Moon The Loon

Five minutes into “The Kids Are Alright,” an excellent film made by Who fans for Who fans — though the sound quality suffers from the producers' decision to speed up several songs —Keith Moon invents and defines modern rock drumming. During the two minutes of a live performance of “I Can’t Explain,” Moon plays behind the beat, in front of the beat and smashes, bashes and crashes his way through what, in lesser hands, would be a trifling love song worth no more than a single listen.

 Pete Townshend, with his windmilling power chords and brilliant writing, might have driven The Who. Roger Daltry, all thunder and fire, may have been its tour guide. John Entwhistle, with his mad runs up and down the fretboard of one of his many custom basses, was the anchor that kept The Who from flying off the road.

 But it was Moon who was the engine. Eschewing drum solos, which he thought were boring, Moon instead soloed throughout every song, following an internal metronome that no one else heard.

 Thirty years later, he still has not been equaled.

 Dubbed “Moon the Loon” for his exploits, which included destroying hotel rooms and driving cars into swimming pools, Moon delighted in tweaking society’s nose whenever possible. Far from a timekeeper who marked the backbeat, Moon played rhythmically and melodically simultaneously, frenetically freewheeling behind a Townshend solo, then adding color to a Daltry vocal with delicate — yes, delicate — cymbal work.

Moon once explained his drum philosophy (though philosophy was a word he would probably never use) this way: fearing that The Who’s sound would be thin without a rhythm guitarist, he felt that if he made enough of a racket, especially when Townshend was soloing, no one would notice the lack of a fourth instrument.

 And what a racket it was. In a long-ago issue of Downbeat, the premier magazine for jazz musicians, a number of leading jazz drummers of the day were asked about the state of jazz drumming. When the talk turned to rock, they agreed that all rock drummers fell short except one: Keith Moon. He, they all said, understood how to play the drums.