Mama Cass And Keith Moon Died In Same 'cursed' Apartment

Credit: YouTube / RCA RecordsMusic » From The Vault The tragic story of how Mama Cass and Keith Moon died in the same apartment Joe Taysom@josephtaysom Wed 12 August 2020 17:00, UK Follow us on Google Discover

One Mayfair apartment in London is a part of rock and roll history, albeit for all the wrong reasons. The location is marked in the annals of time for being the death place of both Mama Cass from Mamas and Papas as well as The Who’s legendary drummer Keith Moon who, somewhat unbelievably died in the same room four years apart.

The two artists, who have both been posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the years that followed their death, were both aged just 32 at their time of passing with their careers in front of them. The apartment in which they both passed away actually belonged to Harry Nillson but, due to the American singer-songwriter largely being on the road in the states, he seldom had a chance to be at his London home and instead rented it out to his musician friends.

Cass Elliott’s AKA Mama Cass was staying in London in 1974 following her solo two-week sell-out run at The Palladium and decided to stay in the English capital for a few days after her dates concluded on July 23rd. There is a lot of false speculation that came out following her death, the main lie being that she choked on a ham sandwich — even though the sandwich was left untouched on the bedside table when she was found the following day.

Elliot had been suffering from health problems in the proceeding months to her death and, in April of 1974, she collapsed in the television studio of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson immediately before her scheduled appearance. She was treated at a hospital and later released, then dismissed the incident as exhaustion but it remains unclear how many times similar incidents to this occurred during this period.

Moon’s death at Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place was equally as much of a tragedy as The Who drummer was trying just about everything possible to stay sober and off alcohol — which led to the development of other issues which would ultimately cause his death.

Following an argument with his partner Annette Walter-Lax, a postmortem revealed that in an attempt to calm himself down he consumed 32 clomethiazole pills which he was prescribed to reduce his alcohol withdrawal symptoms. However, his doctor had made it clear to him that he shouldn’t take more than three pills a day which is what caused his sudden tragic death.

Nillson then believed that because of these devastating events that saw two of his friends pass away at his property that he could no longer live at the ‘cursed’ flat. He then moved out to live in Los Angeles permanently and turned his back on his party place in London which was bought by Moon’s bandmate Pete Townshend who likely didn’t want the property to fall into the wrong hands because of its history.

Keith MoonThe Who