Dec 18 2008
John Entwistle Isolated
I only took a few bass lessons when I first started playing. The only thing I think I learned was a pentatonic scale. Other than that, my teacher told me that there was one bass player I should really check out, and that was John Entwistle from The Who. I was pretty familiar with The Who but never really paid much attention to the bass playing. All I knew about Entwistle was that they called him The Ox because while Pete Townshend was windmilling and Roger Daltrey was whipping his mic around, John just stood there and played. I gave them a few more listens but at that age I thought they were just another pretty good classic rock band but nothing I was all that into.
Since then, I’ve always liked The Who, but never really considered myself a fan. And then I saw this video on YouTube. It’s Entwistle playing Won’t Get Fooled Again, and his audio and video are isolated. And then I got it. Watch it after the jump…
Holy shit! I’ve heard that song a thousand times and this guy is just riffing through the whole thing and I’d never even noticed it before, probably because he had it so fuzzed that it blended in with Townshend’s guitar. It’s the perfect bass equivalent to Keith Moon’s drumming. This band had a rhythm section who played like they were soloing all the time.
For more info on this amazing bassist, a good place to start is his wikipedia entry . The section on technique is particularly fascinating.
