SUPERSTAR
Entwistle believed he knew his limits and it pushed him to go on at a relentless pace.
For him, there could not possibly be a reckoning. But he was to be proved sadly, utterly wrong. First, he became careless. There would be the odd night when he would have to be helped home, or the rare show where he couldn’t quite scale the heights.then, things became more serious.
BY 2002, the toll on Entwistle, now 57, from every goblet of brandy, line of coke, fish-and-chip supper (his favourite), pack of cigarettes and long night was all too evident. He had stopped dyeing his hair so it greyed naturally, but now his pallor was just as ashen. He was overweight, often out of breath. Like his mother, Queenie, he had high blood pressure and rampant cholesterol.and he was depressed at the poisonous state of his relationship with his girlfriend, Lisa Pritchettjohnson, the striking American with whom he had an affair while preparing to marry second wife Maxene Harlow.
He would generally rise at noon in his Cotswolds stately home, Quarwood, where he had lived for 26 years. In front of the house was a sweeping, immaculate croquet lawn of vivid, dappled green.
LISA MIGHT have invited a gaggle of folk from the pub in nearby Stowon-the-wold. All would have raided the fully-stocked bar and helped themselves to his drugs. Like pigs at a trough, they might have gone on gorging until dawn. Entwistle could not have cared less for them, but would have joined in regardless.
It never was his style to be a bystander at a party and especially not one of his own. He was a ticking time bomb.
The Who, disbanded by Townshend in 1982 and re-formed seven years later, were about to embark on a tour of America.
Despite his ailments, Entwistle was passed fit to go and was relishing the prospect. After all, ever since the first days, when he was living at home in west London with his domineering mother and despised stepfather Gordon Johns, he had wanted to be off with the band. There, he received the attention and adulation he craved and a licence to indulge his whims and vices.
Entwistle flew to Las Vegas for the first date but never made it to the stage. On June 26, 2002, he hooked up with Alison Rowse, 32. Petite and dark-haired, she danced at a strip club under the name Sianna. They drank until the early hours. Entwistle also did a small amount of cocaine. Some time in the morning of June 27 his broken, exhausted heart finally gave out.
An inquest by the Cotswold coroner clarified that Entwistle had not taken a lethal amount of cocaine, but rather that he had died from the effects of the drug “superimposed upon ischemic heart disease”.
The circumstances made headlines around the world, with both casual sex and illicit drugs, the archetypal rock ‘n’ roller to the end.wreaths in the shape of bass guitars and spiders were laid out across the croquet lawn. The service was held at a packed St Edward’s Church in Stow. His body was cremated and his son, Christopher, scattered his ashes at Quarwood – some by the fish pond, the rest under a monkey puzzle tree.
● Extracted by Matt Nixson from The Ox: The Last Of The Great Rock
Stars by Paul Rees (Constable, £20). For free UK delivery, call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk