Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  On January 4, 1970, things got worse for Mr. Moon. An incident took place that resulted in the death of his driver/minder, Neil Boland, coloring the rest of Keith’s life very dark indeed. My dear old friend “Legs” Larry Smith, of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, was with Keith that night. “Keith and I had gone to quite a large pub and discotheque in North London, in the suburbs, really,” Larry recalled. “Not particularly wonderful, but Keith always accepted invitations. It was about half past ten and this place was going to close about eleven, and things started to get a bit crazy. Keith was looping about with the boys, but I had an odd sense of the evening. I felt we should get the hell out and beat the closing time, but Keith said, ‘No, no, no, dear boy, I’m going to have another dance,’ and waltzed out into the crowd again.” Larry got the keys and waited for Keith in the backseat.

  “Ten minutes later Keith and eight thousand people came tumbling out of the pub,” Larry continued, “the driver Neil behind him, and suddenly all the rabble realized that they were going to have to wait in a bus queue for twenty minutes and we were going to go gliding in the comfort of a pink Rolls-Royce! They snapped, started emptying their pockets, and we were being rained upon by small change! Because Neil was so proud of the Rolls, he got out and started to run at them, which was even crazier. Neil had put the car in drive, and it was crawling forward. Suddenly we found ourselves rolling toward the main road with no one driving the damn thing! Keith slid over to the driver’s seat, not being able to drive, of course—Keith couldn’t do things like that. At this point people had surrounded the car and were raining down fists, kicking, smashing the windows. Neil was out having a bash with them. I leaned up over the backseat, put my arms over Keith, and started to steer. People were screaming, getting hysterical. When we turned onto the main street, Neil was running alongside the car, still fending off these attackers, and he must have tripped and fallen under the car, so we actually must have rolled over Neil. The car rolled on and on, and Keith finally stopped it somehow. We didn’t feel anything, we were carrying right on, we didn’t know that Neil’s body must have been in the middle of the road. The police came, the reporters came, we were holed up in Keith’s house for two weeks not answering the phone.”

  Larry tells me that Neil was more than Keith’s driver. “We were mortified because Neil was family. He was a soft, lovable Irishman who picked up the pieces of our excesses very well. It’s an art form in itself.” It seems Keith, Larry, and Neil pulled a few pranks together. Once Larry walked into a large department store asking for a pair of “strong work trousers,” which the salesman supplied. “I took the trousers and started pulling the legs apart. ‘How can I be sure these are strong work trousers?’ I ask the salesman, who’s starting to flinch. At that point Keith Moon comes into the store and says, ‘Good morning! I’m happy to test those trousers!‘” The two madmen proceeded to pull the trousers in half while the shocked salespeople looked on. “We hadn’t paid for these trousers,” Larry laughed. “The assistant got the union representative. We were just about to be arrested and dear Neil walks in and says, ‘I’ll pay for those trousers!’ All eyes were suddenly turned on Neil—a total stranger offering to pay for a pair of ripped trousers! I said, ‘Can, I have two bags please? One for each leg?’ We did the same thing in a Mothercare shop. We ripped a baby’s little fluffy jumper in half and the sales assistant just wept.” Larry had one more little story to tell me: “Keith had a microphone and two speakers built into the front of his car, and we drove around this little seaside town making terrifying announcements: ‘This is the Plymouth Police Department, this is an official message. There is a large tidal wave approaching Plymouth Beach. Would you please evacuate the beach, but stay in your shoes. Repeat, stay in your shoes.’ We were in the back of the Rolls with a fucking microphone. How we were not arrested that day, I do not know.”

  Though he was cleared of all charges, after the death of Neil Boland, Keith had even more trouble sleeping. In Los Angeles with me one long, tortuous night, he woke up a dozen times, screaming that he was a murderer and didn’t deserve to live. Each time he would douse his grief with copious capsules and gnash his way back to temporary oblivion. Only his drums and his sense of humor kept him going. We were staying at the Century Plaza Hotel because the notorious Mr. Moon had been expelled from almost all of the L.A. hotels, and he had come up with yet another way to keep himself amused (he always felt an obligation to keep everybody entertained). As I stood watching from the balcony, Keith appeared down below, pouring a giant box of powdered soap into the hotel fountain. He soon joined me on the balcony and together we watched the chaotic froth wreak bubbling havoc as great clumps of suds foamed down the street.

  He was a man of innumerable accents and personalities that he would switch at will whenever evil boredom struck. Even during sexcapades he would turn from a fumbling virgin boy to a dastardly rapist within the space of a few moments. He dressed in the finest costumes and disguises money could purchase, drank deeply from hundred-year-old bottles of cognac, and was never satisfied. Meanwhile the great Who beast rolled along—Live at Leeds, Who’s Next, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy—tour after tour after tour.

  Keith continued to demolish his marriage, wreck cars, strip naked in pubs and bars in various countries, and drown himself in cognac, seemingly imperishable. He did a couple of blazing star turns in the David Essex movies That’ll Be the Day and Stardust, but nothing seemed to quell the fact that he was lonely and mad. When Quadrophenia was released in October 1973, Kim took Mandy and moved out for good. “We led separate lives under the same roof,” she told a journalist. “He’ll get up in the morning and decide to be Hitler for a day, and he is Hitler.” Keith took the loss like a swift kick to the heart. Even his playing suffered. He never got over it.

  During a tragic U.S. tour in late 1973, in which the band often came to blows, Keith collapsed onstage and, as he was carried off, Pete announced to the audience, “We’re going to try to revive our drummer by punching him in the stomach and giving him a custard enema.” It wouldn’t have helped. Keith had ingested too much PCP (an animal tranquilizer) and was taken to the hospital. When the tour got to Montreal, the band and their crew ruined a Bonaventure hotel room so thoroughly (actually ripping out the floor) that sixteen people, including the Who, wound up spending the night in jail.

  Keith was so pissed off that his Uncle Ernie role in Tommy had been trimmed that he refused to play on the movie soundtrack, instead taking off for Malibu to drown his sorrows in the sunshine. In March 1975 he released Two Sides of the Moon, a typical sun ‘n’ surf tribute—the album’s single, a schmaltzy “Don’t Worry Baby,” didn’t set the charts on fire.

  Though he was getting a good suntan, Keith was a very sick man, addicted to his precious cognac and Hollywood’s drug of choice, cocaine. He teetered around town with Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr, pretending to be having a ball. When the Who toured again, Keith once more spent time in jail for kicking a British Airlines ticket terminal to pieces, and he collapsed onstage in Boston. He had a very close call at the Navarro Hotel in Manhattan—he kicked in an offensive painting and cut his foot so badly that if the Who’s manager Bill Curbishly hadn’t found him, Keith would have bled to death.

  Back in Malibu on a break from touring, Keith had a bit of a problem with his neighbor, Steve McQueen. A very private and quiet movie star, McQueen was distraught about the noise and chaos that the Who’s drummer brought to Malibu Colony. He had zero appreciation for one of Britain’s finest rock eccentrics, and the police were called on several occasions. Keith harassed and bugged McQueen until the actor was forced to build a fence between the properties.

  The rest of the band thought about getting rid of the ever-troubled drummer but ultimately decided against it. As John Entwistle said, “What would Keith Moon do without the Who?” As the tour dragged on to Miami, Keith’s s boredom after two days off culminated in another arrest. He walked through the hotel halls with the Who’s music shrieking from
a tape recorder, and when told by an assistant manager to “stop making so much noise,” Keith turned down the volume, dragged the manager back to his room, loudly trashed it, invited the manager to observe the mess, saying, “That was noise,” then, turning the music back up, “This is THE WHO!!!” Curbishly bailed Keith out of jail and promptly checked him into the hospital for “psychiatric evaluation.” He was out in three days.

  In Los Angeles Keith was seeing a lovely blonde, Annette Walter-Lax, but still hadn’t gotten over the loss of his family. He was paranoid about losing his position in the Who, and his drinking and drugging were finally starting to show. He had a potbelly, his once wiry body was soft and puffy, his big eyes were constantly bloodshot. Pete Townshend was writing new Who material but the band was afraid to take Keith on another tour.

  In 1978 Keith returned to London with Annette, taking up residence in Harry Nilsson’s flat in Mayfair (strangely, Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas died there in 1974). In between recording sessions, Keith actually went to a health farm and seemed temporarily together, but his lifeblood drumming just wasn’t the same and it knocked him off the wagon (drum stool) forever. Keith couldn’t keep time and couldn’t follow arrangements. Once again the band talked of replacing him, but Pete couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  On a holiday with Annette, Keith tired of the long plane trip and, losing all control, dashed into the cockpit and drummed on the flight engineer’s table, then attacked a stewardess and some crew members. He was thrown off the plane, taken to a local hospital, and pronounced “unfit to travel.” These continuing incidents dashed hopes that Keith might get better. Despite Pete’s loyalty, the band was ready to relieve Keith of his drummerly duties—but he did it for them.

  Keith, the night of his death. “It was like a sacrifice,” said Roger Daltrey. (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/VENICE, CALIF.)

  On September 6, 1978, Keith and Annette attended Paul McCartney’s midnight screening of The Buddy Holly Story. Paul owned Buddy Holly’s catalog and celebrated Buddy’s birthday every year with a spectacular bash. Keith was in his element that night, sitting at the head of the star table with Paul and his wife Linda, gregarious, charming, and flamboyant as ever. The couple got home at four-thirty, whereupon Keith took a handful of sleeping tablets and a sedative called Heminevrin (a relaxant that curbs alcoholism and mania—he definitely suffered from both!) and fell asleep to The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a Vincent Price horror film. His eyes flew open at seven-thirty and, after unsuccessfully trying to get Annette to cook for him, he went to the kitchen, made himself a steak, drank some champagne, swallowed a few more Heminevrin pills, and died before he got old.

  Keith’s ashes were interred at Golder’s Green crematorium during a small funeral ceremony for the band, his family, and a few friends. Roger Daltrey’s floral tribute was a TV set with a champagne bottle smashed through the screen.

  “In a way it was like a sacrifice,” Roger said. “We can do anything we want to now. I have very odd feelings. I feel incredibly strong and at the same time incredibly fragile.”

  “Keith has always appeared so close to blowing himself up in the past that we’ve become used to living with the feeling,” Pete Townshend said at the funeral. “But this time Keith hasn’t survived, he hasn’t come round, he hasn’t thrown himself off the balcony and landed in one piece. Everybody laughed at Keith and his antics, but they never saw the other shoulder was wet with tears.”

  JIM MORRISON

  The Lizard of Aaaaahs

  I was one of the few hundred people who watched the rise and demise of the Lizard King. In the early, early days, right in front of my greedy eyes, he would slink around the Sunset Strip, black leather unzipped, devilish grin, cocky and unremorseful. “Aaaahh,” we all whispered. “What goes on behind that flawless face? Where does he go when the lights go all the way down?” Tousled, tormented, and highly in demand, he led the parade with dangerous indifference. Even the naked facts do nothing to alter those early images: dark, messy ringlets, love beads, angry, penetrating scowl. Come hither, but be careful.

  The first time I witnessed Jim Morrison slither onto a stage, I was bombed out of my mind on a very early version of PCP called Trimar. My friend Jerry Penrod, the bass player for Iron Butterfly, smuggled it out of the hospital where he worked during the day. He got it in quart jars and handed them right to me. Wasn’t I just the lucky one? An itsy-bitsy vial sold for ten dollars on the street, so I was very popular that balmy night in Hollywood. The underground cavern club Bido Lido’s was packed. I held on to sopping lace hankies full of this incredibly dangerous drug—inhaling, giggling, waiting.

  The news was out all over town that this new band, the Doors, had a gorgeous, hot singer who actually sucked the microphone, and all of us wild, loony girls couldn’t wait to get a load of him. The anticipation was high and so were we. The band played pretty cool, with lots of moody organ, and then Jim Morrison was onstage. Somehow he just appeared, holding the microphone like it was trying to get away, clutching it hard like it might just be alive, moaning, eyes closed, feeling enough pent-up pain for everyone in the room. And God, what did he look like? I had to get a closer eyeful. I struggled and squeezed my way down front and gazed up at a future rock legend in delirious wonder. HE’S HOT, HE’S SEXY, HE’S DEAD. Remember that Rolling Stone cover? I had never seen such blatant sexuality onstage. He writhed in horny anguish, demanding that everybody in the stormy, sweltering room light his fire. “We want the world, and we want it now.” He hooked us all together. We wanted the entire fucking world, and we wanted it right this minute! I had seen the Stones a couple of times and Mick Jagger inspired some steam dreams, but he had his frenzy under control. Jim Morrison was so out of control that it scared people. It scared me close to imaginary death and I loved it. While Mick suggested that danger lurked in his trousers, Jim grabbed hold of it and shook it in our faces. He defied the system with his dick, like a rock-and-roll Lenny Bruce. While the flower dolls urged us to live in peace, Jim bellowed about insanity, incest, and murder. His defiance was catching and we all wanted a piece of it. When he took a dive into the audience without premeditation, we all held him up, snatching some of his scary stuff oh-so-briefly

  Instead of telling journalists that his father had been a captain in the navy and he had been a navy brat, traveling around the country, changing schools on a regular basis, Jim Morrison told the press that his parents were dead. It was easier. Although witty and charming, Steve Morrison had been a strict disciplinarian who barked orders at his sons and daughter, demanding that Jim follow rules that he seemed determined to break. Mother Clara upheld her husband’s position, and there was a constant battle to tame Jim’s innate rebellious nature.

  When Jim was barely five, the Morrisons were taking another trip across the country when they were waylaid by a deadly accident involving a family of Indians. “Jimmy was very much affected,” Grandmother Caroline said. “He wanted to do something.” The highway police and an ambulance were called, but Jim was so upset that his father said to him it hadn’t really happened, that he had just been having a bad dream. It was a dream that never died, and Jim would later claim that the souls of the dying Indians jumped into his head that afternoon.

  While his siblings were content to walk the line, Jim was constantly prodding the facade of fifties morality. With an IQ of 149, he mercilessly tore into his teachers, demanding answers they were unable to give, and, in fact, he would always have a smoldering disdain for authority figures. To pass the time he read Mad magazine and drew stacks of twisted, sexually explicit drawings.

  Jim’s George Washington High School experience in Alexandria, Virginia, was just something to get through. He didn’t participate in any school activities, but because good grades came so easily to him, he was bored and always looking for a way to shake things up and get noticed. When he was late for school, he claimed to have been kidnapped by gypsies. Once he left class early, saying he was having brain surgery that very aftern
oon. He called to friends in the hallway—“Hey, motherfucker!”—many, many years before it was even slightly acceptable. He painted copies of de Kooning nudes, and he was wild for words, foraging through poetry books, glomming on to Blake, Rimbaud, Balzac, Camus, and Beat writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac, who gave Jim permission to “ … burn, burn burn like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars … .”

  His high-school girlfriend, Tandy Martin, while captivated by Jim’s sensitivity (one of Jim’s poems for her stated, “But one / The most beautiful of all / Dances in a ring of fire / And throws off the challenge with a shrug”), still had to put up with his wicked sense of humor, which often brought her to tears. She was devastated when Jim was asked to join the all-important AVO fraternity and he had no interest whatsoever. When the couple broke up, Jim threatened to cut her face up so nobody would look at her but him, but Tandy never believed he would do it. Jim seemed to have quite a few friends but somehow remained a loner, spending more and more time at a club on Route 1, listening to the blues. He graduated in June 1961 but, much to the dismay of his folks, didn’t attend the graduation ceremony. Jim Morrison’s diploma was sent to him in the mail.