Dear Boy: The life of Keith Moon Read Online Free

enough – and plenty of it, what with his restless nature and comic behaviour. He also exhibited an immediate affinity to music. “From the age of three, he would sit for hours beside an old portable gramophone player,” his mother would recall, “and play old 78 records of stars like Nat King Cole and Scots bandleader Jimmy Shand.” In June of 1949, by which point Alf was working as a mechanic for a dry cleaner’s, the Moons had a second child, Linda Margaret, and a year or so later, the family edged itself another mile up the Harrow Road into the suburb of Wembley, to a new house built during the area’s rapid development just months before the outbreak of World War II and subsequently acquired by the local council, at 134 Chaplin Road. On first inspection, there was little difference between their former street and their new one: both were quiet, nondescript and of similar length, running just south and parallel to the Harrow Road. But the Moons’ new three-bedroom house had the distinct improvement of being semi-detached, with a far larger front garden. The family-run shops on Ealing Road were but a short walk east. 2 And the local primary school, Barham, was but a quick jaunt through the Farm Avenue council estate almost directly across the road. It was there that Keith John Moon first went to school in September 1951.
    Built immediately after the war, Barham was a prestigious addition to the Wembley area, a promising beginning for the new post-war generation. And as with most primary school experiences, the memories are of contented innocence. Keith’s sister Linda, who followed there three years later, remembers fondly the headmaster at Barham, a Mr Hall, and recalls the school in general as a haven of delight. “The teachers all loved Keith,” she says, with the uncomplicated nature that ran through all (but one of) the family, “because he was a lovable kid.” Keith’s mother Kit always tells a particularly charming story of a school dancing display when Keith was seven, where upon his turn he danced not just round his small, selected group but round the whole playground and the back of the school before returning to his position; significantly, she recalls how “He just loved all the attention.” She remembers, too, how she attended Barham’s open days “expecting the worst” – Keith was so wired at home that she knew he would take his rampant energy to school with him – but that the teachers “would always say he never gave them any trouble”.
    Keith Cleverdon, a friend of Moon’s from Linthorpe Avenue, around the corner from Chaplin Road, recalls however that even at primary school, “He was always getting in trouble, laughing and joking and farting. Even then he couldn’t give a shit. He just had that attitude – ‘I go to school and if I don’t learn anything, who gives a toss anyway?’”
    Although those who attended Barham with him don’t remember marking Keith for future fame and fortune, a class photo from the era shows him already preparing for stardom. He is seated in the centre of the front row (but of course!), in checked shirt and v-neck jumper, his hair falling in a fringe; while those around him all smile gracefully (one can almost hear the photographer imploring the children to “say cheese!”), Keith is seen mugging furiously for the camera, his head cocked sideways, his eyes winking, his mouth wide open in a furious pirate’s grin. The actor Robert Newton was already famous with English children Keith’s age from his Fifties screen performance as Long John Silver in
Treasure Island
, which had been so successful as to warrant a movie sequel and two television series. Judging from the school photo, Keith’s impersonations of him began early. 3
    Back at Chaplin Road, Alf took to calling his son ‘Nobby’, and tried with limited success to instil in him a love of that most English of sports, cricket. While Mr Moon found new employment as a maintenance mechanic