Photo: Scott Halpin | By Mark Blake, LouderSound | In November 1973, 19-year-old Who fan Scott Halpin travelled to see the band play at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. He ended up on stage
For some fans, it’s the stuff of dreams, for others the stuff of nightmares: finding yourself on stage in front of 14,000 people playing with the biggest rock band in the world. But that’s what happened to 19-year-old Scott Halpin on November 20, 1973; the night he played drums with The Who.
Halpin and his friend, Mike Danese, traveled from their hometown of Monterey, California, for the Who’s show at the San Francisco Cow Palace. It was the first night of the band’s US tour, and completely sold out. They bought tickets from a tout and managed to get close to the stage. But as soon as the concert began Halpin noticed something was amiss: “You could tell Keith Moon was messed up.”
That evening Moon arrived at the venue with a young female fan on his arm. Keith was always jittery before a show, and when she offered him something to calm his nerves, he accepted.
Precisely what Moon took or even how it got into his system is still the subject of speculation. Some say it was all an accident, and he and his friend had their drinks spiked. The most popular story, however, is that Moon necked a handful of ‘elephant tranquillizers’ washed down with a glass of brandy. Either way, whatever the pair took certainly contained PCP, commonly known as ‘angel dust’, a chemical used to tranquillize animals.
Although Moon’s playing was noticeably erratic, nobody realized how powerful the drug was until his friend had a seizure and had to be rushed to hospital. Twenty minutes later The Who were coming towards the end of their set and Moon was clearly struggling.
A few minutes into Won’t Get Fooled Again he ground to a halt, like a clockwork toy whose battery had just run out.
“And then he fell backwards, and had to be dragged offstage,” said eyewitness, San Francisco Chronicle correspondent Joel Selvin.
“We’re just gonna revive our drummer by punching him in the stomach,” Pete Townshend told the audience. “He’s out cold. I think he’s gone and eaten something he shouldn’t have eaten. It’s your foreign food…”
Backstage, Moon’s roadies revived him and called another doctor. Keith insisted on going back on stage, where he tried to wrestle Townshend, before being dragged off by Daltrey. After climbing behind his kit, Moon was injected with a shot of cortisone in the ankle. But partway through Magic Bus he passed out again, and was carried offstage for good.
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“My friend was pushing me forward and saying, ‘Come on man, you can go up there and play, you can play,’” said Halpin. “He’s really the one that got me into it.”
In some interviews Halpin claimed the last thing he remembered was swallowing a shot of brandy and being introduced to the crowd by Roger Daltrey. That, and the size of Keith Moon’s kit: “It was ridiculous. The tom-toms were as big as my bass drum.”
After that, it was all a bit of a blur. However, video evidence shows Scott acquitted himself well on a jam through Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning and Spoonful before struggling a little on The Who’s own song, Naked Eye. Some 30 minutes later, Halpin walked away from the kit an even bigger Keith Moon fan than before: “I only played three numbers, and I was dead.”
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Scott Halpin went on to get married, manage a rock club, play in several groups and become composer-in-residence at the Headlands Centre For The Arts in Sausalito, California. He rarely played drums, preferring the guitar. Sadly, he died of a brain tumor in 2008, aged just 54.
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Read the full story here – wish I could have just printed it for you ’cause it’s ironic:
https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-who-keith-moon-scott-halpin
Photo: Scott Halpin (d) | Rock the Hub’s Facebook page
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