The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (56 page)

The third member of the late-fifties vocal sensations to die young, Puerto Rican Joey Negroni had been a part of the set-up when it amounted to little more than a group of friends – baritone Negroni, plus his partner in The Ermines, lead/second tenor Herman Santiago, and joining members Sherman Garnes (bass) and Jimmy Merchant (tenor) – from the Edward W Stitt Junior High School, going on to perform as The Premiers. It was only with the introduction of a cocksure frontman – soprano Frankie Lymon – that the group looked and sounded ready for the big time. As The Teenagers, they hit it full-on in 1956, with the timeless ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’ jetting into the US Top Ten (and careering all the way to UK number one). Further hits stuttered and spluttered: by the time Lymon’s voice broke the game was all but up for The Teenagers.

By late 1978, 60 per cent of the youthful line-up had passed on: Frankie Lymon had developed an addiction that he couldn’t beat (
February 1968),
and Sherman Garnes had died during surgery
(
February 1977).
Similarly, Joey Negroni had critical health issues: a belatedly discovered brain tumour saw him die from a cerebral haemorrhage.

‘At first I thought he was gonna jump out the coffin and laugh at us.’

John Entwistle

‘We were all set to become movie moguls. So his timing, as per usual, was a bit off.’

Pete Townshend

‘If one journalist says we’re not the same without Keith, I’ll personally break his legs.’

Roger Daltrey

The Who ‘deal’ with Keith Moon’s passing

Thursday 7

Keith Moon

(Wembley, Middlesex, 23 August 1946)

The Who

(The Escorts)

(The Beachcombers)

No matter how unintentional it may have been, there’s something vaguely apposite about the fact that Keith Moon’s demise was a self-destruction of sorts. Moon’s all-too-brief thirty-odd years were a riot of ruination, excess and damage documented to a value of £300K. There are also, of course, one or two white lies to keep the customer on his toes, but, regardless of their legitimacy, Moon tales have embellished rock ‘n’ roll folklore with head-spinning regularity.

Keith Moon
made
The Who. Before, they were tight, cohesive, musical: after the gurning showman muscled his way in, they became toxic and dangerous, a three-dimensional experience. The potent combination of Pete Townshend’s disaffected lyrics and Moon’s firework display behind the traps made them Britain’s first and most convincing punk-rock band. The fact that Moon was a great drummer is often overlooked because of his behaviour, but during the seventies there were few to equal him. In the sixties, there were none. A fan of D J Fontana (Elvis’s maverick original drummer), Moon claimed never to have had a drumming lesson in his life – although this is more than likely one of his yarns. Before making his debut with The Who, he’d played with The Escorts and then, improbably, with a harmony covers group named The Beachcombers. Despite Moon’s well-documented love of The Beach Boys, this was no surf band and he knew he was dragging his heels with them. (So intense had his performance become that his drum kit often had to be secured to the floor with nails.) Moon was now intrigued by a brasher combo known as The Detours: according to legend, a drunken Moon rubbished the band’s session percussionist, Doug Sandon, and took to the kit himself during the interval at a pub gig at his local (The Oldfield). Apocryphal or otherwise, what happened next created a blueprint for the next fifteen years of his, and The Who’s, life. Moon – reportedly dressed entirely in ‘ginger’ (jacket, cords, the lot) – utterly wrecked the hapless player’s drum kit, snapping the bass pedal in two and putting the skins through as he rampaged through a version of ‘Roadrunner’. In the stunned silence that followed, spokesman/singer Roger Daltrey, with rare, understated comedy, asked: ‘What’re you doing Monday, mate?’

Keith Moon: Don’t mess with Uncle Ernie if you want to see your toys again

With Moon on board, the image of the band changed accordingly. Another 1964 gig saw Townshend (who had started to use his trademark ‘windmill’ style) trash his instrument in a fit of pique brought on by a difficult audience: Moon continued the onstage demolition and the UK had a new benchmark in raw rock ‘n’ roll aggression. Their musicianship without question, The Who made records that were always remarkably melodic, beginning an early surge of UK hits with ‘I Can’t Explain’. ‘Anyhow Anywhere Anyway’ and the breathtaking high that was ‘My Generation’ (all 1965) suggested this phenomenon would give The Beatles and Stones a good run for their money. (Surprisingly, in America – despite consistently destroying records for live attendance and decibel output – The Who only ever enjoyed one Top Ten disc.) With music ever more groundbreak-ing and elaborate, the line-up of Daltrey, Townshend, Moon and his close friend for many years, bassist John ‘The Ox’ Entwistle, remained unbroken until 1978. The drummer’s ability as an actor and comedian was no fluke either; he may have been prone to spontaneous combustion but Moon had innate talent here. His often-remarked-upon resemblance to actor Robert Newton (Long John Silver in the 1950 screen version of
Treasure Island)
was actually as lovingly manipulated as his somewhat typecast role as Uncle Ernie in the movie of Townshend’s rock opera,
Tommy
(1975).

The sustained level of success The Who experienced meant money, which in turn meant fewer mundane hassles and more than sufficient space to do the things young men wanted to do. While the others enjoyed trout fishing (Daltrey) and painting (Entwistle), Moon’s methods of entertaining himself were altogether less serene. (Legend has it that when his accountant told him he was technically a millionaire but would need to spend in order to claim on tax, the drummer blew the whole lot in six remarkable weeks, on a hotel, houses, cars and expensive trinkets). He developed a taste for cognac and (this being the seventies) Liebfraumilch. But most of all Keith Moon nurtured a love for mischief. His delight in pyrotechnics was brought to America’s attention as The Who made that landmark 1967 appearance on
The Smothers Brothers
TV show. Rattling their way through ‘My Generation’, pretty much no one but the drummer knew that his drums were set to blow. Having bribed a stagehand to supply flash powder for the stunt, Moon had overdone the dose, causing the kit to explode, almost severing his leg with a cymbal and singeing the hair of Pete Townshend (who himself had already kicked over an amp), rendering the guitarist partially deaf. (Stage left, guest star Bette Davis fainted into Mickey Rooney’s arms.) The list is endless: by the mid seventies ‘Moon the Loon’ had swung from chandeliers, disrobed completely in exclusive public venues, dressed up as Hitler or a transsexual, taken horse tranquilisers (see Scot Halpin
February 2008
) – and, yes, even thrown televisions out of hotel windows. On one occasion, he parked a mini-hovercraft on a railway line, disrupting train services for hours. The infamous twenty-first birthday story, in which the drummer drove a Lincoln into a Holiday Inn swimming pool during The Who’s first US tour, has, however, been dismissed as fable, though Moon did indulge in a lot of horseplay with Herman’s Hermits (for whom The Who had been opening).

A limitless appetite for booze and amphetamines fuelling his antics, Moon’s lifestyle was fast getting out of hand by 1970, his compulsion for fooling and causing public affray now wearing thin with his bandmates (particularly drug-shunning Daltrey) and also his young wife, Kim Kerrigan, whom he had married when she was just sixteen. Kerrigan, now with a young daughter, Mandy, felt neglected – after all, her husband could barely remember his daughter’s age. Perhaps the beginning of the end was when, attempting to escape a group of Hertfordshire skinheads, Moon accidentally ran over and killed his own driver, Neil Boland: the incident haunted Moon for the remainder of his life. Kerrigan divorced him three years later. But rather than change his lifestyle, Moon decamped in 1974 to the US with new girlfriend, Swedish model Annette WalterLax, where he was reunited with various buddies including The Beatles and Harry Nilsson. Apart from a brief visit of a few months to complete The Who’s
Who By Numbers
album and his own solo effort,
Two Sides of the Moon
(1975), Keith Moon did not return to the UK until 1977 – whereupon Nilsson handed him the keys to his London flat at 9 Curzon Place, Mayfair – the selfsame apartment in which their friend Cass Elliot had died four years previously (
July 1974
). The events of August 1978 prompted Nilsson to sell the property.