23 Aug 1946, Keith Moon Birthday: More Lunatics Tales from the Loon

By editorial board on August 23, 2022

Everywhere he went Keith made friends. Especially among other drummers, whom he rightly considered to be a breed of their own. In Morecambe, he asked to borrow a pair of drumsticks from Roy Carr, drummer with support band the Executives.

Carr, quite aware of Keith’s reputation from television and word of mouth, pointed out that he only had two pairs and needed them both. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t break them,’ promised Keith. Reluctantly, Carr obliged, and at the end of the show Moon handed the sticks back, badly splintered but still intact, before taking tnudemoonhe other drummer for a drink by way of thanks. (from the  TONY FLETCHER - DEAR BOY)

Prawns!

Dinner at Tramp was Pacific prawns washed down by Dom Perignon – the usual luxurious Keith Moon supper. But when the bill came, even Keith looked unusually aghast. For a rare few moments, there was complete silence. Eventually Karl asked if his friend was all right.

“How many prawns did we have?” asked Keith by way of reply.

“About 24, I think,” replied Karl.

“They’ve gone up. The bill’s £14,000!70 That’s nearly £600,0 a prawn! I mean, I don’t mind, but it’s a bit much.” He called over the manager.

“These prawns. They’ve gone up, haven’t they?”

“No, Mr Moon. That’s your bill – for the last year.”

Keith, who was usually too drunk to pay for anything at the end of a night at Tramp, had been allowed to run his tab into five figures in the hope that one day he would show up sober enough to pay. Somewhat pale but never one to plead poverty in public, Keith wrote a cheque drawn on an offshore bank account with a great flourish.“What made me laugh,” says Karl, looking back on the incident, “was Keith assumed it was the prawns at £14,000. I thought, ‘What sort of world is this when you think a prawn is £600,0?’”

 

The night was not over. The girls came back to Curzon Place, where Keith tried to impress on them his fame and fortune. But they were not Who fans. They had never heard of him. And this being Nilsson’s flat, there was no memorabilia around to verify his claim. Undeterred, Keith declared, ‘I’ll prove I’m a rock star,’ picked up the lone guitar that Harry had left behind, and started singing Nilsson’s ‘Good Old Desk’.

“It was totally appalling,” recalls Howman. “His mad eyes were going and he was dancing round the room and going up to the girls, pulling faces, and they went ‘All right! We believe you, you’re a rock star.’ I think they thought it was so bad that it made sense.”

MONEY AGAIN

. “His pockets are stuffed with money and he’s already smashed,” he recalls of their setting off. “We get in the cab and he’s giving the cab driver £100 to go a few blocks. So I take the money from him and take control. We hit everywhere. Somewhere late at night we end up at the Crazy Horse saloon. We go to the door and there’s this guy dressed up as a mounted policeman, and Keith is going, ‘I’m Keith Moon of the Who,’ and the guy is saying, ‘ooo?’ and they don’t recognise him and everything is lost in the translation. Fortunately one of the girls working in the foyer recognises him and suddenly it’s all ‘big celebrity’ and out of nowhere a table and chair and a bucket of champagne arrives.eb6277cbaac079796423d6d88f0fbd93

“After half an hour Moonie says ‘I’m going to take a leak,’ and goes off and I’m left on my own. I’m thinking, ‘Where’s Moonie? Has he passed out?’ I go looking for him. He’s not in the toilet. I go back in the club and I see Moonie sitting at a table with a bottle of champagne. I go up to him and he says, ‘Dear chap, what are you doing here? Do have a drink, sit down.’ I say, ‘Keith, we came in together.’ So now we’ve got two tables going where it’s difficult to get one. He says, Aren’t these girls lovely?’ and he starts taking his clothes off and he’s going to join them on stage. Suddenly he’s got his boots, his shirt, his socks off, and he’s about to pull his pants down, and I’m trying to stop him!”

Carr dragged Moon out of the Crazy Horse and after a couple more champagne-dominated stops around town, “We get back to the hotel about five in the morning and he crashes out and I crash out. I wake up about noon and I’ve still got his money. In mid afternoon I got to his room and he’s very groggy and I give him this money and he says (puts on gleeful voice), ‘What’s this? Did we go gambling last night?’ He can’t remember anything. I say, ‘No, this is your money,’ and he says, ‘Oh, we’ve got to go out and spend it.’ And we did!”

from the  TONY FLETCHER - DEAR BOY

 

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