The Who’s tour to go forward without Entwistle
ByJun 27, 2002 10:00 PM
The Who’s Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will carry on with a planned North American tour, despite the death of the band’s founding bassist, John Entwistle.
The Who’s Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will carry on with a planned North American tour, despite the death of the band’s founding bassist, John Entwistle.
“We are going on,” said a diary entry posted Friday (6/28) on Pete Townshend’s official website. “First show Hollywood Bowl. Pray for us John, wherever you are.”
The show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles is scheduled to take place on July 1. The tour’s first two dates--Friday (6/28) in Las Vegas and Saturday (6/29) in Irvine, Calif.--have been postponed, but will be rescheduled.
Bill Curbishley, the band’s manager, said in a statement that Daltrey and Townshend view the tour as a tribute to Entwistle “and to the loss of an irreplaceable friend.”
The Entwistle family is said to be in support of the decision to go forward with the tour. “He lived for music and will always live within the Who’s music,” Entwistle’s son Christopher said in a statement. “This is what he would have wished and our love goes out to the remaining band members and the entourage that makes up the Who family.”
Pino Palladino will play bass on the tour. Palladino played on Townshend’s “White City: A Novel” album, and he also played with Daltrey in two 1994 concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall (during which the album “Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and the Who” was recorded).
Townshend and Daltrey reportedly were in Los Angeles on Thursday when they were told of Entwistle’s death. Entwistle arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday for an exhibit at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino of his artwork.
Entwistle was found dead in his room at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at about noon on Thursday. He apparently suffered a heart attack.