Keith Moon was a famous British drummer, known as a member of the rock band The Who. He is concidered to be one of the most outstanding and best drummers of all times.
Background
Keith John Moon was born on August 23, 1946, to Alfred “Alf” and Kathleen “Kit” Moon at Central Middlesex Hospital in what was then the Urban District of Willesden, London in England. For the first three years of his life, Keith Moon was raised in Tokyngton, Brent in London. Keith Moon could be described as having a restless nature with a very comedic vein to it, and exhibited a great affinity to music from the get go.
“From the age of three, he would sit for hours beside an old portable gramophone player, and play old 78 records of stars like Nat King Cole and Scots bandleader Jimmy Shand.” - Kit Moon in Dear Boy: The Life Of Keith Moon.
In June of 1949, the Moon’s had their second child, Linda Moon. In 1950, the family moved to the Northwest London suburb of Wembley, Middlesex where Keith Moon spent most of his early years of life.
Education
Keith Moon attended Alperton Secondary Modern School.
At the age of 12, he had joined the Sea Cadet Corp and was given his first musical instrument, the bugle. He left school by 15 and was in his first band, The Beachcombers; this was around the summer of 1963. There was rumour that Keith was self-taught, but history says otherwise, he was shown how to play by the late Carlo Little (1938-2005), Carlo was the original drummer in The Rolling Stones and David Sutch's band, The Savages.
Later Moon enrolled at Harrow College, and get a job as a radio repairman, and it becomes possible for him to buy his first drum kit.
There was nothing in Keith’s humble background to suggest the extraordinary turn of events his life would take. He became a surf music fan as a schoolboy, took early lessons on drums as a teenager and played with three local bands in his native Wembley in northwest London, the Escorts, Mark Twain & The Strangers, and The Beachcombers, before joining The Who in the spring of 1964 after an impromptu audition at the Oldfield pub in Greenford. Shortly after Keith’s recruitment, the Who became managed by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp whose energy and ambition focused the group and set them on the road to stardom.
Moon announced his arrival in spectacular fashion on The Who’s first real single ‘I Can’t Explain’ (1965) on which his rifle-shot snare pre-empted Roger Daltrey’s leap into the chorus. Mostly, though, his foil was Pete Townshend with whom he developed an uncanny musical relationship, the product of which became one of the Who’s great trademarks: the chiming, bell-like, open-stringed power chord, cross cut against pounding drums and bass and allowed to feedback on itself and drone into a wall of electronic discord.
Moon’s drumming is outstanding throughout the group’s début album My Generation and on several Sixties singles, most notably ‘Happy Jack’ (1966) and ‘I Can See For Miles’ (1967), but it is on the double album Tommy (1969) that his talents are best utilised. On Townshend’s celebrated rock opera he becomes an orchestra within himself, driving the band along with an intelligence and sureness of touch that defies analysis. On Who’s Next (1971) Moon is reined in somewhat but his playing on the bridge on ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and throughout both ‘Bargain’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ ranks with anything he ever did.
The Who’s greatest strength, though, was in concert and by the end of the Sixties they were justifiably billing themselves as ‘‘the most exciting rock band in the world.’’ To this Moon contributed almost superhuman energy, his hands and feet battering his kit into submission night after night, the relentless power of The Who in full flight spiraling out from his arms and legs.
When The Who slowed down and Pete Townshend sought creative outlets elsewhere Keith moved to California and took cameo roles in several movies, most notably in That’ll Be The Day (1973) and its sequel Stardust (1974), as the drummer in a fictitious rock band led by David Essex. He also completed a solo album, Two Sides Of The Moon (1975) before moving back to the UK in 1977 to play on Who Are You, his last recorded work with The Who.
Keith Moon was an outstanding drummer. In 1982 he was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame. In 2011 he was chosen by the Rolling Stone readers' poll as the second-greatest drummer in history.
Keith Moon he has been credited as one of the earliest rock drummers to regularly employ double bass drums in his setup.
In 2016 Keith’s life was celebrated in the book There Is No Substitute, A Tribute To Keith Moon, in which fellow drummers, musical allies, friends and fans assess Keith’s impact on rock and lasting legacy.
He is a dedicatee of the published script of Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979).
Moon was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Who) in 1990.
Brashly confident, Moon played quite differently to his peers, turning his massive kit into a lead instrument, and his up-front technique was crucial in establishing The Who’s passionate style. His playing ushered in an era wherein the drums became far more than simply a means of keeping the beat, and much of his recorded legacy from 1965-73 has a timeless quality that has never been repeated, let alone bettered. In this respect Keith Moon was to the drums what Jimi Hendrix was to the guitar - a complete original - and as such he was probably the most influential drummer the rock world has ever seen.
Moon’s kit was the biggest in rock, at one stage boasting at least 10 tom-toms, twin bass drums, twin timpani, snare, half-a-dozen cymbals and a gong. With this vast array of percussion at his command, he adopted a peculiar style wherein he pointed his sticks downwards and, as John Enwtistle once remarked: “He didn’t play from left to right or right to left, he’d play forwards. I’ve never seen anyone play like that before or since.” Keith was also a virtuoso showman, twiddling his drumsticks between his fingers and flamboyantly tossing them into the air and, occasionally, catching them when they fell. He developed an on-stage image as a wise-cracker and often ad-libbed comical asides between numbers, and like Pete he took an almost manic delight in wrecking his equipment at the close of a concert, especially in the group’s early days.
Quotations:
"When you've got money and you do the kind of things I get up to, people laugh and say that you're eccentric, which is a polite way of saying you're fucking mad."
"At heart I cannot accept that I am a well-known rock 'n' roll star and one of the greatest drummers in the world. I can't believe that person on the television is really me. The Keith Moon the public knows is a myth, even if I have created him. The real me is the person who sits at home having a cup of tea with his old lady, Annette. The hotel smashing is one way I get relief from the public image. I have no temper. I do it in a spirit of amusment [sic] rather than anger. When I've done damage to a friend's house I come back sheepishly the next day and offer to put things right, which means I'm willing to foot the bill."
"They're always saying I'm a capitalistic pig. I suppose I am. But ... it's good for my drumming."
Personality
Keith was rock’s wildest character in the Sixties and Seventies, an unapologetic freewheeling hedonist whose lifestyle became synonymous with the mad, carefree image of the rock star at large. He courted the press and became notorious as ‘Moon The Loon’, the incorrigible clown who respected no authority whatsoever and never knew the meaning of the word embarrassment. As The Who became massively popular worldwide, so Keith Moon became a celebrity, not just as a drummer, but as the mad jester to rock’s high court whose exploits included cross-dressing, elaborate practical jokes and a much-publicised episode when he and his great friend Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band visited a London beerkeller dressed in Nazi SS uniforms. Keith’s Chertsey home, Tara House, became the venue for many memorable parties, not least the 1971 launch of Who’s Next.
Keith Moon had an extremely destructive personality even off-stage, often at the expense of hotel rooms.
He was allegedly responsible for The Who being banned from every Holiday Inn in the US for life after creating a ruckus while celebrating his 20th birthday at one of the chain's hotels in the Flint, Michigan, though actually they continued to use Holiday Inns for much of their career.
He packed flash powder in his bass drum during an appearance on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967), causing it to explode. This not only caused Pete Townshend's hair to catch fire and damaged his hearing, but Moon was injured as well. His prime purpose in this prank was to upstage Smothers, and when he appeared right in front of the camera whilst a joke was being cracked, before collapsing, his attempts were successful. Bette Davis was standing backstage during the explosion and fainted.
He shared a house in Los Angeles with John Lennon and May Pang, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson in 1974; it was the same place where Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe had met for trysts in the early 1960s. They called it their "rock-n-roll rest home", and Moon was fond of coming down to breakfast wearing a trench coat slit up the back and nothing underneath.
He was ejected from a hotel suite after a night of nailing and strapping all the furniture to the ceiling.
Roger Daltrey's song "Under A Raging Moon" was a tribute to him. The recording featured the work of 40 drummers, including Ringo Starr and his son Zak Starkey.
Physical Characteristics:
Height: 174 cm (5 ft 8.5 in)
Weight: 80 kg (176 lb)
Quotes from others about the person
"He was like a madman let loose on a drum kit with no idea what he was doing. He was just hitting everything in sight, and making a load of noise. There was no way that this guy was going to be a professional drummer, it was impossible because he didn’t have a clue he was like the worst drummer you’d ever seen in your life.” – Gerry Evans in Dear Boy: The Life Of Keith Moon.
"This was somebody without whom we might still be listening to drummers going 'boom-cha, boom-cha.'" - Biographer Tony Fletcher.
"He was the most generous, the most mean, he was the funniest... he could be the most unfunny, everything - the most loving, the most hateful... Everything about him was extreme." - Roger Daltrey, The Who's lead singer.
Interests
Music & Bands
The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean
Connections
Keith Moon started dating a British model Kim Kerrigan in January 1965. Moon married Kim on 17 March 1966 at Brent Registry Office. On July 12, 1966, their daughter Amanda was born. The relationship between the couple were uneasy, and occasionally abusive. In 1975 they divorced.
In 1975 Moon started dating the Swedish model Annette Walter-Lax, who was with him until his death.
