Kim McLagan; Telegraph obit (Wife of Moon)
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 04/08/2006) Telegraph
Kim Mclagan, who died in a car accident on Wednesday aged 57, was a
fashion icon of the 1960s who endured an abusive marriage with the Who
drummer Keith Moon.
She was only 17 when she married Moon in 1966. When they met in 1964,
the Who were just beginning to become famous and she was at the start
of a successful modelling career. She moved to London to live with him,
and for two years she toured with the band while developing her own
career.
It was later rumoured that during this time she was conducting
simultaneous affairs with Moon and Rod Stewart, a deception which came
to light when the two men, both believing themselves to be on their way
to a private meeting with her, shared a train carriage and fell into
conversation about where they were going.
Although she later admitted that marriage at 17 "wasn't the way I
planned it" (the Moons' daughter, Mandy, was born shortly after the
wedding), Kim believed that she was genuinely in love with Moon, and
that that love was returned: "He wanted to marry me, he wanted to
possess me, he loved the idea of us having his baby."
Indeed, her beauty inspired many men to abandon restraint - not least
the author of one of Moon's biographies, who described her as "the most
incredible creature... with blue eyes as deep as the ocean, blonde hair
like silk, an hourglass figure, a face like polished porcelain, and a
cheerful smile to die for". In the succeeding years, however, as the
Who's fame increased, the marriage became tumultuous. Moon left the
task of bringing up their daughter to his wife while living the life of
a single man, to the extent that many fan magazines continued to
believe that he was still unmarried. When their marriage was eventually
discovered, many of Moon's female fans were devastated. Several sent
her gravestones. One fan was so abusive that Moon himself had to chase
her off, pelting her with eggs.
At the same time, Moon's drinking and drug-taking worsened and his
behaviour became increasingly irrational. "He'll get up in the morning
and decide he's going to be Hitler," his wife explained. "And he is
Hitler. He dresses up, combs his hair over one eye, pencils on a
moustache and walks around talking to everyone in a German accent. I
just ignore him." Surprisingly, Moon's attempts to buy his wife a
"defunct European title from some republican country" did not make up
for what she saw as his childish behaviour, which included driving a
Lincoln Continental into a swimming pool. She also bitterly disliked
the humiliation she experienced when Moon and his friend Oliver Reed
were spotted ordering brandy for breakfast in a hotel, both men being
stark naked.
Despite his own infidelities, Moon would fly into a rage if anyone else
tried to talk to Kim when they were together. Violent fights ensued,
many taking place in front of their child. One room of the flat they
shared in London featured the framed remains of a champagne bottle
which Moon had thrown so hard at his wife that it had remained embedded
in the wall behind her. Moon once broke her nose by butting her; and
was said to have threatened her with a handgun on more than one
occasion.
Maryse Elizabeth Patricia Kerrigan was born at Leicester on December 30
1948. As a child she was known as Patsy, but later changed her name to
Kim to avoid confusion with Pattie Boyd, whom she rather resembled.
She spent the first 10 years of her life living on her father's rubber
plantation in Malaysia and then his coconut plantation in East Africa;
her first language was Malay. Early in the 1960s the family returned to
England to live in Bournemouth, and Patsy was sent to a convent school
in Dublin.
In 1963 she returned to England to work as a hairdresser, signing up
with her first modelling agency in the same year. She met Moon at a Who
gig at Bournemouth, and their careers briefly coincided when she
appeared in the satellite telecast of the Beatles' All You Need Is Love
video in 1967.
Kim Moon finally left her husband in 1973, taking Mandy with her.
Though the divorce was finalised in 1975, Moon continued to harass her,
bombarding her with phone calls and even paying a hit-man £250 to
break the fingers of her new boyfriend, Ian McLagan, the keyboard
player of Rod Stewart's band the Faces.
Moon's mental and physical state became worse, however, and in 1978 he
died of an accidental overdose.
A month later Kim Moon married McLagan, and shortly afterwards they
moved to America, where she worked as a chauffeur to celebrities, as a
qualified "aesthetician", and running her own aromatherapy and
cosmetics business, KM Skincare.
Kim McLagan is survived by her husband, Ian, who continues to perform
with Rod Stewart, and by her daughter Mandy Moon, a make-up artist in
Los Angeles.