Pete Townshend Says He 'Tried Everything' To Keep Keith Moon Alive
By Katrina Nattress
May 7, 2022
The Who's Pete Townshend reflected on Keith Moon's death, claiming he "tried everything" to keep the drummer, who died in 1978 of an Heminevrin overdose, alive.
“I tried everything,” Townshend told People of his desperate attempts to help his friend. “I tried giving him money, I tried starving him of money. I tried sending him into rehab. I tried sending him to a guru weirdo, voodoo doctors.”
“I was obsessed with trying to keep Keith alive," he added. "It was quite clear that he was on a downward slide, and there was very little I could do. He was a very complicated character.”
A biopic about Moon is scheduled to begin shooting this month, and Townshend is not excited about the film.
"When you talk about it as a Keith Moon biopic, it's going to be the first semi-fictionalized, dramatized Who story," the guitarist said in an interview earlier this year. "It will be a Who biopic. Somebody is going to have to play Pete Townshend. I've read some very, very varied opinions about what my relationship was like with Keith. I view it one way, and other people view it another way. I certainly was never at war with Keith but neither was I his puppy."