To celebrate 100 years of the Phantom, Rolls-Royce is recreating a legend. Whether the legend is true or not doesn’t matter. It’s more fun to believe it than to seek out what really happened. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. So:
“Legend has it that while celebrating his 21st birthday, Keith Moon—the gifted but self-destructive drummer of The Who—plunged his Rolls-Royce into the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan,” said the world’s most elegant carmaker.
Moon himself told Rolling Stone magazine that the car was actually a Lincoln Continental belonging to another hotel guest, and that he had simply released the handbrake and rolled it into the pool. This is, again, according to research by Rolls itself. Other guests insist no car ended up in the pool at all.
Whatever, it made for a good publicity stunt, and as good a way as any to commemorate 100 years of the Phantom and of Phantoms owned by rock legends.
The Stunt
So Rolls lifted the body shell of a retired Phantom Extended, one destined for recycling anyway, into the giant swimming pool at Tinside Lido in Plymouth, England, a celebrated Art Deco landmark overlooking the English Channel. The location also featured as the backdrop of a Beatles photograph taken in September 1967 during the filming of Magical Mystery Tour. So it has rock ‘n’ roll provenance.
The commemorative stunt was pulled on what would have been Moon’s 79th birthday, a date he, sadly, never saw as he passed away in 1978 at age 32 from complications of alcoholism.
According to Tony Fletcher’s biography of Moon, Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon, it was almost certainly a Lincoln Continental that went into the pool, though no one seems to be too sure of anything. But there’s little doubt Moon was crazy enough to do it.
Food Fight!
In Fletcher’s book, according to (publicist Nancy) Lewis, Moon was drunk by the time the band went onstage that night at Atwood Stadium (at Kettering University in Flint).
“Returning to the hotel, Moon started a food fight, and soon cake began flying through the air.
The drummer knocked out part of his front tooth; at the hospital, doctors could not give him an anaesthetic (due to his inebriation) before removing the remainder of the tooth. Back at the hotel, a melee erupted; fire extinguishers were set off, guests (and objects) thrown into the swimming pool and a piano reportedly destroyed. The chaos ended only when police arrived with guns drawn.”
None of the above details were in the Rolls release, btw.
Rolls Among the Stars
Instead, Rolls went on to rightly and accurately associate its luxurious Phantom with other famous musicians, from Lennon to Liberace.
“Long before icons like John Lennon, Elvis Presley, and Pharrell Williams wrote themselves into Phantom’s story, artists including Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Count Basie, Ravi Shankar, Edith Piaf, and Sam Cooke all traveled by Rolls-Royce, recognizing the brand as the definitive symbol of success and artistry,” Rolls said. “Personalities for whom the term ‘music mogul’ was coined, including Brian Epstein, Berry Gordy, and Ahmet Ertegun, were also among the marque’s most notable owners. Across genres, geographies, and generations, Rolls-Royce remains the ultimate reward for creative brilliance and a canvas for personal expression.”
If not for buoyancy.
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