John Entwistle
John Alec Entwistle was an English singer, songwriter, musician, composer and record producer, best known as the bass guitarist for the rock band the Who. Entwistle's music career spanned over four decades. Nicknamed "The Ox" and "Thunderfingers", he was the band's only member with formal musical training and also provided backing and occasional lead vocals. Entwistle was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Who in 1990.
Entwistle was the first member of the Who to begin a solo career in 1971 while still a member of the band, and has released seven solo studio albums, four compilation albums and two live albums. His best-selling studio album was Too Late the Hero, and its title-track his best-selling single. Musicians who have played on his albums include the Who's Keith Moon, Peter Frampton of Humble Pie, Joe Walsh of the Eagles, Leslie West of Mountain, Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes, Zak Starkey, Howie Casey, Dick Parry, Jimmy McCulloch of Paul McCartney and Wings, Joe Vitale and Tony Ashton.
Renowned for his musical abilities, Entwistle is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rock bassists of all time. His instrumental approach featured pentatonic lead lines and a then-unusual treble-rich sound. He was voted as the greatest bass guitar player ever in a 2011 Rolling Stone readers' poll and, in 2020, the same magazine ranked him number three in its list of the "50 Greatest Bassists of All Time".
Early life
John Alec Entwistle was born on 9 October 1944 at Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital in Hammersmith, West London, and brought up in Chiswick, Middlesex, which is now part of London. He was an only child. His father, Herbert, played the trumpet and his mother, Maud , played the piano. His parents' marriage failed soon after he was born, and he was mostly raised by his mother at his grandparents' house in South Acton. Divorce was uncommon in the 1940s, and this contributed to Entwistle becoming reserved and socialising little.His musical career began at age 7, when he started taking piano lessons. He did not enjoy the experience and after joining Acton County Grammar School aged 11, switched to the trumpet, moving to the French horn when he joined the Middlesex Schools Orchestra. He met Pete Townshend in the second year of school, and the two formed a trad jazz band, the Confederates. The group only played one gig together, before they decided that rock and roll was a more attractive prospect. Entwistle, in particular, was having difficulty hearing his trumpet with rock bands, and decided to switch to playing guitar, but due to his large fingers, and also his fondness for the low guitar tones of Duane Eddy, he decided to take up the bass guitar instead. He made his own instrument at home, and soon attracted the attention of Roger Daltrey, who had been in the year above Entwistle at Acton County, but had been expelled and was working as an electrician's mate. Daltrey was aware of Entwistle from school, and asked him to join as a bassist for his band, the Detours.
Career
The Who
After joining the Detours, Entwistle played a major role in encouraging Pete Townshend's budding talent on the guitar, and insisting that Townshend be admitted into the band as well. At this point the band consisted of Entwistle, Townshend and drummer Doug Sandom, a semi-professional player who was several years older than the others. Daltrey relinquished the role of guitarist to Townshend in 1963, instead becoming the frontman and lead vocalist.The band considered several changes of name, finally settling on the name the Who while Entwistle was still working as a tax clerk. When the band decided that the blond Daltrey needed to stand out more from the others, Entwistle dyed his naturally light brown hair black, and it remained so until the early 1980s. Around 1963, Entwistle played in a London band called the Initials for a short while; the band broke-up when a planned resident engagement in Spain fell through.
Entwistle picked up two nicknames during his career as a musician. He was nicknamed "the Ox" because of his strong constitution and seeming ability to "eat, drink or do more than the rest of them". He was also later nicknamed "Thunderfingers". Bill Wyman, bassist for the Rolling Stones, described him as "the quietest man in private but the loudest man on stage". Entwistle was one of the first to make use of Marshall Stacks in an attempt to hear himself over the noise of his band members, who famously leapt and moved about on the stage, with Townshend and Keith Moon smashing their instruments on numerous occasions. Townshend later remarked that Entwistle started using Marshall amplification to hear himself over Moon's rapid-fire drumming style, and Townshend himself also had to use them just to be heard over Entwistle. They both continued expanding and experimenting with their rigs, until they were both using twin stacks with new experimental prototype 200 watt amps, at a time when most bands used 50–100 watt amplifiers with single cabinets. All of this quickly gained the Who a reputation for being "the loudest band on the planet"; they reached 126 decibels at a 1976 concert in London, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest rock concert in history.
The band had a strong influence at the time on their contemporaries' choice of equipment, with Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience both following suit. Although they pioneered and directly contributed to the development of the "classic" Marshall sound, they only used Marshall equipment for a few years. Entwistle eventually switched to using a Sound City rig, with Townshend later following suit. Townshend said that Jimi Hendrix, their new label mate, was influenced beyond just the band's volume. Both Entwistle and Townshend had begun experimenting with feedback from the amplifiers in the mid-1960s, and Hendrix did not begin destroying his instruments until after he had witnessed the Who's "auto-destructive art".
File:John Entwistle in 1967 with The Who.jpg|thumb|Entwistle backstage before a gig at Friedrich-Ebert-Halle in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 1967|alt=
Entwistle's wry and sometimes dark sense of humour clashed at times with Townshend's more introspective, intellectual work. Although he wrote songs on every Who studio album except for Quadrophenia, Entwistle was frustrated at Daltrey not allowing him to sing them himself. As he said, "I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them." This was a large part of the reason that he became the first member of the band to release a solo studio album, Smash Your Head Against the Wall, which featured contributions from Keith Moon, Jerry Shirley of Humble Pie, Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes and the Who's roadie, Dave "Cyrano" Langston.
Entwistle was the only member of the band to have had formal musical training. In addition to the bass guitar, he contributed backing vocals and performed the French horn, trumpet, piano, bugle, and Jew's harp, and on some occasions he sang the lead vocals on his compositions. He layered several horns to create the brass section as heard on songs such as "5:15", among others, while recording the Who's studio albums, and for concerts, arranged a horn section to perform with the band.
File:John Entwisle.jpg|thumb|left|Entwistle performing with the Who at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1976
While Entwistle was known for being the quietest member of the Who, he in fact often exerted major influences on the rest of the band. For instance, Entwistle was the first member of the band to wear a Union Jack waistcoat. This piece of clothing later became one of Townshend's signature garments.
In 1974, he compiled Odds & Sods, a collection of unreleased Who material. Entwistle designed the cover art for the band's seventh studio album, The Who by Numbers, and in a 1996 interview remarked that it had cost £30 to create, while the Quadrophenia cover, designed by Pete Townshend, had cost £16,000.
Entwistle also experimented throughout his career with 'bi-amping', where the high and low ends of the bass guitar are sent through separate signal paths, allowing for more control over the output. At one point his rig became so loaded down with speaker cabinets and processing gear that it was dubbed "little Manhattan", in reference to the towering, skyscraper-like stacks, racks and blinking lights.
Songwriting
While Townshend emerged as the Who's songwriter-in-chief, Entwistle began making distinctive contributions to the band's catalogue, beginning with "Whiskey Man" and "Boris the Spider" on the band's second studio album A Quick One, continuing with "Doctor, Doctor" and "Someone's Coming" ; "Silas Stingy", "Heinz Baked Beans" and "Medac" from the band's third studio album The Who Sell Out ; "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" ; and "Heaven and Hell", with which the Who opened their live shows between 1968 and 1970.Entwistle wrote "Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About" for the Who's fourth studio album Tommy because Townshend had specifically requested Entwistle to write 'nasty songs' that he felt uncomfortable with. "My Wife", Entwistle's driving, comedic song about marital strife from the band's fifth studio album Who's Next, also became a popular stage number. He wrote "Success Story" for The Who by Numbers, for which he also drew the illustration on the album cover; "Had Enough", "905", and "Trick of the Light" for Who Are You ; "The Quiet One" and "You" for Face Dances ; and "It's Your Turn", "Dangerous" and "One at a Time" for It's Hard, his final studio album with the Who.
Other work
Solo career
1970s
In May 1971, Entwistle became the first member of the band to release a solo studio album, Smash Your Head Against the Wall, which was born out of Entwistle's frustrations within the band, namely not having as many of his songs featured on their albums as he would've liked, and it features a guest appearance by the Who's drummer Keith Moon on one track, as well as strong musical influences from the band's work.Entwistle self-produced the album and it was recorded at Trident Studios in Soho, London over 2 weeks, with a young Roy Thomas Baker engineering the album. Baker would later become known for his work as a producer for the rock band Queen, and the same studio piano that was used by Entwistle during the sessions for this album was later used by Freddie Mercury on "Bohemian Rhapsody". The album peaked at No. 126 on the US Billboard 200 but it failed to chart in his home country.
In November 1972, Entwistle released his second solo studio album Whistle Rymes. Entwistle co-produced the album with John Alcock, his first work with a producer after self-producing his debut studio album, Smash Your Head Against the Wall, and it was recorded at Island Studios in West London's Notting Hill district. The album features guitar contributions from both Peter Frampton of Humble Pie and Jimmy McCulloch.
The album sold around 175,000 copies, and peaked at No. 138 on the US Billboard 200 but as with his debut studio album it failed to chart in his home country.
In May 1973, released his third solo studio album Rigor Mortis Sets In, the second studio album to be co-produced by Entwistle and John Alcock, it consists of two 1950s rock and roll cover versions, one 1960s cover, a new version of the Entwistle song "My Wife" from the Who's fifth studio album Who's Next, and new tracks. Rigor Mortis Sets In set in motion Entwistle assembling his own touring band during the increasing periods of the Who's inactivity.
Bearing the dedication "In Loving Memory of Rock 'n' Roll 1950–∞: Never Really Passed Away Just Ran Out of Time", Entwistle's affection for 1950s rock and roll was evident by cover versions of Elvis Presley's 1953 song "Hound Dog", and Little Richard's 1957 song "Lucille". As George Lucas had released American Graffiti at the same time as Rigor Mortis Sets In was released, creating a huge market for 1950s nostalgia, Entwistle's timing was uncannily prescient. In Entwistle's original material for the album, light whimsy prevailed over the darker vein of Smash Your Head Against the Wall and Whistle Rymes. The album was completed in less than three weeks, ultimately costing $10,000 in studio time and $4,000 on liquor bills.
Rigor Mortis Sets In had a rough launch due to its title and cover art. BBC Radio refused to play the album and banned it, ironically in part due to the influence of disc jockey Jimmy Savile who had just suffered a death in his family. The album's US debut was problematic for MCA Records, who insisted on appending the artist's name to the title, out of concern that the album's sales would be weak without the Entwistle name in the title. It peaked at No. 174 on the US Billboard 200.
In February 1975, Entwistle released his fourth solo studio album Mad Dog. It was his last solo studio album for six years, and the debut and sole studio album by his band John Entwistle's Ox. Mad Dog didn't generate much interest, either in sales or among fans, in what sounded like and is often referred as to by fans as "the son of Rigor Mortis".
The song "Cell Number 7", detailed the Who's then recent brush with Canadian justice in 1974 after a hotel wrecking spree in Montreal while on their Quadrophenia tour.