The Who virtuoso had a perfect life – until his bandmates’ jealousy led him into a spiral of hedonism that destroyed him

JOHN ENTWISTLE’S friend Bill Wyman dubbed him “the Jimi Hendrix of the bass guitar”. It was meant as the highest compliment but the former Rolling Stone bassist inadvertently conjured the very demon that would haunt Entwistle throughout his life. Indisputably, he was a virtuoso musician, easily the most accomplished player in The Who. He was also a trailblazer on the bass, playing it with a kind of boundless invention that no one had before and precious few have managed since.

The problem for him was that his chosen instrument was the bass guitar. In popular perception and the actual hierarchy of almost every band, the singer is centre of attention and standard bearer; the lead guitarist is the creative lynchpin, the driving force; while the bassist and drummer, respectively set to one side and the rear, are simply dutiful infantrymen.

This was as true of The Who as any other group, save that Keith Moon used the wild, kinetic abandon of his playing and the careering craziness of his personality to force himself between Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend into the spotlight.

Onstage chaos quickly became a part of the band’s appeal. At one of their regular shows at the Railway Hotel in Wealdstone, north London, in September 1964,

‘He had 15 identical white suits made’

Townshend smashed up a guitar on stage for the first time. Moon copied him at one of their next gigs, leaping up at the end of their set to kick and hurl his drums across the stage.

It soon became a calling card leaving the solid, steadfast Entwistle to fill the part of the band’s anchor. No matter that on The Who’s 1965 signature single, My Generation, and ever after, Entwistle’s bass was just as much the lead instrument as Townshend’s guitar. Nor that Entwistle, proficient on numerous brass instruments, came to assume the role of arranger-inchief, most notably on Townshend’s two magnum opus rock operas, Tommy from 1969, and 1973’s Quadrophenia.

Or even that he was the only member other than Townshend to write consistently, creating standards like My Wife, Cousin Kevin and Boris the Spider, which for years was their most requested song on tour.

He had other talents, too. For their 1975 album, The Who By Numbers, he submitted a pen-and-ink, join-the-dots caricature of the four band members to be used as the front cover art. Later, he claimed he had been paid the princely sum of £30, whereas the montage of black-and-white photographs Townshend commissioned for Quadrophenia two years earlier cost £16,000.

Glyn Johns, their long-time producer, recalled: “John was hugely respected by the other three. He was also probably the only one who was able to have a positive relationship with all of the other guys… He just didn’t get involved in any of the normal problems within a band, the ego battles.”

Typically, Entwistle kept himself off to the sidelines of band conflicts. But he once complained that his wife couldn’t see him onstage. Manager Bill Curbishley insisted he got the same amount of stage lighting as anyone else but suggested Entwistle’s customary black outfit probably didn’t help.

As a result, Entwistle had 15 identical, but different sized white suits made. Five pairs of trousers had an ‘F’ in them for ‘fat’. The next five had ‘M’ for ‘medium’, with the final five marked ‘T’ for ‘thin’. Entwistle worked his way through them as he toured and lost weight – before reverting to black.

It was this insecurity that left him feeling underappreciated and misunderstood. He rarely articulated it to anyone else, but the injustice he felt festered deep in his gut.

Over time, he found ways to compensate. On stage, he made sure to set his bass louder than anyone else. Eventually, the backline wall of amplifiers that he played through grew so high that it was christened “Little Manhattan” by road crew.

The unholy racket drove Daltrey to apoplectic rages, which only made him turn it up even more. It ruined his own hearing, leaving him needing a hearing aid, but it was worth it to goad the singer.

OFFSTAGE, perhaps as a result of his insecurity, Entwistle resolved to live the devil-may-care life of a rock star. He spent money like there was no tomorrow, like sand slipping through his fingers. He bought a fleet of cars – Rolls-royces, Bentleys and Cadillacs – even though he never bothered to learn to drive. He acquired the world’s biggest private collection of bass guitars; wardrobes full of clothes, boots and jewellery. He stuffed whole rooms with antique weaponry, gadgets – and plaster-cast fish.

His other appetites were just as voracious: women, booze, cocaine, pills, cigarettes, food. Even though he carried on in this bacchanalian manner for a quarter of a century, it seemed to have no effect.

For years, no one could recall him being fall-down drunk. Playing live or in the studio, his brilliance was undimmed whatever he imbibed.always, his playing would be so fluid, so daring and so outrageous it would take one’s breath away. His iron constitution earned him the nickname “The Ox”.

It became a badge of honour, an acknowledgement that he was one of the last of a breed of reckless souls now tamed, wrecked or dead. That was the trouble. Moon killed himself and Townshend had to dry out, but