John Alec Entwistle (9 October 1944 – 27 June 2002) was an English musician, songwriter, singer, film and music producer, who was best known as the bass guitarist for English rock band The Who.

He was the only member of the band to have formal musical training. His aggressive lead sound influenced many rock bass players. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who in 1990.

Associated acts

Ringo Starr
Alice Cooper
Roger Daltrey
Pete Townshend
Cozy Powell
Billy Preston

John Entwistle's instrumental approach used pentatonic lead lines, and a then-unusual treble-rich sound ("full treble, full volume") created byroundwound Roto Sound steel bass strings. He was nicknamed "The Ox", as well as "Thunderfingers" – because his digits became a blur across the four-string fretboard. In 2011, a Rolling Stone reader poll selected him as the greatest bassist of all time. The Biography Channel has declared that John Entwistle is considered by many to be the best bass guitarist that ever lived, and that it is often said that he did for the bass what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar.

Early life

Entwistle was born on 9 October 1944 in Chiswick, a suburb of London. He was an only child. His father, Herbert, played trumpet and his mother, Queenie Maud (29 November 1922 – 4 March 2011), played piano. His parents' marriage failed soon after he was born, and he was mostly raised by his grandparents in South Acton. Divorce was uncommon in the 1940s, and this contributed to Entwistle becoming reserved and socialising little.

His musical career began aged 7, when he started piano lessons. He did not enjoy the experience and after joining Acton County Grammar School aged 11, switched to the trumpet, moving to French horn when he joined the Middlesex School's Symphony 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 'n' roll was a more attractive prospect. Entwistle, in particular, was having difficulty hearing his trumpet with bands, and decided to switch to playing guitar. However, due to his large fingers, and also his fondness for the low guitar tones of Duane Eddy, he decided to take up the bass. He made his own instrument at home, and soon attracted the attention ofRoger Daltrey, who had been the year above Entwistle at Acton County, but had since left to work in sheet metal. Daltrey was aware of Entwistle's reputation and asked him to join as bassist for his band, The Detours.

Early career

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. Eventually, Roger Daltrey fired all the members of his band with the exception of Entwistle, Townshend and the drummer, Doug Sandom, although in Sandom's case it was only because he had not yet found a drummer with sufficient talent to replace him. Upon the entry of Keith Moon to the band, Roger Daltrey relinquished the role of guitarist to Pete Townshend, instead becoming frontman and lead singer. The band considered several changes of name, temporarily performing as the High Numbers, and finally settling on the name The Who while Entwistle was still working as a tax clerk.[12] When the band decided that the blond Roger Daltrey needed to stand out more from the others, Entwistle dyed his naturally golden hair black, and it remained so until the early 1980s.

Around 1963, John Entwistle played in a London band called The Initials for a short while; the band split when a planned resident engagement in Spain fell through.

In 1967, Entwistle married his childhood sweetheart Alison Wise and bought a large semi-detached home in Acton, filling it with all sorts of extraordinary artefacts, ranging from suits of armour to a tarantula spider. His eccentricity and taste for the bizarre was to remain with him throughout his life, and when he finally moved out of the city in 1978, to Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire, his 17-bedroom mansion, Quarwood, resembled a museum. It also housed one of the largest guitar collections belonging to any rock musician.

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 bandmates, who famously leapt and moved about on the stage, with Pete Townshend and Keith Moon smashing their instruments on numerous occasions. (Moon even employed explosives in his drum kit during one memorable television performance.) Townshend later remarked that Entwistle started using Marshall amplification to hear himself over drummer Keith 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.

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 (at this point their equipment was being built/tweaked to their personal specifications), they would only use Marshall equipment for a couple of years. Entwistle eventually switched to using a Sound City rig, with Pete Townshend following suit later as well. Townshend points out 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".

John Entwistle's wry and sometimes dark sense of humour clashed at times with Pete Townshend's more introspective work. Though he continued to contribute material to all of The Who's albums, with the exception of Quadrophenia, he was frustrated by having to relinquish the position of vocalist to Roger Daltrey. As he said, "I got a couple (of songs) on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them."[13] This was a large part of the reason that he became the first member of the band to release a solo record, Smash Your Head Against the Wall (1971) with help from Keith Moon, Jerry Shirley, Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes and The Who's Roadie Dave "Cyrano" Langston.

He was the only member of the band to have had formal musical training. In addition to bass guitar, he contributed backing vocals and performed on the French horn (heard on "Pictures of Lily"), trumpet, bugle, and jaw harp, and on some occasions lead vocalist 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.

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 would be the first member of the band to wear a Union Jack waistcoat. This piece of clothing would later become one of Pete Townshend's signature garments.

Entwistle also experimented throughout his career with "Bi-amping," where the high and low ends of the bass sound are sent through separate signal paths, allowing for more control over the output. At one point his rig became so loaded with speaker cabinets and processing gear that it was dubbed "Little Manhattan," in reference to the towering, skyscraper-like stacks, racks and blinking lights.

His "full treble, full volume" approach to his bass sound was originally supposed to be captured in the bass solo to "My Generation".

Solo career

In 1971 Entwistle became the first member to release a solo album, Smash Your Head Against the Wall, which earned him a cult following in the US for fans of his brand of black humour. Other solo studio albums followed:Whistle Rymes (1972), Rigor Mortis Sets In (1973), Mad Dog (1975), Too Late the Hero (1981) and The Rock (1996). In 1974, he compiled Odds & Sods, a collection of unreleased Who material and, with The Who resting in 1975, went out on the road with his own band, Ox. He also fronted the John Entwistle Band on US club tours during the 1990s, and appeared with Ringo Starr's All Starr Band in 1995. A talented artist, John Entwistle held regular exhibitions of his paintings, many of them featuring The Who.

Late career

In 1990 Entwistle toured with The Best, a short-lived supergroup which included Keith Emerson, Joe Walsh, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Simon Phillips. Towards the end of his career, he formed The John Entwistle Project with longtime friend, drummer Steve Luongo, and guitarist Mark Hitt, both formerly of Rat Race Choir. This evolved into "The John Entwistle Band", with Godfrey Townsend replacing Mark Hitt on guitar and taking over lead vocals.

In 1996, the band went on the "Left for Dead" tour with Alan St. Jon joining on keyboards. After Entwistle toured with The Who for Quadrophenia in 1996–97, the John Entwistle Band set off on the "Left for Dead – the Sequel" tour in late 1998, now with Gordon Cotten on keyboards. After this second venture, the band released an album of highlights from the tour, called Left for Live. In 1995 Entwistle also toured and recorded with Ringo Starr in one of the incarnations of Ringo's All-Starr Band. This one also featured Billy Preston, Randy Bachman, and Mark Farner. In this ensemble, he played and sang "Boris the Spider" as his Who showpiece, along with "My Wife".

Toward the end of his career he used a Status Graphite Buzzard Bass, which he designed. From 1999 to early 2002, he played as part of The Who. As a side project, he played bass in a country-rock album project of original songs called The Pioneers, with Mickey Wynne on lead guitar, Ron Magness on rhythm guitar and keyboards, Roy Michaels, Andre Beeka on vocals and John Delgado playing drums. The album was released on Voiceprint Records. Shortly before his death, John Entwistle had agreed to play some US dates with the band including Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, following his final upcoming tour with The Who.

In 2001 he played in Alan Parsons' Beatles tribute show A Walk Down Abbey Road. The show also featured Ann Wilsonof Heart, Todd Rundgren, David Pack of Ambrosia, Godfrey Townsend, Steve Luongo, and John Beck. That year he also played with The Who at The Concert for New York City. He also joined forces again with The John Entwistle Band for an 8-gig tour. This time Chris Clark played keyboards. In January–February 2002 John Entwistle played his last concerts with The Who in a handful of dates in England, the last being on 8 February at London's Royal Albert Hall. In late 2002, an expanded 2-CD Left for Live Deluxe was released, highlighting the John Entwistle Band performances.

Death

John Entwistle died in hotel room 658 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on 27 June 2002, one day before the scheduled first show of The Who's 2002 United States tour. He had gone to bed that night with a stripper/groupie, Alycen Rowse, who woke at 10  a.m. to find Entwistle cold and unresponsive. The Clark County medical examiner determined that death was due to a heart attack induced by cocaine. His funeral was held at St Edward's Church in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England, on 10 July 2002. He was cremated and his ashes were buried privately. A memorial service was held on 24 October at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London. Entwistle's enormous collection of guitars and basses was auctioned at Sotheby's in London by his son, Christopher, to meet anticipated dutieson his father's estate.

On Pete Townshend's Web site, Townshend and Roger Daltrey published a tribute, saying, "The Ox has left the building — we've lost another great friend. Thanks for your support and love. Pete and Roger."

Entwistle's mansion in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds and a number of his personal effects were later sold off to meet the demands of the Inland Revenue; ironically, John Entwistle worked for the agency in 1962–1963 as a Tax Officer before being demoted to filing clerk, prior to joining The Who.

One aspect of John Entwistle's life emerged after his death that came as a surprise even to those closest to him, including the members of The Who. "It wasn't until the day of his funeral that I discovered that he'd spent most of his life as a Freemason", said Pete Townshend.

Welsh-born bassist Pino Palladino, who had previously played on several of Townshend's solo records, took over for John Entwistle on stage when The Who resumed their postponed United States tour on 1 July 2002. 

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey spoke at length about their reaction to John Entwistle's death. Some of their comments can be found onThe Who Live in Boston DVD. On the opening night of their Vapor Trails tour, which began in Hartford, Connecticut on 28 June 2002 (the night after Entwistle's death), Geddy Lee of Rush dedicated the band's performance of the song "Between Sun and Moon" to John Entwistle.

Oasis played a version of "My Generation" during their set at T in the Park on Saturday 13 July 2002 as a tribute to John Entwistle.

Technique

John Entwistle's playing technique incorporated fingers, plectrum, tapping, and the use of harmonics. He would change his style between songs and even during songs to alter the sound he produced. His fingering technique involved pressing down on the string hard and releasing it to produce a trebly, twangy sound. Note, however, that he would change his thumb position from pick-up to the E string and occasionally even positioning his thumb near the pick-up. His plectrum technique involved holding the plectrum between his thumb and forefinger, with the rest of his fingers outstretched for balance.

Entwistle's playing style was rarely captured well in the studio. He was better heard in concert, where he and Pete Townshend frequently exchanged roles, with Entwistle providing rapid melodic lines and Townshend anchoring the song with rhythmic chord work. Indeed, Townshend noted that Entwistle provided the rhythmic timekeeping in the band, fulfilling the role of the drummer. Keith Moon, on the other hand, with all his flourishes around the kit, was more like a keyboard player. In 1989, Entwistle pointed out that, by modern standards, "The Who haven't got a proper bass player."

Entwistle also developed what he called a "typewriter" approach to playing the bass. It involved positioning his right hand over the strings so all four fingers could be used to tap percussively on the strings, causing them to strike the fretboard with a distinctive twangy sound. This gave him the ability to play three or four strings at once, or to use several fingers on a single string. It allowed him to create passages that were both percussive and melodic.

This method is unique and should not be confused with the hammer-on tapping techniques of Eddie Van Halen and Stu Hamm, or the slapping technique of Larry Graham, and in fact pre-dates these other techniques. However, modern players such as Ryan Martinie use similar techniques. A demonstration of this approach to bass playing can be seen on a video called John Entwistle – Master Class, part of Arlen Roth's Hot Licks instructional series, as well as Mike Gordon's film, Rising Low, where Entwistle can be seen frequently using his fore, middle, and ring fingers of his right hand when playing. This allowed him to create "clusters of notes" in his bass lines, as well as play triplets with relative simplicity. Notable in his left-hand technique was his use of slides, positioning his left hand for octaves, and his use of the pentatonicwhen playing with The Who.

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 A Quick One album in 1966, continuing with "Doctor, Doctor" and "Someone's Coming" (1967); "Silas Stingy" from The Who Sell Out (1967); "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" (1968); and "Heaven And Hell", with which The Who opened their formidable live shows between 1968 and 1970. John Entwistle wrote "Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About" for The Who's 1969 album Tommy because Pete Townshend specifically requested Entwistle to write 'nasty songs' that he felt uncomfortable with. "My Wife", Entwistle's driving, comedic song about marital strife from 1971′s Who's Next, also became a popular stage number. He wrote "Success Story" for The Who By Numbers (1975), for which he also drew the illustration on the album cover; "Had Enough", "905", and "Trick of the Light" for Who Are You (1978); "The Quiet One" and "You" for Face Dances (1981); and "It's Your Turn", "Dangerous" and "One at a Time" for It's Hard (1982), his final album with The Who.

Artistic background

Between 1996 and 2002, Entwistle attended dozens of art openings in his honour. Always gracious, he took the time to chat with each collector, personalising their art with a quote and a sketch of "Boris". In the spring of 2002 John Entwistle finished what was his last drawing. "Eyes Wide Shut" represented a new style for Entwistle. Featuring Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, John Entwistle's style had evolved from simple line drawings and caricatures to a more lifelike representation of his subjects. He was more confident and relaxed with his art and ready to share that with his collectors.

John Entwistle wrote this on one of his pictures:

"Now...! I'm still the Bass Guitarist. If you're reading this Bio at a show – don't forget to wave – I'm the one on the left. If you're reading this at an Art Show – Help support a starving Artist BUY SOMETHING!"

Influence

John Entwistle identified his influences as a combination of his school training on French horn, trumpet, and piano (giving his fingers strength and dexterity). Musicians who influenced him included rock & roll guitarists Duane Eddy and Gene Vincent, and American soul and R&B bassists such as James Jamerson. In turn, Entwistle has been a considerable influence on the playing styles and sounds used by generations of bass players that have followed him, including Geezer Butler, Steve Harris, Matt Freeman, Krist Novoselic, Cliff Burton, Ian Hill, Geddy Lee, Billy Sheehan, Victor Wooten, Tom Petersson, Sam Rivers, and Chris Squire. Entwistle continues to top 'best ever bass player' polls in musicians magazines. In 2000, Guitar magazine named him "Bassist of the Millennium" in a readers' poll. J. D. Considine ranked Entwistle No. 9 on his list of "Top 50 Bass Players". 

He was named the second best bassist on Creem Magazine's 1974 Reader Poll Results. 

In 2011, a Rolling Stone reader poll selected him as the No.1 bassist of all time.

Equipment

See also: The Who's musical equipment

Discography

• Smash Your Head Against the Wall (1971)
• Whistle Rymes (1972)
• Rigor Mortis Sets In (1973)
• Mad Dog (1975)
• Too Late the Hero (1981)
• The Rock (1996)
• Music from Van Pires (1997)