John Entwistle

[vbance]

So may find this interesting

 

 

[King Tut]

Was just watching this yesterday!

[Alanko]

The Giltrap geezer keeps knocking John's instruments off the shelves in the storage room.

 

I found the whole video slightly sad. John mumbling and grunting away noncommittally. Giltrap slightly too eager with his poodle mullet and 'I'm mates with John Entwistle, me!' The prospect of John alone in a vast country pile with his fake pub in a spare room and a stack of vintage basses hidden away. Talismanic icons of former glories, the lean and hungry years of The Who now decades past. All the time and money in the world, but nothing to do.

[prowla]

Two blokes having a chat.

Gordon Giltrap's Fear Of The Dark is a great album.

[Beedster]

1 hour ago, Alanko said:

The Giltrap geezer keeps knocking John's instruments off the shelves in the storage room.

 

I found the whole video slightly sad. John mumbling and grunting away noncommittally. Giltrap slightly too eager with his poodle mullet and 'I'm mates with John Entwistle, me!' The prospect of John alone in a vast country pile with his fake pub in a spare room and a stack of vintage basses hidden away. Talismanic icons of former glories, the lean and hungry years of The Who now decades past. All the time and money in the world, but nothing to do.

 

His instructional video is equally rather sad, I watched it the whole way through once and could never do it again. Takes nothing away from what he contributed to music and to the bass in particular, but as you say, a very long way from the glory days...... 

[visog]

He had such a great tone with his Alembics but that Status through a flanger and distortion? Ugh! What a mess.

[Alanko]

45 minutes ago, visog said:

He had such a great tone with his Alembics but that Status through a flanger and distortion? Ugh! What a mess.

I'm guessing he lost all his high frequency hearing by then. The more terrifying thought is that was the tone he wanted back in 1964!

 

The Alembic was strident and cut through everything like a piano. The Status, plus all the rack gear, just seemed to sound slushy and compressed and goes missing in the mix. Probably turned up to infinity to compensate for the lack of presence.

[Grahambythesea]

Didn’t really show us his collection, no dirty bird, no spider alembic and he did seem rather bored. 

[TrevorR]

6 hours ago, prowla said:

Two blokes having a chat.

Gordon Giltrap's Fear Of The Dark is a great album.

One of my all time faves!

[Hellzero]

Good lord, he made the right decision not to become the lead singer... 🤦🏻

[TrevorR]

9 hours ago, Alanko said:

Giltrap slightly too eager with his poodle mullet and 'I'm mates with John Entwistle, me!'

Given his brief will have been “engage John in conversation about his life, career and collection to give us material for an interesting video” and all he got back was monosyllabic or single sentence answers, no wonder he was trying to inject some energy into proceedings and feed him with leading questions. Feel a bit sorry for him trying to drag any kind of response out of Entwistle. I’ve interviewed a few people like that and it’s hard work to get any useful material.

[spongebob]

I watched a fair bit, but it wasn’t a particularly engaging experience. 
 

JE was clearly a fab player (although I’ve never cared for much of his tone bar Live At Leeds), but doesn’t come across as particularly engaged or interested. 
 

It could be me - the band I heard on that live album I could never hear on any of their studio records (bar A Quick One)…leading me to a not particularly favourable opinion of The Who.

 

Who By Numbers is ok, but for me, what followed was pretty shocking - odd good bits - but…..sorry fans! 🫣

[Alanko]

15 minutes ago, TrevorR said:

Given his brief will have been “engage John in conversation about his life, career and collection to give us material for an interesting video” and all he got back was monosyllabic or single sentence answers, no wonder he was trying to inject some energy into proceedings and feed him with leading questions. Feel a bit sorry for him trying to drag any kind of response out of Entwistle. I’ve interviewed a few people like that and it’s hard work to get any useful material.

I've interviewed people like that for jobs!

 

"...and did you receive any positive feedback at the end of the assignment?"

 

"...errr... I did, aye."

 

Pete Townshend seems to be too far the other way, to be fair. Rabbiting away about how Happy Jack was based on an argument he had with his parents about transcendental meditation and the future of live rock music as a multimedia art form or some bollocks like that.

[prowla]

1 hour ago, spongebob said:

I watched a fair bit, but it wasn’t a particularly engaging experience. 
 

JE was clearly a fab player (although I’ve never cared for much of his tone bar Live At Leeds), but doesn’t come across as particularly engaged or interested. 
 

It could be me - the band I heard on that live album I could never hear on any of their studio records (bar A Quick One)…leading me to a not particularly favourable opinion of The Who.

 

Who By Numbers is ok, but for me, what followed was pretty shocking - odd good bits - but…..sorry fans! 🫣

 

I agree about his tone; whilst he's acknowledged as having done great things for the bass as an instrument, the sounds coming out of the instruments don't do much for me.

[silverfoxnik]

11 hours ago, vbance said:

So may find this interesting

 

 

One of the best bass players of all time, IMHO, who was fortunate and/or lucky to be in of the greatest rock bands of all time. 

 

Whatever any of us thinks of his bass tone or his personality, JE's musicianship and place in the history of bass guitaring is assured! 

 

Having said that, he was definitely a bit of a miserable barsteward, but given his very long career and the number of interviews he would have done over that time - plus a very insipid and slightly sycophantic interviewer on this occasion - I'm not surprised it wasn't a great listen or watch.

 

I met him very briefly once in the mid 80s at a Daily Mirror Pop Party in London.. Me and the drummer in the band I was in at the time went up to say hello to him and, despite JE having two semi-naked Page 3 girls fawning all over him (one on either arm) , he still looked and sounded utterly bored, miserable and pissed off... 🤷

 

 

[Cosmo Valdemar]

John is that he always had an extremely dry sense of humour and rarely seemed entirely at ease in interviews, although if you see clips of him talking in the 70s he seems a lot more relaxed and easy-going.

 

By this time his hearing was seriously impaired and having read his biography it seems he found situations like this quite hard work and could appear a bit withdrawn.

 

As for his playing/tone, he always has and always will be the absolute guvnor for me. As much as I adore Chris Squire, Geddy et al, they're all standing on John's shoulders. And it should be noted, he never had the one tone, at least not until his senior years. He changed his sound quite a bit.