John Alec Entwistle was an English musician who was the bassist for the rock band the Who.
49 Facts About John Entwistle
2.
John Entwistle was voted as the greatest bassist ever in a 2011 Rolling Stone readers' poll and, in 2020, the same magazine ranked him number three in its own list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.
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John Alec Entwistle was born on 9 October 1944 in Chiswick, which is part of London.
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John Entwistle's parents' marriage failed soon after he was born, and he was mostly raised by his mother at his grandparents' house in South Acton.
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Divorce was uncommon in the 1940s, and this contributed to John Entwistle becoming reserved and socialising little.
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John Entwistle met Pete Townshend in the second year of school, and the two formed a trad jazz band, the Confederates.
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John Entwistle 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.
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The band considered several changes of name, finally settling on the name the Who while John Entwistle was still working as a tax clerk.
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Around 1963, John 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.
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John Entwistle picked up two nicknames during his career as a musician.
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John Entwistle was nicknamed "The Ox" because of his strong constitution and seeming ability to "eat, drink or do more than the rest of them".
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John 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.
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Townshend later remarked that John Entwistle started using Marshall amplification to hear himself over Moon's rapid-fire drumming style, and Townshend himself had to use them just to be heard over John Entwistle.
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John Entwistle eventually switched to using a Sound City rig, with Townshend later following suit.
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John Entwistle was the only member of the band to have had formal musical training.
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For instance, John Entwistle was the first member of the band to wear a Union Jack waistcoat.
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John Entwistle experimented throughout his career with "Bi-amping", where the high and low ends of the bass are sent through separate signal paths, allowing for more control over the output.
18.
John Entwistle wrote "Cousin Kevin" and "Fiddle About" for the Who's 1969 album Tommy because Townshend had specifically requested John Entwistle to write 'nasty songs' that he felt uncomfortable with.
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In 1971, John 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.
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The band was preoccupied with recording The Who by Numbers during the spring of 1975 and did not do any touring for most of the year, so John Entwistle spent the summer performing solo concerts.
21.
In 1990, John Entwistle toured with the Best, a short-lived supergroup which included Keith Emerson, Joe Walsh, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, and Simon Phillips.
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In 1995, John Entwistle toured and recorded with Ringo Starr in one of the incarnations of Starr's All-Starr Band.
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John Entwistle played at Woodstock '99, along with Mickey Hart, being the only performers there to have taken the stage at the original Woodstock.
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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.
25.
John Entwistle joined forces again with the John Entwistle Band for an 8-gig tour.
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Between 1996 and 2002, John Entwistle attended dozens of art openings in his honour.
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John Entwistle chatted with each collector, personalising their art with a quote and a sketch of "Boris".
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In early 2002, John Entwistle finished what was his last drawing.
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John Entwistle was more confident and relaxed with his art and ready to share that with his collectors.
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John Entwistle bought a large semi-detached home in Stanmore, London, filling it with all sorts of extraordinary artifacts, ranging from suits of armour to a tarantula spider.
31.
John Entwistle died in Room 658 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Paradise, Nevada, on 27 June 2002, one day before the scheduled first show of the Who's 2002 United States tour.
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John Entwistle had gone to bed that night with Alycen Rowse, a local stripper and groupie, who awoke the next morning to find John Entwistle cold and unresponsive.
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John Entwistle already had severe heart disease and usually smoked 20 cigarettes a day.
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John Entwistle had undergone a medical examination for insurance purposes before the Who's 2002 tour started.
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John Entwistle's authorised biographer Paul Rees has suggested that a more detailed physical examination would have revealed that three of his arteries were blocked and necessitated surgery.
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John Entwistle's funeral was held at St Edward's Church in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England, on 10 July 2002.
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John Entwistle's body was cremated and his ashes were buried privately on the grounds of his mansion, Quarwood.
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John Entwistle's playing technique incorporated fingerstyle, plectrum, tapping, and the use of harmonics.
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John Entwistle changed his style between songs and even during songs to alter the sound he produced.
40.
John Entwistle's fingering technique involved plucking strings very forcefully to produce a trebly, twangy sound.
41.
John Entwistle changed his thumb position from pick-up to the E string and occasionally even positioned his thumb near the pick-up.
42.
The Who's studio recordings seldom did justice to John Entwistle's playing, in part because he was better heard in concert, where he and Pete Townshend frequently exchanged roles, with John Entwistle providing rapid melodic lines and Townshend anchoring the song with rhythmic chord work.
43.
John Entwistle developed what he called a "typewriter" approach to playing the bass.
44.
John Entwistle can be seen using this technique in Mike Gordon's 2002 film, Rising Low.
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John Entwistle was notorious for the extremely high volume at which he played bass, going so far as to rig pick-ups to each string on his instruments.
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John Entwistle identified his influences as a combination of his school training on French horn, trumpet, and piano.
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John Entwistle continues to top 'best ever bass player' polls in musicians magazines.
48.
John Entwistle was named the second best rock bassist on Creem Magazine's 1974 Reader Poll Results.
49.
John Entwistle collaborated with bass guitar manufacturers such as Alembic, Warwick, and Status Graphite His bass solo on the "My Generation" single was a Fender Jazz Bass with stock tapewound strings.