LAS VEGAS (AP) - Stunned fans of The
Who's John Entwistle left flowers and
consoled each other outside a casino
concert hall where the bass player who
helped make the band one of the
biggest in rock history had been
expected to
perform Friday.
`The Ox has left the building - we've
lost another great friend,'' bandmates
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey wrote
on Townshend's Web site.
Former Stones bassist Bill Wyman
described Entwistle as `the quietest man in
private but the loudest man on stage.'
`He was unique and irreplaceable,' Wyman said.
Entwistle, a co-founder of The Who, was on medication for a heart condition,
according to Steve Luongo, the drummer in another Entwistle band for the last
15 years. An autopsy was scheduled for Friday, but Clark County Coroner Ron
Flud said no foul play was suspected.
The Who's scheduled concert at the Hard Rock on Friday was canceled, as was a
July 1 show in Los Angeles. The rest of the three-month, nationwide tour was
undecided, said Beckye Levin of promoter Clear Channel Entertainment.
From London, Entwistle's family issued a statement that thanked fans for their
messages of condolence and asked for `a brief period of privacy in which to
mourn and adjust our lives to this tragedy.'
Their music reflected their offstage life, with band members often fighting and
vowing to quit the group. While the Beatles fit happily into a unified sound,
The Who seemed to slug it out right in front of their fans.
Their concerts were literally explosive - a fusion of acrobatics and volcanic
sound that left the stage and their instruments a smoldering wreck.
They were so loud that the Guinness Book of Records measured a 1976 show and
certified them as the world's loudest band, their noise level just below a jet
plane's roar. Townsend and Entwistle both suffered permanent hearing damage.
``A lot of our fans liked us because we made mistakes. It made us look more
human. And then the fact that we could actually sort of burst out laughing on
stage when we made a real bad blunder,' Entwistle told The Associated Press in
a 1995 radio interview.
Without the steady Entwistle, someone once observed, the band might have
literally flown off the stage. His fingers raced across his bass, but he stood
silently in contrast to his hyperactive bandmates: Moon, guitarist Townshend
and lead singer Daltrey.
Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for the Doors, called The Ox `one of the great, great
rock bassists of all time. A real genius.'
He was also the only member of the band with formal musical training.
He was among the first in rock to experiment with the six- and eight-string
bass, and he also played the French horn.
`As a musician, he did for the bass guitar what Jimi Hendrix did for the
guitar,' said Luongo, 49, who played drums in The Entwistle Band.
Few bass players had a job more challenging than Entwistle's, playing rhythm
alongside Moon, rock's loudest, fastest and most unpredictable drummer.
Entwistle in many instances improvised as much as guitarist Townshend, who once
said the bass player provided more lead material than he did.
``A lot of my playing is improvising,'' Entwistle explained to Bass Frontiers
magazine in 1996. ``I will just discover different little patterns or riffs in
any key at anytime. Somewhere in my brain I have a list of things I can play.
It's a matter of putting them in the right order.'
Entwistle was also an artist and was in Las Vegas,in part to open a show at the
Grammy's Art of Music Gallery at the Aladdin Hotel-Casino. His work included
cartoon-type portraits of himself and his fellow band members.
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