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An Entwistle master class…

Michedelic

Michedelic

MId-Century Modern
Jun 18, 2013
29,371
71,992
Yucca Valley/Joshua Tree
#1
With all these vids now that feature isolated instrumental parts, it’s hard to keep up, and I just found this….


Doesn’t sound too bad in consideration of the processing required to achieve it. One of the great things about “Live At Leeds”, which I absorbed in my formative playing years, was the hard separation of bass and guitar. Wish I had been able to dial out Roger.

Then, there’s this; lower fidelity, but you can focus entirely on the bass…


I would think that the Ox’s playing annoys the “just keep it in the groove” crowd, but that’s not what The Who were about, and they would have been a boring band without him. Yeah, Pete wrote the majority of the material, it’s what set them apart, but still while his guitar work was unique, it had its limitations. I considered Roger’s vocals good, but only occasionally great, and Moon would have eaten alive any other bass player who tried to keep up with him. John’s style and sound just gave them that extra special something.
 
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#2
Musically, in a way The Who were inverted. Townshend was more of a huge rhythm player, you never heard the long solos you'd hear with the other English guitarists, and Moon and Entwistle would churn like whirling dervishes. Supposedly Townshend was hot to get Kenny Jones after Moon's passing so that he could have a drummer that 'played the same parts every time', which he did, and in doing so, high-centered Entwistle in a way, he went from playing in a Major League park to a high-school field. They did sound more polished with Kenny, a top-shelf drummer by anyone's standards, but it lacked the runaway, crazy propulsion that Moon (and Entwislte) supplied on a good day.

And to me, you can have 'Tommy'. 'Quadrophenia' is a far more complete work, more fully realized, a view to how much they'd grown, despite their crazy interpersonal problems.

JE had quite the relationship with Alembic who built him quite a few projects over the years. The Explorer-like basses, a Stanley short-scale with a Bigsby, several more or less conventional Series axes, even a full 34" V shaped axe almost longer than he was tall. The Vulture basses wound up with Warwick after a temporary falling out in the relationship, not aided by Susan Wickersham have grave reservations about 'building something that ugly'.

Entwistle Exploiter.jpg

JE Commemorative Exploiter Four (a numbered series of 50, and 50 8-strings with the inverted V peghead), dig the inlaid 'Boris the Spider' web

JE + V.jpg

34" Custom Series V 4-string, 34" scale. Now you see why most V-shaped basses are short-scale.

Alembic still tells the stories of the various basses they'd build for him, with the relief/action just half-a-hair short of dead straight with the strings virtually sitting on the frets, the setup numbers supplies by his tech. Anyone else would pick it up and try to play it, and it was near impossible. HE'd pick it up, and while he did like just a little bit of rattle in his tone, that's all he'd get and just fly on them. Un-real.
 
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#3
Michedelic said:
With all these vids now that feature isolated instrumental parts, it’s hard to keep up, and I just found this….


Doesn’t sound too bad in consideration of the processing required to achieve it. One of the great things about “Live At Leeds”, which I absorbed in my formative playing years, was the hard separation of bass and guitar. Wish I had been able to dial out Roger.

Then, there’s this; lower fidelity, but you can focus entirely on the bass…


I would think that the Ox’s playing annoys the “just keep it in the groove” crowd, but that’s not what The Who were about, and they would have been a boring band without him. Yeah, Pete wrote the majority of the material, it’s what set them apart, but still while his guitar work was unique, it had its limitations. I considered Roger’s vocals good, but only occasionally great, and Moon would have eaten alive any other bass player who tried to keep up with him. John’s style and sound just gave them that extra special something.
Click to expand...


This, is, cool! :thumbsup:
 
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#5
Mosthigh said:
One interesting thing is Townshend played bass on the demos he would bring to the band. As you can hear on his demo of 'The Real Me', many of the bass motifs are already there, in truncated form. Entwistle certainly fleshed them out and added his own, but he certainly didn't start from scratch.

Click to expand...

very cool! I've always been a Who fan but I've never heard that before. Very interesting to hear Pete's demo of this iconic song. Are there more of those floating around the web ?
 
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#8
J Wilson said:
The Vulture basses wound up with Warwick after a temporary falling out in the relationship, not aided by Susan Wickersham have grave reservations about 'building something that ugly'.
Click to expand...

I may be misremembering the chronology, but didn't Modulus Graphite build the original Buzzard Basses for Entwistle?
 
#9
Mosthigh said:
One interesting thing is Townshend played bass on the demos he would bring to the band. As you can hear on his demo of 'The Real Me', many of the bass motifs are already there, in truncated form. Entwistle certainly fleshed them out and added his own, but he certainly didn't start from scratch.

Click to expand...

So interesting. And for those who don’t see the value of Roger, may I present ‘Exhibit A’, lol.

Heheh, but I’m not dissing Pete. He wrote an awesome song here, and as you pointed out, he clearly had the "Entwistle goes off on bass" aspect in mind from the get go. When it came to the drum part, Moon was clearly on his own though :cool:
 
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#10
Michedelic said:
Then, there’s this; lower fidelity, but you can focus entirely on the bass…
Click to expand...

Man, I love the tone in the bass only version. So ballsy.

Some of the notes aren’t quite what I imagined them to be in my head before listening to this isolated track (I know the song well as a listener, but have never tried to learn it as a bass player)
 
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#11
John Entwistle is the reason I started playing bass in the first place.
I love playing The Real Me. I end up improvising some of the pentatonic stuff, but the main solo riffs are really key to nail.

I've always loved his playing and sense of melody.

I'm listening to Quadrophenia in my new headphones because of this thread, and the whole album is a master class.
I'm on the Punk and Godfather right now, and it's just insane.

Thank you for making me listen in again!
 
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#12
J Wilson said:
And to me, you can have 'Tommy'. 'Quadrophenia' is a far more complete work, more fully realized, a view to how much they'd grown, despite their crazy interpersonal problems.
Click to expand...
While Tommy saved them financially, and elevated their status, it is full of throwaway/filler stuff, I guess to pad out the time. Plus, even though it wasn’t the first of its type, Townshend was feeling his way with the overall concept, and that was the moment in time when every band was compelled to make a big statement album. It ended up being a burden for them in performance for awhile.
I’d agree with you on Quadraphenia; recording technology and production techniques has advanced so much in just a few short years that it was truly their grand statement, as well as a melancholy remembrance of their beginnings.
This may be controversial, but I wish they had just stopped after that, it would have been a perfect ten years of existence, like the Beatles. I wasn’t too impressed with anything beyond it, everything just sounded tired. “Squeezebox” was embarrassing.
 
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#16
Lyrically, Quadrophenia is rich in one liners and truisms of life and work.

A man is running from his boss who holds a gun that fires cost!

I am a man, who reveals all that he digs, should be more careful what I say.

I clean my room and my shoes but my momma found a box of blues

There's a story that the grass is so green. What have I seen? Where have I been?
Nothing is planned by the sea and the sand

Breathe the air we have blown you

I went back to my mother, I said I'm C R A Z Y mom help me!
She said, "I know how it feels son, it runs in the f a m i l y".

As a teen hearing all this while trying to figure out life on a daily basis, Quadrophenia wasn't just rock 'n' roll, it was therapy!
 
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#18
Bob_Ross said:
I may be misremembering the chronology, but didn't Modulus Graphite build the original Buzzard Basses for Entwistle?
Click to expand...
Correct. I think they only made three, all of them green. He used one when he toured with Ringo.
Years later, when a customer requested they make him a Buzzard, they said they didn't have the rights, so they created the Dragon.

1736280691583.png
 
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