Who are you? The guy who played with the Who, that's who By Mike Leonard, Hoosier Times columnist Sunday, February 19, 2006 6:52 AM CST BLOOMINGTON - Google the name Scott Halpin, and you can understand some of the reasons why the Bloomington resident remains cautious and a bit indifferent about recounting his extraordinary little contribution to rock 'n' roll history. "They always get something wrong," he said of the many accounts of the night when, at age 19, he replaced drummer Keith Moon in legendary band, The Who. "I've read where I played anywhere from five minutes to an hour. I came out of the front row to join the band on stage. That kind of thing," Halpin said last week. "One story said I was a graduate of Monterey High School, and I'd sort of slipped away into obscurity, and the last anyone knew, I was a businessman." Actually, Halpin has lived in Bloomington for roughly a decade, makes his living as an artist and illustrator, and occasionally gets out to play bass, now his preferred instrument, and sometimes, drums. He was just a kid from Muscatine, Iowa, who'd moved to California when he hooked up with a friend to see The Who at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 1973. He was a major Who fan at the time. "I was living in Monterey, and I figure from the time it took to drive into San Francisco and the time I spent standing in line, I spent 13 hours. I really did want to get down front," he recalled. The show Halpin had never heard of the opening band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and doesn't remember much about their set other than a vague recollection of the endless riffing on "Free Bird." "It was back in the days of general admission, and you really had to suck it up and just hold your spot (in the audience)," Halpin recalled. "Once The Who came on, the crush of people was so intense, I could only handle about three songs. After that, we kind of escaped over to the side of the stage, where there were these big ramps, and we had a good view of the band." The Who's notoriously wild drummer, Moon, passed out more than midway through the performance, was taken off-stage and after a brief intermission, returned to his drum kit. Accounts of the source of Moon's infirmity vary, but Halpin guesses that the speculation centering on the quasi-psychedelic drug, PCP, probably is accurate. "You could sense it was going to happen again," Halpin said. Sure enough, Moon collapsed again, and Halpin's friend, Mike Danese, dragged him to the side of the stage and pleaded with security guards to tell the band's management that Halpin could step in. "The security guard was probably thinking he's a complete nut, but all of a sudden, (promoter) Bill Graham pops up, and he sees it as a security thing. He's sort of nose-to-nose with Mike, and Mike says, 'He can do this. He's a drummer. He knows the material.' And Bill Graham looks at me and says, 'Can you do it?' and I said yeah." On stage At that point, The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, almost rhetorically asks the Cow Palace crowd if there's a drummer in the house. Unbeknownst to him, Halpin is already in place, sitting on Moon's stool and getting instructions on how the drum kit is set up by a technician. "Then, (singer) Roger Daltry announces my name and we go into it. Pete told me he'd give me cues, and they had me start with (the blues standard) 'Smokestack Lightning,' which I don't ever remember being part of their thing," Halpin said. He admitted he really doesn't even remember what else he played because he was so focused on keeping time and picking up signals from Townshend. A Web site on Who history indicates that Halpin would have played on the songs, "Smokestack Lightning," "Spoonful" and "Naked Eye." An account in the San Francisco Chronicle from 1996 says a bootleg tape shows that Halpin played on the first two previously listed songs and the grand finale, "My Generation." Who members Townshend, Daltry and John Entwistle thanked the skinny kid from the audience for stepping to the plate but didn't hang around long after the show. "They were very angry with Keith and sort of fighting among themselves," Halpin said. "It was the opening date on their 'Quadrophenia' tour, and they were saying, 'Why couldn't he wait until after the show (if he wanted to get high)?" Daltry, who'd begun drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle at that point, told the substitute they'd pay him $1,000 for his efforts, and a roadie gave him a tour jacket on the spot. "Then everyone split," Halpin said. "My friend and I both had long drives ahead of us, so we loaded up on all the free food that was put out for the band, and we both headed for home." In the meantime, someone stole the tour jacket that Halpin had just received as a gift. Halpin received favorable mention in the next day's Chronicle review. He received a nice letter from the band but no money - not that it mattered. The legacy The Who returned to San Francisco a couple of years later, and Halpin did get to go backstage and meet Moon, who was gracious but in his typical whirlwind mode. "He was doing this hilarious monologue and taking off his stage clothes and putting on his street clothes in front of everyone," Halpin said with a laugh. "He said 'Nice to meet you' to me, and then he was off." The story of Halpin's brief stint playing with The Who often comes up when people collect stories of rock 'n' roll lore or Who retrospectives. Rolling Stone magazine would later name Halpin the "Pick-up Player of the Year." A few years ago, the cable network VH-1 flew him to New York City for an interview that is included in a program called "The Forty Freakiest Concert Moments in Rock History." Last week, Halpin sat down in the WFIU-FM studios in Bloomington to tape a segment for NPR's "Morning Edition." "It's just one of those stories that won't go away, but you know, it's not a story that even a lot of people I know have heard," he said. "I mean, how do you tell this story? Are you bragging if you do? It's kind of weird, how it all went down. And to be honest, it all gets kind of foggy because it all happened so fast. I didn't have time to take it all in. All I was thinking about was not screwing up."
Scott Halpin Died in 2008 at age 54.
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