Keith Moon’s Final Performance with The Who (1978)

Last sum­mer, we revis­it­ed a mem­o­rable moment from the annals of rock ’ n’ roll — the time when Kei­th Moon, fly­ing high on PCP, passed out at a 1973 Who con­cert in Cal­i­for­nia, giv­ing an unsus­pect­ing fan, Scot Halpin, the chance to take over on the drums. (Watch it all hap­pen here.) It was a glo­ri­ous moment for Scott. For Kei­th, it was the mid­dle of the end — anoth­er exam­ple of the out­ra­geous sub­stance abuse that would kill him five years lat­er.

Fast for­ward to 1978, and we arrive at Kei­th Moon’s final live per­for­mance with The Who. It took place when the band shot live footage for the rock­u­men­tary, The Kids Are Alright. In his recent­ly-pub­lished biog­ra­phy, Who Am I?, Pete Town­shend writes that, by 1978, Moon’s addic­tions had caught up to him. His “drum­ming was get­ting so uneven that record­ing was almost impos­si­ble, so much so that work on the Who Are You album had ground to a halt.… [The Who] had just about enough tracks for a record, with very lit­tle addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al to spare. ‘Music Must Change’ was com­plet­ed with foot­steps replac­ing drums.” When it came time to shoot live footage for The Kids Are Alright, Town­shend “was ter­ri­fied that Kei­th would­n’t be able to hide his dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion,” but agreed to give it a try.

The ini­tial shoot was appalling. The band was out of prac­tice, and Kei­th could­n’t keep up. So they tried a sec­ond shoot, filmed at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios on May 25, 1978, where they played a lim­it­ed num­ber of hit songs before a small audi­ence. (Watch above and below.) “Kei­th was in a good mood but bloat­ed and unfit,” writes Town­shend, “and he found the repeat­ed takes weary­ing.” Because Moon’s ear­phones kept falling off, they taped them to his head with thick black gaffers’ tape. In the months that fol­lowed, Moon head­ed to Mal­ibu, Cal­i­for­nia where he tried to kick his alco­hol habit and then start­ed abus­ing med­ica­tions to relieve the with­draw­al symp­toms. On Sep­tem­ber 6, Moon took 32 tablets of clome­thi­a­zole, a seda­tive meant to help him cope with the with­draw­al. The next morn­ing Roger Dal­trey, The Who’s lead singer, called Pete Town­shend and sim­ply said “He’s done it.”

For more on this sto­ry, check out the audio ver­sion of Pete Town­shend’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy Who Am I?. It’s read by Town­shend him­self, which gives it a nice per­son­al touch. And you can down­load it for free if you sign up for a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com. Find the details here. Final­ly you can also watch Town­shend dis­cussing his book and music career in a 90-minute con­ver­sa­tion with Paul Hold­en­graber here.


via Rolling Stone


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Comments (3)
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  • marco says:

    amaz­ing i see the movie . . cadil­lac records

  • LORRAINE TAYLOR says:

    It is nice to look at all the good and pos­i­tive music accom­plish­ments Kei­th
    Suc­ceed­ed in his life.A James Dean of Music per­haps.
    PUBLIC LIFE BRINGS ITS OWN SPECIAL TRAINING.AND HE LIKE LIKE MARILYN MUNROE LEFT EARLY.I DONT BELIEVE THE WHO HAVE ACHIEVED ANY NEW MUSIC SINCE KEITH PASSED AWAY.SO HIS MUSIC LIVES ON WITH THE WHO.
    HIS DAUGHTER AND FAMILY? WOULD NOW BE ABLE TO SEE HE MADE IT TO THE TOP THRU THE PROBLEMS.HIS TALENT SHONE.

  • Jorge Azamar says:

    I came late to The Who but bet­ter lat­er than nev­er. It was at my 20 years old and though I had heard some songs of the band, there was lit­tle atten­tion to their music. When The kids are alright was an inter­na­tion­al pre­miere it was dif­fer­ent. I am a mex­i­can and see them in movies shocked me from begin­ning to end. Since then I am a real fan of the group. That year was to It’s Hard album,Athena song and more. I explod­ed into fire lights, real­ly, as Eric Bur­don once said of them. Kei­th being a sort of group’s soul was an impor­tant music man in music panora­ma in gen­er­al. A real pity he passed away so soon, so soon, but their entire cul­tur­al, musi­cal, emo­tion­al, crazy way to cre­ate music and emo­tions will last for a long long time to come. God bless them.

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