Saturday, August 5th, 1972

John is interviewed in Record Mirror: "Why the WHO play better in the U.S."

 

If anyone has this issue - I'd love to get a complete copy of the article!! I found a partial photo of the interview and have transcribed what I could - would love to get the rest!

Partial Transcript:

 

Who's Sick

Who's Man in black, John Entwistle talks to Rob Mackie

SOMEONE IN a group that also contains Pete Townshend and Keith Moon has problems when it comes to being noticed among the group -- it's a bit like appearing on a TV talk show with Jonathan Miller and Harpo Mark sitting on either side.

Roger Daltrey at least has his stage act that people know him by, while a rare day has occurred if John Entwistle tas a toe on stage.

"If I jumped about as well, we'd look like a bunch of lunatics", says John very reasonably, and perhaps the importance of his contributions to the group would only be fully appreciated in absence.  Try and imagine someone else playing bass on 'Won't Get Fooled Again', or picture the 'Tommy' saga minus Cousin Kevin or Uncle Ernie. Or that you'd never seen the Who do 'Heaven and Hell'.

There was an old Hollywood film where a guy's just about to commit suicide and an angel comes down to prove his worth in life, he gets magically show what life would have been like for the people he knew if he hadn't been there.  That would work well for John.  Not that he needs to have anything proved, but suicides in his line, as a songwriter anyway.  "I've got through writing all those horror numbers now, I've just written a nice ordinary one...about suicide", he mentions as deadpan as ever.

There's a deadpan quality about the way he writes some of the horrific themes too, which only makes them more chilling.  Remember this: "Maybe a cigarette burn on your arm Would change your expression to one of alarm/I'll drag you around by a lock of you hair/Or give you a push at the top of the stairs".  That was that nice Kevin, taking care of his little cousin.

 

"Him and Uncle Ernie", says John in fond reminiscence.  "There's a horrible couple of characters. I was suggest that I ought to do the ones about them because I have the darkest sense of humor.

 

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kid at school who used to bully me around before I discovered I was as big as him."

Its all too evident that 'Boris the Spider' has a reallife equivalent too, as John is talking in the studio he has built into his lovely home in Ealing and behind him with its legs neatly splayed out in a glass-ridden box is a very nasty looking species of spider. "I used to have a stuffed cobra", he says drily, "It fell apart and ended up in the dustbin"

To complete the aura of suburban evil, John is dressed to match his jet-black hair and it somes as a surprise that his new solo album is about 'A set of fairy-tale characters.  They aren't named characters, but they are depicted in a sort of Beatrix Potter style in water colours in the sleeve. Little Miss Muffet may have got scared out of her wits by a spider, but worse fates may well be in store for any characters created for 'Whistle Rhymes', the second Entwistle slo album, out here in October.

But really it's entirely in keeping for John to be writing in the style of a kids book.  Without the addition of the Entwistles' first, Christopher, the material might never have got written.  "By the time I've got up for the baby at 6 am., I'm up and there's nothing special to do, so its easy get down to songwriting.   I've done 17 in the last two months which is about the same output as the previous six years. I even wrote one of those 'Now I'm A Farmer' things, but I don't think I'll use it"

Chirstopher is one of the reasons for the aura of quiet satisfaction that surrounds Joh.  There are a lot of others.  He's not the sort of person to say "Hey! lok at this", but everywhere you look in his house, there's something amazing. <Missing>

Pride of place goes to a synthesizer worth 11,000 dollars and capable of 30 billion combinations.  It's a toy that would take a long time to get tired of.  In a twinkle, you can play the same phrase 20 or 30 different instruments with any kind of variations you want. You can do impossible things on it -- ever heard a piccolo with a wah-wah pedal?

There are 21 bass guitars.

One has its own built-in light show with the colours changing according to what being played. Nine are Gibson Thunderbirds: "They're ideal on stage for me, but they break pretty easily and they stopped making them, so i bought up everything I could find." The least musical instrument in the studio is a long stick decorated with tops from beer bottles and with tin cans attached -- A Christmas present from Roger.

John's built-in bear downstairs houses a fine collection of antique pisolry, a TV set wiwth video attachments for recording, and -- intermittently -- two enormous but friendly deer hounds.  The main room is bing entirely re-done "I don't like living in other people's taste, and open on to a garden with a pond swimming with carp and goldfish.  Christopher's on the last in a carry-cot type of thing having his face washed by the tongue of one of the large and lopin deer-hounds -- its a cosy domestic scene far from the union jack jackets and guitar smashing of the early Who.

While The Hollies seemed to split up over the issue of Allan Clarke's solo album, John's "Smash You Head Against The Wall" was taken as amateur of course by the group.  "We all have our own projects as well. Pete's got his own solo album, Roger records <missing>

"I'm not aware of that, all that I feel we have to live up to is the last live gig. Albums matter to us as new material for a live show, that's all. The Who is a stage act. Singles don't interest me at all. I think I've seen "Top of the Pops' once in the last two years. I'm not really aware of singles"

"It's a thing for the family to say 'ooh, it's gone up to number 8, thats all.  There's an obvious single on my solo album, but I don't think I'll put it out, I think singles ought to be representative of an album, not just the most commercial track, which is what they always seem to be.

"The live shows stay exciting because we're always doing something different.  Actually, we've always worked best in the States.  Work's more concentrated there. There's no home life to distract you.  When you're here, you have to take care of bills and go to the office between gigs. There you're just the group and that's all  that matters. My bass playing has gotten better each year, but I'm never really satisfied."

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