Fact #83396

KEITH MOON DRIVES CAR INTO POOL : FLY ON THE WALL

This feature by Johnny Black first appeared in the magazine Classic Rock, November 2012

Holiday Inn, in 1967 was the world’s largest hotel chain, with nearly 1,000 properties – comprised primarily of roadside motels. 
In 1908, General Motors was founded in Flint, Mich.,

Keith Moon jumped off the roof of one motel into the pool wearing a top hat, cape and riding boots. At another, he bought a pirhana, dumped it in the hotel room bath and fed it raw steak, which killed it. Somewhere in Alabama he dumped so many cherry bombs into the toilet that it became completely dislodged from the floor, and in Chattanooga he started a bar fight by smashing a bar stool over the back of a good ole Southern boy.

By the time the entourage rolled into Flint, Michigan, on Keith's birthday, they thought they'd seen just about everything, but Keith had barely got started.
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August 1967
23. Herman's Hermits, The Who and The Blues Magoos play in Atwood High School Stadium, Flint, Michigan, USA. Then, being the occasion of his 20th birthday (although he pretends it's his 21st) Keith Moon of The Who runs wild at the local Holiday Inn.

Harvey Lisberg (manager, Herman's Hermits) : Keith Moon was bonkers. It was like he had two personalities, one was wild and insane and the other was a superb musician, an excellent drummer.

Barry Whitwam (drummer, Herman's Hermits) : One motel on that tour had a swimming pool surrounded by rooms on all sides. Myself and Derek Leckenby (Hermits' guitarist) were having a bet with our manager (Charlie Silverman) that we would jump off the second floor into the swimming pool for fifty dollars. We were just about to shake hands on the bet when Keith Moon jumped off the roof of the motel wearing a top hat, cape and riding boots. The pool was only six foot deep.

Peter Cavanaugh, (DJ, WTAC Radio, Flint, Michigan) : WTAC at that time was the big Top 40 station in Michigan. Flint is about 70 miles North of Detroit, and we covered all of Michigan other than Detroit.

We were on top of all the new music from when The Beatles hit and changed everything, so when I Can't Explain was released, I loved it, and we put it right into rotation on the day it was delivered to us by the guy from Decca. We were the first station in America to play The Who.

Keith Moon : Somebody gave me a portable bar and somebody else the portable booze. I'd started drinking about ten o'clock in the morning...


Peter Cavanaugh : Allegedly, it was Keith Moon's 21st birthday. We found out later it was actually his 20th birthday, but they came by the radio station in the afternoon and they brought us a cake, which was so cool. It was his birthday and they brought us a cake!

Bob Dell, our PD, was on the air, so he had the joy of interviewing them. I got to shake hands and say hello, but that was about it. They were in the station for about 25 minutes and left before I had a chance to really talk with any of them.

So I didn't really get involved until I went down to the show that night.

When we sat down to have our first drink in the bar, I remember Pete Townshend being fascinated by the way we use the word 'fuck' all the time in Flint, Michigan. Every other word, especially then, was 'fuck'. What tickled Pete, because he's a very smart guy, was that we were using it as a noun, a verb and an adjective. The British equivalent, he said, would be 'bloody'.

I was at the show with a bunch of listeners, some of our deejays and some of the Detroit radio people who had come up. The Who just destroyed the stage.

Keith Moon : I can't remember the show.

Peter Cavanaugh : They did about a 45 minute set, and one thing I remember vividly is Roger Daltrey kicking a timpani drum right over the goalposts. Keith was throwing all his stuff around, and Roger just caught it the right way, and it must have sailed at least 75 yards.

Everybody was just blown away. After the show, we went to The Holiday Inn.

Peter Noone (Herman of Herman's Hermits) : We had rented the Ambassador Suite, and we pre-paid the room and told (the hotel) we were gonna destroy a room. 'Which ones do you want redecorated?' Because we were gents.

Barry Whitwam (drummer, Herman's Hermits) : It all started very innocently. It was Keith’s birthday party and one or two birthday cakes had been delivered for him.

Keith Moon : The Premier Drum Company 'ad given me a 'uge birthday cake, with like five drums stacked up on top of each other.

Peter Cavanaugh : The Who were virtually unknown in America at this time. They were opening up for Herman's Hermits, so being at the party was more like hanging out with a bunch of crazy friends, but these British guys were crazier than any friends we ever had in the States.

It was my first rock'n'roll party, and it was wild rock'n'roll frenzy at its finest.


Tom Wright (photographer, road manager) : The room was jammed, everybody smoking, drinking, laughing, the music is going.

Barry Whitwam : The whole tour gathered in the dining room to view all the cakes - which were a very impressive sight!  They were all placed on a large table in the middle of the room together with paper plates and napkins. Keith Moon was just about to get stuck into one of his cakes when I stopped him just as a forkful of cake was going into his mouth. He asked ‘what are you playing at?’ and I explained that we had been advised previously not to eat any cake that was sent unless we knew the person who sent it because obviously you could have no idea what was in it. I told him that somebody had tried to poison us with a cake last year and another cake had been found to have razor blades in it, so from that day, sadly, we could never chance eating the cakes that the fans sent to us.

Most people in the room had been drinking, so the atmosphere was great and everybody was ready for a party. Keith Moon put his plate down on the table and stuck his finger into the cream on top of one of the cakes and casually flicked the cream at Karl Green who was standing next to him.

The cream hit Karl right in the face and everybody in the room laughed, apart from Karl who just turned around and stuck his finger into the nearest cake and flicked some back into Keith’s face. Within seconds everybody in the room was throwing cake at each other, it was like one of those old black and white movie cake-fights of the thirties.

Nancy Lewis (journalist) : The first thing he (Keith) did was pick up the cake, and hurl it against the wall and then a whole melee started to break loose. Herman was involved too. They had a big cake fight right there. It was total chaos.

Barry Whitwam : It only took five minutes to change the room into what looked like the inside of a cake.

Peppy Castro (guitarist, The Blues Magoos) : I was in the dining room of the restaurant and witnessed cake being thrown. He was a maniac. The stucco ceiling in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn had to be re-done because of all the cake that was thrown on it.

Tom Wright : The manager comes up to Keith and tells him that this will just not do, 'We're going to have to stop this, right now.'

Keith Moon : As the party degenerated into a slanging, I picked up the cake, all five tiers, and hurled it at the throng. People'd started picking up the pieces and 'urling it about. Everybody was covered with marzipan and icing sugar and fruitcake.

Tom Wright (roadie) : I knew that wasn't going to sit well with anybody. I told him (the manager) we'd wind it down and so on, and he left.

Keith Moon : Half a dozen cars were parked around this swimming pool - all beautiful paint jobs.

Keith Moon : I ran out, jumped into the first car I came to, which was a brand-new Lincoln Continental. It was parked on a slight hill, and when I took the handbrake off, it started to roll, and it smashed straight through this pool surround fence, and the whole Lincoln Continental went into the 'Oliday Inn swimming pool, with me in it. AH-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Keith Moon : So there I was, sitting in the eight-foot-six in the driver's seat of a Lincoln Continental, underwater. And the water was pouring in - coming in through the bloody pedal 'oles in the floorboard, you know, squirting in through the windows. In a startling moment of logical I said, "Well, I can't open the doors until the pressure is the same It's amazing 'ow I remembered those things from my physics class! I knew I'd 'ave to wait until the pressure was the same. So I'm sitting there, thinking about me situation, as the water creeps up to me nose.

Today I can think of less outrageous ways of going than drowning in a Lincoln Continental in a 'Oliday Inn swimming pool, but at that time I 'ad no thoughts of death whatsoever. There was none of that all-me-life-passing-before-me-eyes-in-a-flash. I was busy planning. I knew if I panicked, I'd 'ave 'ad it. So when there's just enough air in the top of the car to take a gulp, I fill up me lungs, throw open the door and go rising to the top of the pool. I figured there'd be quite a crowd gathered by now. After all, I'd been down there underwater for some time. I figured they'd be so grateful I was alive, they'd overlook the Lincoln Continental. But no. There's only one person standing there and 'e's the pool cleaner, and 'es got to have the pool cleaned in the morning, and he's furious.

John Entwistle : He never drove a car into the swimming pool. He couldn't even drive.

Roger Daltrey : It flaming well did happen. We got the $50,000 bill for it. He could have gone to jail for three years. This was Right-wing America in the Sixties. They just didn't like us long-haired hippies. People write books and never talk to the band. They just talk to drunks and people who were half there.

Peter Noone (aka Herman) : That never happened. He would tell stories. He just forgot what happened.

Peppy Castro (guitarist, The Blues Magoos) : I personally didn't witness Keith drive a car in the pool. So, if it did happen, they must have dragged the car out rather fast. I was there. I do know the pool had tons of broken glass in it from Keith throwing and breaking glass and bottles in the pool. I did witness some of that and was pissed off at him at the time because of the damage he was causing.

Peter Cavanaugh, (DJ, WTAC Radio, Flint, Michigan) : I was in a room, and I heard the ruckus and I went outside and the first thing I saw was the vehicle in the pool. By this time we'd all had several beers and some other stuff too, so things can get a little cloudy, but I clearly remember seeing the vehicle in the pool. Quickly a crowd gathered around. I think Keith had his pants off at this point.

In a way, it all kind of made sense. It was all starting to seem like a movie. After seeing that set they'd done in afternoon, it all seemed perfectly logical, like an exclamation point at the end of the day.

Keith Moon : So I went back to the party, streaming water...

Tom Wright (roadie) : At one minute after twelve he (the manager) comes running back and says, "God damn it, this sounds more like a revolution than a birthday party. We're having complaints and you can't do this and you can't do that."

Tom Wright (roadie) : He was just about to go into a big deal when Keith just picked up what was left of the five-tiered cake and just shoved it into this guy's face.

Tom Wright : Everybody in the room just went silent, including this guy. All this stuff, like, just drips. And you can't even laugh because it's so shocking.

Barry Whitwam : All the cakes were splattered over the walls and ceiling, and ground into the carpet. Not satisfied with that, Keith went over to Karl and ripped Karl’s trouser leg from the pocket down to the knee and laughed in his face as if to challenge him.

Now Karl is never one to pass a challenge like that, so he walked up to Keith and pulled his trousers down so hard that the stitching ripped in every seam and there Keith stood with no trousers; his underpants had been pulled down with his trousers; and to make it worse he was only wearing a short T-shirt that didn’t do anything cover his embarrassment!

John Entwistle : He hit the sheriff with the cake, because the person he threw it at ducked.

Barry Whitwam : Everybody thought this was hilarious, apart from the police officer who, up to this point, was supposed to be guarding us from the outside world.  When he saw Keith’s private parts he pulled out his revolver and walked over to Keith to arrest him for breaking the law in Michigan State. The funny thing was that the officer was still pointing his gun at Keith’s manhood. I think he would have shot it off if he had tried to run for it.

As we were still laughing, the officer pulled out his handcuffs and tried to cuff Keith, but we were too fast for him. We all gathered round the officer and separated the two of them, and as we did, Keith’s roadie, together with the tour manager and Karl, frog-marched Keith to the nearest exit and pushed him out.

Nancy Lewis : We were trying to escort him back to his room so he could cover up.  As he was going out the door he fell over flat on his face and knocked out his two front teeth.

Keith Moon : I ran, I started to leg it out the door, and I slipped on a piece of marzipan and fell flat on me face and knocked out me tooth.

John Entwistle : He was so pissed, he tripped and fell over and smashed his teeth.

Nancy Lewis : He was so out of it he wasn't even aware what happened so he had to be rushed to the dentist.

John Entwistle : While we were at the dentist's, the rest of the tour got extremely drunk and started spraying the car park with fire extinguishers.

Karl Green (bassist, Herman's Hermits) : We ended up having fights, raids, with fire extinguishers, ripping the railings up around the pool and throwing them in, ripping vending machines off the walls to get crisps and stuff out of.

Peter Noone : We were naïve - we were kids - and we'd go into bars with fire extinguishers. They make people's eyes bleed. We thought, 'This is America, no-one must sleep.'

Barry Whitwam : Peter Noone and I decided to help to clean off each other’s cake by using fire extinguishers, which at the time seemed to be a good idea.  Wrong! Little did we know but the extinguishers had a chemical in the fluid that would remove the paint off cars. We were having a good old time running all over the hotel, in and out of rooms and when one extinguisher ran dry you just pulled another off the wall and carried on with the battle. The battle continued into the car park where we would use the cars as a shield, if the car windows were open that would be a bonus had would be able to fire straight through the car and get our target.

Peter Noone : This fire extinguisher takes all the paint off the cars, so there was a big bill.

Keith Moon : Six of them 'ad to 'ave new paint jobs; the paint all peeled off. We'd also destroyed a piano. Completely destroyed it. Reduced it to kindling. And don't forget the carpet. And the Lincoln Continental in the bottom of the pool. So I got a bill for $24,000.

Peppy Castro (guitarist, The Blues Magoos) : By the next morning, nine cars that were in the parking lot needed to be repainted from Keith's fire extinguisher assault. From what I remember the tour paid for the damage and not just The Who.  

Peter Cavanaugh, (DJ, WTAC Radio, Flint, Michigan) : After the State Police came we decided it was time to move on, so me and Bob Dell went to this rock bar, Conto's with Peter Townshend and a few others. We hung out there til about 2.30 in the morning, then we dropped Peter and the others off at the hotel.

Keith Moon : I spent the remainder of the night under the custody of the sheriff at a dentist's. The dentist couldn't give me any anaesthetic because I was pissed out of me mind. So 'e 'ad to rip out what was left of the tooth and put a false one in.

John Entwistle : We all waited while they operated on him without any anaesthetics … cause he was drunk. He was whimpering for about two days. He didn't even see a swimming pool that night.

Barry Whitwam : Meanwhile, back at the hotel the police officer was slipped a hundred dollars for his good work and was sent on his way after being reassured that the damage would be paid for in the morning.

Keith Moon was credited with most of the damage to the hotel but, in fact, he had very little to do with it at all.

A lawyer very recently asked me if Keith Moon had really driven a car into the swimming pool that night, the answer I gave him was "No, that must have been on another occasion".

Keith Moon : The next day I spent a couple of hours in the nick. The boys 'ad chartered me a plane because they 'ad to leave on an earlier flight. The sheriff took me out in the law car, and he puts me on the plane and says, "Son, don't ever dock in Flint, Michigan, again." I said, "Dear boy, I wouldn't dream of it." And I was lisping around the new tooth.

Barry Whitwam (drummer, Herman's Hermits) : Apparently the plane they hired went through a terrible storm and nearly crashed. I remember Karl saying that the plane dropped so fast one time that the dust on the floor hit the ceiling, along with everything else that wasn’t screwed down.

Pete Townshend : The fucking plane crashed, and nobody whimpered, nobody said a word. Nobody. Nobody CARED. Crash landed . . . that was in the days of the Herman's Hermits tour but it's still insanity.

Peter Cavanaugh, (DJ, WTAC Radio, Flint, Michigan) : I heard later, from the record company people and the promoters, that there was a lot of money had to be paid to cool everything down.

Keith Moon : I was in debt up past me eyebrows before this 'appened.

Harvey Lisberg : What Keith Moon didn't know was that, under the terms of the contract, Herman's Hermits, as the headline band, were held to be responsible for any damage caused on the tour.

Barry Whitwam : We were hit with a $25,000 bill for new carpets, wallpaper and ceilings. Herman’s Hermits ended up banned from Holiday Inn for life!

Keith Moon : Luckily, 'Erman's 'Ermits and the boys split it up; about thirty of us all gave a thousand dollars each. It was like a religious ceremony as we all came up and dropped a thousand dollars into a big 'at and sent it off to the 'Oliday Inn with a small compliments card with "BALLS" written across it - and the words, "See you soon." Ah-ha-ha-HA-HA Ha ho-HAHAHA!

Pete Townshend : It's important to say that when we say we often 'hated' hotels, because they were a cold component in our lonely lives, we also appreciated their comfort, the clean sheets, the maids who cleaned, the people who brought food to our rooms, who prepared it, the people who made sure we had rooms in the first place. We're not stupid or ignorant. We were too young and spoiled to know any better at the time, so sometimes we made trouble. It was the people I've just mentioned who suffered. I'd like to apologize to them now (Feb 2000), and tell them that whenever I see a Holiday Inn sign I feel WARM... there must be a solid piece of American travelling salesman in me. I suppose that's what we were, travelling salesmen.

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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

The Who were reportedly banned for life from Holiday Inns worldwide, but the ban was lifted in 1999 and the ceremony broadcast in a VH-1 documentary about the event.

According to authoritative website The Hypertext Who, "There was no car driven into a swimming pool EVER and The Who were not banned from Holiday Inns. In fact, they stayed at Holiday Inns throughout their 1968 tour."

The Holiday Inn was taken over by Days Inn,

Keith Moon, after countless further misadventures, died on ????

John Entwistle died ....

Despite his plainly stated wish in My Generation, Pete Townshend got old. Roger Daltrey took up fish farming and did some acting. The Who, as an entity, is still out there, making music and performing live.