Surviving punk is a tough business. The inflammatory statements that make bands sound revolutionary eventually sell them out. Johnny Rotten said he wanted to be an anarchist, but now, judging by his projects with VH-l, his insurrection will be set to the tune of Cher’s “Believe.” The Who’s Pete Townshend, a punk before the label existed, said he hoped he’d die before he got old, but he not only got old; he grew old pathetically.

He spent the Eighties neurotic, alcoholic and pretentious, doing reunion shows and impressario’ing Tommy’s Broadway production-hardly ferocious and definitely not punk. Keith Moon, however, took up Townshend’s slack, dying at 32 and looking a full ten years older after a life spent refusing to acknowledge the limits of the law and his body. In Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, Tony Fletcher details Moon’s legendary excesses and epic passions, but though it’s clearly not Fletcher’s intention, the book shows the close tie between rock ‘n’ roll and arrested development.

Moon, Fletcher shows, was hard work to be around because he never out-grew his manic teenage need to perform and command attention. Petty vandalism on the subway gave way to his legendary destruction of hotel rooms, and an older Moon replaced walking around London in a gold lame suit with public displays of drunken nudity. His immaturity extended to his romantic life, where he was so possessive of his wife Kim-and later, his girlfriend Annette-that she could not go out in public for fear of facing his jealous anger, even though he was indiscreet in his infidelities. Fortunately, by becoming a drummer in what Fletcher calls “the Truly Great Band,” he found a situation that rewarded rather than punished his immaturity.

There was more to Moon than this rather cold summary; everyone in Moon speaks of his extreme generosity and good-heartedness, but it’s hard for readers to recall Moon’s better side after more than 500 pages of boozy adventures. His goodness seems abstract in Fletcher’s text, while his bad behavior is documented in vivid detail as each drunken, pilled-up, three-day romp had a specific costume, an identifiable cast of characters, and a comically-absurd bill to pay when the bender concluded. At the end of a short 1975 British tour, he was handed a check for less than 48 pounds when the rest of the band made thousands because he made such a drunken scene in an airport that British Airways had him arrested and banned.

After being bailed out, he had to travel by rented car-a white Rolls or nothing, he insisted-from gig to gig. With a manager able to dole out the seemingly endless supply of money such exploits required, he never had to come to grips with the cost of things or any real sense of consequence.

Money, of course, is always central to a rock ‘n’ roll story, and in the case of Moon, he happened along at the financially best possible time to redefine “indulgence.” The real story of the early ’70s is the discovery of just how much money there was to be made in rock ‘n’ roll, and musicians found themselves enjoying unprecedented and apparently unending wealth. To hide their money from the taxman, to explore Hollywood options, and to find out just how big their worlds really were, British musicians emigrated to Southern California, and Keith Moon was among them. In Moon’s saddest section, Fletcher chronicles Moon’s time in Los Angeles, where he, Ringo, John Lennon and Harry NiIsson among others found themselves in an alcoholic, purposeless artistic sinkhole from which few if any good records emerged. In Los Angeles, Moon’s lunacy lost context and creativity, and the California he found was defined more by the drunken, hostile Steve McQueen who lived next door than the idyllic bikini girls of Moon’s beloved Beach Boys.

Fletcher suggests Moon’s story is a ’70s one, as if he would have been less outrageous and debauched in another time. Unfortunately, his teenage years and rock ‘n’ roll history suggest otherwise. A recent Spin cover story recounted ridiculous stories of AxI Rose’s petulant demands, and as petty and conniving as they sound, they are the sort of demands we expect of rock stars. Audiences want their Stars to be larger than they are, and to live lives that are more dramatic and dangerous as Pete Townshend recognized. In a letter to Fletcher, he wrote, “show business and society… feeds and rewards addictive and ultimately suicidal behavior.” In Moon’s case, crowds wanted the wild man offstage and on. They were disappointed, for instance, if he wasn’t on the edge of out of control throughout the set, and for many, a concert wasn’t a Who concert until Moon kicked over his drum kit. Moon’s fame was made up of equal parts drumming ability and insanity, and fans wanted both, so in retrospect it seems inevitable that Moon would do the things that made him famous no matter the cost.

In the last chapter, Tony Fletcher recalls Moon’s kindness to him as a young fanzine writer, and throughout the book, he is clearly sympathetic to Moon. He puts Moon’s outrageous appetites in perspective where possible, and works hard to show that there was more to Moon than brandy, uppers and madness. For most readers, Fletcher performs his greatest service discussing Moon’s relationship with The Who, which was far more tenuous than people might think, but the book is more valuable when Fletcher documents Moon and The Who living through some of popular music’s most important moments. Moon is, indirectly, the story of those times and how they affected a handful of people, and that in itself is reason to read the book. Because Moon’s life revolved around the endless party, his biography is also an occasion to think about the rather complicated relationships between artists, audiences, art and maturity.

Some poems are written as if the writers had too much time on their hands; New Orleanian Joel Dailey writes as if he doesn’t have enough. In Lower 48, his new book, he writes as if he has his television’s remote control in one hand and a pen in the other, capturing the lines he thinks he hears while clicking as fast as he can. The result is poetry for a culture that makes stars of chefs, has theme music for trials, and names its world-ending computer glitches