![]() ![]() It was almost like all that energy was stored up in the fat, and it had to kill him because it couldn’t come out. You’ve got to think about someone with the amount of energy that he used to put into those performances – where the hell do you put it when you’re not performing? It must have been awful. He’d had California living, he’d done no exercise, hadn’t done any drumming, and he paid the price. And 18 months in the life of Keith Moon was a fucking long time, and he had overindulged in every way. “But he’d had two years off well, 18 months. You can see on the Shepperton footage that he was really starting to suffer behind the kit by the end of each song, I remark. We’ll get a gymnasium at the studio, I’ll come down with you and we’ll train, and I’ll get Pete back on the road, and you’ll soon be fit’. It’s just because we haven’t been on the road for two years. “It must have been like falling off the edge of a cliff for him, because he saw this beautiful young kid go from looking 16 years old to looking 40 in a very short space of time, and he found it very hard. And he’s saying: ‘Yeah, but I’m overweight, I can’t drum anymore’. Without you in it it would be as dull as dishwater’. And I kept saying to him: ‘Keith, you’re the star of the fucking film, you’re brilliant. And what he saw shook him to his very core. Just weeks prior to his drug-hastened demise, he accompanied Daltrey to a private screening. It’s the passion that lives within our music on stage that makes The Who special.”ĭespite the fact that The Kids Are Alright wasn’t released until after Keith Moon’s tragic death at the age of 31 in September 1978, the drummer did get to see the finished product. But as long as that passion remains I’ll go on doing it. I don’t know whether the notes are quite the same as they used to be, because I’m a lot older, but they’re good enough, and it’s never been all about just notes to me anyway. Still do today, and when that dies we’ll stop. But hear it played live and it’s explosive. Even Who’s Next feels like we’re all constrained even though they’re great performances you can still hear the constraints of the studio. The personalities and performances were just too fucking big, and it was very difficult to do The Who justice in the studio for some reason. “The four walls of a studio could never contain us,” Daltrey attests. “The last gig.”Īnd how fortuitous that the footage ultimately captured the band in full effect, for the difference between The Who as a studio entity and as live band was always immense. The Who’s behind-closed-doors performance at Shepperton film studios, their first live work-out in well over a year and specifically arranged to provide contemporary footage for the movie, was also destined to be their very last show with Keith Moon. The timing of The Kids Are Alright may have been totally inexplicable, but it was also quite perfect. At the time it was released people were saying: ‘This film makes no sense, it’s a complete piece of rubbish.’ But now they call it one of the breakthrough moments of rock’n’roll film-making. It’s unpretentious, fun and an important rock’n’roll document. ![]() It captures the band at the pinnacle of our career. ![]() ![]() It’s complete anarchy but he gets away with it. I couldn’t be objective about it at the time, but I look at it now and think it’s a really important piece of work. We thought it was going to be some cheap little stuck-together production, and it ended up costing an arm and a leg. He did a short promo, and we said why not. “A fan came to us,” Daltrey remembers, “and said he’d like to make a film using clips of the band. There’s no doubting that the finished article was the best cinematic portrait of a band ever given a cinema release, but how did it come into being? Why would a band at their peak suddenly take time out to produce what was essentially an historical document? ![]()
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