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The Who’s who of bass players dies
A concert by The Who always looked like a death match for attention fought by a trio of psychopaths. Pete Townshend would windmill-strum, then shatter his guitar into splinters. Roger Daltrey strutted and tossed his microphone in whirling, look-at-me arcs. Keith Moon flailed on his drum kit, which he’d occasionally douse with water for splashy visual effect, or — on one memorable occasion in 1967 —load up with explosives and detonate.
But then there was John Entwistle. At a glance, it seemed that The Who’s implacable bass player, who died Thursday, June 27, at the age of 57, had opted out of this spotlight melee. He stood as inert as plywood, his head turned slightly to keep an eye on the pandemonium, his bass strapped to his shoulder as firmly as a shingle. He was impervious to chaos, a bystander at a five-car pileup staring at the crushed metal and ignoring the sirens. He seemed more like a maitre d’ than a rocker.
Unless you closed your eyes. Then you realized that Entwistle actually was at brawling with his band mates. It’s just that his efforts at one-upmanship began and ended with his fingers and the fleet, fluid notes he pounded from his bass. Entwistle ran riot on his instrument in a way that few rock bassists have ever tried. Before him, bass players were self-effacing and minimal. They filled the low end of the audio spectrum, added accents, kept the beat and minded their own business.
Entwistle could get spare when necessary, but for all of his stoic airs, he had the soul of a showoff. “The role of the lead guitarist was the most glamorous to me,” he once said. But he preferred the sound of a bass, and he lucked into a band with a guitarist perennially insecure about his own abilities as a lead player. If any other act had written My Generation, there’d have been a blazing guitar solo in the middle. Instead, Entwistle’s bass tumbles through the stops of that 1965 anthem, probably the most famous bass break in rock history.
He died of a heart attack at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, just a day before The Who were slated to start a new tour. Townshend and Daltrey announced, the next day, that the shows would go on as scheduled as of coming Monday.
The group didn’t say who would face the formidable task of filling Entwistle’s role onstage. A brief news release signed by the band’s manager, Bill Curbishley, said: “Both Daltrey and Townshend view the tour as a ‘tribute to John Entwistle,’ and to the loss of an irreplaceable friend. The Entwistle family is in full support of the decision to continue and feel this is what John would have wanted.”
Having lost Keith Moon to a drug overdose in 1978, the group is now left with just two members of its original lineup. The passing of Entwistle also stills the other half of a rhythm section as musically volatile and imaginative as any that rock has produced.
Known as Ox to friends, Entwistle was one of those rare musicians more admired than imitated, if only because re-creating his polychromatic style was too tricky. Every once in a while, you’ll hear bass guitar runs that burble in melodic and diffuse directions and realize that somebody has been studying the album Who’s Next. Listen to the Cars hit Bye Bye Love, for instance — it’s almost a homage.
Mostly, though, his contribution was in elevating the idea of what the bass could do, the role that it could play; he pushed it to the front of the stage and the front of the mix. This wasn’t a single-handed accomplishment. Paul McCartney helped, as did Jack Bruce of Cream, James Jamerson of Motown, as well as Brian Wilson, whose bass lines for the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds seem to broaden the very vocabulary of pop. Entwistle was perhaps the most unbridled of the bunch. Later bands such as the Jam and the Minutemen didn’t crib specific passages from him so much as embrace his expanded view of the instrument and apply it to their sound.
Entwistle’s relationship with Daltrey, Moon and Townshend was rocky, to say the least. He said that at one point in the late ‘60s, he quit The Who every two weeks, and he nearly accepted Jimi Hendrix’s invitation to play with him, full time. “I had to say no because it was a good week with The Who,” he quipped. He had a variation of George Harrison’s problem: He’d write songs, a few of which would make The Who’s albums — Boris the Spider, Heaven and Hell and My Wife, for example,” were all his — but most of his compositions were passed over. He claimed, unconvincingly, that he didn’t really mind, for a reason that startles: “I never really wanted The Who to do more of my songs because I thought at the time they would mess them up,” he says in the liner notes to a Rhino Records compilation of his solo work.
Even his best material, however, paled next to the music of Townshend, one of pop’s greatest and most ambitious songwriters. In 1971, Entwistle became the first member of The Who to release a solo album, Smash Your Head Against the Wall, an apparent reflection of his growing frustratiotion with second-fiddle status. Unburdened by The Who, Entwistle’s mordant humor shone through in songs, as did a theatrical bent that led him to sing as other characters — often unsympathetic ones. Apron Strings, from 1972’s Whistle Rymes, for instance, is sung by a guy who selfishly complains that his mother’s death is going to make his life harder. The Window Shopper, from the same album, is a confession by an unrepentant peeping Tom. Offstage as well as on, he was sedate and retiring by The Who’s standards. You can watch The Kids Are Alright, a 1979 documentary about the band, and emerge without a clue about the guy’s personality or passions, aside from his affection for a sprawling collection of instruments. He spent his down time fishing, or drawing, or collecting Star Trek tapes and brass instruments and hanging around the nine dogs he kept at one time on his property.
Given the circumstances, he seemed like a pretty ordinary guy — at least before the lights went down and The Who began to rumble. Then, gentlemanly appearances to the contrary, he didn’t so much play as pillage, invading songs one melodic bar at a time, with elegant riffs that ran curlicues around vocal melodies. On the classic Bargain, for instance, Entwistle gradually wrests control of the tune, and by the time Townshend sings “I know I’m nothing without you,” Entwistle is in full mesmerizing gear.
He threw elbows, in his own quiet way, without ever punishing the songs or trying to dazzle for the sake of dazzling. He’ll be remembered for doing something that seems impossible: anchoring The Who and shoving them into overdrive at the very same time. —Dawn/The Washington Post
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