Dear Boy : The Life of Keith Moon

When the young Keith Moon was beating the tar out of his drum-kit in Shepherd’s Bush in 1964 it would have been unthinkable that this sparky little mod kid would have been the subject of a door- stopping 500-page biography. But young Keith soon mutated into Moon the Loon and joined the pantheon of legendary rock and roll wild men who lived fast and died young and 500 pages now seems the minimum space needed to cover his many excesses. Tony Fletcher has drawn heavily on interviews with Moon’s wife, his sister and his girlfriend for the last eight years of his life. Oliver Reed, Alice Cooper, and Larry Hagman also have their say and the picture that emerges is of a man whose outrageous antics sprung from an absurdly over- generous personality. The drink, the drugs and the trashed hotel rooms are all splendidly chronicled as is the music. His drug-fuelled demise is not a pretty sight but Moon had always walked the walk and so the fact that, unlike the other members of The Who, he actually did die before he got old, ultimately comes as no surprise. –Nick Wroe.

Also published as Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend.