Weekend Bonus! Episode 54: Replacing Keith Moon?

Kicking off their 1973 American tour, The Who begin at Cow Palace in Daly City, California for the opening night. Almost getting through the entire concert Keith Moon collapses and passes out twice but according to The Who: “The show must go on!” But who can possibly play drums in replacement of Keith Moon?? Listen and find out! 

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Transcript

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Hello, rock and roll. Hey there. Welcome back to Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. I'm your host Jay. This is just a little bonus episode. Just a little bonus. How do you do? One-off episode here. And we're talking about the 1973 Keith Moon stand-in of Scott Halpin. Yes, the drummer Keith Moon couldn't go on, so someone from the audience took his seat. What does that mean? Okay. So the Who kick off their 1973 US tour, and they are supporting their new newly released already a hit album, Quadrafinia. It is the very first night, the opening night of the tour, in uh at the Cal Palace, Daily City, California, which is a suburb of San Francisco. Okay, first I want to talk to you about the album itself, Quadrofinia. So if you have never heard the album Quadrofinia, it was uh written by Pete Townsend. It's sort of like a semi-autobiographical concept album written by Pete Sound Re Pete Townsend, the singer, songwriter, guitar player. It's about a young, pill-popping mod who seems to be coming apart at the seams. Uh a sort of exclamation from the young uh main character, Jimmy. He says, schizophrenic? No, I'm quadruphonic. It's sort of a uh it kind of plays into this idea that uh the main character, Jimmy, his personality is split into four distinct warring aspects that sort of mirror the four members of the band the Who. Okay, so in England, it was sort of easily understood. Mod culture is a sort of British culture, you know, it's it's easily recognizable. Back in the States, it it's um it's not as understood. If you don't know what I'm talking about, mod, then go look it up. This is not what that episode is about. I'm just saying in the United States, there is no innate understanding of mod culture at the time in 1973, United States. Okay, so the thought of that and the combined with the technical failures that the Who were having in England uh during the Quadrifinia tour uh really gave them a lot of stress. So, what what was happening during the English part of the tour on the songs Won't Get Fooled Again and Barbara O'Reilly, those two songs, Pete Townsend had pre-recorded synthesizer tapes that would play while Keith Moon, the drummer, would play drums too. And the problem was that uh sometimes they wouldn't come on as cued properly. They wouldn't come on late, they come on too early, or they just wouldn't come on. So the beginning of the tour uh is just it's just it's a little stressful. So, okay, so the opening night, November 20th, 1973, Cow Palace, Daily City, California. And uh it's a little um it's a little arena, indoor arena. It sits about 12,000. You know, you're you're you're every city has a little sports arena, that kind of thing. So I never knew this. I read this um in this um this book I was reading about Keith Moon. It talks about how Keith Moon he would get so nervous before shows, he had stage fright, and he would eventually throw up. And uh what would he do after throwing up? Would he would drink, of course. Why if you have an empty stomach, of course you drink, don't you? So anyway, this time not only did he drink, he also took PCP with this woman he met shortly before the concert. And um there's some speculation as to what he took, uh what he ingested. No one really knows. I mean, there's a lot of different stories what he took, but based on what Pete Townsend said, okay, based on what Pete Townsend said, um, he took ketamine and drank brandy. The the the sort of pedestrian Google search will tell you that he took horse tranquilizers. But according to the 1999 Tony Fletcher biography on Keith Moon, simply titled Moon, that I have right here next to me, states that the woman he ingested with almost immediately collapsed and had to go to the hospital. The band goes on, Keith uh while he's playing, Keith is playing while he's playing drums, Keith is speeding up, he's slowing down like um like a broken tape machine, you know, like that. Roger Daltrey's uh sorry, Roger Daltrey, uh lead singer, witnesses hearing this. He jokes with the crowd saying, and now for you who have come the first night of the tour, you won't get fooled again. Here we go. And they start the song, won't get fooled again. Halfway through the song, Keith Moon slumps over, face first, slumps over on his drums. The roadie, Mick Double, goes uh his name is Mick Double, he goes to lift him up, but it's obvious that Keith is like completely passed out, and Keith Moon is carried backstage, and they um give him a cold shower, and they give him an injection of cortisol, a cortisol injection. Alright, so Pete Townsend is joking with the crowd. He says, uh, don't worry, we're gonna give King, we're gonna give him a good custard enema. Don't worry about it, everyone. Alright, but then he realizes the situation is actually quite serious, and he states to the crowd, Alright, without him, we're not a group. You're you're just gonna have to wait. So, 20 minutes goes by, nothing's happening, you know, 20 minutes, no music, you just you know, and then um the band decides to do a couple of songs as a trio. So it's so it's John Entwistle on bass, Pete Townsend on guitar, and Roger Daltrey singing no drums, just the three of them. They do a couple songs with that. Finally, Keith Moon clambers back to the stage, and they're about to do uh Magic Bus. So he grabs the claves, the little sticks, you know, he grabs those and they go into the intro of Magic Bus. But only after a few bars of that song, he collapses again. Alright. He's carried backstage, and uh eventually they took him to the hospital where his stomach is pumped, and it turned out he had taken PCP. That's what was in his guts. Angel dust. At the time of 1973, PCP was used, it's no longer used as this, but was used as an animal tranquilizer specifically for agitated monkeys and gorillas. Alright, so uh here's a line I like from this Tony Fletcher book. It says, Whether out of genuine amnesia or an unwillingness to confess to his stupidity, Keith need Keith never offered any recollection or taking anything at all. I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about. Right? So the Who showed no signs of any kind of anger at Keith uh on stage for letting letting the band down. Uh later it was said that Roger Daltrey was angry, embarrassed, let down. But Pete Townsend was more like, well, it was gonna happen sometime, you know. So anyway, Keith Moon. Um sorry, no, Pete Townsend asks the audience, can anyone play drums? I need somebody good. So he's asking the audience, can someone come in and play drums for Keith Moon, right? So uh upstage is pushed a young boy named Scott Helpin. Um, he was an art student at the San Francisco Community College, young guy, and he had only been playing drums for like a year or so. And I think Bill Graham was there. He said, Can you do it? He said, Yeah, I can do it. So they get him on stage and they give him a shot of brandy. They say, here you go, have a little shot. And Pete Townsend looks at him and he says, like, don't worry, like I I'll I'll cue you what to do, right? Alright, so he gets behind the drum set. It's crazy, right? So it's like if like you went to the WHO concert last night, and someone was like, Wow, awesome! You know the Who concert? Where'd you sit? I sat behind the drum seat. So, okay, so Scott Halpin. He is uh he actually pulled his weight. Um, he plays three songs, and later he said that I only played three songs, but oh my god, I was so beat. He talks about how Keith Moons Mooden's drum set was ridiculous. Like the the snares were the size of like, or the toms and the and the snares were the size of like bass bass drums, everything was kind of connected together, you couldn't move anything. So the first song that they played was uh Smokestack Lightning. They also played Spoonful, two old blues songs, and then they played Naked Eye, which was a kind of a relatively new song for for the Who. So um it went well, you know. He pulled it off, and that was towards the end of the concert. They did three songs. They uh he stood up, he's he's he stood next to Roger Daltrey, and they everyone bowed, you know. Thank you. He went backstage and he kind of partied with the band, uh, drank some beers, uh, had some snacks, got a free jacket, which he says was stolen later on the way home from the concert. Uh he was promised a thousand dollars for for for for work that he did with the Who, and he said he never got that check. But he he did say that he um he received uh a very honest, sincere thank you letter from Pete Townsend. Um it's it's kind of sad this this guy who who who saved the day who was the rock star, that really is a 15 minutes of fame. He just recently died of a brain tumor. Scott Halpin, R.I.P. Thank you for helping out the Who. So going on from there, uh they really kind of cover this up, like, no, everything's okay. Um a journalist from the British magazine Record Mirror came in and wanted to talk about what had happened that night, and basically they told the journalist Um, due to exhaustion of jet lag and not getting enough sleep, but Keith, so Keith's fine, don't worry about it. So um, fortunately for Keith, uh, he was okay because uh that that girl that that he partied with, she got really sick. She had to go to the house, she almost died. But anyway, so fortunately for Keith, he had a night off, actually, he had four nights off until the next concert. And to recover, he basically stayed in the Keith Moon, spent the night spent those days in the hotel staring at the TV, recuperating, glued to the hotel TV screen, and the next show uh the Who played was on the 25th of November at the forum in Los Angeles. Keith Moon was back to normal, sharp as attack. Roger Daultrey, the lead singer, kind of teasing a little bit on the whole uh uh the whole situation about Keith Moon. When they introduced the song uh Bellboy from the album, Quadrifinia. Uh Roger Daultrey says, Here's the geezer that gets drowned every night and it's not even in water. Keith Moon stands up, takes a bow, and says, Thank you, Atlanta, while they're in Los Angeles. Alright, so I'm gonna wrap it up right here. So that's basically sort of uh a little day in the life of just rock and roll, right? And uh cool cool thing at the end of the at the end of the year, 1973, Rolling Stone put out uh an article that was um Scott Halpin, the drummer, he won the Pickup Player of the Year Award. You know that that's pretty cool. Anyway, that was a day in the life of good old rock and roll. So that was your bonus, a little bonus party there. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. We are on Instagram at Jay's Rock and Roll Stories. You can contact the show at Jays Rock and Roll Stories at gmail.com. They're on Facebook as well. And guess what? I will see you on Tuesday for a brand new episode. See you later.