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 Moon
Keith
died of an overdose in the bedroom on Thursday 7th 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.
Cass Elliot (of the The Mamas and Papas)
Strangely,
four years before Keith’s death the bedroom bore witness to the premature death
of Cass Elliot. She had performed two
weeks of sold-out concerts at the London Palladium. In that flat she retired to
bed and died of a heart attack aged 32. She was overweight and unhealthy but
32….you’re just getting into second gear aren’t you? Rumours floated that she
had choked to death on a ham sandwich but the autopsy showed no traces of food (or
drugs) in her system. She was flown home and buried in Los Angeles.
Oddly
some of Keith Moon’s clothes were stored in one of the wardrobes when Cass was
staying at the flat. His assistant Dougal Butler called at the flat to retrieve
some of Keith’s belongings. He had to enter the bedroom to get to wardrobe. He glimpsed
Cass who he assumed was sleeping but she was very probably dead.
An
interesting article relating to the cursed flat is here...
The front of the
building…
Around the side
of the building…
And the back…
Going to the
party…
A typical
night...