier setup comprised two 14×22-inch bass drums, three 8×14 (Tuna Can) mounted toms, two 16×16 floor toms, a 5×14 metal snare (usually a Ludwig Supraphonic), and one extra floor tom of different sizes but mainly 16×18 or 16×16. Moon’s classic cymbal setup consisted of two Paiste 18″ crashes and one 20″ ride. In 1973, Moon added a second row of tom-toms (first four, then six) and, in 1975, two more timbales. These huge kits became well known, notably the amber set in the films, Tommy and Stardust, and in footage shot by the BBC at Charlton in 1974. The 1975/76 white kit with gold fittings was given by Moon to a young Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr. His final kit, a dark metallic one, is seen in the footage from The Kids Are Alright at Shepperton in 1978.
Early in The Who’s career, live sets culminated in “auto destruction”, members destroying their equipment in elaborate fashion, an act that was imitated by other bands and artists including Jimi Hendrix in his breakout performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Moon showed a zeal for this, kicking and smashing his drums. During the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour television show, he loaded a drum with explosives which detonated during the finale of “My Generation,” singeing Townshend’s hair and embedding a piece of cymbal in his arm (this has been speculated as starting Townshend’s tinnitus). Another time, he filled clear acrylic drums with water and goldfish, playing them for a television appearance. When an audience member asked “What happens with your goldfish?” he replied with a grin, “Well I mean, you know…even the best drummers get hungry.”[7] Antics like these earned him the nickname “Moon the Loon.”
His determination to add his voice to Who songs led other members to banish him from the studio when vocals were recorded. This led to a game, Moon sneaking in to join the singing. At the end of “Happy Jack,” Townshend can be heard shouting “I saw you!” It is said that he noticed Moon trying to join in[citation needed] Moon can be heard singing on several tracks, including a section of “A Quick One While He’s Away” (A Quick One, 1966), “Armenia City in the Sky” (The Who Sell Out, 1967), “Bell Boy” (Quadrophenia, 1973), “Pictures of Lily” (1967), “Instant Party Mixture” (My Generation Deluxe Edition, 1965), “Bucket T” and “Barbara Ann” (Ready Steady Who EP, 1966).
He was credited as composer of “I Need You,” which he also sang, and the instrumental “Cobwebs and Strange” (from A Quick One, 1966), the single B-sides “In The City” (co-written by Moon and Entwistle), “Dogs Part Two” (1969) (sharing credits with Townshend’s and Entwistle’s dogs, Towser and Jason) and “Wasp Man” (1972), and “Girl’s Eyes” (from The Who Sell Out sessions; featured on Thirty Years of Maximum R&B and a 1995 re-release of The Who Sell Out). He also co-composed the instrumental “The Ox” (from the debut album “My Generation”) with Townshend, Entwistle and pianist Nicky Hopkins. “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” (from Tommy) was credited to Moon, who suggested the action should take place in a holiday camp. The song was written by Townshend, and although many think Moon sings on the track, the version on the album is Townshend’s demo. However Moon did sing it live and on the Tommy film. He also produced “Baba O’Riley”‘s violin solo (which he had suggested), and was recorded by Dave Arbus, a friend.
Daltrey said Moon’s drumming style held the band together; that Entwistle and Townshend “were like needles… and Keith was the wool.”
A reputation for destruction
Moon was destructive. He laid waste to hotel rooms, the homes of friends, even his own home, throwing furniture out of high windows and destroying the plumbing with fireworks.[8] He frequently flushed powerful fireworks (Cherry bombs) down the toilet and enjoyed detonating toilets for personal amusement. The acts, though often fueled by drugs and alcohol, were his way of expressing his eccentricity, as well as the joy he got from shocking the public.[9] In Moon’s biography, Full Moon, Dougal Butler observed, “He would do anything if he knew that there were enough people around who didn’t want him to do it.”
Moon’s pranks bear a similarity to those of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who affected the same maniacal stare as Moon. A darker side to Moon’s behaviour, tentatively diagnosed as caused by a Borderline Personality Disorder in Fletcher’s biography, was physically violent towards three women in his life: his wife Kim, girlfriend Annette, and only daughter Mandy. He was also prepared to pay someone to break his ex-wife’s second husband’s fingers out of jealousy. Annette Walter-Lax described his Mr Hyde-like change into a growling, uncontrollable beast as something out of a horror movie. She begged Malibu neighbour Larry Hagman to check Moon into a clinic to dry out, but when doctors recorded Moon’s intake at breakfast (a full bottle of champagne along with Courvoisier ), they concluded there was no hope.[10] Alice Cooper remembers his drinking club, The Hollywood Vampires, commenting that Moon (‘the Puck of Rock ‘n’ Roll”) used to enter dressed up as the Pope. [11] Joe Walsh has recorded chats with Moon, finding it remarkable how witty and alert the inebriated drummer managed to stay, ad-libbing his way through surrealistic fantasy stories à la Peter Cook.
Although his behaviour was outrageous, it was in the humorous vein[12] as his friend Vivian Stanshall, of the Bonzo Dog Band claimed. Moon produced Stanshall’s version of Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds.
According to Townshend, Moon’s reputation for erratic behaviour was something he cultivated. Once, on the way to an airport, Moon insisted they return to their hotel, saying , “I forgot something. We’ve got to go back!” When the limo returned, Moon ran to his room, grabbed the TV while it was plugged in, threw it out the window and into the pool. He then jumped back into the limousine, sighing “I nearly forgot.”
On January 4, 1970, Moon was involved in a car-pedestrian death outside the Red Lion pub in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Trying to escape hostile skinheads from the pub who had begun to attack his Bentley, Moon ran over and killed his friend and bodyguard, Neil Boland. Although the coroner said Boland’s death was an accident, and Moon was given an absolute discharge having been charged with driving offences, those close to him said Moon was haunted by the accident for the rest of his life. Boland’s daughter investigated and suggested that Moon may not have been driving.[13]
Moon’s penchant for the wild life was detrimental to his drumming and his reliability as a band member. On the 1973 Quadrophenia tour, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, Moon took a large mixture of tranquilizers and brandy. He passed out during “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and again in “Magic Bus.” Townshend asked the audience, “Can anyone play the drums? – I mean somebody good.” An audience member, Scot Halpin, filled in for the rest of the show. Guitarist Pete Townshend later said in an interview that Moon had consumed large tranquilizer pills, meant to be shot at animals, with the brandy.[14] During the band’s recording sabbatical between 1975 and 1978, Moon put on a great deal of weight.
Moon’s close friend and legendary drummer Ringo Starr was seriously concerned about his ‘Rock Star’ lifestyle and told Moon that if he kept going the way he was he would eventually kill himself. Moon simply replied ‘Yeah, I know.’[citation needed]
Moon owned a lilac-coloured Rolls-Royce, painted with house paint. On Top Gear,[15] Daltrey commented that Moon liked to take upper-class icons and make them working class. The car is now owned by Middlebrook Garages (based in Nottinghamshire, England).
Work outside The Who
Although Moon’s work with The Who dominated his career, he participated in minor side projects. In 1966, he teamed with Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck, session man Nicky Hopkins, 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. He also played timpani on another track, “Ol’ Man River” (credited on the back of the album as “You Know Who”).
Moon is said to have named Led Zeppelin. When an early version of the band was being discussed that would have had himself, John Entwistle on bass, Jimmy Page on guitar, and an undecided vocalist, he stated the potential group would “go down like a lead zeppelin.” He joined Zeppelin on stage and drummed with John Bonham for encores in a show on 23 June 1977 at the L.A. Forum (recorded on Led Zeppelin bootlegs, For Badgeholders Only/SGT Pages Badgeholders Club).
In 1974 Track Records/MCA released a solo single: “Don’t Worry, Baby” b/w “Teenage Idol”, the former a reflection of his love of The Beach Boys.
In 1975 he released his only solo album, pop covers entitled Two Sides of the Moon. Although this featured Moon’s singing, much drumming was left to other artists including Ringo Starr, session musicians Curly Smith and Jim Keltner and actor/musician Miguel Ferrer (Twin Peaks and Crossing Jordan). Moon played drums on only three tracks.
In late 1975, he played drums on the track “Bo Diddley Jam” on Bo Diddley’s The 20th Anniversary of Rock ‘n’ Roll all-star album.
In 1971 he had a cameo role in Frank Zappa’s 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 drummer at a holiday camp during the early days of British rock ‘n’ roll. Moon reprised the role for the sequel Stardust in 1974. The film co-starred Moon’s friend Ringo Starr of the Beatles. He appeared as “Uncle Ernie” in Ken Russell’s 1975 film adaptation of Tommy. In a bar about 1975, he asked Graham Chapman and Bernard McKenna to do a “treatment” for a “mad movie”. They asked a thousand pounds, Moon pulled the cash from his pocket and gave it to them. This was the start of the project that would become the movie Yellowbeard. Moon wanted to play the lead but the movie took many years to develop, and by that time he was in physically poor shape, and unsuitable.[16] In 1976, he covered the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” for the soundtrack of the documentary All This and World War II. He impersonated a camp fashion designer in Sextette (1978), starring Mae West. 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 filming. The published edition of the screenplay to Life of Brian is dedicated to Moon.
Moon once owned a hotel, The Crown and Cushion in Chipping Norton.
Death
Moon was Paul McCartney’s guest at a film preview of The Buddy Holly Story on the evening of 6 September 1978. After dining with Paul and Linda McCartney, Moon and his girlfriend, Annette Walter-Lax, returned to a flat on loan from Harry Nilsson in Curzon Place, London (near Shepherd Market), where Moon died of an overdose of Clomethiazole (Heminevrin). The medication was a sedative he had been prescribed to alleviate his alcohol withdrawal symptoms as he tried to go dry on his own at home; he was desperate to get clean, but was terrified of another stay in the psychiatric hospital for in-patient detoxification. However, Clomethiazole is specifically contraindicated for unsupervised home detox due to its addictiveness, tendency to rapidly induce drug tolerance, and dangerously high risk of death when mixed with alcohol.[17] The pills were also prescribed by a new doctor, Dr. Geoffrey Dymond, who was unaware of Moon’s recklessly impulsive nature and long history of prescription sedative abuse. He had given Moon a full bottle of 100 pills, and instructed him to take one whenever he felt a craving for alcohol (but not more than 3 per day). The police determined there were 32 pills in his system, many times the lethal amount, 26 of which were still undissolved when he died.[18] Moon died in the room in which Cass Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas had died four years earlier.
On the audio DVD commentary to The Criterion Collection’s release of the Monty Python film Life of Brian, Eric Idle talks about the dinner party. Idle relates that Moon was excited about his role as a prophet in the movie. After launching into his speech for the film, Idle and Moon exchanged a “big, warm hug,” with Idle commenting that “he was just such a wonderful enthusiast.”
Moon died a couple of weeks after the release of Who Are You. On the album cover, Moon is seated on a chair back-to-front to hide the weight gained over three years (as discussed in Tony Fletcher’s book “Dear Boy”). The chair is labeled “NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY.”
Moon was cremated. His ashes were scattered in the Gardens of Remembrance at Golders Green Crematorium in London.
Events after his death
While Moon was alive, The Who performed with four members. Afterwards, he was replaced by Small Faces/Faces drummer Kenney Jones and later Simon Phillips. The Who also added keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick to the live band. The Who’s drum position is currently occupied by Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr. Starkey was taught by Moon and referred to him as Uncle Keith.
Daltrey recorded a song, “Under a Raging Moon”, as a tribute to Moon and the “middle bar” in the London Astoria is named after him.
A biography was 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.[19]
In early 2006, Moon’s signature Pictures of Lily drum kit was reissued by Premier Percussion under the name Spirit of Lily.
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 collision near Austin, Texas on August 2, 2006.
Moon’s daughter, Mandy, is married to a graphic artist. She has two daughters and lives in Southern California.
Daltrey is producing a biopic about Moon called See Me Feel Me: Keith Moon Naked for Your Pleasure, which will be released in 2009. Comedian Mike Myers will play the main role.
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