The Day Keith Moon Drove His Car Into a Pool on His Birthday

Keith Moon did not ever need a reason to party, but he did turn his 21st birthday into a rager — one that involved one of his most infamous acts of rowdiness.

It was Aug. 23, 1967 and the Who had performed a show that evening in Flint, Michigan. Moon would later recall to Rolling Stone in 1972 that he’d started drinking around 10 a.m. that morning and had no recollection of performing the show. But he did remember that a drum company had sent over an enormous birthday cake to the Holiday Inn the band was staying at, where partying got underway around the pool.

“As the party degenerated into a slanging, I picked up the cake, all five tiers, and hurled it at the throng,” Moon recalled. “People’d started picking up the pieces and ‘urling it about. Everybody was covered in marzipan and icing sugar and fruitcake.”

READ MORE: When Keith Moon Got Wild as the Who Began Their 1975 U.S. Tour

In came the Who’s manager, and then the police, prompting Moon, dressed only in his underwear, to take off.

“I ran out, jumped into the first car I came to, which was a brand new Lincoln Continental,” he said. “It was parked on a slight hill and when I took the handbrake off, it started to roll and it smashed straight through this pool surround [fence] and the whole Lincoln Continental went into the ‘Oliday Inn swimming pool, with me in it. Ah-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!”

Keith Moon Somehow Remembers How Physics Works

Remarkably, Moon knew that the only way he’d be able to open the car door and get out safely was to wait until the external pressure was the same as the inside. He stayed calm the whole time.

“Today I can think of less outrageous ways of going than drowning in a Lincoln Continental in a ‘Oliday Inn swimming pool, but at that time I ‘ad no thoughts of death whatsoever,” he continued. “There was none of that all-me-life-passing-before-me-eyes-in-a-flash. I was busy planning.”

Different Sides of the Same Story

It’s worth noting that not everyone who was at the Holiday Inn that night remembers it the same way. Barry Whitwam, drummer for Herman’s Hermits, the Who’s opening act on that U.S. tour, remembered the cake throwing, but not the car in the pool.

“The whole tour gathered in the dining room to view all the cakes,” Whitwam would later recall (via Classic Rock). “Everybody was ready for a party. Keith Moon put his plate down on the table and stuck his finger into the cream on top of one of the cakes and casually flicked it at [Hermits bassist] Karl Green who was standing next to him. The cream hit Karl in the face and everybody laughed – apart from Karl, who stuck his finger into the nearest cake and flicked some back into Keith’s face. Within seconds everybody in the room was throwing cake at each other. It only took five minutes to change the room into what looked like the inside of a cake.”

But, Whitwam insisted, “there was no car in the pool, only all the pool tables and chairs.”

Moon’s own bandmate, Pete Townshend, has also said the story is a conflation of other incidents involving cars in places they shouldn’t have been. Singer Roger Daltrey, however, did remember seeing a car in a pool that night.

Regardless, this is Moon’s story. And in his telling, once he was out of the car and on dry land, he noticed the sheriff waiting for him with a gun. Moon made another break for it, slipped on a piece of marzipan and knocked out a tooth. The rest of the night was spent in a dentist’s chair with the sheriff next to him, where a new false tooth was put in without anesthesia on account of Moon’s inebriated state. The following day saw the drummer spending a few hours in jail.

“The boys [Moon’s bandmates] ‘ad chartered me a plane because they ‘ad to leave on an earlier flight,” Moon explained, adding that he was hit with a $24,000 bill for all the damage done at the hotel, including the car at the bottom of the pool. “The sheriff took me out in the law car and he puts me on the plane and says [American accent], “Son, don’t ever dock in Flint, Michigan, again.” I said, ‘Dear boy, I wouldn’t dream of it.’ And I was lisping around the new tooth, Ah-Haha Hahaha!”