Chords for Mike Portnoy's tribute to Keith Moon

[A] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ [G] _ _
[A] _ [E] _ _ [A] _ Moon [G] Maloon, [C] Geeth [G] Moon.
[A] Geeth was [N] one of my all-time favorite drummers and probably
my first drum hero when I was a kid.
He was a one-of-a-kind drummer.
There's never been
anybody like him before him and there's been nobody like him since.
He was definitely one-of-a-kind.
His style, his personality, and somebody that I really miss.
I really miss hearing him and
seeing him.
He was such an inspiration to me.
_ I was introduced to The Who _ just as early
as The Beatles.
They were one of my favorite bands when I was a little tiny kid.
When Tommy
came out in 1969, _ it was my favorite album through most of my childhood.
So I was listening
to The Who from the very beginning of my life.
_ It wasn't until years later that I actually
discovered Geeth's part of The Who and his impact on me as a drummer.
I saw the movie
The Kids Are Alright when it came out in 1979. _
Although I had been listening to Tommy in
Live at Leeds and Quadrophenia for all those years, I had never really seen Geeth. _
So when
I saw him on the screen with The Kids Are Alright, I was blown away by his personality.
He was just the type of drummer you couldn't take your eyes off of.
He was a big, big influence
on me in terms of showmanship and the way he was just so commanding on stage, just bouncing
his sticks and the crazy faces.
He was just such a personality.
He played drums like _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ a
He was my first real drum hero.
_ _ _ Geeth played like a total hurricane.
His style was unlike
any drummer I've ever seen before.
He didn't ever play a solid backbeat or groove.
He was
actually just a whirlwind of tom fills and cymbal swells.
His kick drums were always
pulsating.
Rather than actually laying down a solid groove and foundation, he was constantly
just playing circles around it.
I realized when I did these tribute shows how incredibly
_ exhausting it is, and I have no idea how he was able to sustain that type of energy and
style night after night.
So I knew I had to do a Who tribute and really tap into the Keith
Moon inside of me.
_ _ This band, I think of the four tribute bands I put together, this band
had the most awesome lineup.
Paul Gilbert, of course, on guitar, and Paul did an amazing
job, as always.
On bass was Billy Sheehan, and I couldn't have thought of anybody else
to be playing bass in a Who tribute, because Billy is, I think, the greatest bass player
alive.
And John Atmussel's style was just such an up-front lead _ type of bass playing
that really, Billy was just absolutely perfect.
In fact, I wanted to do this Who tribute years
earlier and was basically waiting for Billy's availability to actually follow through and
pull it together.
So once he had a window of opportunity, we went forward and did the
tribute.
And on vocals, Gary Cherone, another, I think he was a perfect choice to do the
Roger Daltrey part. _
Gary's a tremendous front man, such a great, great front man, as Roger
Daltrey was.
And his voice was incredibly similar as well to Roger.
So this band came
together, Amazing Journey.
We did three shows across America, one in LA, one in Chicago,
one in New York.
All three of them were so much fun.
For me to be able to get into Keith
Moon's body, I mean, I just felt completely possessed by him.
Just really all the nuances
and the way he played and the way he acted on stage, I was definitely tapped into his
spirit for these shows, and it was a lot of fun.
My kit for the Amazing Journey shows
was, it was a little different from the other tributes.
The other tributes I did, I had
one kit that Tama made me, and I did all the shows on that one kit.
For the Who shows,
I knew that there was a possibility that after the first show, the drum kit would be completely
destroyed.
So Tama actually made me a kit for LA and for New York, two different kits
with the same configuration, which is this kit that I'm sitting behind now.
And this
setup is basically Keith's kit from around 69 to 71.
It's the kit that he used at Woodstock
and the Isla White concert and all the Tommy performances.
And to me, this was a very classic
setup for him.
Very, very simple, three 14-inch rack Toms, the exact same depth, and three
crash cymbals.
No hi-hat, no ride, no china, no splashes, just three crashes.
And I've
never played a kit before with no hi-hat and no ride, and it was a really bizarre setup
to adapt to.
And he did use a hi-hat in the studio, and also on some earlier and later
kits.
But on this particular kit, this was it.
Three crashes, three 14-inch Toms, three
floor Toms, two kicks and a snare.
It's a really simple and strange kit, but a lot of
fun to play.
So this was the kit I used in New York and LA, and this kit is the one that
I used at the New York show, and it's slightly beat up.
You can see that there's some holes
in my bass drum back here from at the end of the show.
I've swung some cymbal stands
through the kick drums, and there's a nick on the bass drum somewhere where Billy Sheehan
smashed his bass.
But _ basically, _ it was a lot of fun playing on this kit.
And the Chicago
show, I had a completely different kit.
The Chicago show was being promoted by Victor
Salazar and the guys at the Drum Pad, and they have a thing where Victor really likes
to reproduce classic kits.
So he went ahead and actually built Keith's classic 75 kit,
which was multiple rows of concert Toms, and the white finish and the gold rims.
And that
was a beautiful kit that I just used for that one show in Chicago, and I went easy on it
at the end of the show.
I didn't destroy it too bad, just a little bit.
So it was a
lot of fun.
Anyway, enough about the kits and Keith and the music.
Let's actually look
at some of the footage from these shows.
And once again, Keith, I miss him.
He was really
one of my all-time heroes and one of a kind, and there's not many people like him out there.
And I did my best to do justice to his legacy for a whole new generation of people to see.
What an amazing character and drummer he