"Keith stripped off all his clothes and ran off into the crowd of schoolgirls"

Dave Edmunds on making "Stardust" with Keith Moon as his running pal.

Among the many great interviews I conducted for my Keith Moon biography during 1996 and ’97 were several centered around Keith’s performances – and antics, but of course – in the seminal British rock’n’roll films That’ll Be The Day (1973) and Stardust (1974), each of which starred David Essex. (Ringo Starr was prominent in the former film, and Adam Faith in the latter, which had a bigger budget and was shot in part in the States with a view to an American audience.) These interviews included actors Larry Hagman (the transcript to which I published here), Karl Howman, and Paul Nicholas; the producer Sir David Puttnam; and the writer of both movies, Ray Connolly, who explains how they came about, in his own words, here.

And then there was Dave Edmunds. The great Welsh rocker was central to the success of the film Stardust, not so much because he played his one and only proper cinematic acting role (as Alex, the “quiet” member of the films’ fictional Stray Cats), but because he put together the double album soundtrack, playing just about every instrument for the Stray Cats’ recordings in the process.

(By a strange twist of fate, when the “real” Stray Cats came along, Dave Edmunds was hired to produce them. Elsewhere, he has claimed that the US band had no knowledge that the name had been used in a major movie, let alone that their producer had been an acting but real musical member of that band!)

Keith Moon, Paul Nicholas, and Dave Edmunds, as 3/5 of the Stray Cats, onstage at the Bellevue Theatre in Manchester.

At the time that he was enlisted in Stardust, Dave Edmunds was just entering his thirties, and arguably at the commercial peak of a lengthy musical career that extends back to the late 1960s with a UK Top 5 as front man of the trio Love Sculpture (the bracing “Sabre Dance”). In 1970, he had scored a UK #1, a US Top 3 and indeed a global smash with “I Hear You Knocking,” and by 1974 was basking in a pair of consecutive Top 5 UK hits, his covers of “Baby I Love You” and “Born To Be With You.” A rock’n’roll purist, a fan who never expected to have fans of his own and whose good-natured, hard-working spirit was apparently contagious, Edmunds was the youthful golden boy of the rock’n’roll revival that gripped the UK (and much of the US, I understand, also) at the start of the 1970s, a revival that That’ll Be The Day, in particular, tapped into, endorsed and promoted. A pivotal part of the historic Welsh studio Rockfield from its founding days, he called his early 1970s group Rockpile - though only after playing in a club of that name on his first tour of the States.

(I learned that last tidbit of info from reading the sleeve notes accompanying this excellent 2CD Anthology, assembled with Dave’s complete co-operation and featuring his reminiscences on each track, and which accompanied me to no end of musical delight while editing the manuscript and working up this intro.)

The “potato loft” referenced at the start of the booklet above was the original Rockfield Studio.

From the Keith Moon perspective, I look upon That’ll Be The Day and Stardust, which sadly are not readily available on streaming platforms (at least in the States), and the soundtracks to which seem similarly consigned to obscurity, as the pinnacle of the drummer’s acting career. It is something I elaborate upon in describing both films in more detail in my introduction to the Larry Hagman interview. Sure, Keith was bigger and bolder and more visible in Tommy, but in That’ll Be The Day and Stardust, playing the role of J.D. Clover, Keith is at his most natural, and for all that he is somewhat playing himself, the lunatic drummer in a rock band, he also demonstrates a captivating presence and a natural way with his lines, as in this scene from early in That’ll Be The Day.

Whether Keith was acting or acting out when he later appeared to have some kind of breakdown during a filmed on-set performance by the Stray Cats at the Manchester Bellevue Theatre, for Stardust, remains something of a mystery. Edmunds, as he describes it below, felt that it must have been an act. Others I talked to believed that Keith genuinely lost the plot. Either way, Edmunds was but one of but many that Moon swept up and gathered on board his crazy train, alongside Oliver Reed (I ran my memorable interview with Ollie here and here), Larry Hagman, Karl Howman, and just about everyone else who appeared in a film with Moon. And as with the others, Edmunds remained truly grateful for the experience, even if he was relieved that for his own part he didn’t have to stay on that crazy train for too long.

“We all went through debauchery, but luckily, I wasn't snagged by it . I’ve never had to go to AA or rehab. Drugs never caught me. I don't have an addictive personality, luckily.”

Though we conducted the interview by phone, you wouldn’t be able to sense as much from the conversation that flows below. As with all those I spoke with for the book, I remain appreciative to Dave for his time, and his stories - recalling how, for example, at a service station on the British motorway on the way to a shoot for Stardust, spying a coach of schoolgirls assembled for a head count…

“Keith stripped off all his clothes and ran off into the crowd of schoolgirls, ran all the way round the bus, through this crowd of 13-15 year-olds, jumped back in the limo and said, 'Right, off to Manchester!' Caught us all by surprise.”

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As with most of my archive transcripts, this interview is available to paid subscribers of Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith. Subscriptions are just $6 (c. £5) a month, 20% discount for a year, and subscribers get access not only to these exclusive posts, but to all the archives, and the Crossed Channels podcast.

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