And another Entwistle interview in the Los Angeles Times

[Brian Cady <cadyb@home.com>]

Available on line at:
http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/20000816/t000076957.html

Low-Key Entwistle Still Is Who's Musical Anchor 
By RANDY LEWIS
     If a rock band were a human being, and the members were different
parts of that individual, clearly songwriter-guitarist Pete Townshend
would be the Who's brain and singer Roger Daltrey its voice. Until his
death in 1978 from a drug overdose, drummer Keith Moon was the legs on
which the group moved. 
     But what of the enigmatic John Entwistle? 
     The tall, bearded bassist who typically stands motionless onstage,
nonchalantly peeling off astonishingly unconventional parts that would
challenge many a lead guitarist to duplicate, represents the Who's
central nervous system, without whose complex yet cohesive playing
everything else would collapse on the floor in a flailing heap. 
     He's widely regarded as one of the most accomplished bassists in
all of rock--one who helped give the instrument a place of prominence
alongside the lead guitar. Yet his profile in the Who was long
overshadowed by the showier stage antics of the windmill-style
guitar-thrashing and smashing Townshend, the microphone-twirling Daltrey
and the drum-kit-bashing Moon. 
     Entwistle is secure with his place as the emotional and musical
anchor, though, he says, "it took a long time to get to that space."
Readers of Total Guitar magazine recently voted him "Bassist of the
Millennium," an accolade he accepts with pride. 
     His approach to the bass "came from a need to have a much clearer
bass sound." Early on, Entwistle recalls, "our manager, Kit Lambert,
said, 'The bass sounds like a big blur--I can't hear the notes you're
playing.' To stop that, I just turned the treble up. It all started
there. . . . 
     "I'd always played fast lead figures on the bass, and once you turn
the treble up you can hear them," he says. "It's much harder to play
with the treble up than without it. You can get away with murder on the
bass with the treble down." 
     Entwistle has amassed a collection of hundreds of basses over the
years--he doesn't know exactly how many he owns--first out of interest
as a collector, later to create an arsenal to have at his disposal in
the studio depending on what was called for. 
     "I have several stage basses I rely on and use all the time . . .
one eight-string and three four-strings," he says. "But my favorite is
the one I used to record 'Tommy' and 'Live at Leeds': It's called
'Frankenstein,' because I took parts of five smashed basses and stitched
together one good one. I always seem to go back to that one."


        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
         http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm