Keith Moon (August 23, 1946 – September 7, 1978)

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“Moon the Loon”, as he was nicknamed by friends, Keith Moon became bored and easily agitated when he wasn’t on tour with The Who. Moon joined The Who when he was 17 in 1964 in addition to collaborating with future members of Led Zeppelin on several projects. 

Moon grew up in London’s Wembly neighborhood. Friends and family described him as being a mediocre student who had difficulty focusing and was somewhat of a loner.  He showed an interest in music when he was young and started playing the bugle when he was 12, and then afterwards the trumpet.  He joined the local Sea Cadets Corps as a bugle player and eventually moved on to playing the drums, which he apparently was much more skilled at. 

His drumming style was unique and eccentric which at times completely frustrated other band members. According to bass player John Entwhistle, Moon would change the tempo of his drumming according to his mood. “He wouldn't play across his kit.  He'd play zigzag. That's why he had two sets of tom-toms. He'd move his arms forward like a skier."

He quickly developed a reputation for being aggressive and destructive, smashing up his drums, destroying hotel rooms, throwing furniture and TV’s out of windows, and exploding toilets with cherry bombs.  He celebrated his 21st birthday in Flint, Michigan while on tour with Herman’s Hermits.  Both bands began drinking early in the day, on into the afternoon. By the evening he hurled a 5-tiered cake at the inebriated party guests which eventually sparked a cake fight throughout the hotel lobby and around the outside of the hotel. Moon was naked by this point and got into a Lincoln Continental limousine parked in the lot, pulled up the handbrake and rolled backwards, too drunk to realize he could have just slammed on the brakes, and eventually crashed through the fence and down into the pool.

Keith Moon developed a severe alcohol and amphetamine addiction that began to affect his ability to perform on stage.  His band mates threatened to replace him if he couldn’t stop drinking, as he would pass out often and thus, unable to play.  In the 2007 documentary ‘Amazing Journey’, Pete Townshend commented, “He just always took pills in handfuls, it was just a habit that he had.”

In 1975 Moon began dating Swedish model Annette Walter-Lax, who urged him to go to a rehab facility.  He was supposedly afraid of detoxing in a hospital setting and was prescribed Heminevrin, a sedative to reduce the effects of alcohol withdrawal symptoms.  The doctor who prescribed it wasn’t aware of the extent of Moon’s lifestyle.  He was instructed to take not more than 3 per day and was given a bottle with 100 pills in it. Moon took 32 of the pills; 26 were found undigested in his system.  The overdose of the medication disabled his esophagus and prevented him from vomiting, thus suffocating him.




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