Career
Mooney began his musical career in 1977 with Anglo-Irish punk band The European Cowards, in collaboration with John Keogh and rebel rouser John Herlihy. He was then enlisted as the bass player for Adam and the Ants, between 1980 and 1981, appearing on the album Kings of the Wild Frontier. Wide Boy Awake released two EPs in the United Kingdom, including songs "Chicken Outlaw", "Billy Hyena", "Bona Venture" and "Slang Teacher", some of which appear on 1980s various-artists compilations.
The band were managed by Mooney"s then-wife Pamela Rooke.
"Billy Hyena" was accompanied by a music video directed by Derek Jarman. Wide Boy Awake disbanded soon after without releasing a full album.
During this period, Mooney guested on Sinéad O"Connor"s album The Lion and the Cobra, writing and playing guitar on one track "Just Call Maine Joe", featuring Leslie Winer on backup vocals. The band recorded an unreleased album, featuring guitar work by another Adam Ant collaborator, Marco Pirroni.
Mooney formed a new version of Max, which released a drug induced soft rock middle-of-the-road album called Silence Running, produced by Trevor Horn, but the band dissolved in the wake of money problems and drug-related deaths.
Mooney relocated to Florida and then to Boston with Winer but returned to the United Kingdom briefly in 2001. He now resides in Berlin. Mooney worked with Leslie Winer as part of the electronic group "C" on the albums Witch and Spider.
This group recorded two albums (The Lavender Pill Mob and Mike"s Bikes) released independently.
The second album featured guest vocals by Adam Ant on one song. In 2008, Mooney co-founded the South.A.H.I. organization (Societee Anomyme des Hermites Inconnu) with Frau Bettina Louisiana Gachette.
As of 2015, Mooney and Louisiana Gachette now run an artistic and political-hermit website known as Hermit Group 1.org.
