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Keith O'Neill

Music:

* While growing up listened to The Beatles, sixties influenced music, Al Jolson and the Big Band sound.
* Musical influences are mostly drummers and include Ginger Baker, John Bonham, John Isman and The Beatles
* The first record he bought was an electronic type song called Pop Music by M. His mother used to buy all his records for him.
* Favourite album is Quadrophenia by The Who.
* Played his first live performance infront of an audience at the age of about 18. It took place at St George of England High School, Bootle with an audience of about 30 people. He had only just started playing the drums.
* Before taking up the drums Keith played trumpet, bass guitar, clarinet and flute.
* Previously drummed with Space's Tommy Scott in the Australians, and a psychedelic Mod group known as the Windmills.
* Can sing like Pavarotti

Life before Cast:

* Born February 18th
* Occupied his time as a child in Litherland with absoloutely anything he could get his hands on and spent a lot of time reading and listening to music. Spent his free time in the same way as he grew up but started also talking walks in the countryside.
* Since the age of 16 he had many different jobs includine being a nurse, a rep selling surveying equipment, a solicitor's clerk, an office worker, a printer and also worked in an old people's home for the terminally ill.

Cast:

* John Power had seen Keith play around town in bands before asking him to join Cast, but Keith met John's dog Ted before he met John, when they bumped into each other on Lark Lane.
* When the media began calling Cast 'the new Who' Keith didn't seem to mind the comparison too much and pointed out that "The Who are a great band, at least theyre not calling us Depeche Mode."
* The band lived up to their Who-like reputation in December 1995 when Keith and John spent a night in jail in Nantes, France for hotel room trashing.

Drums:

* Ludwig
* In Amsterdam in '96 John Power kicked over Keith's Ludwig kit after the drummer apparently fluffed part of a song... but after listning to a bootleg of the gig he realised he'd made a mistake.
* Premier Genista in Electric Turquoise - 12*8,13*9,16*18,20*18. Noble&Cooley piccolo. Zildjian cymbals.

Quotes About Keith:

* 'Nearer the bar, Cast drummer Keith O'Neill, with two balloons stuffed up his T-shirt, fondles one of Keith Moon's bass drums and bellows in a terrifyingly rich operatic tenor. "We brought him here to inseminate him with the spirit of Keith Moon," sighs Tyson, "and look what fuckin' happened." ' Q magazine interviewing Cast at John Entwistle's house in early '96.
* 'The front-line boys stand pretty static, putting the audience's visual attention on drummer Keith O'Neill, a five-armed thrashing machine of the Keith Moon school who works his face muscles as furiously as any other part of himself.' review of a Canadian gig June '96
* 'Across the room, O'Neill the drummer is begging bassist Wilkinson to stop calling him Bowlhead, the result of a disasterous recent haircut. "I would mate," replies the other, mournfully. "But the first thing I'll see when I wake up on the bus tomorrow is you. And I'll think, Bowlhead. What can I do?" ' Q Magazine on their first North American Tour in 1996
* 'incredible to watch, more exciting than the rest of his group put together' John Power on seeing Keith playing with his previous band, Windmills
* 'Keith didn't really start playing until he was 29, and he's only 28 now.' Peter Wilkinson, '97
* 'He was just exciting to watch. He was like a breath of fresh air.' John Power February '97.
* 'wild eyed, Animal-like drummer' Q magazine, April '97.
* 'I just remember a crate of champagne in Keith's arms and he was swigging the lot, and that's when I realised, I'm going to bed here. Then I got woken up by the explosion of Keith's brain and it was all police with guns. We were lucky, really, because we could have easily got our heads kicked in. It was the day after the riots and the French police were very uptight anyway.' Liam Tyson on the hotel trashing incident.
* 'As always, the fun begins when the tape clicks off. Cast drummer Keith, his face permanently scarlet after two years of nefarious rock'n'roll lunacy, necks a lethal cocktail of vodka, gin and what looks like stagnant gerbil piss, then proceeds to beat out a tattoo on the window as two "heavily laden" females pass by below.' Record Collector, September '97
* 'The genuinely loveable Keith, a constant source of amusement for his bandmates, and an extraordinarily talented drummer to wit.' Pat Gilbert, 1997

Quotes From Keith:

* We went and did a gig at the Splash Club in London. We played to a pile of puke and four dogs. We were so skint we had to chip in to buy a bottle of sherry. Ł3.50 between seven of us.
* On ex-Australians bandmate Tommy Scott, now of Space: 'Tommy tells the papers he's 26. Is he fuck! He's 32! He was in a cabaret band for years.'
* On Cast's previous drummer Russell Brady: 'He had a beard, so he had to go. Skin's next.'
* The wrist action of how the tonic falls into the gin is very important.
* John's like a Tazmanian Devil, smeared in marmite.