Annette called from Los Angeles one day to be told by “this cantankerous old man” on the switchboard that ‘Mr Moon is at home in the country with his wife.’ “I heard later on that he had gone down to the breakfast room naked, walking around shamelessly while all these old ladies were having their bacon and eggs.”
John Walters came to meet with Keith Moon during this week, seeing for himself the ravages of the Bacchic celebration. “There was a very lightly dressed girl of German or Austrian background who had been there all night. She said, ‘Good morning’ and went off into the shower.
Keith said, ‘See if you can find out her name, will you mate, I can’t remember what she’s called.’ “Walters fulfilled Keith’s request and soon the girl disappeared into the London streets with only her taxi fare and memories. The producer’s attention then turned to a hole in the alcove, which looked “as if a giant had bent down and bitten a chunk out of the wall”.
“Jesus, what happened here?” he asked Moon.
“That? Oh, I was trying to show Peter Sellers how to open a bottle of champagne without touching the cork. It involves banging it against the wall.”
Moon returned instead to partying. At the end of the week off, the Londonderry charged him £2,000 for accommodation and an extra £1,000 to redecorate the suite – and banned him from ever staying there again. “I wrecked it totally,” Keith confessed to the press like a proud child. “Mind you, it was an incredible party.”
On October 15 and 16, the Who played the Apollo in Glasgow. On the 17th, they intended flying back to London, by regular British Airways jet, then making their own way by car up to their concerts in Leicester for the 18th and 19th. True to form, the Who did not opt for a tour bus; relations were too strained to live in that close a proximity.
But Glasgow Airport was fog-bound on the 17th, necessitating the Who join the general public on a special coach to the larger Prestwick International Airport just outside Ayr. Keith, who had earlier in the day stocked up on toy guns and itching powder, spent the long coach journey south winding up the other passengers and swigging from his bottle of brandy.
Prestwick, it transpired, was also completely fog bound – for the first time in three years. No one knew when, if at all, the plane to London would depart. Keith got more drunk and rambunctious with it. As with hotels, airports provided a perfect stage for him to perform on. “Anywhere where there were normal people he could shock,” says Peter Rudge, “we used to think to break the boredom, we’d let Keith have some fun.” Instantly recognisable in his rabbitskin fur coat as Moon the Loon in the immediate proximity of the general public, Keith did his best to keep the airport crowd entertained. Which mostly meant amusing himself.
“It was the funniest thing in the world,” says John Wolff, who laughs about it still, though he had to handle the aftermath. “It built up more and more and more. Keith pulled or pushed over a terminal to the floor, because the girl was saying, ‘There are no flights anywhere,’ so he went, ‘Well, fuck you,’ and over it went. After that, the police came from their station at the airport, and said to me and Dougal, ‘Will you please take care of this man or we’ll have to take him away to jail.’
“So he quietened down, was very contrite, because he could put on this very contrite face. You’d have to have seen it to believe it, how innocent looking he was, the wide brown eyes, the downcast look of ‘I’m sorry’, a little bit hangdoggy – but a man with growth on, debauched from the night before. He was quiet for a while, but he spotted a paraplegic’s chair, and he got into the wheelchair.
He wanted to go down this flight of stairs on the wheelchair, a little bit like a Marx Brothers movie.
I couldn’t believe he was going to do it. He came down the stairs, and of course it doesn’t work like it does in the movies, because in the movies they have big wheels at the front that can take a step.
But this paraplegic’s chair only had two small wheels, so as soon as he went over the first step, the little wheels caught so he went straight over the top.
It went like a Catherine wheel, this chair and him going over and over, with him still in the seat. As it was going down the centre there’s these old people looking up, like Aaaagh!’ People were pinning themselves up against the side to let him go by.
“So there he was lying there at the bottom, and the same police came up. ‘We warned you, you’ve got to look after this man,’ and we apologised and said it was all an accident and they swallowed it. It’s a wonder he wasn’t dead. We thought he would have to go to the hospital, but Keith got up miraculously.
“Then it went quiet again, and we waited. There were these announcements, the flight was always delayed half an hour, they’ll keep you there for three days in half hour increments.
We’ve been there all day and he’s been drinking all day. Finally he went and held up this old woman at the kiosk with his toy gun, and she thought it was real, and almost died of a heart attack. He pulled the trigger and she went, ‘Oooooh’ and dropped away as this little flag came out with the word ‘Bang!’ on the end of it!
“At this point you have to pan across to the same two coppers coming out of the same cubbyhole. They marched straight over, and I’m going, ‘But…’ and they said, ‘No, not this time,’ and they each lifted an arm, and Keith’s legs were going because he couldn’t touch the ground, in this great big fur coat.
