Keith Moon Shows His Dark Side In A Moment Of Lunacy

1976

Keith Moon trashes a hotel room - no surprise there. But this time The Who drummer is hospitalized after beating up his room at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.

Keith Moon has exhibited destructive tendencies since the early days of The Who, when in response to Pete Townshend smashing a guitar, he kicked over his drum kit to the delight of the crowd - a stunt that has become a signature of the band's raucous sets that they end with what they call "auto-destructive art." He even went so far in 1967 as to load his bass drum with gunpowder for a TV appearance - an event later featured as the opening to the 1979 movie The Kids Are Alright. That particular stunt was not repeated after it ended with Pete Townshend's hair on fire and Moon with a piece of cymbal protruding from his arm. The carnage is not restricted to stage shows, and Moon has also become (in)famous for destroying hotel rooms. His first time was in Germany in 1966, and the bills have racked up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last decade. This time the errant drummer comes off the worse and ends up in the Hollywood Memorial Hospital, Florida, taken away by ambulance after drunkenly destroying his room and then collapsing for the second time in five months. Moon is released from the hospital a week later and flies to Malibu to recuperate in the new house he is building. Before doing so, he tells local DJ Dave Ryder, "I don't really remember much about it. I felt dizzy... and I just blacked out." Medical staff describe his condition as a breakdown caused by overwork and pressure. The hard-living star has long suffered from alcohol addiction, resulting in increasingly erratic behaviour both on and off stage. The only reason he has not been fired from The Who is because his bandmates are concerned that doing so may finally tip him over the edge. Despite repeated attempts to sober up, his hell raising continues until 1978 when he dies after overdosing on the very drugs he is prescribed to wean him off drink. Photo from the album The Who Sell Out