The Fox Rocks

I’m a day late, but wanted to pay tribute to my favorite bassist, John Entwistle on the anniversary of his death.  I have one personal memory of him that I treasure dearly.  I’ll never forget how sweet he was when he found out Pete Townshend was hanging out with me and a friend at the Navarro Hotel in 1979.

The phone in the Pete’s room rang.  My friend picked it up and answered, “Pete Townshend’s room,” using her best executive assistant voice.  She paused, listening to the person on the other end and answered, “We are fans hanging out with Pete.  Who are you?”  Pete and I sat watching in amusement.  She looked over at us with typical Brooklyn nonchalance and said, “It’s John Entwistle.”  “You want to come over and hang out too?  Yeah… sure,” she said sarcastically into the phone.   She listened a bit more and then hung up the phone.  By this time, I had left Pete sitting alone at the table and was an inch from her face. “Was that really John?  Did he really say he wanted to come over?”

Forgetting Pete was even in the room, which we did throughout the night, we chatted on as two teenage Brooklyn girlfriends discussing an out of the ordinary event and sarcastically disbelieving that a celebrity would  keep their word.  (Even though we were hanging out alone with Pete Townshend, who had kept his word!)  Pete watched, amused by our antics.  He poured us wine, a new conversation started and we quickly forgot about John and the call.

Then… the door bell rang.  I sprang from my seat, yelled, “My turn!” and ran to the door, with Pete running after me.  I will never forget the cute wide eyed surprised look and smile John gave me when I opened the door and said “Hi!” with a big grin.  Pete then caught up to me, put his arm around my shoulders and said to John, “This is my pet worm.”   I turned to him and said, “HEY!”  He just laughed, squeezed me hard and motioned for John and his companion to come into the room.  Pete and I followed.  His arm still around me.

John was just wonderful and very funny.  He asked all about us and was sincerely interested.  Actually, both Pete and John were so sincere and down to earth that I couldn’t help, but drop my Brooklyn teen bravado for a moment and fall in love.  I was a bit sad when John had to leave, but we still had Pete and stayed with him until the small hours.  I’ll leave that for more blogs to come.  Rest In Peace sweet John.