Phoenix Book Reviews would like to thank John Van der Kiste for his review
John Van der Kiste lives in Devon. A library assistant, former DJ and musician, he has written over twenty books, mostly historical or musical biographies, and reviewed records and books for national and local journals and fanzines.
"How do you attempt to capture an exploding time bomb?" This, the opening sentence of the foreword, was the reaction of Mark Volman, successively a member of 60s rock bands The Turtles and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, when asked for his impressions of Keith Moon. You may equally ask how a biography of the drummer with The Who, who only lived to be 32, clocks in at nearly 600 pages. Of course it's not just about Moon the Loon, from his birth in post-war Willesden to the highs, lows and general craziness of the 60s and 70s and the tragic end in a Mayfair flat one night in September 1978. It's also an engrossing account of the band who gave the Beatles and Rolling Stones a close run for their money in the mid-60s, and almost ground to a halt after his death.
There are some hilarious anecdotes in this book, which I won't spoil for you. One involves a German security guard and a Spike Milligan book. Another explains how he got his own way with a reluctant record company over an expensive and highly ornate sleeve for his solo album, 'Both Sides Of The Moon' in 1975 - a record which the author is honest enough to admit was pretty dire.
But much of it is a sad, even harrowing life of a man who probably suffered from Borderline Personality Syndrome and, as one of his friends admitted, was of the first generation to earn millions more than their father but lacked the commonsense or self-discipline to spend it wisely. Everyone around Keith was out of their skulls on spirits or less legal stuff much of the time, and he more than most. He became so used to the adulation of rock star life that he expected the same everywhere he went, not least at home, and naturally his wife Kim and daughter Mandy bore the brunt of it. Worst of all, perhaps, was the fate of his driver Neil Boland, a blow which almost threw him totally off balance.
It's beyond dispute that Keith could be utterly irritating, a complete liability, even a spoilt vicious brat. As the oldest joke in the music biz goes, 'what do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer'. It's evident that he had little of the musical creativity of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend or John Entwistle. Yet he had a gift for comic repartee and timing, and his Radio 1 shows which he recorded while standing in for John Peel one summer suggested that like his close friend Viv Stanshall, he could have held his own alongside the Monty Python team, given the chance.
I've always loved The Who, and if you're a fellow lover of 60s and 70s rock, you'll revel in the attention to detail in this biography. If you're not, you'd probably find this heavy going. But if you're interested in what makes rock stars tick, or alternatively if you want to read about the effect that too much fame, fortune and success can have on a personality ill-equipped for it, you may want to skip some of the musical content and read about the man himself.
No matter what your viewpoint, there's no denying that Fletcher has done his research impeccably and really got inside his subject's head. (It's also good to report that Fletcher met his hero briefly as a 14-year-old fanzine writer, and found him not only stone cold sober but charming, interested and happy to sign his autograph - just in time, as three weeks later he was dead.) For the head of someone as larger-than-life as Keith Moon, that's no mean achievement.
Publisher: Omnibus Press
ISBN: 0711977321
Price: £14.95 p/b
Date Reviewed: June 2002
John's Rating: 5/5
