Showing posts with label Excess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Excess. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Who - 10 Worst Hotel Wreckings


Found in a copy of Q Magazine from 2004. It was a special issue devoted to British rock band The Who ('The Inside Story') and the piece was titled "Remember the Gaff Where the Doors we Smashed"- a line from their song Bellboy. The article was mentioned on the cover as 10 Worst Hotel Wreckings. At Jot we are fond of lists, even lists of debauchery and excess - so here goes in slightly  abbreviated form:

1 New York
4 April 1968
The Who's first headlong tour of the US found them ejected from the Gorham Hotel after Moon rained cherry bombs (highly explosive red firecrackers) down on New York City cops from a ninth-floor window. He used another to blow up his toilet, knocking out the plumbing on the whole floor in the process.

2 New York
5 April 1968
The Who had barely unpacked their cases at the Waldorf Astoria before they were given their marching orders for failing to provide a cash surety. Moon, unable to retrieve his luggage because the door was locked, blew it open with another cherry bomb.

3 Saskatoon
11 July 1968
According to a myth-making interview Keith Moon conducted with Rolling Stone in 1972, it was at a hotel in Saskatoon that the bored drummer chopped all of his hotel furniture into kindling.

3 Toronto
14 October 1969
Roger Daltrey rarely instigated pranks, but this time he set roadie Bob Pridden's shoes alight after he'd left them outside his room to be cleaned. The fire brigade were called, The Who ejected and Keith Moon blamed by all concerned. 

5 New York
March 1971
Moon was partying at the Navarro Hotel with some of The Grateful Dead and wanted to play them some music but his tape recorder was in a roadie's room next door. When Moon couldn't rouse the roadie, he carved a hole through the adjoining wall