From the Keith Moon archives: Carlo Little
Moon's only drum teacher talks about his only drum student, 1996.
Today, for those loyal and supportive paying subscribers without whom this Substack would not exist, I am continuing to mine the vast treasure trove of interviews conducted for my Keith Moon biography, titled Dear Boy in the UK, Moon in the US, Keith Moon in Brazil and Germany… and La Bombe Humaine du Rock in French because the French dance to their own tune.
Until now, the transcripts I’ve posted have mostly been with the more famous names I interviewed back in 1995-97: Oliver Reed, Alice Cooper, John Entwistle, Larry Hagman, Dave Edmunds, Jeff Beck… they are all in the archives somewhere if you look for them. Today I am posting my interview with the lesser-known Carlo Little.
This is in part because Carlo’s name has come up in regard to another post I want to write, and in part because his crucial involvement in Keith Moon’s development as a drummer has come to mind with all the very public spats about Zak Starkey’s role within The Who. That role was one that most fans had until recently considered permanent, given Zak’s personal and professional connection to his “Uncle” Keith, and his evident inheritance of Keith’s drumming style.
This leads us back to the inevitable question: Where did Keith Moon get his style from? Certainly, there were many influences, as detailed in my biography, but Keith only ever had one drum teacher: Carlo Little. Why did Carlo Little teach Keith Moon the drums? Because Keith asked him to, that’s why, even though Little was not a teacher. Why did Keith ask him in that case? Because Little was playing for the Wembley area’s celebrated Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, whose live show in the very early 1960s was apparently without compare, in no small part due to the ferocity of Carlo Little’s drumming.
This was an opinion I heard regularly as I began my archival research and looked to track down my interviewees. Carlo seemed like a crucial connection, someone I really needed to find and talk with if I was going to get to the bottom of Keith’s drumming style. But in those pre-Internet (as we know it) days, when e-mail was a brand-new concept and Facebook not yet a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s 11-year-old eyes, I typically needed a phone number I could call or, failing that, a firm address I could write to. Nobody appeared to have either for Carlo Little.
What I was told, however, and by two people - which was enough to constitute consensus under the circumstances - was that, retired from a music business that had failed to reward him for his talents, the 57-year-old could be found running a hamburger caravan at the (old) Wembley Stadium car park on weekends, when there may well have been a regular boot sale [translation: trunk/yard sale] or something similar that would ensure passers-by.
So what did I do? What do you think I did?
Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith posts twice a week. Subscribe to receive the posts ion your Inbox. Upgrade to paid for $6 a month/local equivalent with a 20% annual discount to gain access to exclusive posts (such as this and all the other archived interviews), the Crossed Channels podcast and the full archive.