Keith Moon: A Personal Portrait - Peter Dougal Butler

Keith Moon: A Personal Portrait - Peter Dougal Butler
Full Moon Books

2001

This is a wonderful read and well worth picking up one of the low cost copies (sub £20 - June 2012) currently appearing on ebay.  The photos are the joy in this book.  There are several hundred many of which are little more than snap shots but it is interesting to see a mega star off duty.

Jon Hotten Classic Rock 5 star
(reviewed jointly with Anyway Anyhow Anywhere)

Each reassuringly expensive (and in the case of Peter Dougal Butler’s Keith Moon memoir very reassuringly), these two picture led cofee table extravaganzas make handsome additions to The Who bookshelf.

Anyone interested in purchasing Keith Moon will already know that Dougal played Man Friday to the Loon’s Robinson Crusoe throughout most of the drummers adult life. Here then is a heartfelt insider view containing priceless ephemera and unseen snaps along with Dougal’s story. Produced in a limited edition of 2,000 it is a genuine collectors piece. There are some lovely touches too; Moon’s handwritten off-licence bills hints at his extravagence.
Dougal has written about Moon before in an out of print book titled Full Moon and the film rights have been acquired by Robert De Niro’s production company Tribeca.

Andy Neill, Record Collector.

Keith Moon ,eh? 23 years gone - where is he now? No doubt propping up that great celestrial Speakeasy with Viv Stanshall, Peter Cook and Oliver Reed for company. Meanwhile back on earth the new bread of loaded lad continues to aspire to his level of the absurd and the outrageous.

If the stories need telling again who better to do it than Peter Dougal Butler who was keith’s personal assistant through much of the mayhem and the madness with one booze birds - oh almost forgot rock n roll paperback “Moon the Loon” already to his name.

Starting with his first exposure to Moonie as a Middlesex mod, Butler’s war stories are recounted here with obvious affection for his old employer. While the first person writing falls defiantly on the wrong side of PC (crumpet - here, giving her one - there) the tales told are frequently engaging and inevitably hilarious.

Butler is not afraid to expose Moon’s darker side as it was frequently unleashed on friends, with his treatment of loved ones being at times downright reprehensible. Ultimately, this artfully desigened book functions metaphorically as a “friend of the stars” slide show. Sit down, get the port out, swap the stories. “That’s Billy Fury which reminds me of the time”.Ringo Nilsson Lennon, McCartney and the Faces are all among those making pictorial cameos.

For The Who diehard, there’s over 350 colour and black and white shots including unseen 60s pictures of the band on stage and on tour in America rehearsing for the Lifehouse shows at the Young Vic, the Quadrophenia test session at Stargroves, and life on the road in hotel rooms and on board various airplanes.

The illuminating Life with the Moon’s segment at Tara House is vividly depicted through various snaps and the pages virtually buckle beneath the weight of Keith’s bar bills. The many moods of Moon are on display, one minute in room wrecking mode, the next orderly queuing for ice cream at Disneyland.

Just stopping short of $200, A Personal Portrait is admittedly a rather costly family album. But with a wealth of unsean pictures and first hand yarns, its an endearing tribute to one of the truly original characters ever to shuffled off rock’s mortal coil. And Appropriately - its large enough to jettison through a hotel window.

Kerry Potter, Q, 5 star review.

Peter Dougal Butler was PA cum chauffeur cum care assistant to Who drummer Keith Moon from 1966 to 1978. Unlike his erstwhile employer, Butler lived to tell the astonishing tale in fact this is the second time he has done so. In 1981’s light hearted Moon The Loon long out of print although the film rights have been bought by Robert De Niro’s production company - Butler catalogues the surreal silliness, the booze, the parties, the birds, the pranks. Now nearly 25 years on from Moon’s death, Butler looks back with older wiser more critical eyes on his time as sidekick to one of rock’s most comical and at times most obnoxious characters.

Butler is no polished wordsmith and those after a comprehensive biography would be better off with Tony Fletchers Dear Boy. It’s the photos however that make this book providing far more insight into the man behind the goonery than all those hoary anecdotes about cars in swimming pool. There are hundreds of shots mostly taken with Butler’s cheap camera. Some blurry, some faded, the odd one with a finger straying into the frame. Thers Moon in the morning clad in Y fronts and glittery socks (stolen from who else - Gary Glitter). A fuzzy snap of Lennon, McCartney and Moon in 74 - apparently the last ever photo of the two Beatles together, a shot that sees Moon in the background for once, peering presciently over the shoulder of his future Who replacement and then Faces member Kenney Jones. The opening two photos are particularly striking Moon in 66 - bright eyed and enthusiastic on an early tour of America and then again in 77 resident in his California beach house, bedraggled, bloated and engrossed in spying on neighbour Ali McGraw. The sheaves of legal letters, stroppy correspondence from Moons bank and astronomical alcohol bills also included make for similarly fascinating browsing.

At $198 this is - like Moon’s bar tabs - a hugely expensive proposition, but afficianados of the patent British exploding drummer will find it well worthy of the outlay.