Hello, my name is Angie Moon and I’m a classic rock historian and writer. Throughout my life, I’ve moved around a lot and have experienced friends coming and going, but one thing that has stuck by me is music. Music has provided me comfort even in the most difficult times. I got into classic rock at the age of 14 thanks to the Austin Powers trilogy. I fell in love with the fashion and the music of the 60s and that’s all I would think about. If it wasn’t about classic rock or the 60s, I didn’t care. I would find a way to make all my school projects about classic rock, even in university. I never set out to be a writer. Actually, my original dream was to be a classic rock DJ, kind of like what my dad did back in the 70s.
When I was in undergrad, I took a class called Introduction to Social Media and the big assignment for that class was to create a blog about a topic of my choice. Of course, I picked classic rock, but I didn’t want to just create an ordinary classic rock blog. I wanted to write about classic rock from a unique angle, and so The Diversity of Classic Rock was born. When I was working at the radio station, the programme director called the music I was playing too white, straight, and male and I knew for a fact that classic rock is diverse in both the people who make it and the sounds that you hear and so I compiled lists of classic rock (era) musicians who were from all walks of life: Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, LGBT, female, Jewish, etc. There’s only so much you can write about that and so I broadened my horizons to tell more classic rock stories and review new music from the classic rock era. Still, I wanted to keep doing more with my writing. I’m not satisfied by being stagnant. I wanted to take my writing to the next level.
I had a few friends who urged me to write a book because they liked my writing so much, but for years I had no idea what to write about. Believe it or not, I’ve been into true crime longer than I’ve been into classic rock. Starting when I was around 8 or 9 years old, my dad and I would watch true crime documentaries every weekend: 20/20, 48 Hours, and Dateline. I’d also watch a lot of America’s Most Wanted and documentaries about prison life. When I was a teenager, the Investigation Discovery channel had launched and it was an all you can eat buffet of true crime and I’d spend entire summers watching that channel. Fast forward to my university years and I was guesting on my late friend Cillian’s radio show. During a break he played a nice folk song from the 60s. No context. No explanation. He asked me what I thought of it and I said it sounded nice. He said that the song was by Charles Manson. I nearly fell over. I knew about Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders, but I didn’t know about this side of Charles Manson, that he was a musician. Turns out he met The Beach Boys and befriended Dennis Wilson, all because of a chance encounter the Manson Girls had when hitchhiking in Hollywood. The Beach Boys even recorded one of his compositions, “Cease to Exist”, which they recorded as “Never Learn Not To Love”. I kept that information in my back pocket for about five years.
During lockdown I got really into The Kinks. I’ve been listening to their music since I was in secondary school, but more on a surface level. As I started reading more about them, I noticed some similarities between The Beach Boys and The Kinks: two sibling groups with true crime connections. The Kinks didn’t just have one true crime connection, but rather two true crime connections: they met John Wayne Gacy while on tour in the US in 1965 and the Kray Twins wanted to manage them in the 60s and originally wanted Ray and Dave Davies to play them in a biopic (instead they were played by two other rock and roll siblings, Martin and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet). I also thought about Phil Spector going from pioneering producer to convicted murderer as I remember the Phil Spector trial going on when I was a kid. I started noticing this pattern of classic rock and true crime and so I started to put together a list of classic rock and true crime connections.
Originally, my plan was to make it a blog post for The Diversity of Classic Rock, but when I told my husband about the idea he enthusiastically encouraged me to make it a book and so that night I wrote 9,000 words. I hadn’t seen another book like Crime of the Century so I thought it was a cool idea to combine two of my biggest interests: classic rock and true crime. I am particularly interested in celebrity true crime because on top of all the psychology and legal system aspects, there’s also the star power, that glimpse into their life - so close yet so far from us, and that rise and fall story arc. When my mother was pregnant with me, the infamous OJ Simpson car chase was happening so I wonder if that played a role in my interest in celebrity trials.
While writing the book I was chronically ill and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t stand or walk without a back brace. I was waiting on a surgery to help cure my chronic illness and so I turned to writing to pass the time and check something off my bucket list. In total, it took me about two years to write and research for the book. Pretty much daily I would be reading books and articles and watching documentaries to research and I wrote the book as I did my research. I wanted to get the book out there as soon as I could so I went the self-publishing route and for months I did a lot of less fun behind the scenes things like the editing process and organising the business side of things, but there were also some fun things like designing the book cover, all my idea! The title of my book comes from a Supertramp album of the same name. The cover design is full of easter eggs referencing stories in my book, particularly Joe Meek and The Kinks.
One of my biggest interests as a bisexual woman is LGBT history and I wanted to make sure there was a nod to this part of my roots. I tell this story at all the book events I go to. The tarot card motif is a reference to a day in January 1958 when Joe Meek had a friend do a tarot card reading and the friend drew three cards and wrote what came to mind: Buddy Holly, dies, February 3. Coincidentally, the Gibson Flying V was patented in January 1958. February 3 comes and goes, and thankfully Buddy Holly was still alive. Joe Meek was still worried about him regardless. In March of 1958, Buddy Holly was on tour in the UK. Joe Meek went to one of his concerts to let him know about February 3. Buddy Holly didn’t think much of it but thanked him for his concern. In January 1958, Buddy Holly went on a Midwest tour with JP “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Richie Valens, and Dion and the Belmonts. He was living in New York with his wife Maria Elena Santiago, who was pregnant. Buddy Holly was desperate for money so he decided to go on tour in the Midwest during the worst possible time of year, the middle of winter.
The tour was poorly organized and zigzagged across the Midwest in a repurposed school bus during a really cold winter. A young Bob Dylan attended his concert in Duluth, Minnesota and Eventually Buddy Holly had had enough so he decided to charter a plane to fly from Iowa to Fargo, North Dakota. The Big Bopper was ill so he took a seat on the plane. A coin toss decided the fate of Valens, who was afraid of flying. Not long after the plane took off in inclement weather, it crashed in a field. That became known as The Day The Music Died: February 3, 1959. Joe Meek killed his landlady before turning the gun on himself on February 3, 1967. For years he was obsessed with Buddy Holly and felt like he had some sort of connection to him. His American equivalent, Phil Spector killed Lana Clarkson on February 3, 2003. Coincidentally, one of the guitarists who popularised the Flying V was Dave Davies of The Kinks, born February 3, 1947.
As for women in rock, one chapter is about Debbie Harry of Blondie and her alleged encounter with Ted Bundy. In the Altamont chapter, I talk a little bit about Grace Slick’s band Jefferson Airplane, who had played that festival and helped organise it. While I am not a Sex Pistols fan and I kind of dreaded having to write that chapter on Sid Vicious, I ended up finding that story fascinating because of Sid’s girlfriend Nancy Spungen. A lot of media portrayal and representation paints her as a drug addicted groupie who deserved her fate and that is really disrespectful. There’s a lot of respectability politics and it doesn’t sit right with me. She didn’t deserve this. The reality is that Nancy was a very smart girl who had a difficult life from the start because she was born choked by her umbilical cord and was prescribed drugs from a young age due to her frequent temper tantrums. She was so smart that she graduated from secondary school at 15. She had a passion for rock music and wanted to be a music journalist. Her parents supported her dream by giving her money to move to New York and London to be closer to that scene. Her mother, Deborah, wrote a really good book about Nancy’s life and it was a big help in my research. One common criticism of true crime is that it focuses too much on the perpetrator and doesn’t humanise the victim. I wanted to make sure that people could read the story of the real Nancy Spungen.
Besides classic rock, I really love collecting vintage clothing and travel photography. I have been collecting vintage clothing since I was a teenager and I have a lot of vintage dresses, blouses, and coats in my collection. I have clothes from coveted labels like Quad, Gunne Sax, Laura Ashley, and Mary Quant. My love of travel dates back to when I was a child and my grandparents would show me their photos of their travels around the world. I wanted to be just like them. While I haven’t seen as many countries as they have, I have been to five continents and have lived in four different countries. My favorite travel destinations I’ve been to are Japan, Australia, and Hawaii.
Crime of the Century: Classic Rock & True Crime is available to purchase on my website crazyonclassicrock.com and if you buy it directly through me, you can get a signed personalized copy, and you can even get the book signed by my cat, Bowie.
Angie Moon on Instagram: @angiemitchellemoon
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