Kim McLagan dead at 57

Wife of musician Ian McLagan killed in two-vehicle collision on FM 969

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, August 07, 2006

A traffic collision Wednesday claimed the life of Kim McLagan, 57, a top British fashion model of the 1960s, a Bastrop-area salon owner and wife of former Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan.

The couple have lived in Manor since 1994.

The two-vehicle crash occurred at 9:50 a.m. at Taylor Lane and FM 969 in eastern Travis County. Texas Department of Public Safety officials said McLagan died at the scene.

Officials said McLagan was driving a 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser south on Taylor when she apparently ran a stop sign at the intersection. She was hit by a 2000 Freightline dump truck that was heading west.

As a teenager, Kim Kerrigan was the toast of swinging London, marrying the Who drummer Keith Moon in 1966 and appearing the next year in the worldwide satellite debut of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" video. She was divorced from Moon in 1975; he died three years later of an accidental drug overdose.

In 1978, she married Ian McLagan in England. Despite her life there amid fashion and rock stars, Kim McLagan seemed just as suited to the peaceful, rural life outside Manor, where the McLagans lived on 15 acres.

She owned K.M. Skincare on Texas 71 in the Alum Creek community between Bastrop and Smithville. She was a licensed aesthetician and worked for several years at Lake Austin Spa.

McLagan was not one to dwell on her past, friends say.

"I had no idea she used to be a model," said Dick Simcoe, owner of Little Thailand restaurant in Garfield, where the McLagans would eat most Friday nights. "She was so beautiful, inside and out. Her and Mac were very much in love."

Growing up as Patsy Kerrigan on her father's rubber plantation in Malaysia, the doe-eyed beauty changed her name to Kim after her family moved back to London and she began modeling. "Patsy" was too close to Pattie Boyd, another model whom she resembled, and so she became Kim to avoid confusion.

She's survived by a daughter, Mandy Moon, the product of her stormy marriage to the Who drummer. The McLagans, who were married for 28 years, had no children together.

After years in Los Angeles, the couple moved to Manor after the California city's 1994 earthquake.

Ian McLagan soon established himself as a fixture on the Austin music scene, in recent years playing a popular early show with his Bump Band every Thursday at Lucky Lounge in Austin.

"Kim just loved it out here," Simcoe said. "She told me she'd never move back to England."

Ellen Moore of the Bastrop Advertiser frequently wrote about the couple in her local scene column.

"There was no one on this earth who didn't think that she was an angel. She was very family-minded, a wonderful, loyal friend," Moore said.

"She was always interested in learning: herbs, whatever, always reading something. She would help people with aches and pains. It was all about keeping them healthy."

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652

Additional material by staff writer Tony Plohetski.