Keith Moon - Death

Death

On 6 September 1978, the night of his death, Moon and girlfriend Annette Walter-Lax were guests of Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney at a preview of the film The Buddy Holly Story. After dining with the McCartneys at Peppermint Park in Covent Garden, Moon and Walter-Lax returned to their flat. The flat actually belonged to singer Harry Nilsson, who was loaning it to Moon. The flat, No.12 at 9 Curzon Place (now called Curzon Square), Shepherd Market, Mayfair, was the same property where singer Cass Elliot died four years earlier.

Moon watched a film, The Abominable Doctor Phibes and requested Walter-Lax cook him a breakfast of steak and eggs. When she objected, Moon replied "If you don't like it, you can fuck off!" These turned out to be his last words. Moon then took 32 tablets of clomethiazole (Heminevrin).

Clomethiazole is a sedative which was prescribed to Moon to alleviate his alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Moon desperately wanted to detox from alcohol; however, due to his fear of a psychiatric hospital, he wanted to do it at home. However, clomethiazole is specifically discouraged for unsupervised home detox because of its addictiveness, its tendency to rapidly induce drug tolerance, and its dangerously high risk of death when mixed with alcohol. The pills were also prescribed by a new doctor, Dr. Geoffrey Dymond, who was unaware of Moon's recklessly impulsive nature and long history of prescription sedative abuse. Dymond gave Moon a full bottle of 100 pills, and instructed him to take one pill whenever he felt a craving for alcohol (but not more than three pills per day). The police determined there were 32 pills in Moon's system, with the digestion of six being sufficient to cause his death, and the other 26 of which were still undissolved when he died.

Moon died shortly after the release of Who Are You. On the album cover, he is seated on a chair back-to-front to hide the weight gained over three years (as discussed in Tony Fletcher's book Dear Boy); the words "NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY" appear on the back of the chair.

Keith Moon was cremated on 13 September 1978, at Golders Green Crematorium in London and his ashes scattered in its Gardens of Remembrance.