John Entwistle's solo albums - unfairly ignored?

Outside of a few songs from Empty Glass and the song "White City" there's not much from Townshend's solo career that I think would've been better if they were Who songs. Townshend's solo career is mostly filled with unlistenable garbage

IMO John's solo career is about in-line with Pete's in regards to song quality. But in his case, at least with the songs I mentioned above, I do think had they been recorded by The Who that they would've been better. I mean, The Who's "Heaven and Hell" is better than John's solo version of that song imo.

"What Are We Doing Here?" has classic Who written all over it. i think it's one of the few John solo songs that everybody seems to like (or at least not hate). While my choice in "Try Me" might seem as odd as it's no masterpiece, I think is a bit of a hidden gem in John's solo career. It's got a cool guitar hook and an overall good feel, but John's vocal sounds strained. It'd be interesting to hear a Roger vocal on it or perhaps a Who, John sung version at a lower key and a more Who-like feel.

 

I already know some of you guys hate this, but so what, I F________n love it

If I was gonna cover a JE tune, this would be a top pick........
Great song with emotional weight IMO......
and so what if there's a couple cliche' lines.

 

I agree with that, but because that music is excellent as is and wouldn't have been improved in another context . . . so obviously I don't agree with the statement you made after the above.

I like lots of Entwistle's solo material, too--and Daltrey, as well.

 

I love the dark humor in a lot of John Entwistle's songs

 

me too (Club Bene) ...10 minutes from my home. Been an empty lot for several years-great shows there.

 

In college I had cassette copies of his first three-played them like Who canon. Later bought Too Late the Hero. Not bad, but not Empty Glass either.

 

My John Entwistle Collection of favorite songs he released on The Who records (only songs where he takes the lead vocal):

Whiskey Man
Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (UK mix)
Someone's Coming
Cousin Kevin Model Child
Postcard (EP mix)
Heaven and Hell
When I Was A Boy
My Wife
Success Story
905

 

Perhaps he was thinking that he tried that and it didn't work commercially, so he'd write an album as bland and generic as all the crap he was hearing on the radio.

That said, I love the title track and the bass licks in "Fallen Angel." Joe Walsh is remarkably uninspired on this record, though. I'd never have guessed it was him.

 

I listened to it once in something akin to horror. I don't even know where my copy is, anymore. I do have his first couple albums on CD, which are both really very good, and a couple more compilations and live albums, plus Too Late the Hero. I also listened to Rigor Mortis and Mad Dog in other people's collections and decided they weren't worth owning. I have to get Music from Van-Pires one of these days.

 

In terms of track selection, they are both superb. In terms of sound quality, they sound fine to my ears, but I'm not much of an audiophile.

 

Pete didn't even write the music to "White City Fighting." That's David Gilmour. Pete contributed the lyrics.

 

I went to those Club Bene shows. One time he let 20 or so people in for his soundcheck, so I got to sit at his feet for an hour as he played, barely arm's length away. He even let a fan come up and sing "The Real Me" with the band. Afterward, he sat for a while and signed anything you wished. ("We have to limit it to, say, ten per person"). It was pre-cellphone days, so few people had a camera on them and nobody was asking for a photo. I had mine, so I asked.

 

Wow! This was taken from Italian TV!

 

I lost track of which was which, but I have both versions of Smash and Whistle, and I think the original CDs sound just fine but I do not like the remasters at all.

For Rigor Mortis and Mad Dog, I only have the remasters. I think Rigor Mortis sounds fine, but Mad Dog sounds awful.

 

I honestly don't know how anyone can defend most of Pete's solo career. Especially All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, most of White City, The Iron Man and Psychoderelict. I've tried to get into each of those albums at one point or another and just found them all to be complete garbage.

Unfortunately Pete was really running on fumes throughout the 80s and it really shows starting with his songs on Face Dances and probably (at least partially) explains why he hasn't released much new music since 1994.

 

It's not like Odysseus doesn't know this or could be talked out of his opinion, but many people, including me, find COWBOYS to to incredibly smart, passionate, deep, emotionally moving, intriguingly complicated, and very well crafted as song-objects providing aural pleasure and all that. (I think it is POSSIBLE that me being 14 and in zenith of my PT fascination when it came out might help bouy how much I adore it.) If we started the "Pete sucks" discussion with half of WHITE CITY and most onward with a handful of exceptions prior to the new one, I'm mostly with him.

 

Funny story, I went with Jack Blades and a writer friend of mine to see Entwistle play at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. This was sometime in the late 1990's I think. Anyway, I doubt there were more than 20 people in the whole club! Being such a small audience, there was a lot of audience interaction, jokes, false starts/screw-ups etc. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

 

Admittedly Pete's work on Face Dances and It's Hard has grown on me through the years, but I still feel that John's songs on It's Hard ("It's Your Turn" and "Dangerous", not "One at a Time") were superior to Pete's sans "Eminence Front".

Unfortunately the music from Pete's solo career hasn't grown on me like much of his work on FD and IH has though.

 

That's actually a plausible theory, that he was deliberately trying to tone down his more creative and eccentric traits to be more commercial. But since creativity and eccentricity were what made most of us love his work in the first place, that was a dire mistake.

 

The only album I had issues with was the narration version of Psychoderelict, just because there was so much narration. I like the version without the narration fine. All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, White City and Iron Man I absolutely love (as well as Empty Glass of course). I also love both Face Dances and It's Hard. I like those two as much as any Who album aside from Who Are You, which is my favorite Who album. From my perspective, Townshend reached a late-career, sustained peak of genius from 1978 through 1989. Unfortunately he fizzled out or at least lost interest in doing much creative work in the 90s, but there's scattered work since then, of course, and this year's Who album was quite good.

 

I'm sure Entwistle knew exactly what that phrase meant. The British style of humour could often be what many people might consider offensive. If you have a problem with that, look elsewhere for your entertainment.

 

I’ll do just fine without you telling me where I should look for entertainment, thank you.

 

I love your posts, attitude, appreciation of music, and the ability to see the good in so much......You get down to it, music is a great thing. I get negative at times, but in reality there is much I appreciate even in things I can be critical of...

not that what I'm say in this post has anything to do with JE....... I'm pretty immune to criticizing him, for the most part...

 

On the Odds and Sods outtake album John has the opening track......
Always dug this one

 

I do think it's important to look at older books/films/albums and judge them both the context of their time, as well as a modern context, because culture and society are always going to evolve. In this instance, however, I don't think it's accurate to characterize British humor of the 1970's as possibly offensive without acknowledging that the offensive material might not necessarily involve sexual or scatological humor, but rather white comedians having a chuckle at the expense of stupid [n-words] for entertainment purposes.

That said, I can remember watching 1970's vintage BBC programming on Detroit TV (this was when we only had eight TV channels to choose from, but two of them were PBS and the CBC) and my parents being shocked at the how all-white British sitcoms such as "The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin" would drop the n-word as a punchline. We're not talking "social commentary" or satire along the lines of "All In The Family" or "Blazing Saddles", but things like Dave Allen performing a monologue which repeated n-jokes (complete with dialect) about poll taxes in the deep south. I don't know why this didn't cause more controversy at the time, other than apparently somebody like Spike Lee wasn't in the habit of watching these shows. Come to find out, the BBC aired a show called "The Black And White Minstrel Show" up until 1978.

All that said, I don't think that "Mad Dog", as an album, is as offensive as all of the above. The instrumental track in question could have easily been given a different title, and nobody would be the wiser. Entwistle was a chronically edgy artist, and the title may have simply been intended to be edgy. Even if so, it's probably more telling that I've never encountered any mention that the record label ever voiced any objection to the title.