How The Who’s John Entwistle decided to become a bass guitarist

The Who‘s John Entwistle was one of the best bass players of all time, known as “thunder fingers” he inspired a whole generation of musicians. He was a fundamental part of the band until 2002 when he tragically passed away at the age of 57 when he was touring with Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey.

However, he actually started playing the piano, then the trumpet and even the French horn before finally making his own bass guitar to be able to learn how to play. He influenced countless famous artists like Geddy Lee (Rush) and Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead).

How The Who’s John Entwistle decided to become a bass guitarist

Also known as The Ox, John Entwistle recalled in an interview with Marc Allan in 1996 how he ended up becoming a bass guitarist. He was born in Hammersmith, London in 1944 and started his musical career in 1961.

“Well, I started on piano. I was actually convinced by my father when I was 11, that I should actually carry on teaching myself to play the piano, but I’d really like to play the trumpet. Basically, there were too many trumpet players around then, ’cause it was jazz players.”

“The school orchestra gave me a French horn instead, so I took up classical horn. And I was never really happy with jazz, you know? But rock and roll… I starting discovering rock and roll, I was just starting out, yeah. I really wanted a change of instrument. No one wanted a trumpet player in their band. If I’d been a sax player, okay, but I was a trumpet player, and that didn’t fit. So I made myself a bass guitar.”]

He continued:

“I couldn’t afford to buy one, so I made it. It didn’t live very long. I might as well have just bought one. But then I managed to buy a stolen body, and some stolen parts. I made myself one for about 8 pounds. We had a local factory Fenton Wire, used to be Burns Wire. It was just around the corner from where I lived, so I managed to procure the parts. Ended up with, well I suppose you could call it a real bass. It wasn’t exactly wonderful, but it was,” John Entwistle said.

During the same conversation the late musician said that he basically decided to play the bass because of the sound of it. He learned how to play really quickly because he already had a music background. He knew how to read music since hw as six and the only thing that took some time for him was to find his own style as a bassist.