I'm Not THAT F***ing Old, You Know!
A Birthday repost: Oliver Reed talking about Keith Moon while drinking me under the table.
Dear Subscribers, “followers” (Substack’s preferred new term, not mine) and casual scrollers,
I am in the midst of a mammoth birthday weekend, though it is a different writing deadline rather than the birthday itself which has prevented me from completing my usual Sunday post. So in the interest of birthday presents, here is mine to you: the first part of my Oliver Reed interview from 1996. I posted it quite early in my Substack life when I had only 1/6th the number of subscribers I have now, and it has always been behind the paywall. (THANK YOU to those who subscribed as a result… you continue to get all manner of bonus posts and pods!) It hopefully serves as a good example of what else you can find there if you’d like to up your subscription. But it also serves as a memory of how fortunate I’ve been in my life to have spent time with so many monumental characters. It occurred to me this weekend that, quite separate from my various book projects, I got to interview Keith Richards, Allen Ginsberg, Antônio Carlos Jobim and Gordon Parks, all in their own homes. That’s a pretty wide range of culturally influential characters to hang with.
But not even Keith Richards, who would quickly start plying me with Jack and cokes when I went round to his pad one day, could match Ollie for the opening line of this post. Ollie was younger than I am now when he looked so old to me then, and he died just three years later, at the age I turned today. I have no desires to go so soon: there are too many interesting people out there, and too many good stories to be told. Have fun with this one.
“I’m not THAT fucking old, you know!”
As far as greetings go, it is hard to imagine one more emphatic.
But when it’s being delivered to you by the person you now realize is the great and greatly feared actor Oliver Reed, it is… well, it is possibly not the best of starts to an interview.
But. Let’s rewind a little.
When compiling a list of characters I wanted to interview for my Keith Moon biography, Oliver Reed was always near the top of the list. He and Moon became what we might call “running buddies” after meeting for the movie Tommy, in which Reed – whose flag was flying high following starring roles in Oliver!, Women In Love and The Devils - was cast as Tommy’s “uncle” Frank, opposite Ann Margret as Tommy’s mother.
Reed’s reputation as a “hellraiser” was already on par with that of Keith Moon, and the pair’s immediate friendship, and attendant mischief making, quickly became the stuff of newspaper headlines and subsequent legend. It was a friendship that persisted on into Los Angeles and beyond, and I figured that Reed would have plenty to say about that friendship and those antics, if I could get him to commit to it.
I’m not quite sure how I found his agency details. I know that once I was ensconced in London for six months in 1996, then in those pre-Internet days, I did go to central Libraries and literally open up the book of actors’ agents – a sort of yellow pages for the famous – and write down a whole bunch of relevant phone numbers. And while I generally act on a connection, a reference of sorts, I do believe that in this case I put in a phone call, followed up with the requisite fax, and all of about a week later, received a phone call from Reed’s agent.
“Oliver would be delighted to talk with you,” the agent told me. "He lives in Ireland, so you could do it over the phone, or if you want to go out there and meet him, that would be fine with him too. Here’s his phone number. His wife Josephine will probably pick up, they are expecting your call.”
Now, you might be surprised that such a famous – and infamously combative - actor agreed to talk with me quite so quickly. Additionally, that he was handing out his home phone number to people he didn’t even know.
But I learned two things that year from working on the Keith Moon book. Firstly, that my prospective subjects were ready, willing, able and indeed eager to talk about Keith. Nobody had written a proper biography about a man that so many people loved, and the right number of years had passed since my subject’s own passing. As many of his surviving peers moved into middle age, they were becoming comfortable with their – or at least Keith’s – raucous past, were able to reconcile and analyze their relationships with him in the rearview mirror, with sufficient perspective, and wanted to get those memories and thoughts on the record while they could. I wasn’t a famous biographer, but I had some credibility - two books, a substantial stack of freelance clippings, and if not quite the Moon family’s or The Who’s full-throated endorsement, then certainly nobody trying to put the kibosh on the project. Under all these circumstances, Oliver was just one of many famous names whose proverbial door opened at first time of knocking.
Secondly, I learned that the truly famous – not the latest upstarts, nor the prima donnas, but the people who occupied a higher sphere of celebrity, one that would likely not disappear even if they stopped working – handle their own affairs. A few months later, Larry Hagman would call me on a Sunday lunchtime, during my son Campbell’s second birthday party. A year after that, Roger Daltrey called me direct as I got out of the shower - though that conversation is off the record. And only a couple of years back now, Bruce Springsteen agreed to be interviewed for my Eddie Floyd co-write and similarly called me from a number that wasn’t even protected by Caller ID. (Of course, it may have been a burner!) These are all people comfortable with conducting their own business, dealing one-on-one, stripping the middle person out of the way as soon as they’ve confirmed a project’s authenticity.
Oliver Reed: “Keith Moon was a fellow for me who convinced me that … life should not and can not and WILL not be taken seriously. It can be taken seriously in as much as there is pain and there is laughter and there is sweetness, but in between those olfactory senses, and sense of smell and hearing, that there is a sense of the bizarre.”
So, I called. I knew of Josephine: she had been the subject of much tabloid finger-pointing when she started seeing Oliver at age 16, in 1980. Reed was 42 at the time. Confounding the sceptics, the couple married in 1985, and here we were, more than a decade later, Josephine was now in her thirties, Reed in his late fifties, and the age gap must have seemed ever smaller.
Sure enough, Josephine picked up, confirmed that they were expecting my call, and when I expressed willingness to come to Ireland, effectively offered – or insisted – to arrange the meet. My budget for the time in London that year wasn’t large, but I had the book advance in the bank, a monthly consultancy fee coming from RCA Records, and our rent was covered almost to the penny by the sublet income from our Manhattan apartment. There weren’t any other sizeable trips on the horizon, and the opportunity to meet with Oliver Reed in person was too inviting to turn down. We agreed to make a weekend of it: myself, my wife, and our baby, spending one night in a countryside Inn and another in Cork. And in-between, we’d drive to the town of Mallow, where Josephine asked me to meet Oliver Reed on a Saturday lunchtime at the Hibernian Hotel. [It is called that now. I think it might have had a different name back then.]
Not knowing of Mallow, but knowing how famous actors comported themselves for interviews, I presumed we were talking about a stately home hotel, perhaps a castle. I expected I’d park on a gravel forecourt, a besuited receptionist would cast weary eyes over me when I entered in casual clothes, and I would be led to a drawing room or library where Mr. Reed would be sat resplendent in a leather armchair, waiting to grill me about my purpose. (Why did I not just look up a photo of the hotel on Google? No Google! No browsers with photos even!)
Additionally, I knew nothing of Reed’s current personal lifestyle. He was getting on in years and I’d already met a few interviewees who were confirmed ex-drinkers. I was clueless as to whether he had also sobered up, or was still on the sauce, or had settled into what we now call a “social drinking” routine whereby he could stop after a couple. In short, I was in the dark about much of our encounter except the time and place and Josephine’s assurance he would be there and ready to talk.
Mallow turned out to be a market town, not too dissimilar from Beverley in Yorkshire, where I was born, and it was thriving on a Saturday lunchtime. As for the Hibernian, far from being a stately five-star castle out in the fields, it was your regular well-equipped but terraced (as far as I recall) three-star town Hotel, very very much on the main road - to the point that dropping me off at the front door posed a problem what with all the traffic. Knowing from past experience that committed drinkers often insisted you drink with them – we’ll do my day with Keith Richards another time – and bowing to precaution, I nonetheless suggested that my wife keep the keys to the rental car, just in case.
The hotel had a reception almost immediately inside the front door, and I recall it led off on one side to a large lounge bar area that was bustling with activity. I introduced myself to the receptionist as a Mr. Fletcher with an appointment for Mr. Olver Reed.
“Ah yes, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Reed called a while back with a message.” And as he went to retrieve it from whatever cubby hole he’d kept it in for safe keeping, my heart sank. I’d come all this way and Ollie was going to stand me up.
“Yes, Mr. Reed apologized but he will be delayed. He’s taking a neighbor’s cow to the vet.”
Taking a neighbor’s cow to the vet. There was something quite Irish about it – and I mean that in anything but a pejorative sense. It seemed the sort of thing you would do for your neighbor in the Irish farmland. Nonetheless, part of me wondered if it was a wind-up; it also seemed so very Oliver Reed. I was invited to wait in the large lounge bar. I ordered a coke and sat down to go over my notes, pondering about Oliver Reed, the cow, the vet, and whether this was going to turn in to a shaggy dog story, to mix animal metaphors, and I would be left high and dry, my trip to Ireland reduced to sightseeing.
Every few minutes I’d look up to see if I recognized Oliver Reed anywhere. And maybe the fourth time I did so, it was just in time to see a man of late middle age, in glasses and grey hair, making his way through the throng, glancing around for an acquaintance as he did so. He carried himself well enough, but certainly not with the charisma the one time I saw Sean Connery march down Wardour Street, turning heads as he did. In this case, nobody in the room so much as batted an eyelid. I went back to my notes.
Something made me look up again a few seconds later. The man had doubled back, was looking at me from only a few feet away and as we locked eyes, I now recognized the firm features. They were worn – not quite leathered, but worn – and he was clearly no longer in the prime of life. But those features had character and power, and now I saw him closer up, it was unmistakably Oliver Reed. .
And that’s when he uttered his greeting. Roared would be a better term.
“I’m not THAT fucking old, you know.” It was said in a highly theatrical old, as if he was delivering a line in a movie.
How do you possibly match it? Answer: You don’t even try. You stumble some sort of “Oh, sorry, I didn’t fully see your face when you walked across the room there,” and you thank him for coming to meet with you. You maybe also wonder if you made a mistake in doing so, if this is how the conversation will start.
But it turns out it is just Oliver Reed, being Oliver Reed: loud, direct and provocative. He comes over to the table, possibly shakes my hand, sits down and immediately warms to the task at hand. “Terribly sorry for keeping you, but my neighbour’s cow took ill, and he doesn’t have a truck. I do. We had to get her in the back and over to the local vet. It took a while. So. Keith Moon.”
He speaks in clipped, upper class, constantly theatrical tones. It is absolutely the voice of an actor. When a bartender comes over - if they recognize him, they say nothing - he orders a Saxenberg beer, brewed in the Czech Republic. If he was going to drink, I had half expected him to be a brandy man like Keith, or perhaps a red wine man – only the best – and failing either of those, that he’d be on the local Guinness or my much-preferred Murphy’s. But no, he was drinking an imported bottle of lager. At least, I thought, it’s not a full pint. He’s not here to get drunk.
A few minutes later, Josephine comes in to check that we’ve connected – I guess she also took the cow to the vet – and Oliver is almost obsequiously polite to her, ending each comment – “Would you like to join us?” (she declines), and a “well you know where to find us,” with the word “darling.” It does not sound forced. Before I can even start the tape recorder, he is talking about Keith Moon, sharing some choice anecdotes. They jump from one to another with confusing regularity, causing me a considerable amount of research when I eventually came to include them in the book. But just about everything he told me panned out close enough to the way he recollected it.
And just about everything he told me was quotable, as in, headline material. I don’t think it was part of the theatrical dialogue, a desire to speak in superlatives, but a genuine reflection of what Keith meant to him. For it turned out that Oliver Reed credits Keith Moon with changing his life.
Oliver Reed: Jumping in at the deep end, we were staying down at the hotel in Weymouth, filming Tommy, and it was decided that Keith stay in one hotel with one half of the crew and I would stay at another with half the crew because it was suggested that there would be too much mayhem if we were put together. So immediately Keith Moon moved out to my hotel and all the people that were staying in his hotel moved down as well. They were electricians, riggers and a lot of very important people in the movie. They moved in and Ken Russell moved out, because it became too much. I was there with my stand-in/bodyguard and Moonie was there with Dougal and ... crumpet. The place was full of crumpet.
-From the movie?
No, because of Moon. Because of the Who, because he was a pop star.
When Townshcnd first heard me sing in the studios he looked up at Ken in the box as if it was a joke. But Ken said 'this is exactly what I wanted.’ With Ann-Margret singing and Moonie. They didn't want Moon to be involved in the film at all.
-I read that once you were on board they shifted much of the role from Uncle Ernie to Frank.
They did that beforehand. Because Ken Russell being an eccentric, and me being an eccentric (and Ann Russell, producer) thought - rather like the hotel - that it would be turmoil. So they didn’t want Keith to come near me. But Keith got very stroppy and he fought very, very hard to do the Uncle Ernie song. Otherwise he’d just be round the back in this trip club with Tina Turner, making faces. But He wanted to be more involved that that. I think he wanted to be an actor more than anybody else did, and probably would have been.
-You’ve raised about eight different issues already.
Well that’s because I haven’t begun at the beginning. It was interesting that one of your letters said you’d read what I’d said about him, but you were sure that there was more to it than that.
-I read what you wrote about Keith in your autobiography, but it was only about three anecdotes.
I would just like to reiterate what you've found out from everyone else who know him.
…I was not a pop buff. At that time I was working back to back and working very very hard and, I was about 31, I'd done some quite serious work with Ken Russell, The Devils and Women In Love. And suddenly Ken said to me, Would you like do this musical? Because Russell and I were going to do this film togetehr which I was going to produce with my brother and I lost quite a lot of my money on it because Ken wasn't honest about what he was doing in America.. By way of apology, I think he shocked everybody by saying he would like me to play the husband in Tommy. And he was quite powerful in those days. Of all people who'd heard about it, it was Moon who thought that it was a very very good idea...
…So I first saw Moon when he was hovering outside of my window in a helicopter while I was shaving. The I charged outside with my two-handed sword.
-And you had no idea he was coming?
No idea at all. And at that time in my stable yard, Dougal came in his purple Rolls Royce.
-One came by helicopter, the other by car?
Yes. So I came running downstairs I attacked Keith with my two-handed sword and he went running through the French windows.
Keith Moon was a fellow for me who convinced me - and that's why I live in Ireland - that there is a sense of the bizarre in life. That life should not and can not and WILL not be taken seriously. It can be taken seriously in as much as there is pain and there is laughter and there is sweetness, but in between those olfactory senses, and sense of smell and hearing, that there is a sense of the bizarre.
-But you must have had some of that in you, before you met him?
No. I was taking life a little bit too seriously. You go back, I took life a little bit seriously. I got cut and in a fight or two, I was a werewolf ... but Keith showed me the way to insanity.
-That's a strong statement.
Yeah. (Pauses.) Yeah. But that’s okay. He showed me that way.
-Keith obviously knew who you were because he was excited you were in the movie. Did you know who Keith was?
No.
-Not at all?
No.
-Did you know what Tommy was?
No, no. I was very much into Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
-You had no idea that Keith Moon was already Moon the Loon, had this reputation with drinking and nightclubs and the whole thing?
No, no, no.
-You say he wanted to be an actor; I would perhaps say he was almost a groupie around actors. When he heard you were in Tommy he would have thought, 'Oh, I’ll go see him.'
I guess he wanted to be an actor. He never said that to me, but what we would do is we would invent characters and play them out with each other. I never saw Keith as... (pauses) I don’t think his death was... His death was only a wind up. He only wanted somebody to discover him. ln exactly the same way I suppose he wanted somebody to discover him as an actor. So when they said to him he couldn't act as Uncle Ernie that hurt him very very much because that was something that he wanted to do. I've seen Keith in all sorts of situations, but I've never seen him what I would deem 'straight.'
-You mean straight as in sober, or as in normal?
As in boring. As in saying, ‘Good morning, how are you?’
So anyway, back to the Swedish girlfriend. Have you heard this one about Ted Ray? We were in the hotel on location, and Ted Ray who was a famous English comedian was there on this golf tour. Moonie and I got him pissed and then we carried him up to his room, put him in his room, [Keith] was with two Swedish girls at the time. Ted was unconscious in bed, we took his clothes off, and they started to kiss him, with lipstick traces all over his legs and stomach, not quite on his winkle, and one of them left a note that said, 'my darling Ted, you were so fantastic last night' and they put their perfume over the pillows and sheets and left some of their underwear on the floor. And that was it. We all went out and had a party somewhere.
Keith used to stay in my suite, because I took over Ken Russell's suite, and he was the only one who had a suite in this hotel, so when he went away they gave it to me. I used to go home at the weekends, because I had children and Keith had no attachments, so he used to stay at the hotel. Directly I was away Keith would move into my suite and have a party. Then I'd come back and the room would be full of flowers. Completely.
-That little bit is in your book and you say that he was using it but you would get the bill for it?
He used to get the spare key and break in, and I would come back and he'd have used the chrysanthemums as coshes.
-So he didn’t smash your room?
No, just smash the flowers So when we came back from the weekend and my room was full of flowers, we would meet in the bar, and there was Ted Ray. And we would say nothing and neither would Ted Ray. But then he and I looked at each other, and I said, “How was the weekend Ted? Enjoy the golf?” He said, "It was you, you bastards!”
-Keith brought out the practical joker in you?
Well I was always… my grandfather who was very famous in the theater was a great practical joker too, so no. We just fell for each other directly we saw each other, because, really, he was the path I was looking for.
-Right. It does seem you were kindred spirits.
So there's no way I'm going to stop behaving like I do, because for one I'm getting too old to change, and for second because I don't want to change my path. I can't afford to do the things that Moon did, because in the end he spent I think all his money on his generosity. I’ve still got Hornby, his plastic rhinoceros. I don't think Ringo's still got the dinosaur Keith gave him. I don't suppose Dougal's still got the purple Rolls Royce, but I've still got his chess set that he gave me, I haven’t got his dog Beanbag that he gave me, when he went to America. Beanbag died. Keith went to America because he was probably advised to get out of England because of all the tax...
-I would argue that was not the reason, because here was someone who didn't know what money was. From everyone I’ve spoken to, it doesn’t sound like he ever looked at his bank balance.
Then why did he go?
-His marriage had broken up, and it cut him up a lot deeper than he expected.
Before my time. He never talked to me about his wife. Why did he go live in Los Angeles in the 1970s then?
-Because, I think he thought that’s where the rock community was hanging out, that’s where Hollywood was, that’s where the glamour was.
That’s certainly where he got his clothes. He was always very keen on his clothes, his red crocodile boots. Keith is the cause of my brothers' 40th birthday party of me being barred from the Beverly Wilshire.
-Can you remember that story?
It started off with Moonie finding out... He was living overlooking the Valley, and he was with the Swedish girl (Annette), and he found out where I was living, and I came back one day having just finished a film with Lee Marvin (The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday, 1976] and I walked into the Beverley Wilshire and there in one of the booths – Richard Harris’s booth, God! – was Moon. "Hello Ollie," he said. "Sit down, champagne."
"Moonie," I said, "what arc you doing here?"
"Not fucking about, I'm living here."
"Living here?"
"Yes, I’ve decided to live here." And he had this shammy leather suit on with parrots and flowers. He got it from Westwood Leather. Because he had all these things made up. I was going off for a premiere with Columbia or something; they were trying to groom me to behave like an Englishman should in American - like an American. You've got to wear a dinner jacket. And there was Moon in his shammy leather parrot gear and his red crocodile boots. I introduced him to the girls I was with who I had to escort to the premiere... He was very quiet for Moon. I said, I don't know how long this is going to take but will you be here when I get back? And I told the publicist that I wanted to come back here afterwards. We went out through the wing door, waited for the ladies, the ladies came down, there were a lot of cameras, I had a lady on one arm and one on the other.....Brrrrrgrh!
With that I knew directly that it was a lemon curd pie (laughing) because not only did it sting my eye but a lot of it had forced its way into my grin. And I took the stuff out of my eyes and the girls with their beautiful gowns on for the premiere were covered in cream, and somebody came up and handed me a card and clattered off down the road. So I looked at it and in those days I didn’t have to wear glasses, and it said 'Pie In The Face International: You have been selected by Mr. Keith Moon to become a member. Here is your certificate.' And in this envelope which I was also handed was 'You are a member, sponsored by Keith Moon.'
So I turned round with the girls to go back through the swing door, into the bar and there he is, upside down laughing. He stayed inside, saw what was happening, heard the rumpus, saw me come back in. Needless to say we didn't go to the premiere, I got the publicity girl who didn’t know who Keith Moon was either, to apologise. I would have gone down there covered in Oxo but the girls wouldn’t!
The next morning there was a phone call, 'Mr. Reed, we're Pie in the Face International, we understand Mr. Moon got you yesterday,' (this in a perfect Californian accent), and I said, 'If you are Pie in the Face International you will know,' and they said 'would you like us to get him back?' I said 'No, What is that? It would just be 'you did this to me, I'll do it to you.'' It was absolutely wonderful. To be honest, I was very glad I didn't go to the premiere because I'm not a premiere man.
So, we went up to his house with all the twinkling lights were (Sherman Oaks). That was when I saw him probably as flat as anybody can be.
-Flat?
Flat as opposed to effervescent. Just flat. And I suppose it was wrong of me, bccause I was never flat when I was with him. It was wrong of me. I remember sitting on a big huge white settee and then putting on records and listening to records.
-I was told he wasn't proud of his Sherman Oaks home. That he didn't have people round. And maybe you knew him well enough that you just went round?
Yeah, I only went there once. It was flat, he was very flat. I thought, 'Hello, he’s not getting on too well with the crumpet. He seems to be stretched by women.' Because I'd only ever seen him before in the company of...
He and Pete got on like a house on fire. Like a house on fire. I don't think there was any thing, no matter what Roger says, terribly close with The Ox or Roger. There was no reason why The Ox should come down (to Tommy) except for the two songs that were being filmed. But Pete brought a boat down and harboured it fairly near where we filming and came round and socialised. I remember I had a friend who was in Puckpool Holiday Camp [on the Isle of Wight] with some Greencoats, and Moonie and I went over there. Moonie's not working the next day and all I had to dothe nxt day was, 'There's more at the door,' it was very easy to film, and I didn't have to look beautiful and I didn't have to remember my lines because I'd done them all before. So we went off to see Gus at the Isle of Wight.
-You were staying in Hayling? Or Portsmouth?
Portsmouth I think it was. So we went off to Puckpool... Ken was looking for a holiday camp and I recommended it. But we would have had to go over to the Isle of Wight and bring all the crew and it would have taken too long. I said to Moonie, That’s a pity, because I’ve got a mate over there, I’m going off to see him. So Moonie, said, 'I’ll come along' and off we went, Dougal, Moonie and I. We took the ferry over and went to see Gus. And of course people couldn't believe Moon was there or that I was there, we had a wonderful evening. It got later and later and the last ferry went, I said 'I know you don't need to get back, but I do. I need to work tomorrow morning.' Keith said 'Don't worry, we can arrange a fishing boat: Dougal, arrange a fishing boat!' And then the weather turned. And no one would take us back. So Moon eventually got... It was like Flora McDonald and her father steering, and his daughter, and they were the crew. And Keith sat on the prow holding the progger with all the waves coming over, shrieking and shouting in the sea. It was going down, he was getting lost.
-Were you both quite merry?
Moonie was! Dougal was his faithful, always looking after Moon. The sea was really breaking bad. But we got there in time. Went up, I had a hot bath, put a lot of blue eyedrops in, went down, did the scene, it was over very quickly. Then landed up with Ann-Margret and Moonie and I at a real holiday camp on our way home, doing stunts off the top of diving boards, smoking joints, on our way home from the set during two days off. I remember I thought Keith was going to get knocked off the front of the boat. The sea was so big. You couldn't get anywhere near to the beach, and we had to jump off the boat. We had to be careful because film insurance is such that you're not supposed to do those sort of things, and I had to do it because I had to get to work.
-And this was late late at night?
It's early in the morning! Dawn is coming. We stayed at Puckpool till about 3:30. By the time we came back, dawn was coming up. Work started early in·those days, so we only just made it.
-You had swum the last part back?
Oh yes, only because it was so windy and the surf was so big that he had to stay out behind the breakers.
-You mentioned about Pete having a boat and bringing it down to the marina in Portsmouth, and there’s a story about Pete taking the two of you out on his boat and Moon cutting the anchor so you drifted... And again you had to swim back. Did this become a regular thing?
Yes. Because we were down at the seaside, and it seemed to be in Keith’s head all the time that as we were at the seaside, we should be swimming or paddling. On the drive back from that weekend, I had a t-shirt that had 'wild thing' on it, and Keith sitting down with the Greencoats - except it wasn't Butlins - and Ann-Margret was sitting there, saying 'Keith you're so funny' and we thought we were being fairly sane.
-Did she get to see you two at it?
No, she was always working so hard. We didn't do it (be mad) when we were working and Moonie and I were never working together, except for the Tina Turner thing when Uncle Ernie was there. He demanded to be in that: 'Why can't I be collecting the tickets?' Ken knew by that time that we were very close, and that I wanted him to do it. He wasn’t going to say 'No Keith, I don’t want you to do it.' Ken was a diplomat.
-This brings up a more serious point about Keith. You talked about how he wanted to be an actor, I saw David Putnam who produced That'll Be The Day and Stardust, and he said that That'll Be The Day would not have gotten made without Keith. Without him talking it up. He only had two lines in it but they were stunning, so he was promised that, come Stardust, he would have a bigger role. But during Stardust he was having personal problems, he was drinking a lot, and they had to keep cutting his lines back. And Putnam said it was very sad, but that within doing Stardust Keith realized he wasn’t going to be a great actor, he realized he didn’t have the discipline.
I used to talk to him about it, because I'd made a film before that with Orson Welles [I’ll Never Forget What's'isname, directed by Michael Winner, in 1967] and Orson told me, 'If in doubt, do nothing.'
-He couldn't have done that?
Well, he could. He'd get high in front of me and I could make sense out of him, then he'd go through a whole trip saying nothing and doing nothing. We used to play this part where he was an ice cream and I was a block of ice. Or vice versa. So we would say these things but do nothing. But Keith couldn't keep still - he was always 'fiddle about'.
We were going to put on a play together called The Dinner Party. we were going to do it, it was nothing more than an idea, and then he died. We were going to do it at The Embassy off Piccadilly. We were going o have a dinner table on stage and then invite a restaurant around to serve dinner. “Dinner tonight will be served by The White Elephant.” And it would run for a fortnight. Keith would invite his friends round and I would invite my friends round. There would be telephones on the table, and upstairs, in the shape of an easter egg there would be a snooker table. And we'd have Alex Higgins and people like that playing snooker, up there and us downstairs eating, and people coming in and off, and microphones on the tables, and waiters serving. And five people from the audience would be invited up to join us every night.
-Obviously no script?
No script at all. Everybody would have just a little pair of opera a glasses. Little plastic ones that they would be given so they could get close enough. That would be it. Five people from the audience being served, and us and our friends, and the posters would be, 'Have you been invited to the dinner party?' It would have been quite the spectacle.
-It would have been fantastic. Keith was full of ideas, do you think it would have got done if he hadn’t died?
It was his idea on that one. I’d love to give him credit for it. We had such fun at times when we did eat - and he wasn't really into eating that much – that I probably said 'What a pity, I should write that down.' It came around like that. But it was his idea to put it in an egg.
-It’s great that he taught you the path to insanity, But you mentioned being in LA and seeing him flat, did you get to the point of seeing him and thinking, “I’m not sure this guy is totally happy”?
Well there was my brother's 40th birthday party. Did you hear this story?
-Something about a birthday cake and a smashed up hotel room?
It cost me an arm and a leg It was my brother’s 40th birthday…
Sensing a long story coming on, I asked to pause so as to change cassettes; we had already filled up the free side of a C60 I had with me. And I was right, it was a long story. And it was followed by another. And another. You can read them all in Part 2 of “Keith Moon Showed Me The Way To Insanity: Drinking In Oliver Reed.”
Fabulous. Thank you!
Great article, Tony. I have 'Dear Boy ...' as well, which I enjoyed immensely! Reading it gave me the impression that Keith's drumming was an exact representation of his lifestyle. I'm as much of a party viking as the next man, if not more so, but he must have been exhausting to be around.