Pete Townshend sat down with Billboard to discuss The Who’s 1969 album, ‘Tommy.’
The rocker was asked about the different ‘iterations’ of the album and if he sees it as an evolving work. The rocker shared that he cared about the ‘lasting legacy’ of his work and the band’s financial struggles back then. Apparently, Entwistle almost ended up in jail, but the band had a plan to not let him go. He explained:
“I have to be absolutely honest here: I think I do care about the lasting legacy of my work. I do very much. One of the reasons I’m with my current wife Rachel [Fuller], is that around 1996 The Who were struggling to get back together to help our bass player John Entwistle who was in dire straits financially, he was gonna go to prison for tax evasion. We had to tour to keep him out of jail, basically.”
He then mentioned the legacy of the album:
“So the legacy of Tommy is really important to me. At my age now, 79 in May, there are big decisions to make. I can’t jump out on a stage the way that I used to — some of the photographs of me jumping up in the air, it looks like I’m jumping seven feet in the air, I don’t know how it happened. I survived Keith Moon, and the fact is that Keith Moon didn’t survive Keith Moon.”
Entwistle’s Death ‘Forced’ Townshend To Be A Better Guitarist
Talking to Rolling Stone, Townshend mentioned that when Entwistle passed away, there was a huge gap in the band’s sound. It was a gap that he had to figure out how to fill by trying out new techniques and approaches to playing.
Townshend also reflected on the void left behind when drummer Keith Moon died in 1978. He said:
“When John Entwistle died, there was another space left. That was because he was filling up so much of the musical spectrum with his bass sound, which was not a traditional bass sound.”
Townshend then explained what he had to learn after his friend’s passing:
“I started to solo. I had to learn to practice the guitar, which I hadn’t done much of before. I’ll never be a famous shredder, but I can play better than I could when we were in the Live at Leeds years, for example.”
Entwistle passed away in 2002 after contributing to all of The Who’s studio albums released during his lifetime, from their debut in 1965, ‘My Generation,’ to 1982’s ‘It’s Hard.’
