He was not alone in maintaining a private pharmacy. Paul McCartney took it upon himself to use the first day of the Pussy Cats sessions to drop in on Lennon with his wife Linda; it was the first time the world’s most famous songwriting partnership had been in a studio together since the Beatles.
Ringo, Keith and Harry missed seeing the pair’s fragile reconciliation, having already taken to the town for the night, but a few days later McCartney, with Linda and children in tow, stopped by the beach house, and immediately headed for the piano;
though Lennon and Starr immediately excused themselves from the room, Moon and Nilsson took the opportunity to sing along a Beatles. Nilsson also took the opportunity to offer McCartney some angel dust.
‘I said, “Is it fun?” ‘ recalled the ex-Beatle in the biography Many Years From Now.‘He tho
ught for about half a minute. “No,” he said.’ ‘I said, “Well, you know what, I won’t have any.” He seemed to understand. But that’s how it was there.’
Keith frequently brought his own medication to the studio. Not that Keith played much on Nilsson’s Pussy Cats. Lennon had hired the revered LA session player Jim Keltner for the job even before Ringo had flown back into town. Now, with Moon hanging out too, he had three of the best drummers in the world on hand – although two of them were out of practice and out on the town too often to be much good.
With Oliver Reed during the casting and filming of Tommy
None of which meant that Keith respected the property. He called Reed into his room one day to help him ‘fix the television’. Oblivious to the machinations of the touring rock musician, Reed helped his friend move it towards the window. “All of a sudden he tips it up to one side and out of the window. Bang! The porter comes charging up the stairs. ‘Good, there you are,’ says Moon. ‘Next time, answer the phone when I call.’”
Bitten by the holiday camp bug, Reed decided to visit an old friend of his who he knew was working as a Greencoat at a camp on the Isle of Wight. The Tommy crew, at the time, were staying on nearby Hayling Island. Getting over to the Isle of Wight was no problem; Keith and O
liver, with Dougal in tow, took a ferry. Once there, however, they got drunk as usual and allowed the last ferry back to leave without them. Reed was needed on set the next morning and, ever the professional, was determined to get back for the dawn call. Keith’s solution was simple: “We’ll arrange a fishing boat.”
But then the weather turned,” says Reed, “and no one would take us back. Eventually we got this girl and her father in what was nothing more than a rowing boat. It was like Flora MacDonald. The father rowed us with his daughter steering. And Keith stood on the prow holding the tiller with all the waves coming over, shrieking and shouting in the sea. I thought Keith was going to get knocked off the front of the boat.” 
When they reached Hayling Island, the storm was so bad the boat could not approach the beach. The trio bravely jumped in the water instead and swam through the breakers up to the shore. A rather stunned crew assembling for breakfast watched as first Keith Moon, then Oliver Reed, walked into the hotel, soaking wet, totally naked, and ordered brandies for breakfast.
During a break in filming, Oliver Reed asked Keith, Joy and the ever-present Dougal over to Broome Hall for the weekend. Keith took the opportunity to try out and show off his latest acquisition – a video camera he had just brought back from the States. Oliver and Keith passed the first day on a drunken remake of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That night, Keith knocked on his host’s room, imploring Oliver to come see what he had filmed.
“I went to his room and there was Joy Bang in bed with nothing on, and he turned on the video and I recognised my garden, it was very pretty. And all of a sudden I recognised one of my girlfriend’s tops, except it was being worn by Joy Bang. She came down the steps, Moonie went staggering back. Then Joy Bang took off her clothes, lay on the bank of the old Victorian pool at the time, and opened her legs … There’s my girlfriend and me expecting to see some great art thing, and the only thing my girlfriend could say was, ‘Why is she wearing my clothes?’” Reed and Moon having become kindred spirits, it was no surprise that the duo began talking about working together beyond Tommy, coming up with a wonderful idea for The Dinner Party.
