The Kids Are Alright
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Happy Jack- The Who
“Because Keith wasn’t the best singer in the world, he was banned from the studio when vocals were being recorded. This led to an on-going game with Pete Townshend, in which Keith would try to sneak into the room to join the singing. At the tail end of “Happy Jack” Townshend can be heard shouting “I saw ya!” as he notices Keith once again trying to join in.”
“He had been kicked out of every hotel in Los Angeles, so he had to pretend to be a count to get checked into the Century City Hotel. He made me stand on the balcony, as he tip-toed over to this huge fountain with a box of Tide. He sneaked back to the room, and we watched the mania ensure. It was like an ‘I Love Lucy’ episode times 1,000 with all these bubbles shooting up into the air and stopping traffic. He loved to wreak havoc everywhere he went.” - Pamela Des Barres
Larry Smith;
“We would go into a pub, and Keith would come in with a smoke capsual cellotaped to his boot, which would be lit by Neil just before he came in. They take a while to catch a light, these smoke capsuals. So I would be standing by the bar, swigging my brandy and Keith would come in. ‘Good morning, dear boy, how are you?’ I would buy him a large brandy, much to the glee of the guvnor. By then the smoke capsual would be really taking off and the bar would be full of smoke. Sometimes the guvnor would be like ‘You lads are wonderful’ and buy us a drink, other times we would just be thrown straight out!”
At the end of July, accompanied by Annette, Dougal (-Keith’s assistant), and Larry Smith, he and Pete Townshend went to America to join Eric Clapton on tour, now that Clapton was back on the road (after getting over his heroin addiction) Pete and Keith wanted to offer their support. Keith was not able to provide the best example of sobriety. But if Annette had enjoyed being with the gentle Keith that came out of the clinic - and everything was happening so fast she hardly knew him at all as yet - she as forcefully introduced to the side of his character that would be prominant over the next four years when he fell off the wagon and hit the free booze on the translantic flight in a big way. At their Atlanta hotel, blind drunk, he destroyed his room so violently that Annette called in Pete Townshend for help.
According to Annette, Pete took one look at the situation and shrugged. “He’s alway like that” he said.
The Who travelled to Bremen in Germany for a routine television appearance on the show ‘Beat Club’, and while getting drunk on brandy during rehearsals, Moon and Townshend went into a Nazi routine. For Moon to indulge in black comedy about the War in the exact location likely to cause offence was to be expected, but for the teenagers in Love Affair, a new pop band that were also on the show, it was almost unbelievable. “We were just wetting ourselves,” says the band’s the 17-year old singer Steve Ellis. “It was this Luarel and Hardy humour, the funniest thing we had ever seen”.
