John and John Remembered

Tomorrow will mark the 73rd anniversary of arguably the most dominant figure of the 1960s pop music revolution. John Winston Lennon was the inspiration and driving force for what turned out to be the biggest group in music. While many have aspired to emulate that success, the Beatles were quite simply on another level. The '60s had many memorable figureheads who were as much interested in real social issues as making music. Lennon was just about the most high profile of them all. His quest for peace spawned the Summer of Love in 1967 and his influence on music is immense. As a song writer, he had few equals and when you listen to any given Beatles song, you can usually tell whether it was a Lennon or a McCartney composition quite quickly. By pure coincidence, his only child, Sean, from his marriage to Yoko Ono was also born on October 9th. Like his father, Sean has been politically active and was most recently spotted at the "Occupy Wall Street" protest in New York. It is a great tragedy that John's life ended in the way it did because there is every chance that he still had a great deal to offer musically not to mention his political activity. The list of musicians who cite Lennon as a major influence is too long to record. We live in a world of hype and superlatives these days, but in the case of John Lennon, they would be quite appropriate. If John was at the forefront of '60s music, John Entwistle of The Who could hardly have been more different. Surrounded by the triple egos of Moon, Townshend and Daltrey, John Entwistle remained the quiet one content to stand motionless and let his music do the talking. Ask anybody who is anybody in the world of music as to who dominated the bass guitar and they won't even need to think about their answer. If Paul McCartney was a great bass player, John Entwistle was Olympic standard. He remains the biggest influence on that instrument as a succession of players have attempted to emulate his effortless mastery. In a sense, John Entwistle had to be that good to be able to play in a band as dynamic as The Who. For a start, he had to try and keep time to the maniac drumming of Keith Moon - few others would have had a hope in hell. He also had to accomodate the obsessive tinkering of Townshend. Although a great song writer in his own right, he was always happy to play second fiddle to the writing dominance of Townshend. If Lennon's death was a tragedy, Entwistle in many respects achieved the rock and roll dream. On the eve of another US tour, Entwistle was found dead in his Las Vegas hotel bedroom having spent the night with a prostitute and a sizeable quantity of cocaine. He spent money like water and didn't even think about what tomorrow might bring. While Keith Moon died taking the medication which sought to treat his alcoholism, Entwistle had no such intentions. At 57, Entwistle lived out the famous lyric of "My Generation" and did indeed die before he got old. Either way, the two Johns Lennon and Entwistle were about as high up the '60s musical tree as you could get and still very much missed.