Gary James' Interview With The Who's Bassist
John Entwistle
NEW! Audio Excerpt Below
Hear an audio snippet of John Entwistle speaking with Gary James
It may be hard to believe, but "Tommy", the Rock Opera, is twenty-five years old. In support of that anniversary, Buena Vista Home Video recently released The Who's Tommy, the Amazing Journey which chronicles the rise and long standing popularity of "Tommy".
We are proud to present an exclusive interview with John Entwistle, bassist for The Who. And we do mean exclusive, since John Entwistle gave only three interviews promoting this video; one to United Press International (U.P.I.); one to C.B.S. Radio, and one to Gary James.
Q - John, besides promoting this video, what are you doing in the U.S.?
A - I'm taking a break in the middle of Roger's (Daltry) tour. Two concerts at Carnegie Hall and we're actually taking that show out on the road. You're talking about fifteen gigs so far.
Q - Are you considered a Special Guest on this tour? Are you doing all the dates?
A - Well, I'm doing all the dates, but I didn't actually come on until the second half of the show, after a twenty minute break. There's another bass player and I take over from him, and perform a couple of my songs. I stand on stage and we do a selection of stuff from "Quadrophenia", and few other songs.
Q - You didn't start out playing bass, but trumpet. I'm just wondering how difficult is it to make that transition from trumpet to bass?
A - Well, I started off on piano when I was six, and then went on to the trumpet when I was eleven, and French Horn. It's not such a difficult transition once you've got a musical sort of background to work from. I more or less taught myself to play the bass, by playing along with Duane Eddy records and any Rock records I could get hold of. The most difficult transition was stopping being a soloist on trumpet and French Horn and becoming a background sort of bass player. I didn't particularly like that role, so I said I'll have to change that.
Q - Didn't you put out some kind of instructional video on how to play bass guitar?
A - I did, yes. It's kind of an instruction video. It's done like this video here. I just play along with another guitarist. The guitarist asks me questions and I'm sure I could do a much better video than I've done so far.
Q - When you really come right down to it, isn't the ability to play an instrument well, a God given talent? Can you really teach someone?
A - That depends on how good you want to play it. Any one can play the bass to a certain extent. The God given part is being able to make bass lines that stay in people's memory and people copy.
Q - Can you believe that it's been twenty-five years since "Tommy" and the Woodstock Festival? Has the time gone by rather fast for you?
A - Yes, rather fast. I don't feel any difference in myself.
Q - Is there still a Who?
A - Well, there's still me and Roger, yeah.
Q - Having been part of a group like The Who that went all the way to the top in the music business, what is there at this stage of the game that still gets you excited about performing?
A - Well, I keep playing and I'm actually better than I was last week. As long as I feel like that, I want to keep on playing, whether it's with The Who or with my own band or any capacity. I'll play at the opening of an envelope. Any chance I get to jump up on stage and jam with a band, I'll do it. But, I think if I felt I wasn't as good as I was the year before, then I'd probably think about stopping playing. I'm just getting better. I can't see any reason for me to slow down or stop or even think about stopping.
Q - Did it ever bother you that maybe Roger Daltrey or Pete Townshend would get more attention than you would?
A - It did at first, but I got used to it. It was probably the same with most bass players unless they sang.
Q - Were you to The Who, what Bill Wyman was to The Stones, that rock solid guy who could always be counted on?
A - (laughs) They couldn't always depend on me. I did have an occasional drink, or two. Yeah, the only difference between myself and Bill, well there's a lot of differences actually. The only difference was I wrote some of the stuff for The Who. Bill was just the bass player. I mean, we're kind of different, but we kind of had the same image I guess. I don't think I was quite as standstill and reliable as Bill was, you know.
Q - Did The Who ever play the Hamburg, Germany club circuit like The Beatles did?
A - No. We managed to escape from that. The main sort of breeding ground for the Hamburg bands was Liverpool. As we weren't from Liverpool, we didn't actually get into that. They didn't start taking London groups over there till later... after we'd made our first album. We played the London circuit, up and down England.
Q - What was it like to be in a band in England in the early '60s?
A - You'd drive to the gig, usually in a van, with the equipment in the back. You'd get to a club or a dance hall and you'd play for, I guess three and a half or four hours, pack up your equipment and travel the way home, and do the same thing the next day.
Q - You did that what, six days a week?
A - Yeah. Most of this was very, very close places, because most of the people went to work during the day. I'd work in the tax office all day and then go and do the gig at night.
Q - When The Who were first starting out, did you get the girls screaming for you like the other groups did?
A - For a very short period of time, yeah. We didn't like it 'cause it got in the way of the music, so we kind of set about trying to stop them from screaming by changing the words of the song to something rude. There was actually a time when we threw tampons at them, to shut 'em up, to shock 'em. (laughs).
Q - That's probably why The Who got the reputation of being a very loud group, to silence the screaming fans.
A - Yeah, that was the idea. We supported The Beatles a couple of times.
Q - In England?
A - Yeah, in a place up north called Blackpool, which is like a holiday resort for people who live up north. We played there just after they did A Hard Day's Night. I think we decided to get loud from way before then, but we were offstage laughing because the words they were singing weren't the words to the song. It's basically just abuse, most of the time at the audience. The audience was just screaming. They couldn't hear the words, so they just sang anything they wanted to.
Q - Did you actually make out what they were singing?
A - Yeah, 'cause we were in the dressing room, and all we could hear were the house microphones.
Q - So, give me an example of what they were singing.
A - Basically "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "I Want to Hold Your Something Else."
Q - That leaves a lot to the imagination.
A - Yeah, but the audience didn't know. We decided we didn't want to be like that. We didn't want all the screaming stuff. We managed to get out of it pretty quickly.
Q - Why do you think The Who became so popular? You outlasted a lot of your contemporaries.
A - Well, I mean the thing about The Who was we could actually play very well. We're all very good at our instruments. We kept getting better. I think the reason audiences came back, was that no two Who concerts were ever the same. We'd play the same songs, we'd play the same stuff. Some of our gigs were tragically lousy. Others were absolutely brilliant. The audience would keep coming back for more to see if they could see a better show than the last time.
Q - And announcing to the world in 1968 that The Who was writing a Rock Opera was certainly different, wasn't it?
A - We started off by doing a mini-opera on one of our earlier albums. Pete was kind of averse to writing a set of songs that told a story, at first. Once he got the first mini-opera which was called "A Quick One" and then a second one called "Ray L", he started getting into the idea. The actual term opera kind of put me off. I preferred to think of it as a concept album that told a story rather than an opera, which seems very high brow, snobby.
Q - Do you live in this country?
A - I do half of the year, yeah. I've got a house in Los Angeles and I've got a house in England as well. I spend most of my time in England.
Q - When you're not on the road, is there a set schedule you follow? What is a typical day for John Entwistle like? What do you do with yourself?
A - It depends on what sort of projects I'm working on. I'm working on a book at the moment. I've got a series of lithograph cartoons coming out pretty soon. I've got a solo album coming out that I've got to write, so I usually wake up at 12 o'clock if I'm lucky and get underway a project I'm doing. I watch TV to relax afterwards.
Q - And there's plenty of TV to watch with cable.
A - Well, I've got a couple of satellites in England. We don't get cable there at the moment.
Q - This book you're working on, is that your autobiography?
A - Yeah. It's not a serious one. It's supposed to be a funny one, the funny things that happened to us while we were on tour. It's probably gonna be a trilogy. The first one will probably drop at the end of the Herman's Hermits Tour. The next one will drop at Woodstock. The next will probably go up to 1978. So it'll stop there when Keith died.
Q - Who's going to be publishing this book?
A - I haven't really decided yet. I've been approached by quite a few different people. It's coming out all over the world.
Q - Maybe we'll talk again about what's in the book, because it just seems to me that The Who were in the right place at the right time, and know the right people and your story is quite interesting.
A - It wasn't really knowing the right people. It was being as good as we were. We never got anywhere without playing there first. It was kind of like once the audience went around and told their friends about us, and their friends came back, that's kind of how The Who built their selves up.
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