Let’s hear it for the bass player
So who’s your favourite bass player? Lovers of the upright jazz/bass will put their hands up for Charles Mingus or perhaps the wonderful English player Danny Thompson. The brilliant and ultimately tragic Jaco Pastorius still has a big cult following and old rockers will tell you that you can’t beat a bit of Bill Wyman. For me, The Who’s thunderous Jon Entwhistle cannot be mastered. Not only am I a fan, I was also lucky enough to be probably, the last person to interview him for television before his untimely death at the beginning of The Who’s Millenium world tour.
The interview came about because Yorkshire Television wanted to celebrate the making of The Who - Live at Leeds, one of the handful of truly great live rock recordings. We were invited to make a short ten minute piece with the big fella’ at his home, a seventeenth century mansion in the Cotswolds. We arrived at midday to find, like all proper rock stars, Jon Entwhistle was still in bed. We were shown to the bar by Jon’s guitar technician and told “Jon will join you shortly.” When I say bar, I’m not talking a little cocktail thing in a corner with a bottle of drambuie inside a furry pink poodle. This was a full blown pub inside the house, called “The Barracuda Tavern”. Huge stuffed game fish hung on wires from the ceiling. Jon’s hobby we were told was fishing for barracuda.
Jon joined us within half an hour. We sat on two tall stools at the bar and the camera started rolling. I posed my first question “Live at Leeds is regarded has one of The Who’s finest achievements, can you remember much about how it came about?
“I beg your pardon!”
I asked the question again.
“Look I,m sorry, but you’re going to have to speak a lot louder.” Jon’s guitar tech interrupted. You will have to shout Ian.. Jon is very deaf. All those years of playing at maximum volume have shot his eardrums to pieces.
The interview took about an hour to complete. I shouted myself hoarse. And then had my own ear drums blasted when Jon picked up his bass and played a full throttle version of ‘Yong Man Blues.” Our own private rock concert.
As we packed up to leave, Jon’s American girl friend asked us if we’d like to stay for dinner.
We had to decline, telling them that we had to be in London to film a sequence about The Sex Pistols with a director called Julian Temple.
Jon rose up from his stool. ‘Well you’ll have more fun here!” I’m sure we would have done.
The fuller version of this story and much more is now available in Ian’s latest book “Bringing it all back home“