MORE ON THE OX: Glenn Reynolds and Orrin Judd were kind enough to link to my early news about John Entwistle’s death, however, I said very little that’s personal in that post. And invariably, when a celebrity dies, the writer feels compelled to mention how that celebrity affected him. It’s seemingly especially important in a Web log!

But I’m always a little reticent to discuss rock music on my blog, for fear that I’ll end up sounding like a bad parody of Creem or Circus magazine (the worst of all possible worlds). And like my father and his endless and authoritative collection of ‘30s through ‘50s Big Band music, I feel like I’ve become stuck in my own musical Mobius loop, as very little of what I hear on the radio these days inspires me to buy new music. And also, there’s a little bit of a Groucho Marx syndrome—since I played and recorded rock music for much of the 1980s, it’s tough to get that excited about a genre that I can actually play! (While I’m primarily a guitarist, I have played bass from time to time, and recently brought my old Fender Precision Bass back to California from my parents’ house to record with. And naturally, I restrung it with Rotosound strings, because that’s the brand that Entwistle helped develop.)

As a teenager, The Who were an exciting band for me. In my pre-teens, I quickly went through both the 1960s’ and the 1970s’ cartoon bands: The Monkees and Kiss (although the Monkees did have good songs, and Mike Nesmith in particular was a talented musician—but that’s an essay for another post). Then, when I was about 12, I figured it might be a good time for me to check out those Beatles fellows—they seemed popular at school (this was the mid-‘70s), and wrote lots of songs I heard on the radio. And I think the TV movie version of Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter aired a couple of times around then. This began my long fascination with 1960s and '70s English rock groups (paralleled by my later interest in late '50s and early '60s cool jazz.)

In 1978, The Who released Who Are You, with its best selling title song, Keith Moon died, and their documentary The Kids Are Alright was playing the midnight movie circuit (back when there was a midnight movie circuit). I wouldn’t see the movie until the early 80s (I think I spent a little high school graduation money on the videotape), but buying the double LP soundtrack and reading the hagiographic liner notes of the accompanying illustrated booklet was definitely a fascinating experience.

These four musicians had fundamentally changed what rock and roll should sound like: Pete Townshend experimented radically, first with feedback and “power chords” on his guitar, and later with song structures far beyond the typical I-IV-V chord progressions and verse/chorus/bridge/solo/verse/chorus progression of most rock songs. His material also forced Roger Daltry to develop into one the great singers in rock. And Daltry's solo albums, unlike Townshend's, have never equalled his best moments with The Who.

Keith Moon of course was the quintessential madman drummer, seemingly never repeating a bar of music that he played.

And Entwistle completely transformed the bass. Having to fill the huge instrumental holes that a power trio typically has, he somehow, intuitively knew that he had to play the bass very differently from its typical background role. He pioneered three key changes in its sound: he plugged it into some of the first Marshall Amplifiers, and then strung it with roundwound, instead of the more traditional flatwound strings. The result was an instrument that was not quite a guitar, but also was far, far removed from the traditional thump thump thump warm thudding background role of the bass. It was now the bass as a bright, distorted, trebly sounding lead instrument. (Paul McCartney was playing some of the first melodic bass playing with the Beatles around the same time, but he still used a very traditional sound. Entwistle’s sound began precisely where Townshend’s distorted SGs and Les Pauls ended, especially live.)

The third major change that Entwistle brought to the bass was a fearless ability to improvise and solo (“Can You See The Real Me” from Quadrophenia
is his classic recorded solo While Townshend bashes out fairly pedestrian chords, Entwistle’s fingers traverse the entire range of his bass’s fretboard—and then some. Few bassists were willing to go as far up their instrument’s neck as Entwistle was). As I said in my previous post, watch any concert footage of the Who, and try to spot the confusion in the cameraman or the director, when he can’t figure out who’s actually soloing—Townshend or Entwistle. There’s something that sounds like an electric guitar, but lower, but it’s certainly not a traditional bass!

I saw The Who live only once—on their first Farewell Tour, in 1983, from the bleachers at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia with several friends from my senior high school class. (Classic rock concert moment: sometime during the afternoon, not too long before The Who went on, an unspeakably stoned teenage girl wandered over to an open spot in our row, sat down, and prominently tossed all of her cookies, and probably all of the cookies of every Keebler elf onto the concrete in front of us. You won’t get excitement like that when you see Bobbie Short at the Carlyle!)

With Kenny Jones replacing the late Moon on drums, by then the Who were pros—the excitement and raggedness of the Keith Moon days were long gone, but it was a good show nonetheless. And they were still a working band in those days—recording new music and touring, unlike what they became in the late ‘80s and ‘90s: a nostalgia act, exciting to be sure, but musically static.

The Who’s career long seemed effectively over, and was, with the release of their last studio album in the early 80s. Like a dying sun, we were simple witnessing the afterglow of their glory. Entwistle will be missed, but his place in rock music history is secure. And hopefully he and Keith Moon are reunited, both to play as one of rock’s great rhythm sections, and to destroy hotel rooms in the great Continental “Riot House” in the sky.

UPDATE: Brink Lindsey reminisces about meeting Entwistle personally and watching him perform an impromptu jam. And Eric Olsen, himself a music producer, has some thoughts.

UPDATE: Brink Lindsey, who was at the same concert I attended, says it was September of '82. Hey, at least I got it within a year!