Have you seen the advert for the Who Are You set?
It states “THE FINAL STUDIO ALBUM TO FEATURE KEITH MOON THE MOST ROCK AND ROLL OF ROCK AND ROLL DRUMMERS”.
Now I’m not an expert (I manage quite nicely with just four Who albums) – but is this statement correct?
Was Moonie a “rock and roll” drummer at all, never mind “the most rock and roll of rock and roll drummers”?
I remain to be convinced. But am I wrong? Was he all about the “rock and roll”?
…and here’s the ad:
The drummer with the most “rock n roll” lifestyle? Or was that John Bonham?
Aha – so they are referring to lifestyle, not playing style?
Dunno. He did make all those great jazz fusion albums too *
* No he didn’t
That’d be my take too.
Not really, Bonham was a thug, Moon, for good or ill, touched every base.
“Touched every base”?
Like the old conundrum “When exactly does a kitten become a cat?”, the continuum from “Rock & Roll” to “Pop” to “Rock” and so on is blurry at best… for instance, I believe The Rolling Stones still take to the stage to the announcement, “The greatest rock & roll band in the world”, and in that spirit I’d say referring to Moony as a “rock & roll” drummer is probably fair game, especially if (as already mentioned) you consider R&R to be a lifestyle and not just a playing style…
When we heard that intro on Get Yer Ya Yas Out it was a bit of a shock – no one called the Rolling Stones a Rock and Roll band – Rock and Roll was 50s Elvis and Chuck and Little Richard etc.
It’s an American thing
To be fair, the Stones do “roll” (swing) in a way that straightforward “rock” bands don’t. It’s an important distinction. I felt that KM was so busy beating the crap out of the skins that the “roll” was lost.
I love great drummers (Jim Keltner, he the man) but I’ve never known such excitement as watching Keith Moon live (apart from the awful Oval where he seemed completely out of it).
To those who know these things, was he actually , technically any good?
Played the melody didn’t he? Reputation as chaotic but Rick Beato interviewed Glynn Johns and to paraphrase, they used a drum machine or metronome or something. The only one who was bang on the beat was Keith.
Think this was posted recently.
Cheers
I hate this kind of hyperbole in advertising.
But Moon was an extraordinary force of nature behind that drumkit. I remember vividly seeing them at the lyceum when they were touring Quadrophenia. They exploded on to the stage playing CAN’T EXPLAIN and Moon was very much part of that energy,
Yikes, It was like being hit by a tsunami. The whole audience went berserk the entire venue became a gigantic moshpit. It was quite terrifying.
After two songs they stopped and suggested we calmed down a little.
Daltrey told us , We got through last night’s show without too many fatalities.
I hadn’t seen anything like that for years until i saw Stormzy in the Arena Tent at Roskilde…..
As a casual Who listener, I think he dominates too much. WGFA being the obvious exception – it works there. But I think great drummers serve the song but on many songs KM tries too hard to stand out with his constant fills and rolls and I think the songs suffer because of that. Would they have been better with a less flamboyant drummer?
They had Kenny Jones for a while
so…no.
I agree. All that clattering about I find quite annoying sometimes.
Generally, the “clattering about” is only annoying on their weaker songs. On “I Can See For Miles” he clatters constantly from start to finish and it’s magnificent.
Not a fan of “Tommy”, which I find rather turgid for the most part and as for anything after “Quadrophenia”, I was highly underwhelmed. I gave up on them completely.
Sometimes the clattering works though:
I was lucky enough to see the Who with Moon quite a few times, and he was a force of nature. His personality was essential. It has occured to me that the band couldn’t have worked without the original four of them. With all due respect to the drummers (and bass players) who have come after them, they are essentially replicating what Moon and Entwhistle did, and they actually now need many musicians to effectively do that. There is a great video about Whos Next in the Classic Albums series where Glyn Johns (I think) talks about and analyses how Moon’s drum patterns follow Daltrey’s vocals, and we all know about Entwhistle’s terrific lead style bass – to do what they did live with just the four of them was extraordinary.
As to the OP, I think the description refers to what might loosely be described as his ‘lifestyle’ – chucking tellies out of hotels or Rolls Royces into swimming pools, and other amusing stunts.
Who Are You isn’t a great album, or even a very good one, so giving this the mega box set treatment seems a stretch to me.
A band consisting of 4 leads – lead vocals, lead guitar, lead bass, lead drums.
All fighting for supremacy in the sound and the mix.
Often a fine, fine noise. But a danger of spilling over into a mess (does Moonie have to hit every drum, how many rumbling notes can Entwhistle get in, and how many windmilling chord crashes per song are needed).
Lots and then some more.
If it’s the Who that’s what is says on the tin. They weren’t Steely Dan.
Holmes, you astound me!
There’s a brilliant clip in that famous 69 documentary of Gene Vincent in Britain.
They’re warming up in a basement in London somewhere, and the uncouth guitarist next to him starts to make a ‘very’ loud noise causing Gene to shield his ears and wince.
Real Rock ‘n’ Roll isn’t that loud – listen to Gene’s run of LPs from Bluejean Bop! (56) to Crazy Times (60)… and ‘no one’ is more Rock ‘n’ Roll than Gene Vincent. No one.
Bizarre that so many people use the phrase ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, and so few people actually listen to Rock ‘n’ Roll.
You should get in touch with Polydor’s marketing people.
The Who presented themselves as Maximum R&B, at least to begin with, and then they did a career-spanning box set called that. But despite that, Moon and Entwhistle certainly had a taste for the rock & roll lifestyle. The other two, not really.
So the consensus seems to be that the Polydor marketing people were leaning into Moon’s rock and roll lifestyle, rather than suggesting that he was the “most” rock and roll drummer?
That’s my take.
Indeed – the Who re-unions through the 90s were primarily convened to give John Entwhistle a payday because his lifestyle had skinted him again.
He died the night before the start of the 2002 Tour in a Las Vegas Hotel Room accompanied by Hookers and Cocaine … Rock n Roll excess to the end
(and in this case, the very end sadly)
The greatest rock drummers were Neil Peart from Rush and Clem Burke from Blondie.
@uncle-wheaty
Ahem. I think you’ve forgotten moi…
I’m not particularly invested in the Who havimg acquired over the decades a vinyl Meaty Beaty…, a tape of Whos Next and a CD of Quadrophenia soundtrack.
However insomnia has meant that I have watched two Who concerts on Gigs TV channel recently (Freeview 284 – check it out).
I was surprised that I preferred Shea Stadium 1982 with keyboards, Kenney Jones and dodgy 80’s clothes and haircuts to 1975 Texas with Keith whirling away which seemed a bit post 60’s heyday, slightly directionless raawk. You can almost feel the seeds of punk stirring.
To be fair to Pete, who I find possibly the most humourless and pompous of rock stars, he did attempt to respond and evolve to the new directions of the late 70s and early 80s.
Not a fan of his style. In fact I’d go so far as to say that all their records would have been better with a different drummer. Precisely which drummer would suit their sound more than KM is an interesting “what if” question, though, to which I don’t really have an answer.
With all the music software available now one can probably produce versions of Who songs with any drummer of your choice dropped in. In fact I’d bet that they are probably on youtube already.
Littld interest in the band or most of their music: a dash of Tommy, Who’s Next and some of Quadrophrenia will do me. But I did enjoy the long piece in this months Mojo, about the end days of Moon,,and the catalyst that became to their decades of trying to pretend normal service could be maintained. Even handed, there is as much criticism as there are offered mitigations.
The super deluxe Who Are You promises plenty of material from 1979 with the freshly installed Kenney Jones, including Shepperton rehearsals and live performances. At this point, they seemed to be attempting a kind of continuity Who. The signs were promising. They appeared reinvigorated. It wasn’t to last. Face Dances was disappointingly restrained and their subsequent live performances seemed to have all the edges smoothed off. They became just another highly professional stadium band before transforming into their own tribute act.
This thrilling amateur film (seven minutes) was uploaded recently – it’s the most exciting sounding Who from the 1979-82 period I’ve heard. Maybe the Jones era (at least in concert) has been underrated…
They get a raw deal from critics. That’s storming stuff.