Daltrey: We tried everything to save Moonie but he’d even take monkey tranquillisers...

ROCK wildman Keith Moon swallowed drugs by the “handful” and once took a monkey tranquilliser that knocked him out cold for 24 hours, Roger Daltrey has revealed.

Drummer Moon had an “addictive personality” that made his death at the age of 32 “inevitable”, despite the efforts of his bandmates in The Who to save him, said Daltrey.

He said: “In my own opinion, I think Keith was slightly autistic and he obviously had an addictive personality.

“I’ve never known anyone take the amount of booze and drugs Moonie did. People take one ark bomber and they would be high as a kite, he would take a handful and be high for days.

“The memorable one was when he took a monkey tranquilliser.”

Moon had “literally passed out” on stage as the band started their second number. Daltrey, 73, said: “He was out for 24 hours and, as this drug left him, the next day we had to push him around in a wheelchair.

UPSET

“It used to destroy him when he did it. He would be upset when he let us down and incredibly unhappy.”

But Daltrey never felt that an intervention or rehab was an option.

He told a US radio show: “We talked to him, tried everything. We used to get p***ed at him because we cared about him and saw the inevitability of what was going to happen.

“Ultimately, it is down to them – they have to want to do it.”

Moon died in 1978 after taking 32 clomethiazole tablets, one for every year of his life, at his London flat.

Daltrey, who kicked off the first of six shows in Las Vegas on Saturday, said: “Every facet of his personality was way up there – he was the most loving, caring person, but he could be hateful and spiteful. He was like fireworks.”

Daltrey felt similarly helpless with bassist John Entwistle, who died in 2002, aged 57, of a heart attack induced by cocaine. He said: “There was no way you could have changed him.”