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Keith Moon.
Though he’s been dead for nearly 34 years, Keith Moon received an invitation from the Olympics committee to attend the Summer Games in London along with his band, The Who, lead singer Roger Daltrey confirmed.
“It is true, and it could only happen in Britain. I mean, we are so organized,” Daltrey said when he appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on May 3. “We got an email requesting, ‘Can Keith Moon attend the opening ceremony?’ And our manager sent an email back responding, ‘Well, actually, he currently resides at Golders Green Crematorium where he’s been for the last 35 years, but maybe if you’ve got a round table, some letters and some glasses, you might be able to get him there.”
“Have a séance and bring him back?” Kimmel laughed.
“Yes!” Daltrey joked.
In April, The Sunday Times first reported that the band’s manager, Bill Curbishley, had been contacted by an official from the Olympics committee inquiring as to whether the late rocker “would be available to play.”
The prolific drummer died in 1978 after accidentally overdosing on prescription medication he’d been taking to detoxify from heavy use of drugs and alcohol. He passed away at the age of 32, nearly 15 years after he first joined the rock band when he was 17 years old. He was cremated on Sept. 13, 1978, his ashes scattered over gardens at Golders Green, where a plaque in his honor now exists with the quote, “There is no substitute.”
Moon was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 with The Who, and ranked by Rolling Stone readers in 2011 as the second greatest drummer of all time.
According to Daltrey, his former bandmate won’t be making a resurrection anytime soon. But Kimmel suggested there could be one viable option.
“Tupac came back,” the comedian pointed out, referencing the hologram at Coachella that had the world aflutter in April.
Kimmel also inquired about the current status of The Who, which now consists only of Daltrey and Pete Townsend after their fourth member, bass player John Entwistle, died in 2002 from a cocaine-induced heart attack one day before the band’s 2002 US tour.
Commented Daltrey, “We’re kind of having a very long sabbatical, which seems to be like most of our career.”
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