Keith Moon was the drummer for The Who. The Who weren’t quite as big as it got, but they were almost as big as it gets, and for a band of such stature they demanded a drummer with considerable clout. Again, Moon wasn’t quite as big as it got but he was still up there with the other big boys and he gets extra credits because his brief but eventful spell in this life, if not the next, was pretty much as famous for what he did away from the drum kit as what manner of wonders he performed behind it. It would be fair to say that Keith Moon lived life to the full. It was a life crammed with triumph and tragedy, rampant tomfoolery and abundant sadness. Poor, silly Keith was little more than a boy in a man’s body and a life of serious endeavour was never the one for him. Instead he burned himself through several lives in one go, apparently unbothered and undaunted by the glaring reality that it was never, ever going to last forever; so why not jolly well enjoy it for as long as it does last? When the knock at the door finally came the reaper, with impeccable comic timing, insisted that Moon should die overdosing on medication intended to lure him (it was never going to work anyway) away from the muscular handshake of alcoholism. He was 32 at the time (and shall forever be) and his last meal was a steak. He looked much, much older than his years, but I suppose it was the 1970s.
These days Moon is still well remembered, as a misguided lunatic and formidable musician, and despite being a huge pain in the arse for seemingly the entirety of his life. And with a bit of luck he will still be remembered in hushed tones a hundred years from now, which is more, I both suspect and am afraid to say, than can probably be said about Liam Payne. If it hadn’t been for children being murdered with giddy abandon across the Holy Land, Liam Payne would have been the heavyweight champion headline of the week. At first a few Argentinian idiots, all of whom were ten years younger when Liam Payne was last this famous, gathered outside his hotel to light candles and sing empty, bubblegum syrup songs and remember this sweet lad who wouldn’t say boo to a goose and had clearly also never got to grips with how balconies work. But as the hours and days moved on the story was re-painted with darker hues; tumultuous brushstrokes of ranting and raving, snorting and smashing, of anger, of despair and of acts more familiar with finality. A terminal occasion. The end of the last sentence sealed with as thick and black a full stop as you could imagine. Liam was no more and somewhere in Buenos Aires there is a health and safety officer with a few questions to answer.
I doubt this was what Liam Payne had in mind for his last moments – going apeshit with a minibar, thousands of miles from home. Personally, he made not the slightest mark on my life, and yet here I am writing about him. I can do Girls Aloud and B*witched but I can’t do One Direction. I can definitely do Harry Styles but I can’t do all the others. On closer inspection it appears that those very same others had all enjoyed quite a bit more success than Liam had managed to rustle up in his kitchen, and that must have been hard to swallow; to be the one that was left behind in this lonely, malicious world. Read anything about One Direction and you will be told that they went on hiatus in 2016, but we all know that hiatus is just another word for breaking up and all fucking off in different (ironically enough) directions. Their souls had been sucked dry by the industry fat cats (Sharon Osbourne, who now resembles something one might have surgically removed from the underside of a neglected scrotum, or that chap tied to the bed in SE7EN, only wearing an Elvis wig, should be ashamed to say the music industry let Payne down – she is part of that industry and she is as culpable as all the rest) and then they were freed up to cover themselves in stupid tattoos and continue sending twelve year old girls to sleep with a unicorn for company. Earlier this year Liam’s second solo album was quietly shelved, which, for a musician, is never what you might call a good sign. Still, at least he doesn’t have to worry about all that shit now. There is a relief in death which must be very comforting; so dead that you don’t have to worry what people think of you anymore. So dead that you don’t even have to worry about dying. Liam Payne was 31 when he died, and he looked young enough to be Keith Moon’s son.
He’ll slide in and out of the news for a few more days but in the end Liam Payne will end up just another name on a list in moody monochrome at the end of December, when we are reminded of all the souls we lost at sea this year. They’ve been coming thick and fast recently: Dame Maggie Smith, Kris Kristofferson, James Earl Jones, Alain Delon, Whitney Houston’s mum and, of course, Alex Salmond. Each had their story, but I like Salmond’s the most. Perhaps it was because he was such a stubborn arsehole; an arsehole who couldn’t wait another minute to secure his dream of Scottish independence, despite the whole idea absolutely honking of disaster, like a car full of Arbroath smokies being driven through a particularly swollen sewer. Perhaps it was because his reputation had been undermined but he had somehow pulled himself back into shape. Or perhaps because I found myself liking him slightly, though purely because he had the good taste to fall out with Nicola Sturgeon and never fall back in again. But I think it’s because he died a worthy death, trying to help – hit by a huge heart attack, the applause for some speech he’d just made still ringing in his ears, while trying to open a bottle of ketchup for someone. Even better, he did all this at the ripe old age of a mutually beneficial sex act; in doing so joining a proper little gang of rascals – Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Elizabeth I, Louis Armstrong, Genghis Khan, Gregg Allman, Evel Knieval, Aldous Huxley, William Blake, Emmeline Pankhurst, Buddy Rich, Rachmaninoff and Richard Wagner. The 69 club, now that’s some competition.
They say 69 is no age at all but that’s rubbish. 69 is 69, no matter which way up you put it and it’s a shame Liam Payne couldn’t hold out for another 38 years just to get the badge and certificate. When you die at 31, 69 must seem like forever. I’m not particularly looking forward to death but I can see some of the advantages. It is, after all, quite an effort to keep on sifting through all the crap we have on our plates just to find the last bit of dumpling is still there, but smaller than we’d hoped for. We’re told that life has never been so good, so how does it not manage to come across that way? How can a rich, young, popular, good looking man find so little to be happy or proud of that the best thing he can think of to do is get smashed and play a game of gravity with the marble floor of a hotel courtyard? If we’re all so happy why is everyone getting diagnosed for ADHD, anxiety and depression or threatening to hold their breath until they get free gender reassignment on the NHS? Is it because we all know it’s a scam and that we’ll get to 69 and start thinking about care homes and rubber pants? If I knew I was going to spend the last twenty years of my life watching David Dickinson at high volume and forgetting the last thing I said I’d take 69 in a shot. Every. Single. Day. The truth is we are as healthy as we’ve ever been and yet we’re also fat and fucked and rotten to the core and the rate of attrition still feels no better than the first day at Verdun. What a pickle we’ve got ourselves in, just like poor old (well, not that old) Liam Payne. Burn out or fade away – I’d offer you the choice but it just isn’t as simple as that anymore. Is it time for a drink yet?
G B Burton. 19.10.2024
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 