A putrid stench radiated from the bathroom. It was the smell of decaying flesh mixed with day-old booze and cigarettes. The hotel maid pushed her cart through the doorway and squinted into the darkness. It was daytime, but the motel suite’s previous occupant, Keith Moon, had left the curtains drawn, as if concealing the evidence of some heinous crime.

The maid gingerly opened the bathroom door. Her eyes were drawn first to the half-empty tub and then to the puddles of water on the floor. Finally, she saw it. Wrapped in toilet paper and placed on the lavatory seat, like the world’s worst birthday present: a dead piranha with its teeth bared in an awful rictus grin.

It was July 1967, The Who were touring America and Keith Moon had bought the fish from a local pet shop. That much is true. And the motel was in Vancouver. Or was it Oklahoma City? When it comes to The Who and Keith Moon, myth and hearsay still reign supreme.

Harvey Lisberg, who managed the tour’s headline act, Herman’s Hermits, remembers the incident – sort of. “A piranha?” he says now. “Oh yes, I heard about the piranha. But I thought there was more than one… Piranhas.”

The Who’s summer 1867 US tour was the one in which Keith Moon killed at least one omnivorous freshwater fish, destroyed a hotel lavatory with explosives and celebrated his 21st birthday by allegedly driving a Lincoln Continental into a motel swimming pool. Or did he?

Only one fact remains unchallenged: The Who came to America, promising “to leave a wound”. They did just that, and left, three months later, after nearly blowing themselves up on live TV. A wounded America would not forget them in a hurry.

On paper, the group’s latest touring partners, Herman’s Hermits, were the anti-Who. A cheery Mancunian pop group fronted by pretty boy Peter Noone, the Hermits sang old music hall numbers and songs about beautiful girls. By ’67, America had fallen for the simple charms of the Hermits’ hits I’m Henry The Eighth, I Am and Mrs Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter.

“The acts were totally incompatible, but it didn’t matter,” says Harvey Lisberg. “Herman’s Hermits were much bigger, and The Who needed to do some groundwork in America.”

The Who’s PR-savvy guitarist Pete Townshend immediately created a stir by slagging off the headliners in a US teeny magazine. “These Herman’s Hermits are the biggest band in America,” he scoffed. “I have a mission to rid the world of this shit.”

The Who joined the Hermits and their American special guests, The Blues Magoos, for the first date in Calgary on July 13. The three groups would spend the next 10 weeks travelling in a chartered DC-9 jet, with their names sprayed across its fuselage.

Regardless of Townshend’s criticism, The Who and the Hermits had one thing in common. They were all post-war, ration-book kids, hell-bent on enjoying themselves in a country that until recently they’d only seen in the movies. As Harvey Lisberg puts it: “They were all English, working class and drunk in the middle of nowhere.” What could possibly go wrong?

Five days into the tour came the piranha incident. One source claims The Who’s drummer Moon left the fish in a bath of warm water before playing that night’s gig. When he returned, the water had gone cold and the piranha had perished. Herman’s Hermits’ drummer Barry Whitwam tells a grislier tale. “Keith put the piranha in the bath and ordered a raw steak from room service,” he said. “He told the waiter to throw the steak in the bath and the fish choked to death.”

On-stage, The Who’s live show was similarly dangerous, but highlighted the gulf between their music and the headline act’s. The predominantly female audience wanted to scream at Peter Noone and hear Mrs Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter. But they couldn’t ignore The Who. Every night, at the climax of My Generation, Townshend smashed his guitar just enough to separate the body from the neck. Later, a roadie glued the instrument back together in time for the next show. “The guitars were crap, but the audience didn’t know that,” says Lisberg. “It was clever promotion.”

After Vancouver, the touring party headed south for dates in Texas, Tennessee and Alabama. “This was our indoctrination into the real America,” said Townshend. “We all loved black music,” adds Lisberg. “So it was horrendous to see colour prejudice and black people having to ride at the back of the bus.”

The locals’ prejudice also extended to the visiting Brits with their fancy clothes and hair. In Chattanooga, Keith Moon and the Blues Magoos’ lead singer narrowly escaped a beating after sauntering into a good old boys’ bar wearing velvet trousers and a sealskin jacket. In several Holiday Inns, the long-haired Limeys were ordered to wear bathing caps before going in the swimming pool.

Then again, their way of going swimming was rather unorthodox. Moon, Barry Whitwam and The Hermits’ bass guitarist Karl Green had devised a game where’d they’d christen each new motel by jumping into its pool from their respective balconies. “Bloody insane!” says Lisberg. “You’d be sat in your room and suddenly you’d see one of them go sailing past the window.”

After discovering how painful it was landing feet first in the water, they started wearing shoes. But Moon soon trumped the others. One day, as various Hermits placed wagers on who would jump from the highest motel balcony, Keith plummeted past from the roof. He was dressed in riding boots, a top hat and a cape. All bets were off.

Moon’s 30 minutes on-stage every night wasn’t enough to burn off all his excess energy. Bored, homesick and invariably drunk, he desperately needed a distraction. In the American south, he discovered ‘cherry bombs’, a firework which looked like the comedy ‘bombs’ in Tom & Jerry cartoons. They were devastatingly powerful and banned in most states. Naturally, Moon stocked up. “I asked Keith, ‘How many of those things have you got?’” recalled Townshend. “And he said, ‘Five hundred.’”

Pete Townshend thinks Keith blew up his lavatory in a Holiday Inn in Georgia. Harvey Lisberg believes it was Montgomery, Alabama. Moon and John Entwistle had already blown a hole in a chair and a suitcase, before tossing a cherry bomb into the toilet just to see what would happen. Moon pulled the chain, but the still-lit firework wouldn’t flush. The pair ran from the bathroom just as the bowl exploded, sending chunks of porcelain flying like shrapnel.

It was 2am and Lisberg was fast asleep when the motel manager rang him: “Suddenly, there was this broad southern accent going, ‘Do you have a Mr Moon in your party? The toilet is missing from his room.’” Pete Townshend later inspected the damage. “There was no toilet,” he marveled. “Just a sort of S-bend coming out the floor.”

As the headline act, Herman’s Hermits were held accountable. The manager presented Lisberg with a $1000 bill which he passed on to the tour promoter: “We weren’t going to pay. I tried to have a talk with Keith and tell him not to do it again, but he was totally wacko.”

At 27 years old, Harvey was regarded as the tour’s responsible adult. Peter Noone was 16 when he’d joined Herman’s Hermits four years earlier. But by summer ‘67, the Hermits were in their late teens or early twenties, and the mood of sexual liberation emanating from the West Coast had made its way inland.

In every town, the groups would plug that night’s gig on the local radio station. After the concert, whichever DJ they’d met earlier would arrive at their hotel with a gang of young women in tow, like some sexual pied piper. It happened everywhere.

“There were millions of groupies,” says Lisberg. “Nobody knew where they came from, but they were always something to do with the DJs.” Lisberg stationed roadies outside the Hermits’ rooms to keep the younger ones away: “But they still got in.”

Townshend’s old art school friend, the late photographer Tom Wright, joined the tour in Florida. His first 10 minutes with the Who was an eye-opening experience. As the DC-9 taxied down the runway, Wright glanced out the window to see a station wagon racing alongside: “We must have been doing about eighty, when the driver produced a double-barreled shotgun. He pointed it at the plane and fired twice.” Wright later discovered Keith Moon had spent the night with a young fan, and that the assailant was her irate father.