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Thomas Scot Halpin has the
greatest rock concert story of them all. He went to see the Who
and ended up onstage as the band's drummer.
It was Nov. 20, 1973, at the Cow Palace, opening night of the
"Quadrophenia" tour. That notorious show was the last Bay
Area performance of the rock opera until this weekend, when the
band returns to perform it in San Jose.
Nobody caught his name, but everybody remembers the skinny kid
plucked from the audience to replace the legendary Keith Moon --
the one-man lunatic fringe who went down that night like concrete,
passed out at his drum kit.
Halpin, then 19, in low-slung bell-bottoms, tight T-shirt and
mod haircut, coolly took the seat of his idol, picked up the sticks
and laid down the beat for three songs. Then he took a bow, arms
around Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, as if he had belonged
there all along.
"For some reason it keeps coming up," says Halpin, who had
scalped a ticket to the sold-out show."It's like one of
the few times you could play royalty." In the documentary "The
Who: Thirty Yearsof Maximum R&B," singer Daltrey recalled
that when Moon collapsed for the second time that night, Townshend
called out for a substitute. A sea of hands shot up and a line
of drummers formed at the stage entrance for auditions.
This doesn't square with the way Halpin remembers it.
Now 42 and a painter, Halpin splits his time between San Francisco
and Bloomington, Ind., where he was tracked down earlier this month
for one more go-round of every teenage garage drummer'sfantasy.
The Who was the most drum-driven band in rock, with Moon an unorthodox
showman who did flips and walked on his drums. He would pound the
air and contort his face, but he never missed abeat.
Though his playing was erratic that night, a bootleg recording
of the show indicates that Moon made it through 70 minutes and
all the Quadrophenia material, including "Bell Boy," his
drum and vocal showcase.
Then the band went into "Won't Get Fooled Again." Moon reared
back to hit his cymbal and went right off his stool.
'SUDDENLY THEY PULLED THE CORD'
"The guy was completely a locomotive, and then suddenly they
pulled the cord. I thought it was Keith Moon theatrics," recalls
Halpin, who was watching from the side seats with Mike Danese,
a hometown pal from Muscatine, Iowa, who now lives in Lafayette.
Two stagehands picked up the slumping drummer and carried him
offstage, feet up. This also was not beyond Moon's sense of drama,
but then the houselights went on.
Backstage it was determined that he had probably overdosed, possibly
on PCP, or angel dust. An injection of cortisone got him back onstage
after a 20-minute delay, but it wasn't long before he went down
again.
When Townshend called out, "Can anyone play the drums?"
Halpin and Danese were already at the edge of the stage.
"And my friend starts saying to the security guard, 'He can
play,' " Halpin says. In truth, he hadn't played in a year, but
that didn't slow the braggart Danese, who made such a commotion
that promoter Bill Graham appeared. "He just looked at me
and said, 'Can you do it?' " Halpin doesn't recall his answer,
but Danese assured Graham that he could.
"The story was that I stepped out from in front of the stage,
but that's not what happened," Halpin says. "Townshend and
Daltrey look around and they're as surprised as I am," he says,
"because Graham put me up there."
With a shot of brandy for his nerves, Halpin shook hands with
Townshend, then sat down at his first drum set since he left Iowa,
in front of 13,500 critics. "I get onto the stool. Was it
still warm? Who knows. I'm in complete shock," Halpin says. "Then
I got really focused, and Townshend said to me, 'I'm going to lead
you. I'm going to cue you.'
"I'm laying down the beat. They're doing all their 'Live
at Leeds' kind of stuff, and then I don't remember what happened.
I guess I played a couple more songs. It was such a weird experience."
The bootleg reveals that Halpin drummed through the traditional
"Smokestack Lightning" and "Naked Eye," from &"Odds
and Sods," closing with the anthem "My Generation." He
was onstage for about 15 minutes. "I played long enough with
them that no one booed and no one threw anything at the stage,"
he says.
PARTYING WITH DALTREY
Afterward he was invited backstage and managed to get Danese back
there as well. They were escorted into a party room, and Daltrey
gave him a tour jacket and promised him he'd be paid $1,000. Danese
recalls that "Daltrey was drinking Jack Daniel's straight
out of the bottle."
Halpin remembers mostly the buffet table. "We were about
the last ones to go," he says, "because we're eating all
this food and taking food with us."
To do so he put down his souvenir tour jacket and sticks, and
somebody snatched them. Then he drove his Volkswagen Beetle back
home to Monterey, woke up his girlfriend and told her the story.
He might have passed anonymously into lore, but pop critic John
Wasserman put out an all- points bulletin in a column titled "Mystery
Drummer Into the Breach," and the mystery drummer responded. Then
Townshend sent him a thank-you letter from Los Angeles, but it
did not contain the $1,000 Daltrey had promised. -- perhaps his
memory was clouded by that Jack Daniel. As a result of his fame,
Halpin got an audition (but no job) with Journey, and Rolling
Stone magazine named him "Pick-Up Player of the Year."
The Who returned in 1976 for a series of shows at Winterland,
and Halpin went down there to see about some unfinished business.
Again without a ticket, he waited four hours at the limo entrance
until he found a way into the show. Afterward, he found Graham,
who took him backstage to meet Moon.
The drummer was his old self, changing clothes in front of everyone,
blathering nonsense. "He said something, and I couldn't even
figure out what it was," Halpin says. Like many Who purists, Halpin
lost his heart for the band when a drug overdose finally killed
Moon in September 1978.
When the Who documentary aired on PBS a few years ago, Halpin
got his moment of screen time, though he wasn't mentioned by name.
Somewhere in the Bill Graham Presents archives, a video ofthe
whole show exists. Halpin would like to see that, to fill in the
gaps in his memory. He'd also like to see the paycheck Daltrey
promised him.
"That's $1,000 plus interest," he says. "Let's figure
it out."
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