Keith Moon death location (23^rd August 1946 to 7^th September 1978)

I live near Manchester and take regular trips down to London by coach. We stay in a hotel in Docklands but every day the coach runs everyone into central London. It drops us off on Park Lane. Before I go exploring London I always walk about 50m down to Curzon Street to the flat where Keith died. It’s become a sort of tradition. Musician Harry Nilsson owned the flat but he was in demand in American and being away he loaned it to out to friends. It was in the bedroom of flat 12 on the fourth floor that two famous singers died – in the same room and probably in the same bed…

Keith died of an overdose in the bedroom on Thursday 7^th September 1978. He and his girlfriend Swedish Annette Walter-Lax (he liked the Nordics) had attended a party in Covent Garden hosted by Paul McCartney. Restless Keith was a little bored and they left early. They returned to the flat where, at some point, Keith swallowed some clomethiazole tablets (a sedative to help with booze withdrawal.) His doctor had given him a box containing 100 pills and advised him to take one pill when he felt a craving for booze (his favourite tipple being Corvasier brandy) - and definitely no more than three pills when the craving was strong. Normally about six pills cause death. Over the night and early hours Keith swallowed 32. Hours later when Annette entered the bedroom it was unusually quiet and she knew instinctively he was dead before finding his lifeless body, face down. He was cremated on 13th September 1978 at Golders Green Crematorium in London and his ashes were scattered in its Gardens of Remembrance.

I can recommend two terrific books about Keith Moon: “Dear Boy” by Tony Fletcher and “Moon The Loon” by Dougal Butler (his personal assistant.) The second book is more chatty and tells of the almost daily rigours of keeping Keith out of trouble’s grasp. I had to bid £15 for it on ebay as it’s a bit of a cult book now. I photocopied it and sold it back on ebay for £12 making a £3 loss.

An interesting article relating to the cursed flat is here...

http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2008/10/mayfair-and-the-deaths-of-harry-nilsson-mama-cass-and-keith-moon/