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Wed 24 September 2025 21:45, UK
Without the endlessly anarchic stylings of Keith Moon, it’s very likely that the world might never have heard the rock and roll revolution of The Who; his wild antics, both offstage and on, captured the youthful spirit of the band during their earlier years, becoming as essential to their existence as a parka is to a mod.
Travelling back to the earliest days of The Who, long before the 1960s earned its ‘swinging moniker’, the band weren’t quite the leading rock rebels that they later became – they hadn’t even landed upon The Who name yet. Instead, they were travelling around the dingy R&B nightclubs of London, shilling out Cliff Richard covers as The Detours, but even then, it was clear to all witnesses that their core appeal lay with the unrelenting energy, and occasional violence, of their live performances. Inevitably, then, they were in need of a suitably unpredictable drummer to match that energy.
Then, in 1964, as mods and rockers duked it out on the beaches of Brighton, The Who finally found their white fucking whale in the form of Keith Moon. His uncontainable spirit and amphetamine-fueled playing style defined the explosive sounds of The Who, and he was arguably the key catalyst for the band’s quick ascent to the top of London’s rock scene. At the same time, though, the momentous discovery of Moon came at the cost of the band’s original drummer, Doug Sandom.
A bricklayer by trade, the young Sandom first joined the ranks of The Who back in 1962, when they were still touring under the slightly less-catchy name The Detours, after an unexpected encounter with Roger Daltrey. “I thought I was going to an audition, but it wasn’t happening, so during a brief chat with Roger, I told him I’d had a wasted journey. ‘It’s not wasted, mate,’ he said. ‘Our drummer’s going on holiday so come and sit in with my band The Detours,’” Sandom told the Daily Express in 2014.
From that chance meeting, Sandom suddenly found himself at the epicentre of the swinging sixties, and carving out the era-defining mod rock sounds of The Who in the process. Ultimately, though, his time rolling with the up-and-coming stars of Britain’s rock scene was fairly short-lived. For starters, the drummer’s wife was understandable not too keen on her husband being out until all hours of the morning, living an archetypal life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But the problems didn’t end there.
Sandom would often butt heads with Pete Townshend, who, as the main songwriter, tended to have a greater degree of irreplaceability than the drummer. Those rising tensions came to a boil at precisely the wrong time, as The Who landed an audition for Fontana Records.
That high-pressure environment marked the breaking point for Townshend’s patience with Sandom. “He had a terrible go at me, snarling, ‘What’s wrong with you? If you can’t get it right, then you’re out.’ I just got up from my stool and said, ‘That’s it, I quit,’” the drummer recalled. As with many heat-of-the-moment decisions, walking out on The Who was one that Sandom soon came to deeply regret.
“It was the biggest mistake of my life,” he shared. “It really came home to me when I watched them on TV giving that fantastic performance at the Olympic Games and knew it could have been me up there too.” Not wanting to detract from Sandom’s drumming abilities, though, there is no guarantee that The Who would actually have gotten that far with the original drummer bashing out the rhythm. After all, Moon formed a huge aspect of the band’s appeal, particularly when it came to their live performances and their reputation among the wildest rock outfits of the period.
Admittedly, though, if you had thrown away a chance – however slight – to become a core part of one of the greatest rock and roll bands to ever grace the airwaves, it would undoubtedly stick in your mind for decades, too.
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