Rock stolid

Former Who bassist John Entwistle still loves doing it — even if it is on a smaller scale

SKEPTICISM be gone: Money has nothing to do with Who bassist John Entwistle hitting the road solo and playing such low-key concert cities as St. Catharines. Dollars aren’t part of the equation. Entwistle’s a millionaire, right? The guy’s practically rolling in cash.

“You’re never rolling in cash when you’ve got a 17-bedroom house,” joked Entwistle, the stolid Who cornerstone known as The Ox, from his hotel room in Chicago.

Unlike the recent return of such British Invasion icons as George Harrison and Ringo Starr — who have been accused of resurrecting The Beatles to maintain the ritzy lifestyles to which they have become accustomed — Entwistle’s intentions in rolling through St. Catharines next week are entirely honorable.

“I’m not doing this tour for profit,” he stressed. “I’m just hoping to break even. I just want to play, so I’m here to play.”

He has done about 40 North American club shows already, spreading vocal duties around with band members on his solo material and such Who nuggets as My Wife, Boris the Spider, Summertime Blues, Heaven and Hell, Trick of the Light and Success Story. The tour is also the official announcement that Entwistle the songwriter is back: While Entwistle is on the road, estimable independent label Rhino will be releasing an anthology drawn from his five critically acclaimed solo albums.

John Entwistle The Viper Club Downtown St. Catharines March 20

Entwistle is also plugging an independent release called The Rock, which he recorded in 1988 and is now making available on his own Whistle Rhymes label. The Rock sat around collecting dust after a record company intending to release the album folded on the eve of the band’s signing.

The album is being sold at shows as a limited edition and bears Entwistle’s own cover art: portrait of the bassist as crumbling, classic Greek icon.

“My son had his own record label for a while and did his own release,” Entwistle reasoned. “I thought ‘Wow, if it’s that easy, I’m going to do it myself.’ I decided to press up 5,000 and sell them on the tour.”

In the seven years since The Who’s final reunion tour, Entwistle has kept himself busy on the road with his own solo shows and, in the past two summers, as part of the touring band for Who-mate Roger Daltrey and Ringo Starr.

The itch to record and perform is impossible to resist.

Entwistle’s solo albums — from 1971’s Smash Your Head Against the Wall to 1981’s Too Late the Hero — “really stemmed from writing so many songs without an outlet. I had to do solo albums to be able to bring the songs to life.

ABOVE: John Entwistle, touring the clubs with his homegrown release The Rock, says he doesn’t plan on trashing any hotel rooms in Niagara.

RIGHT: Sleeping it off, far right, on the cover of The Who’s The Kids Are Alright. photo special

“But I’ve always needed to play. When I’m in front of an audience, I play better. I need that live fix. I have to play to exist.”

On this tour, Entwistle is dividing the vocals evenly among the known and the unknown. With backing from drummer Steve Luongo, Entwistle takes the mike for his best-known songs, My Wife and Boris the Spider. Guitarist Godfrey Townsend (absolutely no relation to guitarist and writer Pete Townshend) takes over on the rest of The Who’s material, leaving Entwistle free to fill the likes of Summertime Blues with bass solos. Keyboard player Alan St. Jon sings the four songs Entwistle wrote for The Rock.

The whole enterprise is so far away from the maniacal extravagance for which Entwistle, Townshend, Daltrey and late drummer Keith Moon were known in The Who. In The Who documentary The Kids Are Alright, Entwistle was filmed pulling his gold records from his plush estate, breaking them out of their cases and thumbing his nose at mass success by using the records for skeet shooting.

Now he’s happily playing small-to medium-sized clubs instead of stadiums.

“Financially, it would be more viable (to play a large stadium), but I don’t think I would actually sort of get so close to the audience,” he said. “We do a thing called Meet and Greet afterwards, when people bring along their albums and we sign them and you sit on the long table and you actually get to meet the people you’re playing to, which is great.”

In the stadiums with The Who, “the audience is about 100 yards away. That was very frustrating. You can’t make any eye contact; you can’t see any facial expressions.”

The timing actually seems as good as ever for a Who reunion rather than a solo tour. The Who box set, 30 Years of Maximum R ’n’ B, has been out a couple of years now, Townshend has been constantly popping his mug in front of news cameras for the Broadway and travelling runs of the deaf-dumb-and-blind-kid opus Tommy, and the entire Who back catalogue is being remixed and remastered for better-sounding, longer albums on CD.

ENTWISTLE Please see page E 8

‘Financially, it would be more viable (to play a large stadium), but I don’t think I would actually sort of get so close to the audience …’ — JOHN ENTWISTLE