PETE TOWNSHEND: Sizes Up Entwistle

Q: But didn’t hobnobbing with the glitterati and playing before the royal families of Europe feel uncomfortable? Even John Entwistle commented in 1970 that The Who had become “snob rock,” and “the kind of band that Jackie Onassis would come and see”?


Townshend: “I don’t know if I was uncomfortable with it or comfortable with it. I don’t remember Jackie Onassis coming to one of our gigs. I never really quite got what John’s grief was. I think John was in the wrong band. John wanted to be in, I dunno, Whitesnake. Really. But he loved me and he loved my writing and he loved playing the music, but I think he wanted there to be lines of coke in the dressing room and groupies on the end of his knob all the time. And when he was left to his own devices, that’s what he did and that’s how he died.”


Key word in quote above: “Really.”