Keith Moon

Keith Moon was an English drummer whose 14-year career as the drummer of English rock band The Who across 1964–1978 produced one of the foundational bodies of work in 20th-century international rock-drumming — particularly his 1969 rock opera Tommy drumming and his 1971 album Who's Next drumming. He was born Keith John Moon on August 23, 1946, in Wembley, Middlesex, England, into a working-class English family. His father Alfred Charles Moon was a Wembley-area motor-mechanic, and his mother Kathleen Winifred Hopley was a homemaker.

His 1964 audition for The Who at the Oldfield Hotel in Greenford, Middlesex — at age 17, replacing the Who's previous drummer Doug Sandom — launched his 1964–1978 14-year tenure as the drummer of The Who. His drumming style — characterized by his explosive, near-continuous tom-tom-rolls drum-fill technique, his refusal to play conventional drum parts, and his improvisational approach — shaped 20th-century international rock-drumming practice.

His 1965 first commercial Who single "I Can't Explain" launched his 1960s English rock-drumming public profile. His subsequent late-1960s and early-1970s Who albums — particularly the 1969 rock opera Tommy, the 1971 album Who's Next (which produced "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Behind Blue Eyes"), and the 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia — produced his 1960s and 1970s English rock-drumming public profile.

His drug-abuse-and-alcoholism biographical narrative — across his ongoing late-1960s and 1970s amphetamine, barbiturate, alcohol, and tranquilizer abuse — shaped his later biographical narrative. His off-stage destructive behavior (across multiple American hotel-room destruction incidents — particularly the 1967 Holiday Inn destruction in Flint, Michigan, in which Moon destroyed his Holiday Inn suite, and the 1976 Howard Johnson's destruction in Philadelphia) shaped his late-career biographical narrative. He died on September 7, 1978, at age 32, in his London Mayfair apartment, of an accidental overdose of clomethiazole (a sedative he had been prescribed to reduce his alcohol-withdrawal symptoms following his 1978 alcohol rehabilitation). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

His name Keith derives from the Old Scottish-Gaelic place-name meaning "forest" or "battle place." Keith has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.