Keith Moon’s swimming pool folklore recreated by Rolls-Royce as £500k car is plunged into lido

Accounts of whether The Who’s Keith Moon did, or didn’t, submerge a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool vary according to the recollection (and doubtless consumption) of those present. But we know for sure it’s happened now…

Legend has it that, while celebrating his 21st birthday, the gifted but fatefully self-destructive drummer plunged his Rolls-Royce into the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, creating one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most enduring pieces of folklore.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1972, Moon said he thought the motor car might actually have been a Lincoln Continental belonging to another hotel guest; he said he let off the handbrake and rolled the car into the pool. Other party guests maintain that no motor car ended up in the pool at all.

Truth is, it doesn’t really matter – urban myth or not, the story endures to the extent it has become the definitive image of rock ‘n’ roll indulgence and, as such, the car in the pool could only be a Rolls-Royce.

So, to mark the Rolls-Royce Phantom flagship’s centenary and the motor car’s place in rock ‘n’ roll mythology, Rolls-Royce has done the decent thing on the eve of what would have been Moon’s 79^th birthday and brought legend to life by submerging an extended wheelbase Phantom – a retired prototype destined for recycling – into a swimming pool. And one with a music history of its own, at that.

The chosen location was Tinside Lido in Plymouth, England, a celebrated Art Deco landmark next to the English Channel. Linked to John Lennon, another of the Phantom’s famous clients, the Lido served as a backdrop to a photograph of The Beatles taken on 12th September 1967, during a visit whilst filming for The Magical Mystery Tour.

But to the consternation of some locals, and the confusion of the BBC , Rolls-Royce – in cahoots with Rolling Stone UK – dropped a £500,000 Phantom EWB into the clear blue waters on a day when temperatures were more St Tropez than south-west England, and so laid to rest the myth for once and for all.

Was there ever really a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool? There sure was – and the gallery above shows the pictures to prove it, just in time for what would have been Keith’s 79^th birthday this weekend (23^rd August).

We know for sure it’s what he would have wanted…