John Entwistle - Ten Years Today.

Ten years ago today John Entwistle died in room 358 at the Hard Rock hotel, Las Vegas, one day before the Who were scheduled to play their first show of a 2002 tour of America. It was on the 27th of June 2002 that music lost the most talented of it's bass player section.

Entwistle was known to many as Thunderfingers because of his amazing ability at playing the bass guitar, a name he constantly lived up to throughout his musical career and it never surprises me when he is topping 'the world's best bass player', he was a genius with his ax. The thing that always stuck out the most about Entwistle was how casual he looked whenever he was playing, it was like an "I can't be arsed" attitude, he stood so still, his face was always wishing it was somewhere else, yet when you look to the center of his body that his bass covered, his fingers and hands were all over it - covering every inch of his fret board to create those infamous Who basslines. He used a different approach to bass playing - using a technique he referred to as 'Typewriter', which was achieved by Entwistle positioning his four fingers on all the strings so that he could tap percussively on the strings. 

A genius? Maybe.

In the presence of an audience was where Entwistle always flourished, he and Townshend would work together in making themselves known as the greatest live band ever, with Entwistle providing rapid melodic lines then Townshend taking over by putting the icing on the cake with his rhythmic chord work. With Keith Moon being unable to keep time it was Entwistle's job to keep time, a job that he succeeded in at every Who gig.

You know what else he could do? He could bloody sing. With an amazing falsetto, that I have spoken before in a post about 'Live at Leeds', it's a wonder why he hadn't been asked to sing more Who songs, rather than letting Roger and Pete take most of the spotlight in that area.

The unsung hero of the Who, I usually find, everyone knows Roger Daltrey, everyone knows Pete Townshend and Keith Moon - but does anyone really know John Entwistle? Maybe when you find your kids picking up Who records for the first time you should sit down and explain to them about the Ox, before he is left in the shadows.